The Mad and the MacAbre

* * *

A month later, Alicia announced that she was engaged. Charlie wished her the best, and meant it. Then he joined his co-workers in speculating about whether or not the ridiculously short time frame between meeting the guy and agreeing to marry him was somehow related to an unexpected pregnancy.

When she brought him to their next gathering, Charlie decided that no, they were simply in love.

* * *

On a lark, Charlie entered Kutter in a small local dog show. They were eliminated in the first round, though at least Charlie was pretty sure that their scores were better than the bulldog that took a dump in front of the judges. They didn't get a trophy, but Charlie gave Kutter lots of treats.

* * *

'Hear me out before you say no,' said Alicia. Charlie didn't like her wicked grin. There was no question that her intentions were evil.

'All right.'

'I have a friend--'

'No.'

'She just moved here a couple of weeks ago. If you don't count me, she doesn't have any friends outside of work. She's really nice. She likes dogs. I think you two would really hit it off.'

Charlie thought about that for a moment. 'You mean a blind date, right?'

'Yep.'

'Uh-uh. No.'

'You're not going to take pity on my poor friend? My poor lonely friend, who got really excited when I told her all about you?'

'Sorry.'

Alicia lowered her voice to a whisper. 'She's been unwillingly celibate for the past two years.'

Charlie broke into a cold sweat and hoped that Alicia didn't notice. 'I'm busy.'

'I didn't say when.'

'When?'

'It's open-ended. Anytime you two are able to make it work. And here's the best part, I thought that you could do a 'dog date,' where you take your dogs to the park together. She has a Yorkie. So Kutter can have a date, too. It'll be fun.'

'Is her Yorkie mean?'

'Her Yorkie is just fine. Can I tell her you said yes?'

'I don't know.'

'You need to say yes, because I'll harass you about this as much as I can without violating any HR policies.'

By the official company rules, Charlie thought that the 'unwillingly celibate' comment might have been a human resources violation already, but of course he wasn't going to report her. 'Fine,' he said.

'Cool! How about Saturday?'

'Afternoon or evening?'

'Do you already have plans for either?'

'No.'

'Then let's go with Saturday afternoon. You'll love her. I promise!'

* * *

Despite the badgering from his hair stylist, Charlie still refused to add any highlights.

* * *

He had no idea what to wear. He wanted to dress to impress, but he also didn't want to look like an idiot running around the dog park in formal clothes.

'You're lucky,' he told Kutter. 'All you have to wear is fur.'

Kutter woofed in agreement. Or disagreement. One of the two.

Charlie settled on jeans and his nicest red polo shirt, with an extra spritz of cologne.

* * *

She was seated on a bench, waiting for him as he and Kutter arrived at the dog park. Unless it was some other curly-haired blonde with a Yorkie on her lap.

'Elizabeth...?' he asked.

'Hi, Charlie!' she said, standing up.

Charlie had hoped it was a case of mistaken identity. She was remarkably unattractive--overweight, bad complexion, and crooked teeth. Her hair was nice, and Charlie liked her yellow blouse, but she wasn't one-tenth as good-looking as Alicia.

Was that how Alicia saw him? Her ugly co-worker? She hadn't set up the blind date to be nice to him; she did it because there was nobody else who'd go out with her repulsive cow of a friend.

Okay, 'repulsive cow' was too harsh.

And he had to be honest: he was not a handsome man. Not even if you graded on a curve. For all he knew, she was thinking the same thing, that Alicia must've picked her ugliest co-worker to set her up with on the date.

If nothing else, she looked a lot better than some of the junkies he cut up.

'Hi,' he said. He gave a gentle tug on Kutter's leash. 'This is Kutter.'

'Nice to meet you, Kutter,' said Elizabeth. 'This is Cooper.'

'After the singer?'

'Alice Cooper?'

'Yeah.'

'No, but I like his music. Are you a fan?'

'Uh-huh.' Charlie didn't listen to music very often, but School's Out was one of the few CD's he owned.

Charlie awkwardly shook her hand. A soft breeze was at her back, and he noticed that she smelled nice, sort of like cotton candy.

'So Alicia says that you rescued your dog...?'

'Yeah. Not from wolves or anything like that, but yeah.'

Elizabeth giggled. Charlie smiled as well. The wolves line was kind of clever. He didn't usually ad-lib things like that.

'That's pretty cool of you. I got Cooper from an animal shelter. If my sister hadn't stopped me, I probably would've taken home six of them.'

'That's a lot of Yorkies.'

'Yeah.'

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Charlie frantically tried to think of something to ask. 'Do you go by Beth?'

'Liz. Or the full Elizabeth. As long as you don't call me Lizzie, it's fine.'

'I won't.'

'Thanks.'

'Do you want to see Kutter catch a Frisbee?'

'I'd love to.'

With the pressure on, Charlie half-expected Kutter to develop performance anxiety and completely botch the Frisbee-catching game. Fortunately, with the exception of one miss that was Charlie's fault (a bad throw, but not a bad enough throw to be humiliating) Kutter caught them all.

'He's really good at that,' Liz said.