His eyes glistened. Was he going to cry? “I don’t want to be rid of you. I just want... I just want —”
“Oh, Richard, you just want everything to be the way you want it, without regard to the way things are or what I want. Why don’t we agree to be just friends for a while and see how it works out?”
Chapter 16
A week later, Sandy was prepared for her and Waffle’s day in court. As much as she could manage, she had researched representing herself in a hearing in front of a judge. On Sunday afternoon, she practiced in front of her vanity mirror.
She prepared for bed Sunday night cautiously confident of tomorrow’s outcome. Surely a judge would see that Waffle was better off with a soft life with her than with being out racing around a pasture tending a herd of cattle and possibly encountering God knew what.
Before turning in, she let Waffle outside for his nightly ritual. He had been out only a few minutes when she heard a chorus of loud, hysterical barking—not just from Waffle, but from her other big dogs, Ricky and Fred. Pablo began to pace and growl. Adolph, too, barked and yipped louder than usual. Smelling a skunk odor, she strode to the back door. Adolph trotted along beside her, looking up at her anxiously.
She opened the door and walked out onto the patio.
Waffle had something cornered outside Ricky and Fred’s pen and the two dogs were barking and clawing at their wire fence as if they were wild animals. A few seconds later, she was able to see Waffle facing off against a skunk.
“Oh, no! Oh, my God! Waffle! Come here!... Come here, boy!”
When he didn’t obey, Sandy dashed across the yard, waded into the fray and grabbed Waffle’s collar. The clamor halted for a few seconds. Suddenly skunk odor pierced the air, as indescribably potent as if the small varmint were standing right beside her. The putrid smell threatened to take her breath. “Oh, my God!”
All three dogs began to shrink back and whimper. Waffle was whining and wiping at his face and nose with his front paws. He shrank to the ground and rolled his head and face on the grass. The skunk raced across the back yard and disappeared through the fence.
“Oh, my God, no!” she shrieked. She, too had been sprayed.
Oh, dear God. “No, no, no.”
Sandi stood there in the reeking air paralyzed by panic.
With all of the pets she’d had, she had never had one that had been in a confrontation with a skunk. She had never been close to a skunk either. She turned back into her house, seeking to slam the back door against the breathtaking smell, but she carried it with her.
For lack of an immediate solution, she picked up the phone receiver with trembling fingers and pressed in her aunt’s number. Aunt Ed and her husband would know what to do. They knew everything.
“Hey, babygirl, what in the world are you doing calling your dear ol’ aunt at ten o’clock at night?”
“Oh, Aunt Ed, my dogs and I got sprayed by a skunk and the stench is sickening. Waffle has to go to court with me tomorrow and —”
“What are you going to court for?”
“Nick is suing me for custody of Waffle. We have to be there at one o’clock for a hearing.”
“That bastard! Who’s your lawyer? I hope you’ve got a good one.”
“Of course, I don’t. I can’t afford lawyers. I’m representing myself. What am I going to do about this odor? I think I might throw up any minute. I can’t go into the courtroom with me and Waffle smelling like a skunk.”
“Tomato juice, hon. Tomato juice. That’s the only remedy. Get about a gallon of it and wash them down.”
“What about me?”
“Wash yourself down, too, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know any humans a skunk got to.”
“Oh, dear, Aunt Ed. Gallons of tomato juice are not something I keep around the house.”
“Then you’ll have to go to the store, darlin’. Listen, I’m sorry, but I need to run. My honey and I are in the middle of something.” She hung up.
Sandi glowered at the phone. Her aunt had never hung up on her.
Recovering her wits, she grabbed her keys, dashed outside to her car and headed for Walmart, the only grocery store she knew would have a large quantity of tomato juice on hand. Once there, she cleared one whole shelf of half-gallon cans of tomato juice. Fortunately, with the late hour, few people were in the grocery store, but the ones that were there, backed away and stared at her. She lifted her chin as if she were wearing the world’s most expensive perfume and pushed her basket to the cash register.
Back in her driveway, she called her neighbor. “Fiona, what are you doing?”
“Nothing much. Chilling out. Listening to some tunes.”
“Is there any way you can come over and help me? I’ve got to go to court with Waffle tomorrow, you know. He and I and my other two big dogs got sprayed by a skunk and I have to bathe them and me in tomato juice.”
“Oh, shit,” Fiona said. “I thought I smelled a skunk. How did you get sprayed?”
“It’s too long a story to tell right now. I just need your help.”
“I’ll be right there. Have you got enough juice? I’ve got some spaghetti sauce.”
Mental eyeroll. “I bought ten half-gallons of juice. Surely that will be enough.”
Fiona showed up dressed in pink babydoll pajamas and high-heeled house shoes with huge white pom-poms on the toe. Her bleached blond tresses were tipped with hot pink.
Two a.m. came. Sandi and Fiona had drunk a pot of coffee. Waffle, Ricky and Fred had been scrubbed with tomato juice, then washed with doggie shampoo. Sandi had doused herself in the red liquid, then showered with cucumber-melon shower gel. The kitchen and bathroom looked as if
