He was so delightful and strange. Her hands were still sweaty, maybe even sweatier. She’d made sure she had enough cash to pick up dog food and a dog bowl and a leash at the Petco. The dog started trembling. Adam unbuckled his harness and leaned way over, embracing the dog and whispering, “Crispy, Crispy,” and Crispy began to hyperventilate.
• • •
“Where are your collars and leashes?” asked Jillian. She was bent over, holding Crispy by the shoulders, and waddling toward the cashier.
“Right there,” said the cashier, pointing to them. Jillian put her arms around the dog while Adam picked out a neon-green collar and a red nylon puppy leash that was maybe a little too short. Jillian attached these items to the dog and stood up. She stretched her back and Crispy shook her skin. They walked to the dog food aisle and picked out the food, two plastic bowls, and a fifteen-inch rawhide bone.
“This is our first dog,” said Jillian to the cashier. She looked around and half picked Crispy up. “Can you just ring up these things while they’re on her?”
“Can you just rip the tags off and hand them to me?”
“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Jillian. She ripped the tags off and the cashier beeped them onto her total. Everything was a little over a hundred dollars. It was more than the adoption fee, but fuck it.
“Okay, okay,” said Jillian in the car.
She walked the dog up the stairs to her apartment. “Welcome home, Crispy.” Crispy walked around the apartment and sniffed things and looked generally confused. Every minute or so she would stop and jump backward, take a few steps sideways, look around, and then continue sniffing.
Jillian turned on the TV and gave Adam the remote. “Just let her sniff around a second, but let me know if she starts squatting.”
The house wasn’t picked up yet.
Jillian opened the kitchen window and walked around the house opening up the blinds. She set the Petco bags on the kitchen counter, got some scissors, cut off the little plastic loops from where the price tag had been, and hung the leash over the kitchen door. She walked around the apartment picking up dishes, then she picked up stray clothing and put it in the hamper in the bathroom. She moved the damp towels from the floor to the hamper. She wiped the crumbs off the kitchen counters and the kitchen table and put the fistfuls of crud in the trash can under the sink. She felt like she had to do this quickly, and she pivoted several times while she was holding the crud. Then she swept crud off the coffee table and side tables, then she went around picking up little wrappers and pieces of paper. She used a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner to dampen the counters and table, coffee table, and side tables. She glanced at Crispy, who was sitting underneath the living room’s dining table.
We’ll eat there tonight.
Then she got paper towels and went around the apartment, wiping in the order she’d sprayed. It took nine paper towels, more because of how much cleaner she’d used than how much dust and crud was on the surfaces. It hadn’t been that messy.
She took the scrubber-sponge and scrubbed the stove and microwave, then she got the vacuum out of the pantry, emptied the canister into the trash can, and went around and did the living room and the kitchen. The bathroom and bedrooms would have to wait for a bit. First things first. The noise of the vacuum made Crispy get up and walk around in that sideways way she’d used earlier. Jillian looked at Crispy and thought, She’ll get used to it. Maybe she’ll even think the vacuum is funny later. Jillian put the vacuum back in the pantry after rewrapping the cord, then looked around and thought.
The dishes.
She went to the sink and prewashed the dishes and loaded a full load into the washer, poured in the Cascade, and started it. The smell of warm, soapy water and damp, old food filled the kitchen. It mixed nicely with the smell of burnt rubber and dust, but the smell of cleaner was too strong. She opened more windows and lit the candles.
She got the dog bowls out of the shopping bag, then went to one of the kitchen drawers and got out a place mat. She put the place mat down on the ground next to the kitchen table, opened the bag of dog food, and then took a minute to carefully pour out a portion from the twenty-five-pound bag into the bowl on the table. She put the bag in the pantry next to the vacuum cleaner and looked at it. She got a chip clip and closed the open dog food bag, then shut the pantry door and filled the second bowl with water. When she set the bowls on the place mat they didn’t fit. The bowls were too big. She would have to buy a bigger place mat.
She kept cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, running around back and forth between rooms and pivoting. She called this “getting into the rhythm.”
The dog would need to pee soon. She gave the dog the rawhide bone.
She put her hands on her body and thought, I need to do the laundry, or no one will have clean underwear.
Crispy sat in the corner looking at the rawhide bone and Adam was watching commercials.
Jillian had to pee.
The sweet smell of the outside, the vacuum and the candles, the sound of the commercials and the dishwasher and some cars outside, her kid and Crispy in the same room with her, it was awful not to quite have these things yet. This would be perfect in a second, but there were still things to get in order.
She peed. The bathroom was covered in that layer of lint and hair that gets stuck in the steamed-in soap film. She’d clean that, too.
“Get your shoes on, we need to take Crispy out.”
Crispy skidded
