I’m holding it in my arms right now, all 2.7 pounds of it.
Too bad you can’t really date your dog. At least, your dog’s personality.
“I can order the plastic tags, Mom. He doesn’t need the metal ones.” As if he agrees with me, Spritzy nods his head. Then I realize he’s licking my hand over and over, his head bobbing. He must taste rescue cookies.
Verbal Mistake Number 2 with my mother. We’ve been through this before, and....
“It’s a waste of money to swap them out. I just need to learn to live with the sound.”
And 3...2...1...
Cue a big sigh.
Am I callous for thinking about her fibromyalgia in terms of a rubric? It’s like when I create and implement a new mystery shopper’s questionnaire for a new marketing campaign. Study the objective. Determine the best way to meet the goal. Meet customer expectations. Exceed customer expectations.
And always, always, manage expectations.
But the true measure of success comes in predicting what happens next.
“I can see you’re having a tough time, Mom,” I say. My compassion is real. I remember the mom she was before the car accident. I know she doesn’t want to be like this. I know pain can change a person.
“I am,” she says. Her voice is filled with a thousand regrets and a million feelings she wants to convey but can’t. I get it. I understand. I’m a fixer. I can detect nearly any problem in a person’s voice, in the way they bounce their legs, in the nervous twitch of an eyelid.
In the taste of a man’s kiss when he’s trying to silence me from detecting exactly what I’m trained to do.
Spritzy’s licking my face now. It’s cute, but he’s no substitute for Andrew.
“Can I help? Heat up a rice sock for you? Run you a bath?” I ask Mom.
Her voice starts to tremble, the ripples of sound an apology for something she feels sorry for, though it was never her fault. “Thank you. The rice sock sounds lovely.”
I plunk Spritzy down on his impossibly-tiny dog bed and make my way to the kitchen. It is spotless. Crumbs on the counter are like germs in an oncology ward: carefully exorcized and kept at bay at all costs, as if the punishment for a breech is death.
In my mom’s world, it is.
The rice sock has lavender in it, and as the microwave performs its magic, I lean against the counter and take a deep, cleansing breath. The adrenaline from the night’s events drains out of me, the mild rush now turning into the mind-racing of the damned. The entire evening replays itself like a digital film reel being edited on a computer, going in reverse in 2x, 4x, 16x. Then back to the beginning with Ron the Dog Butt Masseuse, to my own massaging of a much more appealing ass.
What have I done?
Ding!
Spritzy comes flying into the kitchen at the sound of the microwave alarm, his little body too fast for his impulses, his nails so long he slides across the kitchen floor and crashes into the wall, jumping up and blinking like the wall attacked him.
He actually growls at it.
Watch out, wall!
I laugh and reach into the microwave, the soothing warmth and waft of lavender giving me some gentle clarity I really need.
Mom’s grateful response as I set the rice sock on her shoulders fills me with a kind of sadness I’ve come to know all too well. It’s the sense of a life lived for everyone else. Everything I do involves fixing problems for other people—for my boss, for our clients, for the mystery shoppers I manage, for my friends, for my mom, for the world.
I can’t let it go.
Spritzy is on the carpet in the living room as I take a step to go upstairs and put the day behind me. He looks at me, eyes beseeching, and then he plants his little ass on the carpet and uses his front paws to drag himself across the carpet.
Oh, no.
My phone buzzes just then as my horrified eyes take in the dog’s obvious, uh, clues.
It’s a text from a private number. One I haven’t seen before.
And all it says is:
Meet me tomorrow in my office at eleven. Your discretion is required. Lipstick is optional. AJM.
AJM?
I frown at the screen while Spritzy violates the carpet. I reach the top of the stairs and it hits me.
Andrew. Andrew James McCormick. AJM.
Andrew is finally texting me. Nearly two years of wondering and waiting, of late nights talking with Amy and Shannon, of dissecting and analyzing and giving up.
I had to slap him to get him to contact me?
Men.
Chapter Five
The next morning, I park my Turdmobile in the employee parking lot and click my remote to lock it. Then I unlock it. I only lock it out of habit, from when I used to own my own car.
This one? I hope someone steals it.
My boss, Greg, got an account where we drive advertisement-covered cars all over town. I inherited Shannon’s car when she was offered the ideal job at Anterdec by Mr. Flawless Billionaire and she decided to reach for perfection and we crabs in the pot that is called Consolidated Evalu-Shop couldn’t grab her ankles fast enough to pull her back in.
Er, I mean...I’m happy for her.
And I got her car.
It’s really an ad for a coffee shop. The brown, roasted coffee bean on top wasn’t supposed to look like a giant turd, but it does.
The coffee shop’s slogan, Coffee Gets Everything Moving, doesn’t help.
And yet, it’s all a postmodern marketing campaign. None of the companies we advertise is real. We drive around and test whether people will go to the websites advertised on the cars. So far, response has been great. We get the cars for one more year. I sold my junker and have diligently saved a car payment every month so I’ll have enough to buy something new if this account goes down the toilet.