Walking Dick Read online

  Fortunately, I knew exactly how to cheer him up. “Okay,” I said, “I know we don’t have a lot of time, but you’re not going to believe what happened to me this morning!”

  He glanced back at the jar, as pale as a sheet. “Well, I can only imagine—”

  “No, Nate, you can’t. See, there was this hit-and-run outside the coffee shop.”

  His eyes widened, and a look of legitimate concern colored his face. “Are you serious? I mean was it serious, anyone we know?”

  They were fair questions. If there was an accident in that neighborhood, the odds would have had it that at least one or two of our friends had to be involved, but I shook my head quickly to calm his fears and explained, “It wasn’t a person, but the dog is okay. I guess it wasn’t technically a hit-and-run either. I mean, the guy who did it stayed there for a second and yelled at me.”

  Nate’s face screwed up in confusion. “Wait, what? Start at the beginning... and hurry, would you? They’re going to be here any minute!”

  “Okay, okay!” I spoke in a rush, trying to cram the entire morning’s worth of emotions into a sixty-second recount. “So I was walking out of Starbucks with my coffee when this golden retriever ran out of nowhere. A guy hit him with his car, and I hurried over to make sure the dog was all right.”

  Nate stiffened protectively, imagining me rushing out into the street. “Aly...”

  “I know, I know, but you would have done the same thing,” I said, brushing him off quickly and getting right back to the story. “Anyway, I was kneeling next to the dog, trying to check on him, and this other guy came flying over out of nowhere! It was literally like one of those white-knight rescue kind of things,” I said, my eyes misting with the recollection of the perfect timing and the gorgeous hero. “Shit, Nate, you should have seen this guy.”

  Something about my tone must have been a clue, because his eyes lit up with excitement as he leaned closer. “What for? What does he look like?”

  I knew if anyone else on Earth was going to get as worked up over that hot guy as I did, it would be Nate. I pursed my lips thoughtfully, trying to come up with some sort of accurate description or comparison, but everything fell short, way too short. In the end, I went with an assortment. “He was, like... Well, if the guy we saw in that spy movie had a kid with the guy we saw on that billboard for futuristic shoes, like the shoe guy was the mother...”

  Nate nodded matter-of-factly. “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t!” I countered. “That guy came swooping in, right in the nick of time, like something out of a movie. I mean, he literally leapt out of his fancy sports car to help. What kind of luck is that?”

  “Good luck,” Nate said wisely, “very good luck, far better luck than you or I deserve.”

  I chuckled and gave him a playful shove. “Shut up. Things aren’t so bad. You need to just let go of all that negativity and learn to focus on what really matters. Be the positive change you want to see in the world—”

  “Don’t you dare start quoting those dumb Post-It slogans at me, Confucius,” he warned. “Right from the start, I told you those are a bad idea. Thankfully, Dick seems to agree. I see he’s already started taking them down,” Nate said, nodding toward my dog that had yellow slips of paper stuck to him here and there.

  I thrived on positive reinforcement, while Nate thrived on the negative. The only other difference between us was that he felt the need to force his dark ideals on me, while I was more laidback about things and tried to let people be themselves.

  “Anyway, getting back to this guy,” he continued conspiratorially, “did you get his name? Anything you could use to track him down?”

  I thought about it for a minute, then shook my head.

  “Like I said, he had a sports car, if that helps.”

  “Of course he did. Every knight in shining armor has his great white steed, only these days, they’re Italian chrome.” He let out a jealous sigh, shaking his head. “It’s so typical that you’d bump into someone like that. I’m never that lucky.”

  “I think he has a girlfriend,” I murmured thoughtfully. “She was in the car, super beautiful but super mean.”

  “The guy must have a thing for dogs then, if he’s with a total bitch,” he said with a smirk.

  “Totally. She didn’t want him to put the dog in the car.”

  “Then she can rot in hell with all the rest of the beautiful mean girls,” Nate replied, wearing a wicked grin. “There are no dogs there, but there are plenty of bitches!”

  Before I had a chance to respond, the bell rang again, and he and I glanced automatically at the door. We stared for a second before he jumped off the counter and headed down the hall.

  “In the meantime, you and I have a job to do,” I said.

  I had started my dog-walking business about three years earlier, when I returned to Riverwood after college. It was a rather risky venture, considering the fledgling population of the tiny neighborhood, so I was forced to supplement my income by doing the unimaginable: I opened the doors of my house to the outside world, to the rest of the Big Apple. New York City was a great place to find new clientele, all those high-powered, career-oriented automatons, the kind of people who only remembered they owned dogs every other Thursday and took it upon themselves to let someone else walk their neglected pets. Needless to say, three years later, my little business was still going strong.

  Nathaniel was my right-hand man, the yin to my yang. He was the sassy, beautiful Colombian to my curvaceous, sheltered white girl. The two of us bonded quickly in grade school and had been notoriously inseparable ever since. We’d seen each other through everything, from first jobs to the high school prom to the day my dad drove away and never came back. Nate came out in the eighth grade, which was no easy feat, and I was there for him then, too. Every step up to that point we’d taken together, but suddenly, it wasn’t enough. As much as I adored my best friend in the whole world, and as great as my business was, and as wonderful as it was to come home to that happy fur-ball I owned, I wanted more.

  “We still have to talk, you know,” I muttered as we headed down the hall. “We need to come up with some sort of plan to—”

  “And we will,” he assured me, giving his hair a superfluous toss, “but for now, just smile.”

  The door opened, and a dozen happy dogs came bounding inside, followed by a dozen frazzled owners. They passed off leashes, bags of treats, and the usual instructions before kissing their pooches goodbye and hopping into a swarm of waiting cabs outside.

  Nate and I waved them off with matching sighs.

  Too many people purchased dogs as accessories or to meet the demands of fads or fashions, usually the little girls and boys small enough to fit in designer handbags, always hypo-allergenic, whether they needed it or not. Of course their fur had to match the exact color of the overpriced ottomans as well. That said, it was how I made my living, and I couldn’t bite the blinged-out and perfectly manicured hands that fed me.

  With the brisk efficiency of someone who had done it a million times before, I split the dogs up among our assembled team, barked out everyone’s marching orders for the day, then opened the front door to set them all free. Less than five minutes after everyone had originally assembled, they were off, heading in opposite directions and squinting in the hot sun.

  I was last out the door, and I whistled for Dick to join me as I wrapped the stack of leashes safely around my wrist. Five enormous dogs were pulled and tugged on the other end, eagerly eyeing the park in the distance with great expectation.

  A faint smile flitted across my face as I watched them. It was their unadulterated excitement that I admired most, that crystalline clarity of thought. Then an image of that golden retriever flashed again through my mind, followed by the man who’d saved him.

  Where is he now? Will I ever see him again? Did I really dream him up?

  Before I could answer any of those questions, the pack took off running, all at the sam
e time, howling for joy as they raced toward the park. My leash-arm jerked, and I took off after them, sprinting as fast as my two legs could carry me to keep up with their four.

  “What a great morning to run out of coffee!” Nate yelled.

  Chapter 6

  I LOVED NOTHING MORE than New York City in the summertime. The warm breeze always smelled like fresh-cut grass. An ice cream cart was parked at the end of every corner, and the leaves on the towering city trees caught every drop of sunshine and scattered it about in a golden glow that glistened off the windows of the high rises and skyscrapers.

  I closed my eyes and leaned back on my elbows, soaking it all in. It was really one of my main reasons for sticking to dog-walking. I had no desire to go into another kind of business, marketing, publicity, or any of the other professions my classmates swarmed to with rabid fervor after graduation. This, right here, is why, I told myself again as I inhaled a fresh draft of clean, rejuvenating air. Who needs a stuffy old cubicle?

  I couldn’t believe, as I sprawled out on a picnic blanket beneath the shade of a giant tree, eating ice cream and playing with the dogs, that it was technically my job, something I was being paid to do. “Doesn’t get much better than this, Dick.” I tilted my sunglasses up and offered him a languid smile, one he returned with a curt nod of his head. “Yeah, you know, don’t you, boy?”

  I was convinced that he actually did know, mostly because Richard Masterson Woodrow III was nothing like his canine companions. I was convinced that he wasn’t really a dog at all, and he seemed to be convinced of that too.

  After I took him in, he only acted like an unadulterated puppy for about three weeks. His protective instincts kicked in almost immediately; the floppy-eared spaniel seemed to think of us more as partners than as master and pet, as if because I was human, he was human as well. Then, as the years passed, we became more like colleagues than partners.

  In time, Dick started coming to the kitchen table at exactly seven every evening so the two of us could eat dinner and discuss the day, or at least I discussed mine while he sat and listened intently, occasionally slurping a stray noodle off the side of my plate. He helped me drag bags of groceries into the kitchen, and at some point, he even learned to fetch outfits from my closet every morning. Unfortunately, his fashion sense was even worse than mine, but I couldn’t expect much from someone who walked around naked in nothing but a dog collar, especially since he was also colorblind.

  When I kick-started my business, Dick adjusted his level of formality accordingly and, just like that, we colleagues became business partners. In Dick’s mind, we were at the same level on the totem pole, co-managers, along with Nate. The dog didn’t seem to mind working long hours, and he never once complained about the heat or the shocking lack of compensation. Whenever the two of us sat down to create the weekly schedule, Dick magically appeared, laying his leash upon the table as his contribution.

  Dick gazed at me with a regal sort of patience as I stretched out on the blanket, then turned his attention to the other lowly four-legged creatures, who were so silly that they found amusement in Frisbee-catching and pointless games of chase. Those puppy entertainments were far beneath the dignity of Richard Masterson Woodrow III, for he was management now. For him, Frisbees were things of the past.

  “Well, what do you think, Dick?” I asked as the two of us stared at the dogs in a practiced sort of way. “Should we give ‘em a few more minutes or head back now?”

  He cocked his head at the street, and then tilted it upward, to gawk at the sky.

  “You’re right. We shouldn’t keep Ms. Anders waiting. She’ll have our heads if we’re late.” After a contented sigh, I scarfed down the remainder of my ice cream cone—a guilty pleasure that would have me lying my ample ass off in the weekly blogs. I tossed the picnic blanket in my oversized purse and gave the handful of leashes a hearty tug. “C’mon, you guys! Time to head back!”

  They charged and bounded toward me in one accord, like a flock of giant, hyper-energized birds. Sal and Chester, the two mastiffs, almost pulled my arms out of their sockets as they struggled to lick up any lingering drops of Rocky Road. I waved them down as Dick looked on disapprovingly.

  “Come on! You can’t blame them,” I muttered as we headed down the street in a happy, tail-wagging parade. “They’re just dogs. Don’t be such a...Dick!”

  Chapter 7

  BY THE TIME WE MADE it back that night, the first of the yellow cabs had already begun to descend upon my little house. Against Dick’s strong advice, we had taken the scenic route home, so I hurried up the walkway to begin dividing off my charges. Everyone paid by cash or check, which made it very easy for me to pay my team of workers on the spot, before collecting their leashes and sending them off into the night.

  By now, we had the entire ceremony and money and dog exchange down to a science. In less than fifteen minutes after arriving at my little brownstone, the last of the cabs pulled away. In the end, only Nate and I remained.

  My friend dutifully plastered a smile on his face for the sake of good PR, but as soon as the last of the clients and walkers took off, he let go of that faux grin and collapsed theatrically against me. “Okay, Aly, I know you wanted to start hatching our plans tonight, but I’m dead on my feet. Gypsy yanked me into the fountain again. I swear, if not for my afternoon Xanax, I would’ve strangled her on the spot.”

  I stifled a smile and kept my comments to myself.

  Gypsy was a particularly spirited Irish setter accidentally-on-purpose assigned to Nate week after week. At first, I was able to convince him that it was just the luck of the draw, not intentional in any way. Once he stopped buying that, I gently reasoned that the pup was used to him, so the owner would trust her with no one else. Now, though, he was even starting to see through that.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll stick me with her again next time, will you?” he asked suspiciously, almost daringly, folding his wet sleeves tightly across his chest.

  I shook my head and continued staring at the ground, wearing a careful frown. “No way! That would be just... crazy.”

  His eyes cooled, and he nailed me upside the head with a playful smack. “Uh-huh.”

  With a parting wave, he was off, leaving Dick and me to head inside for our seven o’clock dinner date. I tore open the cardboard on my preordered weight loss grub and crinkled up my nose in disgust. As colorful as the selection was, I knew it would have little taste to it at all; there was rarely a delectable assortment, even if the globs of calorie-counted nutrition did come in a rainbow of colors. On that particular night, I would eat something orange, though I had no idea what it actually was.

  “Wanna try some?” I asked, waving the lackluster meal invitingly in Dick’s direction, only to watch him literally turn up his nose. He politely nudged his bag of Kibbles ‘N Bits, which looked far more enticing than the pile of goop in front of me, then sat down to wait.

  “How many calories are in that stuff anyway, boy?” I lamented, considering dog food as an alternative as I poured it into his bowl, then popped my tray into the microwave.

  As I stood there, watching the digital countdown and awaiting the beeping that would force me to gobble up that garbage, a sudden thought popped into my head. When the microwave reached the point of thirty seconds left, I finally realized what it was that was so off, the source of that nagging feeling that had been bothering me ever since I stepped in my door. “Wait a minute...” I declared as the thought struck me that the “For Sale” sign was now gone from the house next door.

  Egged on by a burst of nosy curiosity, I forgot about dinner entirely and tiptoed down the hall, as if there was a chance that anyone in the outside world could hear me. My blinds were perfect for discreet surveillance, and after checking to make sure that no one was discreetly surveilling me, I peered through the wooden slats.

  Come out, come out wherever you are!

  There was no one outside, nor was there any moving truck to give them away. I did no
tice the sign this time, discarded on the grass, crookedly lying there as if someone had torn it down in a hurry. I stared at it in wide-eyed confusion, wondering why I hadn’t gotten so much as a heads-up from Bill, the leader of the Riverwood Homeowners’ Association.

  Then, slowly, I allowed my eyes to drift up to the driveway, and a familiar sight struck me: that magnificent sports car I’d seen before.

  The blinds snapped shut, as if of their own volition and I leapt back in shock, cupping my hands over my mouth in complete and utter disbelief. It can’t be! There’s no way he’s... No, it can’t be the same car. I mean, there’s absolutely no way... Right? Right. Not a chance, not even a small one.

  Yet, when I dared just another curious peek, there it was, so flashy that even someone like me, definitely not a car aficionado, instantly recognized. As if there was any glimmer of doubt, the Ray Bans on the dash were all the circumstantial evidence I needed. Those same designer shades that his mean girlfriend twirled between her ridiculously long-nailed fingers as she bitched about the dog in the backseat. It was the same car, owned by the same man, now parked right in the driveway just a few feet from my place, right next to mine. Oddly enough, it looked as if it belonged there, as if it had always been there, as if it wasn’t the strangest coincidence in the world.

  The microwave finally beeped, and I wandered back down the hall to the kitchen, feeling as if my whole world had just turned upside down.

  My faithful dog looked up at me as I plopped down in the kitchen chair beside him.

  Without even thinking, I began scratching him behind the ears. “Dick, you’re not gonna believe this. My knight in shining armor has just become, uh... the boy next door!”