Pug Hill - Alison Pace [112]
“Ready?” I ask her, and Betsy looks right up at me, and our eyes lock. I feel the way I’ve always felt in the presence of a dog: loved. As Betsy stands up and moves the entire back portion of her body to wag her tail, I can hear the gurgling in the back of her throat, and I know a conversation is going to start.
I look at the water and feel the salt on my skin and watch Betsy point her nose up to feel the breeze over her head. I think how I feel lighter than I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. There is, at this moment, a very big part of me that wants to lie on my back and kick my feet in the air with delight.
Betsy barks out a non-barking syllable and I can’t help but think that she wants to point out here that this feeling isn’t all because of Ben. And I have to say, I do agree with her. I think that however this day turns out, there isn’t any way it could turn out badly. I look at Betsy and think that, yes, of course, there is the thought of sailing off into the sunset with the man of your dreams. There’s that, but there are so many other things, too. There’s walking along a small stretch of beach with your best friend, for starters.
I look up and see a sailboat approaching; the sails aren’t up yet and it’s just motoring over. I shield my eyes from the sun to get a better look and at that moment, Ben reaches up to wave at me. As he pulls up to the dock, Betsy barks again. I get up and we walk the length of the dock together, out to meet Ben’s boat. Ben is gazelle-like up there: jumping from the sailboat to the dock, tying a rope to the dock, jumping back on.
When we get to the boat, I reach down to pick up Betsy, and Ben reaches down to us. He takes Betsy from me and puts her in the captain’s seat, and you’d think she’d be happy about that, you’d think she’d really like that seat, but she doesn’t seem to like it all. She’s looking intently into a basket next to the steering console, and looking back at me a little frantically with what I’d really have to say is quite a lot of jealousy.
“It’s okay, Betsy,” I say, and she looks at me like she doesn’t believe me. She takes another look into the basket and reaches her nose to the sky and starts a round of high-pitched shrills.
Ben takes my hand and pulls me up from the dock and into the boat. As he lets go of my hand, as Betsy goes from shrilling to screeching in the background, he says to me, smiling, “I want to introduce you to a friend.”
And I have to be honest, my heart kind of sinks for just a moment, because for a horrible second I am absolutely convinced that some poised and beautiful girl who has perfectly matched her foundation to her skin tone is going to emerge from the cabin, smile at me toothily, and introduce herself as Ben’s fiancée.
But instead, Ben turns to the basket that upon closer inspection is actually a dog bed. He lifts out a little black bundle wrapped in its own tiny yellow life preserver. I look closer and I swear I never would have believed it, not in a million years, if I weren’t looking into its soft, angelic eyes. Inside the yellow life preserver, looking up at me sleepily is a little black pug puppy.
“This is Max,” he says, and somehow I stop smiling just long enough to say, “Hi, Max.”
In the background Betsy’s screeching has lost its sense of urgency and has become much more conversational in tone; also it’s gotten to that point where it’s so high-pitched that you can barely hear it. In fact, if you don’t focus on trying