Pug Hill - Alison Pace [62]
“My wife misses England a lot and I thought a proper pug might do the trick, because of the duke and duchess,” he says and smiles at me so sweetly. I think, Of course he has a wife, and then I think how I wish it weren’t true. I stare out at the hill and I think that there is a reason people should wear wedding rings, so that people like me will know that while they are handsome and David Duchovny-like and have a nice accent along with the bonus of nice teeth and are admiring of pugs and talking to me, they are also FUCKING TAKEN!
“Yeah,” I say, “that’s a good idea,” and that’s a good thing to say. It works out well because I imagine to him, it sounds like I am talking about the procuring of a pug for his homesick British wife, even though I’m not.
I smile somewhat feebly and we both go back to looking at the pugs. After about five uncomfortable minutes—minutes that I imagine are probably more uncomfortable for me than they are for him—he turns back toward me and says, “I don’t think I could stahnd the exposed arsehole day after bloody day.”
Apparently, my thinking for that one brief, exhilarating moment that he was my soul mate and then finding out that he was, of course, not, was not enough in terms of disappointment for one afternoon.
I look at him even though I don’t want to anymore, and he is actually sneering, disdainfully I might add, at all the beautiful pugs. And even as prone to jumping to conclusions as I am, I just can’t believe that I thought, for even the fleetingest of fleeting moments, that he might have been my British chick-lit happy-ending soul mate. Whoever my soul mate may be, I know that at the very least, he has to like pugs. Even if only dorky guys like pugs, like Pamela says. I’m wondering if it would be rude if I stood up right now. I wonder where’d I go though because I don’t want to leave Pug Hill on this note. But I also would really rahther not stay here with him anymore.
He sighs. “I think I’ll have to find a proper British breed.
“Maybe a mastiff,” he says after he’s given it a moment of thought. And even though I don’t want to talk to this man anymore, even though I kind of hate him, I feel, for the sake of English mastiffs everywhere, that I need to jump in.
“Don’t pick an English mastiff,” I say. “The city isn’t good for them.”
He cocks his head to the side, looks at me quizzically. “Because they’re so large?”
“Well, that,” I say.
“I see plenty of large dogs in the city,” he counters.
“No, the thing you don’t know is that besides it being hard to be such a large dog in the city, English mastiffs scare easily.”
“How do you know?” he asks. I do not in fact know if English mastiffs really do scare easily, I only know that Boswell did.
“We had one, my family, when I was growing up,” I explain.
“And she scared easily?”
“Oh, she really did,” I say. “Let me tell you about Boswell.” I turn more fully toward him, sit up a little straighter on the bench. I take a breath and make eye contact. Somewhere in the background it occurs to me that I am, in fact, about to make a speech, but that’s overshadowed by the fact that I need to tell him about Boswell.
“Fine name, by the way,” he says and I think, but don’t say, “Let’s try not to interrupt.” I think back to the time in my life that was all about Boswell.
Boswell came from New Hope. New Hope, Pennsylvania, that is, not New Hope, me. I was only four years old at that point, not so much had happened to awaken me to the longings to be a new person. Something flashes in the British guy’s eyes, I think it might be impatience.
I begin. “My mom found Boswell in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She went antiquing there one weekend and the antique dealers were dog breeders, too. We already had dogs: Morgan, a Saint Bernard; Adelaide, a bulldog; an English bulldog”—I hate to get off track but hope he takes note of the English part because maybe a bulldog would be a better idea for him—“and Mischief, a French