The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [41]
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, then raised his voice so she could hear him. “You’ll see!”
Five minutes later, after much trouble finding the right key for his pink, bougainvillea-dressed condominium, Fred opened the door and was immediately jumped on by Rusty. His first reaction was to lash out with a kick in the dark, and he didn’t know he was kicking the dog squarely in the bladder until he reached for the light switch. Rusty stood by helplessly as over four hours’ worth of urine spilled out of him, uncontrolled. By the time the lights turned on, Fred was standing in a puddle of acrid pee that slowly crept up his trousers.
He bolted into action. Even though Rusty was a huge animal, Fred tackled him, squeezing the scruff of his neck until the dog squealed in pain. He then caught him by all four limbs and fashioned a mop out of him, making sure every part of Rusty’s body was covered in his accident before he was through. He opened the door, tossed the dog out, and slurred, “Go and find another asshole to piss all over. And don’t come back!”
This was the routine whenever Winston wasn’t around to take care of the dog. And it would be all Winston’s fault, Fred decided, as he showered to clear the scent of red wine, nervous sweat, and dog piss from his skin. He bagged his dirty linen trousers and threw them out the back window into the concrete alley. Before morning, some poor sod would find them and need them badly enough to scrub out the stains at the hem.
Thoughts piled up in Fred Livingstone’s brain as he tried to relax in his king-size bed. His foul mood worsened just after midnight when Rusty didn’t come back. Fred lay in bed, listening for the familiar scratching or the high-pitched whine the dog usually let out when he’d been bad and wanted to make up. The more he tried to listen for the dog, the drowsier he got, and finally he fell asleep.
At six, there was a scratch at the door. Fred groaned and rolled over. At seven, after a full hour of seething over being awake and hungover, he got up and stepped into the nearest pair of boxer shorts. He walked hurriedly down the long, sunlit corridor and opened the front door, expecting the usual sight of Rusty laid out in the morning sun. When the dog wasn’t there, Fred felt angrier. He looked both ways and made a clicking sound between his teeth, but Rusty didn’t come.
In the kitchen, while making a cup of instant coffee, he thought back to the night before and marveled at the pain in his head. He stirred sugar into his cup and walked to a wrought-iron, glass-topped table by his office window. Sitting down and scanning the beach for his runaway dog, Fred mourned the end of tourist season. The beach was nearly empty. Only a few weeks before, a group of college girls would jog by every morning at seven thirty, followed by equally attractive jogging college boys. Fred didn’t know which he enjoyed more, but he missed them now that they were gone. In fact, he missed many things that were gone now, a thought which made him sigh and feel old again.
He thought back to Sarah. Had she said yes? She distinctly did. “She said nine o’clock tomorrow, I heard her,” he mumbled to himself.
But the fact was, Fred hadn’t really asked Sarah out to dinner, and he knew it. In his golden days on the island, thirty years earlier, he’d been a real gigolo. But once he started making proper money from his real estate dealings in the 1980s, things changed and women didn’t matter anymore. Before he knew it, he was white and saggy from ten years at a desk, and shagging his personal assistant. The closest he got to beautiful women was through the lens of a hand-held telescope. Some days he would perch for hours in front of his huge window, peering