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  When I opened the door, Alex was leaning in the door frame giving me a goofy smile that was all teeth. He was wearing a navy blue knit cap that made his eyes look even brighter. His jeans were pale blue, washed down to thin soft threads and spattered with bleach spots and ancient paint-stain freckles.

  “Now, you sure are worth the wait,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the sides. His smile was kind and earnest, and I swore I could feel the warmth radiating from it. Joe pushed his head under Alex’s hand. “Hey, buddy!” Alex bent down to eye level with Joe and scratched him behind his ears. Joe’s tail wagged at warp speed, hitting my legs at every pass.

  “He loves you,” I said. “I thought dogs hated the vet.”

  “Well, he has good taste.” Alex winked at me. He was the only person I’d met who could make a wink look natural. “Get your shoes, cutie.” He gestured to my feet.

  I waited, but there was no comment about the socks. I slid into my Air-walks, wishing I’d thought to find sexier shoes, or at least ones that weren’t ten years old and looking their age. Crouching down to tie my dirty laces, I noticed that Alex’s work boots were worn and creased and covered with paint stains like his jeans.

  “What were you painting?” I stood up.

  “Huh?”

  I pointed to his boots.

  “Oh, all sorts of stuff,” he said. “The office, my dad’s tool shed, my deck. That”-he picked his foot up and turned it to the side-“that blue there? That’s a bookshelf I painted for my grandma. Spilled the can all over the garage.” He laughed. “I should get new boots, but these are comfortable, you know?”

  “I think my sneakers are ten years old,” I said, feeling better about my shoes.

  “See, you get it. Nothing like broken- in shoes.”

  When we got out to the car, Alex opened the passenger door for me and Joe and then ran around and slid into the driver’s seat. Joe sat between us, and licked the side of Alex’s face from chin to ear.

  “Thanks, bud,” Alex said, laughing and wiping his face with the back of his hand. He rubbed Joe’s head, leaving the fur on his head standing straight up like a mini-Mohawk.

  We laughed about Joe’s new punk hairstyle. I liked the sound of Alex’s laugh. I liked the way it felt to sit with him and Joe on the bench seat of his truck, like a little family. I fought to keep my thoughts from getting too far ahead of the situation. We were just going to take the dog for a walk. It was entirely possible that this meant nothing beyond that. Years of lusting after Peter-thinking every pat on the back, or arm brush, or knowing look meant surely he liked me as more than just a friend-created a complete lack of faith in my ability to ever have anyone seriously fall for me. So even while I was soaking in every minute with Alex, I couldn’t help but think that maybe he just felt bad for me, this pathetic woman who got drunk and bought a dog off the Internet. Maybe he saw me as a failure of a person and he was one of those missionary types who felt it necessary to step in and help. Maybe he was a dog zealot and didn’t want to see Joe end up at the pound. He was, after all, a vet. He obviously cared about Joe’s well-being. And after all the times I’d gotten my hopes up with Peter and been let down, I didn’t think I had it in me to hope too much anymore. It was better to call it what it most likely was: a guy who cares about dogs, helping out someone who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.

  “First things first,” Alex said, when we got to the parking lot at the canal path, over by the playground. “You cannot keep walking him on that backward leash contraption you’ve got going there.” He reached behind his car seat and pulled out a chain- link collar and a blue nylon leash. “My gift to you.” We got out of the truck. He slipped the collar over Joe’s head and hooked the leash on.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, embarrassed that I still hadn’t gotten around to getting Joe a real collar.

  “Not a problem. I had an extra.”

  He showed me how to hold the leash at my side, not giving Joe any slack, and we started walking.

  “Do you have a dog?” I asked.

  “Two,” Alex said. “Rosie and Tinsel.” He pulled out his wallet, flipped past a few business cards too fast for me to get a good look, and pointed to a picture of a chubby Golden Retriever and a small black and tan German Shepherd running in the grass. “Rosie’s the Golden,” he said. “Tinsel is probably a Shepherd like Joe. She’s a little small, but she doesn’t look like she’s got any other breeds going on.”

  “Tinsel?”

  “Yeah.” Alex blushed. “Mindy named her. Someone abandoned her on our doorstep a few days after Christmas last year. She was really sick. She had parvo, and she almost didn’t make it.”

  “Oh,” I said, picturing him and Mindy in matching flannel pajamas waking up to find a puppy in a basket on their front porch. “Are you and Mindy together?” My voice got higher and squeakier with every word. “I didn’t realize you lived-”

  “No, no!” Alex said. “We’re not together.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to keep a poker face, even though I was pretty sure I’d just shown all my cards.

  “Someone abandoned Tinsel at the clinic. She was probably a holiday gift they couldn’t handle. Mindy found her in a cardboard box when she was opening up for the day. She was going to call a rescue group to try to help find her a home, but then her fiancé said he might take Tinsel when she got better. But I took Tinsel home with me the first night, because I worried she wasn’t going to make it, and then I couldn’t give her up. She worked her way in.” He smiled. “She was too tiny.” He held his hands out to show me that she was only about a foot long. “I wore a sweatshirt for days and walked around with her in the pouch pocket to keep her warm, like a kangaroo.”

  “And she’s okay now?” I said, feeling like the little clamp on my heart that was trying to keep me from getting my hopes up was starting to crack, because how could you not get your hopes up about a guy who would spend days walking around with a puppy named Tinsel in the pocket of his sweatshirt?

  “She’s on the small side,” he said, “but she’s perfectly healthy.”

  We reached the end of the playground and I tried to get Joe to turn around with me. He didn’t want to move, and I ended up tripping over him. Alex caught me. His arms were solid. It didn’t feel like there was any chance that he’d drop me. He helped me find my balance.

  “I was just wondering,” I said. “About Mindy. I didn’t mean to pry.” I rubbed the toe of my sneaker into the dirt, making a thick line. “I just-I mean, do you take all your clients to the park with their dogs?”

  “No,” he said, resting his hand on the small of my back. “I don’t.” He took Joe’s leash from me. “Just you.”

  He smiled and then looked down quickly and gave Joe’s leash a tug. “K nohe,” he said, firmly. Joe walked to Alex’s left side and sat down. “K nohe,” Alex said again. He clicked out the side of his mouth. Joe stood, and they walked in unison. When Joe started to stray, Alex would give his leash a tug and say the command again. I wondered if he knew all the Slovak commands already, or if he learned them just for me.

  They got to the end of the playground and turned perfectly together. It was freezing. As soon as I stopped walking, I started shivering. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets and watched Alex and Joe walking back toward me. I felt funny making eye contact when they were so far away. I looked at Alex and he looked at me and then we both looked away. I watched Joe. He watched Joe. I looked at Alex and he looked at me. We looked away again.

  By the time they got back to me, Alex’s face was beet red and there was no mistaking it. He gave Joe’s leash back to me, and his hand lingered on mine for much longer than necessary.

  “Thanks,” I said, wrapping Joe’s leash around my hand.

  “He’s been trained really well,” Alex said. “You can tell someone worked with him a lot. And he’s very eager to please. So, it’s just a matter of teaching you how to work his commands.”

  “Are you saying I nee
d training?”

  Alex laughed and didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

  “I didn’t say a word,” Alex said, giving my arm a playful swat.

  We spent about an hour going over Joe’s command sheet. Alex made sure I knew what each command meant, and how to make sure Joe adhered to good form. He was a good teacher. And so patient when I couldn’t get the footwork down to keep Joe in heel position. We did it again and again, and he explained and reexplained without the slightest hint of frustration. I wasn’t used to that kind of patience. Even my mom would have lost patience with me by the third or fourth time, but Alex just smiled and said, “Okay, now lead with your left.” And when I’d get confused again and lead with the right, he’d just say, “No, the other left” or “Almost. You’re so close.”

  “It’s not that I don’t know my right from my left,” I said. “It’s just that my brain thinks left, and then I think about what Joe’s going to do, and then we start walking and my right foot moves instead of my left.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Alex said, jogging backward. “Stay there.”

  Joe tried to follow, but I held him back and made him sit by my side.

  When Alex got about twenty feet away from me, he stopped and called out, “Okay, you walk toward me, and just let Joe do his thing. Don’t think about Joe, just focus on me.”

  And it was that easy. I looked at Alex, and it wasn’t awkward this time. I had permission to. I looked right in his eyes and he looked right in mine, and I imagined Alex and me drinking red wine in big globe glasses on a patio overlooking the Aegean Sea at sunset. Peter and Janie were nowhere to be found.

  I made it all the way over to Alex without leading with the wrong foot or tripping over Joe, and after that, it was easy. We did it five or six more times, and Joe and I walked in perfect unison.

  “You were just overthinking it,” Alex said. “Sometimes, you need to let go to get everything to work.” He knelt down next to Joe and rubbed the sides of his face. “You’re such a good boy!” Alex said.

  Joe licked Alex’s chin and leaned against him. The fact that Joe was so at ease with him made me like Alex even more. I crouched down to pet Joe too. My hair fell in my eyes and Alex reached over and brushed it off my face with the tips of his fingers. He smiled. His face was very close to my face. He leaned in and I closed my eyes and waited for him to kiss me. The anticipation of feeling his lips on mine made my knees feel like they might stop working altogether. And then Joe knocked Alex over, pulled the hat right off Alex’s head, and ran across the field, leash trailing behind him.

  “Damnit, Joe!” I yelled. Joe obviously was not the stellar wingman I’d thought he was.

  Alex ran after Joe, who ran in zigzags, swerving to fake Alex out. Finally, Alex got close enough to grab Joe’s leash. Joe dropped the hat and jumped up to lick Alex’s cheek.

  They came running back to me. “It’s impossible to stay mad at this guy, isn’t it,” Alex said, laughing. He shoved the hat in his jacket pocket.

  We went back to working with Joe, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our almost kiss.

  By the time we called it quits, I could barely feel my fingers, or my toes, or my ass, for that matter, and my face was windburned, but I didn’t want it to end. So when we got back in the truck, and Alex asked if it was okay if we stopped by his friend Louis’s house on the way back so he could drop off a book, I was thrilled. Even if it was just a quick stop, it was an extension of our time together.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Joe sat on the seat between us. His eyelids started drooping, but he’d sit up at attention again when we’d hit a bump or make a turn. Finally, he gave up fighting sleep, and flopped down on the bench seat, resting his head on Alex’s thigh.

  We stopped at a red light. “I see a lot of dogs,” Alex said, scratching Joe’s ear with one hand while he steered with the other, “but this one here is in a class by himself.”

  “It’s a very happy accident,” I said.

  Alex smiled, and we had another quiet moment. I knew he was blushing, and I knew he knew I was blushing. It was the best kind of uncomfortable there is.

  “Now, let me fill you in on Louis,” Alex said, breaking the silence. The traffic light changed to green. Alex pulled his hand away from Joe and put it back on the steering wheel to make the turn. “Louis is a character. I guess that’s the best way to put it.” He looked over at me and smiled. He kept his eyes on me for just a little longer than I thought was okay for him to not be watching the road. “He’s almost eighty, but he’s quite the charmer.”

  “Really?” I’d assumed Louis was Alex’s age, although I wasn’t quite sure what Alex’s age was. Thirty maybe? Thirty- five? Twenty-eight? I couldn’t figure it out.

  “Really. We’ll only stop for a minute, but it deserves a warning. I swear, I take the man out to dinner, every waitress in the place is bringing us stuff. I go alone, I can’t even get a refill on my coffee.” He laughed. “The man has some mojo or something.” He winked at me. “He’s giving me lessons.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No,” he said with an impish grin.

  “You had me worried for a minute!”

  “That you wouldn’t be able to resist me?”

  “Sure. Something like that.” I turned and looked out the window.

  “Just for the record, I will be offended if you ask me to leave you with Louis.” Alex didn’t look over at me when he said it, and I think I saw his ear go pink.

  “I’ll try not to fall too hard.” I picked at the seam on the side of my jeans. I didn’t know where to put my hands, and everything I said embarrassed me after I said it.

  “So-what else about Louis.” Alex cleared his throat. “He’s been married three times. His last wife, Gloria, she was the one.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did she die?”

  “No. She ran off with the UPS guy.”

  “What?”

  “She started ordering all this stuff off of one of those home shopping shows, so she got, um, familiar with the delivery guy.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Then one day I took him bowling, and when we came back, she was gone. There was a note, explaining- but she left all the stuff. Boxes and boxes of cheap jewelry and fake alligator purses. Tons of scarves. It was crazy.” I noticed that his eyebrows moved a lot when he talked. “Louis had me get rid of all of it. Hauled it to Goodwill. Boxes and boxes. We thought that would do it, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It’s been months.” He leaned his left elbow up against the door and sighed. “He just can’t get over it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, softly. “I can understand that.”

  “Three wives. And the one who left him was the first one he really loved.” Alex sighed. “Poor guy. He got a taste of his own medicine. He knows it, too. I think that makes it harder. He’s just been moping around. It’s hard to get him to go out with me anymore.”

  We stopped at another light. Joe lifted his head and looked around, and then rested his head on Alex’s leg again with a big sigh.

  “Well, sure,” I said. “I mean he’s got to be so- ” I trailed off. I couldn’t think of how he would feel. “So how many times have you been married?” I laughed.

  “Just once.”

  “Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I was joking. I didn’t mean to- ”

  “Van, it’s fine,” he said and smiled. “I’m not hiding anything. It’s good for you to know.” He looked at me quickly and then back at the road. “Sarah Evans. She didn’t take my name.” He took a deep breath. “We were together in college. And then we got to the end of college and everything was changing. I think we got married to keep things the same. She moved down to Knoxville with me when I went to vet school. We gave it a try.” He rolled his hands around the steering wheel. “If we hadn’t gotten married, we would have drifted apart. You know, missed phone calls and postponed weekend visits. The way everyone’s college love fades
when you get out in the real world.” He didn’t sound upset. It was a story, not a tragedy.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, because he didn’t seem like he had any more to say and I didn’t know what the proper response was.

  “It wasn’t messy. We signed some papers and that was that. She stayed in Knoxville. She’d already found someone else. She said she didn’t meet him until we were separated. You know, you wonder still. But either way, we wouldn’t have worked.”

  I felt awful for bringing it up. I, of all people, knew what it was like to love someone who loved someone else. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to talk about either. “I really didn’t mean to-”

  “Van, it’s fine.” He patted my leg again. “No worries. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You can’t stay with the wrong person. I guess the trick is finding the right one to begin with. Right?” He glanced over at me really quickly and then looked back at the road. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and sighed. “Sarah and I don’t talk anymore. It’s weird, you go through that much”-he paused to think of the right word- “life with someone, and then you don’t even exchange Christmas cards anymore. We’re not on bad terms or anything. It’s just, there’s nothing else to say, I guess.” He smiled. “I promise that’s my only deep dark secret.”

  “Impressive. I’ve got at least twelve.” I raised my eyebrows and gave him a silly smile. He laughed.

  As we sat in silence, I looked out the window, watching the rows of perfect little tract houses with postage stamp lawns like something out of a documentary about the fifties-shrubs bundled up for winter in burlap and twine, white plastic sticks with red reflectors like lollipops at the end of every driveway.

  The houses reminded me of the time I went to Levittown to meet my father. Every third house was exactly the same, with a green plastic awning here and a pair of concrete kissing Dutch kids there, to let you know that the people inside were not all made from the same blueprint.

  I drove out to Long Island, marched up to his house, and rang the doorbell twice. No one answered. I consoled myself with the idea that I could have rung any doorbell and talked to any man, and it would have meant the same thing.