My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley Hardcover - 2010 - 1st Edition

St. Louis—The Present

“My mother says that falling in love and getting dumped is good for you because it prepares you for the real thing, like it gets you ready for true love and all, but I’m thinking it’s more like climbing up the St. Louis Arch and falling off twice. Does that first fall really get you ready for the second?” I shiver a little, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the idea of jumping off the “Gateway to the West.” I admit I’ve been pretty depressed for the past twenty-four hours, but not that depressed. I’m shivering because apparently rain in St. Louis is colder than rain in rural Missouri. Not to mention the fact that my soaking-wet prom dress—and this dress is a fact I’d rather not mention—is sticking to me like wet fur.

On either side of me sit my three dogs, still on leashes. Adam, the restless terrier, wags his tail and tries to break free to greet the three strangers I’ve joined in this dimly lit downtown café.

I glance toward the door, where the sign facing us says OPEN because it says CLOSED to the rest of the world. All three dogs shook themselves the second we stepped inside. Telltale puddles lead across the black-and-white linoleum floor straight to my table. “Sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up before I go. I promise.”

The man who let us in, the old man who I think owns the place, pulls down one of the upside-down chairs from my tabletop and sits himself across from me. “Climbing up the Arch to fall off,” he repeats in a scratchy voice that sounds like he just woke up, but I’m guessing his voice always sounds like this. “Got to admit I never looked at falling in love in just that way.” He gazes out the rain-streaked window as if he’s mulling over how many steps there might be in the Gateway to the West. Maybe on a clear day, which this is not, you can see the Arch from here.

I glance at the other two people inside the café, but they don’t seem interested in me or my dogs. The big man behind the counter is scrubbing down the coffee machine, and the younger guy at the back table doesn’t look up from his newspaper. It’s pretty quiet in here, except for the humming of the fluorescent light overhead and the soft groans from the Dalmatian sleeping at my feet. Rain on the roof sounds like somebody’s throwing handfuls of pins at us.

When I turn back to the older man, he’s staring at my hair, which is still in its prom-night updo.

I reach for the arsenal of bobby pins holding on bravely. As soon as I touch my hair, I discover that massive hairspray plus rain water equals sticky glue. Nice.

“Just so you know,” I offer apologetically, “this isn’t how I usually wear my hair.”

I look over to the counter, but the big guy in a white apron is still cleaning the coffee machine.

I slip the dog leashes off my wrist and start to work un-bobby-pinning my sticky hair. My dogs don’t stir, not even Adam. They’re pretty worn out from our late-night walk that turned into a run when the downpour started. We must have banged on twelve doors before this one opened.

The rain picks up and batters the large front window, turning the world outside into a blur of light and motion. Wind makes the whole room creak.

The man across from me keeps studying me as if I’m under a microscope, the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He has an air of quiet kindness, so I’m thinking he’d be a golden retriever if he were a dog. He’s older than my grandfather, with skin darker than my coffee, which is thick and black and without a doubt the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted. I’m not complaining. It’s cold outside, and the coffee shop was closed up tighter than a muzzled pit bull when the dogs and I showed up. This man didn’t have to let me in.

“Thanks again for opening up for me and pouring me your last dregs of coffee. I don’t even know your name.”

“Louie,” he supplies. “Just Louie.” He smiles, and it takes up half of his worn face.

I smile back. “Louie of St. Louie?”

He nods. “That’s the name of this place, Louie of St. Louie’s.” The way he says it lets me know this café belongs to him and he’s proud of it.

He should be proud. Now that I take the time to notice, I can see what a great place this is, old and full of atmosphere. Pockmarked paneled walls, great tables with silver chrome rims right out of the fifties—my mom would go nuts over them—and wooden-backed chairs with round stool seats like you’d see in a classic ice cream parlor.

The guy at the back corner table flips the page of his newspaper, but he doesn’t look our way.

I turn back to Louie. “This is a fantastic café, and I’d say that even if you hadn’t saved me from being washed away and flushed down the gutters of St. Louis in the middle of the night. What time is it anyway?” I spot a small round clock on the wall by the coatrack. “Wow. After eleven? I’ve got to bring my mom back here. During regular hours,” I add quickly.

I reach across the table and shake Louie’s hand. “I’m Bailey.” I thought my fingers were still numb, but when we shake, I can feel every bone in his hand. “I appreciate you letting my dogs come inside, too. If you can just give me a couple of minutes to warm up, and maybe for the rain to let up a little, we’ll all get out of your hair.”

“Louie!” The big guy behind the counter nods like he wants Louie to join him for a secret conference . . . about me.

But Louie isn’t going for it. He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs at the ankles. His worn black boots must be at least a size 14. “You got something to say?” Louie asks the counter guy.

Identity-Crisis Guy. That’s what I think when the man at the counter finally faces me. This guy has got to be smack in the middle of an identity crisis. The left side of his head is shaved and beardless. The right half has longish brown hair and a full beard, if you can call half a beard “full.” I can’t tell what dog he’d be if he were a dog. Some people are like that.

Louie raises his scratchy voice. “I asked if you got something to say to me, Rune?”

“Rune?” I repeat. Rune is a name I’ve never heard before, but somehow it fits this man, who’s keeping that counter between him and me, guarding his distance.

“Rune,” I say again, confirming the sound of it.

Louie gives me a tired nod, then shouts back to Rune the Identity-Crisis Guy. “You go ahead and have your say, Rune. My friend here won’t mind.”

“Your friend?” Rune shouts. “Your friend? ” He scowls at my three dogs. They’re curled on top of each other, being as good as I’ve ever seen them be. Rune points at us, and the tattoos circling his gigantic arm bulge. He sputters, but no real words come out.

“My new friend,” Louie answers calmly, the tiniest grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Rune reaches around to untie his apron, then throws it to the floor. “Okay then. Your friend’s dogs are going to get this joint shut down. You got any idea the kind of fines that health inspector will slap on you for having three dogs—three wet dogs—in your restaurant?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “He’s right, Louie. I’m really sorry.” I shove back my chair to get up, but Louie reaches across the table and pats my hand.

“You stay put, young lady,” Louie says. “It would be worth a whole heap of fines to hear what such a pretty young woman as yourself, dressed in just about the finest gown I’ve ever seen, is doing in a café in St. Louis with her three dogs at this time of night.”

“Technically, they’re my boyfriends’ dogs,” I admit.

“You steal them dogs?” asks Identity-Crisis Guy. “From your boyfriend?”

“Boyfriends. Plural,” I correct.

“She didn’t steal these dogs,” Louie insists, rushing to my defense. “Do these dogs look stolen to you, Rune?” He turns to me. “You tell him, Bailey.”

I glance at the back table, where the younger guy is still sitting alone, studying the Dispatch in the dim light of the closed café. When I don’t answer Louie and Rune right away, this guy looks over at us, and I think, Ha! You are so listening. I’ll bet he’s been listening all along.

“Well, it’s a long story, about the prom, and me being here with the dogs and everything.” I’m explaining all this to Louie. Only I’m still looking back at the corner guy, and he’s still looking back at me. It feels a little like the stare-down contests Amber and I used to get into in elementary school.

“Long story, you say?” Louie asks. “Well, we got time for long stories at Louie’s. Contemplating that storm outside, I’d say a long story might be the best thing on the menu right about now. Wouldn’t you say so, Colt?” He hollers this last part to Staring Corner Guy.

“Can’t argue with that, Louie,” replies Colt the Corner Guy. “But then I know better than to argue with you about anything.” He gets up and strolls across to the other side of the room, where he lifts a green sweater from the coatrack. He shakes it out and carries it over to our table. He’s almost as tall as Louie, fit as a Lab, but he moves like a greyhound, sleek and confident.

Towering over me, he looks older than I thought, definitely a college guy. He has nice eyes, beagle eyes, round and dark. There’s something familiar about him, but maybe it’s just those eyes. I love beagles.

He puts the ghastly green sweater around my shoulders. It’s ugly, but warm. I stick my arms into the sleeves and sniff my elbow. Faint tobacco and cheap perfume. I start to make a comment about the similarities between this color and pond scum, but I think better of it.

“Whose sweater is it?” I ask, rolling up the sleeves and wrapping the sweater over my gown’s glittery bodice, covering hundreds of tiny hand-sewn pearls.

“This sweater has been hanging on that same hook, ruining the atmosphere, ever since I started coming here,” Colt explains. “I don’t think your customer will mind if your new friend borrows it, do you, Louie?”

“I’d say you’re right, Colt,” Louie answers with an ease that lets me know they’re good friends. He motions for Colt to sit down with us.

Colt grabs a chair off the next table and slides it to ours. Before he sits down, though, he grabs another chair and sets it on the other side of the table. If this other chair is for Identity-Crisis Guy Rune, he doesn’t take Colt up on the offer.

Colt eases into the chair next to mine, and I try to ignore how boyishly cute he is. Or how he smells fresh like the rain, in a good way. Or how his eyes shine, even in dim light.

This is so not the time. I’m still in my prom dress, for crying out loud.

“Go ahead now, Miss Bailey,” Louie says, nodding to me. “We’re listening.”

“Are you sure you want to hear—?” I begin.

But Colt stops me with a raised, just-a-minute finger. “I was hoping we could exchange names first.” He reaches down to Adam, my terrier, and scratches the dog right under his chin, the exact spot Adam loves to have scratched. “I’m Colt.” He looks over at me, his mouth barely giving in to a smile as he raises an eyebrow like he’s asking my name in exchange.

I give it. “Bailey. Bailey Daley.”

Identity-Crisis Guy snorts a laugh from behind the counter. His back is to us, and he’s wiping the same spot he was five minutes ago.

“I was actually asking for the dogs’ names,” Colt says, shooting me that dimpled grin again.

I’m pretty sure my face is turning red, but the light’s so dim in here, it probably doesn’t show. “The dogs’ names? Adam and Eve and Shirley.”

“Adam and Eve and Shirley?” Colt asks, like I’m making this up.

Rune, still safely behind the counter, groans.

“Which is which?” Louie asks, without a hint of doubting or joking in his voice.

I point to the appropriate canine as I list off the names. “Shirley the Shih Tzu, Eve the Dalmatian. And Adam.” Poor Adam has put on so much weight. He used to be skinny. “Hard to believe I’ve had Adam since I was a sophomore,” I say to myself more than anybody else. “Adam was my first.”

Adam thumps his rat tail and turns his broad head to me. The dog has no neck, just a bunch of wrinkles around his collar. I stare into the plump white terrier’s eyes and see the eyes of his master. Green eyes.

“I had a dog just like this when I was a boy,” Louie says, reaching over to pet Adam. “Pure mutt. He loved everybody he met. And everybody sure loved him.”

“Tell me about it,” I mutter, thinking, remembering.

Louie leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “No, you tell me about it. How’d that be?”

Louie of St. Louie

Louie tries to get comfortable as he studies the nice-looking girl in the fancy gown and waits for her to tell them her story. He should have known the second he heard the tap on the door that this was going to be a long night at Louie of St. Louie’s.

Truth is, he nearly went on up to bed right before closing time. Rune isn’t the best cook Louie ever had, not by a long shot, but the big guy can handle cleanup and closing. They only had one customer after dinner hours, and that was just Colt. The kid has been stopping by almost every night for a couple of months, always for a tall glass of apple juice and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But he never stayed past closing.

Louie’s been living above the café for almost ten years, ever since his Lily passed. He hasn’t missed the old house either, not without Lily in it. It wasn’t the same house. That’s all. And with the boys grown, with grown boys of their own living clear across the country, he doesn’t need but the three rooms upstairs.

But he didn’t go up to bed tonight. Since the cancer first reached his bones, sleep hasn’t been something Louie looks forward to. He feels it in his bones that it won’t be too long now before he’ll be with his Lily again. That’ll be all right.

Then he heard that knocking and opened the door. Finding a wet gal dressed like a princess standing on the threshold was just about the last thing he expected. But there she was. And here she is.

Here they all are.

“We are all ears, Ms. Bailey Daley,” he tells the pretty young girl wrapped in the green sweater. “You want Rune to fetch you something to eat while you tell us your story?”

“Kitchen’s closed!” Rune shouts back.

Louie worries that Rune will give himself an ulcer one day . . . or somebody else. How that man stays married to his fine wife is one of life’s great mysteries. “Now, now, Rune. We got bread and cold cuts, don’t we?”

The girl reaches across the table and touches Louie’s hand. Her hand is warm now, at least. The last strand of her coal black hair escapes from the fancy curls she had plastered to her head when she walked in. Now the curls bounce around her face like coils of fine black licorice. She reminds Louie of his granddaughter, Jason’s girl.

“I’m not hungry, Louie. Really. Thanks, though.” She turns toward the kitchen. “Thank you too, Rune!”

She’s something, this little gal in her fancy gown.

“I’m not sure where to start,” she admits, shaking her hair so it falls around her shoulders, covering the green sweater.

Colt moves his chair in closer so he can see her face. Louie figures the young fella wants to hear this as much as he does.

“How about starting at the beginning?” Louie suggests.

“The beginning, huh?” Bailey sighs. She reaches down and strokes the old white mutt at her feet. “I guess that means I start with you, doesn’t it, boy?”

“Adam, right?” Colt asks.

“Right.” The girl settles back into her chair in a relaxed way she hasn’t done since walking into Louie’s. “It all started with Adam.”

They say there’s a line that crosses the middle of the whole universe. They say you can’t see that line. But if you step over it, if you cross it, there’s no going back.

I crossed that line on March 19 of my sophomore year in high school. And I didn’t even realize it—not fully anyway—until the end of May, so of course by then it was too late to do much about it.

The morning began like most school mornings. I woke, showered, and then stood in front of the full-length mirror, my eyes firmly shut while I recited my morning mantra:
“I am sixteen, with extraordinarily large breasts, a fantastic bod, and hair to die for.
“I am sixteen, with extraordinarily large breasts, a fantastic bod, and hair to die for.
“I am sixteen, with extraordinarily large breasts, a fantastic bod, and hair to die for.”

I opened my eyes and studied my reflection. Then I tossed my dog-eared copy of Teen Mind Over Teen Matters: The Art of Positive Thinking into the trash, where it belonged.

“Bailey!” my mother hollered up the hall at me. “Hurry, will you?”

“I’m hurrying,” I called back, examining the horribly outdated contents of my closet. What would a sixteen-year-old with extraordinarily large breasts, a fantastic bod, and hair to die for wear on a bright spring day?

I might have settled for stone-washed jeans and a two-day-old T-shirt, but Amber and I had vowed to hold each other accountable for our last two remaining New Year’s resolutions: 1) Dress better, so that we’d 2) Land our first boyfriends.

I’d had zero luck with number two, so the least I could do was try to stick with number one. I settled on a denim mini (Amber assured me they were back) and a gray-and-white-striped rugby shirt.

“Look at this,” Mom said as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. She didn’t look up from the classifieds. “Three garage sales between here and school.”

“Mom,” I whined. “Not on the way to school. Promise.”

Now she looked up. My mom could have passed for my sister, which was sometimes fun, like when we went to Florida and they carded her every time she ordered white wine, which was exactly why she ordered it. Or, not so fun, like when the lifeguard hit on her instead of me. She was shorter than me and could still wear jeans she’d worn in high school. Plus, she had great hair, and great hazel eyes that were now aimed at my semi-bare thighs. “Bailey, was your skirt that short when we bought it, or did you grow six inches when I wasn’t looking?”

I grabbed a bagel. “Isn’t it garbage pickup day in Grove?”

“You’re right!”

My mother was so easy to distract it almost took the fun out of it. Rich people in the Grove district threw away furniture that cost more than our house.

“We have to go there on the way to school, Bailey.”

“Grove isn’t on the way to school.”

“Well, sort of. If Fourth Street were blocked off like it is for parades. And if they were doing construction again on Elm.” Mom gulped her coffee.

Me and my big mouth. Mention a garage sale or a garbage pick, and my mom salivated. She’d been renting a stall at one of those antique malls, Aunt Teak’s—get it?—for almost a year. I don’t think she’d sold anything yet. Our own garage was so filled with the junk she bought from other people’s garages that she’d had to park outside all winter. Her real job was as a receptionist in a dentist’s office. She got the job because of her great smile. My mom could get any job she interviewed for. Keeping them wasn’t that easy, though. She was always ready to move on to something new.

“It’ll be great furniture,” she muttered. “Heavy. It’s good you’ll be with me.”

“Yeah. Really good.” But I knew there was no use arguing with her. “We better leave right now, because Mrs. Weaver will kill me if I’m late for English again.”

Mom dashed out of the kitchen, and I cleared the table. When I put away the cereal, I saw that she had cut out the contest entry from the back. Mom loved contests. She’d won more appliances than we’d use in a lifetime, but we always had gifts on hand for weddings.

Mom shuffled back into the kitchen. “Where’s my purse?”

"On your arm.”

She yawned. “I stayed up for WKMM’s Midnight Madness phone-in contest. Worth it, though. I was the twenty-eighth caller. Got us two free tickets to some band named Disaster’s Death.”

“Cool.” I aimed her toward the front door. “Seriously, I can’t be late, Mom.”

“Late schmate,” she muttered with her unique brand of motherly logic.

Once outside, we both headed for the driver’s side of the van.

“You have to let me drive, Mom,” I insisted, snatching the keys out of her hand. “I’m never going to get my real license if you don’t let me practice.”

She gave up, and I started the van and backed down the driveway. Backing was my best driving skill. I wasn’t too bad going forward. But I kept failing that stupid parallel parking exam. “What’s so great about parking along curbs?” I asked halfway across town. “Nobody’s parallel parked in Missouri since the Stone Age.”

“Left!” Mom shouted when we were still a solid block from our turn.

We spotted the West End vultures, two women from a rival antique store. They revved their engine. “Pull over to the curb so they can’t get in!” Mom screamed.

I swerved. My front wheel rolled over the curb in an unorthodox parallel parking maneuver. We leaped out and snatched a table out from under the beaks of the vultures, which wasn’t half as hard as cramming the disgusting thing into the van.

“This will look fantastic when I refinish it,” Mom declared, shoving the last pockmarked, splintered table leg inside the van and sliding the door shut fast.

“When you refinish it? Like the day after I pass my parallel parking test?”

“Hey! This table is a diamond in the rough, Bailey.”

Maybe. But as far as I knew, all of Mom’s “diamonds” were still sitting in our garage, as rough as the day she’d discovered them.

Mom dropped me off at the deserted schoolyard. Everybody was already inside. “Sorry I made you late, honey. Worth it, though. You can have the table when I die.”

Great. Clutching my pack, I backed up the sidewalk, turned to run in, then tripped over something and sprawled flat onto the sidewalk. Dazed, I lay on my back and squinted into the sun, hoping nothing was broken and that maybe Mrs. Weaver would count this as excused tardiness now.

“Arf! Arf!” A skinny white dog scrambled out from under me.

“You tripped me?”

The dog pranced to my face and started licking. I scrambled to my feet, but he scratched at my bare legs until I picked him up. He had the most gorgeous green eyes, but seriously bad breath. “Thanks a lot, doggie.”

He wagged his tail and wiggled, still trying to get at me.

I set him down and jogged over to my fallen backpack, trying to ignore my sore backside and bruised pride. When I turned back around, the dog was gone.

“Fickle, fickle you,” I muttered.

2

After English, Amber and I bucked the crowded halls back to our lockers.

“Did you really get knocked down by a giant dog on your way to class?” Amber didn’t sound like she believed me any more than Mrs. Weaver had.

“Yeah. Only he wasn’t giant.”

“Whose dog was it?” Amber asked, as if that were the crucial question here. Not “Are you hurt? Did you get rabies? How will you get Weaver to stop hating you?”

“I’ve never seen that mutt before,” I answered, finally breaking the secret code of my smelly locker, which had smelled even worse before I’d inherited it and filled it with cinnamon sticks. Now it smelled like Christmas vomit instead of regular vomit.

Amber shut her locker. She stood two heads taller than me. In her silky top and lace-up jeans, she could have been a model, and not just because of her height and sleek body. She was more graceful than the rest of us put together. She kept her blond hair short and never looked anybody in the eyes, except me. I’d told her a million times she’d be the one guys would go for in college, after they got over themselves and could deal with a tall woman looking down on them.

“You know every dog in Millet,” she said. “Or at least they know you.”

I pulled out my tattered science notebook and leaned against my locker. “I’m telling you, Amber, I’ve never seen that dog before.” She was right about dogs knowing me. It was kind of a joke with us that dogs loved me, but guys not so much. Not a very funny joke when you come to think about it.

“Oh . . . my . . . gosh!” This outburst came from Carly, who had the locker next to mine. Carly Fields almost never appeared without a boy attached to her arm.

“What?” I asked, shutting her locker so I could see what the fuss was about. “Did you just notice that you don’t have a guy hanging on you?”

She didn’t take her gaze off the hallway behind me. “Will somebody please tell me who that is?”

Amber and I turned around to see what she was talking about.

And there he was.

He came strolling down the hall as if he were a carnival passing through town—as if he owned every inch of the place, even though he’d never been here before. We could all swear to that. It’s hard to explain the way he obviously didn’t belong in our school, yet he did belong. Like he was a part of somewhere else in the same way geese are a part of the sky, even though they fly over Millet every season in their crisp, soulful V. But here he was, one lone creature of flight, who had looked down on us, glimpsing Millet from above, and peeled himself from that V, leaving his world for ours.

“Where did he come from?” Amber whispered.

Nobody answered.

We watched him stride through the hall. Heads turned. People stopped laughing. A couple of teachers stepped out of the faculty lounge and watched him pass.

Any new kid who moved into Millet, Missouri, population 2,302, was big news. But this kid—with his California tan and his Hollywood body, thick golden hair that brushed his forehead, and a confidence that made him look too old, too cool, for school—he wasn’t news. He was a news flash. A news bulletin. A we-interrupt-your-regular-programming-to-bring-you-this-special-announcement event.

Amber, Carly, and I pressed against our lockers, waiting until the absolute last second to face Miss Jones and the Paleozoic era. I, for one, willed him to walk our way.

“Unbelievable! Does anybody know this guy?” Carly tugged down her peasant top and scooted up her mini-miniskirt, which already made my denim mini look granny length. Carly would be the one to end up getting to know this stranger. She’d known every datable guy in our school. And I’m talking known in the biblical sense. True, I couldn’t swear to that part. But Carly Fields never bothered to deny the rumors.

“He’s coming for me,” Carly said, fluffing up her long blond hair.

“Waste a little time, why don’t you?” Amber teased. “Might want to let the guy get to his first class before you take him to first base.”

Unlike Carly the Home Run Queen, Amber and I were the never-been-past-first-base girls in our group, which explained our New Year’s resolution.

Sure enough, Mystery-Godlike Guy changed hall lanes and headed straight toward us like he’d known we were there all along. Like he’d left his flock of geese for us. For this very moment.

For a second, the hall blurred. People moved in slow motion. Sounds and shapes melded into each other, into time and space, sky and earth.

He walked so close I could smell him. Breathe him.

He was moving too fast. He was going to pass us by.

My heart sank. I bit my lip. I held my breath. Think of a cliché, and I did it.

Left, right, left, right. He was in front of us, not slowing down. . . .

Then just as he passed, he turned his head—a head worthy of a spot on a Roman coin, deep-set eyes, strong chin—and he smiled.

At me.

“What was that about?” Carly asked, obviously astonished that Mystery-Godlike Guy had smiled at me. Me. She glared at me, her gaze moving up and down like she’d never seen me before and was sizing me up for a new suit.

“What, Carly? What’s what about?” But I knew. I wondered if they all knew. Did everybody in Millet feel what had just passed between me and this stranger? Could they hear my heart pounding in sync with his footsteps as he moved down the hall?

“You know this guy, Bailey?” Carly sounded as peeved as she was puzzled.

I shook my head. The bell rang, and Amber and I were scooped into the crowd of last-minute students.

We were so late to science that we ended up in the front row. Amber slumped in her chair and whispered, “He definitely smiled at you.”

“Nuh-uh,” I answered, not sure why I felt the need to deny it. Because in my mind, I could still see him smiling.

And I was still smiling back.