Rose woke up on Monday morning, then on Tuesday, and on Wednesday and Thursday, too, thinking that this would be the day— the day she took a shower, brushed her teeth, snuck the dog out the front door for her walk, came back home, then donned her suit and panty hose, pulled her briefcase out of the hall closet, and went to work like the rest of the world. Every morning she'd wake up, full of good intentions and high energy. She'd lecture herself in the shower about how the Chinese symbol for crisis was the same as the one for opportunity. She'd walk the dog to Rittenhouse Square, and she'd look to the south, to where the gleaming glass face of the high-rise that housed Dommel, Lewis, and Fenick stood like a fifty-two story reproach, and her heart would sink. Really, everything would sink—all of her internal organs, kidney and liver and whatever else was down there, all of it joining in a universal cringe, all of it thinking, "No" and "Can't" and "Not today." So she'd go home and call Lisa, her secretary, and explain that she was still sick. "I think it's the flu," she'd croaked on Monday. "No prob," Lisa had said—Lisa, who never wasted an entire word on Rose when a portion of a word would do. But by the end of the week Lisa wasn't sounding quite so tolerant, and had 204 Jennifer weiner
actually granted Rose a full sentence. "You'll be back Monday, right?" "Right," Rose had said, trying to sound crisp and competent and sure of herself. "Certainly," she said. "Of course." Then she'd plopped down on the couch and watched A Wedding Story. In her week away from work, Rose had become completely addicted to the show. A Wedding Story lasted half an hour and was as carefully structured as a sonnet, or a geometry proof. First segment: Meet the Bride and Groom (yesterday the bride had been Fern, a clerk at a dru gstore, and the groom had been Dave, a heavily bearded longdistance trucker twenty years her senior). Second segment: How They Met ("I walked in for Pepto-Bismol," Dave had rumbled, "and there she was, behind the counter. Prettiest girl I'd ever seen.") Part Three: Wedding Plans (Fern and Dave were getting hitched at the Radisson. Dinner and dancing to follow, with Dave's two sons from two previous marriages serving as best men.) Final segment: The Big Day. (Fern walked down the aisle, a vision in off-white. Dave had cried. Rose had, too). It had been like that for four days running. She'd eat doughnuts and cry at every bride, every groom, every dress, every mother and mother-in-law, every first kiss and first dance; at dumpy social workers from Alabama, schoolteachers from New Jersey, tech-support assistants from San Jose with actual, visible mustaches, girls with bad skin and bad perms and bad grammar. Everyone else in the world can do this, she'd think, as the dog wedged herself onto her lap and licked at her tears. Everyone but me. On Saturday morning the telephone started ringing. Rose ignored it, hitching the dog to the leash she'd finally purchased and hurrying out the door before noticing she was still in her slippers. Her fuzzy bunny slippers. Oh, well. A homeless guy eyed her appreciatively. "You looking good, baby!" he yelled. Well, that was encouraging, Rose thought. "You heavy-set, but you still looking good!" Okay, she amended, maybe not so encouraging. She spent twenty minutes letting the dog sniff hedges, hydrants, the bases of parking meters and other dogs' butts, and when she came home,
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the phone was still ringing, as if it hadn't ever stopped. The phone rang while she stood like a lump of lead in the shower, letting the water thunder down on her head, trying to muster the energy to wash her hair. At five o'clock, Rose finally yanked it to her ear. "What?" she said. "Where the hell have you been?" Amy demanded. "I left you fourteen voice-mail messages at work; I sent you six e-mails; I stopped by the other night ..." Her voice trailed off. Rose vaguely remembered knocking, and how she'd pulled her pillow over her head until it stopped. "Your secretary says you're sick, and my friend Karen saw you wandering around Rittenhouse Square in your pajamas and slippers." "I was not wandering. And I wasn't wearing pajamas," Rose said haughtily, ignoring the matter of the slippers for the time being. "They were sweatpants." "Whatever," said Amy. "What's going on? Are you sick?" Rose glanced longingly at the television set, then forced herself to look away. "I need to talk to you," she finally said. "Meet me at La Cigale in fifteen minutes," said Amy. "No, half an hour. You'll need to find some regular clothes. I don't think you'd be welcome in your jammies." "They weren't pajamas!" Rose repeated, but Amy had hung up. She set the phone back on the counter and set off to find some shoes.
"Okay," said Amy, who'd already ordered coffee and a pair of scones as big as baseball mitts. "What'd he do?" "Huh?" Rose asked. "Jim," Amy said impatiently. "I know this is all that son of a bitch's fault. Tell me what he did, and we'll figure out what to do to repay him." Rose smiled a tiny smile. Amy had honed her philosophy of failed relationships, and how to behave in their wake, over years of bad boyfriends. Step one: Mourn for a month (two weeks if the relationship hadn't involved sex). Step two: If you'd been dumped
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or cheated on, permit yourself one scandalous act of revenge (her last boyfriend, a hard-core vegan, had doubtlessly been shocked and horrified to find himself enrolled in the Organ Meat of the Month Club). Step three: Get over it. No regrets, no moping, no late-night drive-bys or dialing while drunk. Just on to the next adventure. "So what did he do?" "He cheated on me," Rose said. Amy shook her head. "I knew it." She narrowed her eyes. "Now, how are we going to make him pay? Professional humiliation? Anonymous letter to the law firm? Something disgusting left in his car?" "Like what?" Rose asked. "Anchovy paste," Amy said. "A few squirts inside the glove compartment, and his Lexus will never be the same." "Well, it wasn't just him," said Rose. "What do you mean?" "It was Maggie," said Rose. Amy spat out a chunk of her scone. "What?" "Maggie," Rose repeated. "I walked in on them." She'd said it so many times in her head, and to the little dog, that when she finally gave voice to the story, she felt as if she were reciting a poem she'd memorized years ago. "I walked in and they were in bed. And she had my new boots on." "The Via Spigas?" Amy was sounding more horrified by the minute. "Oh, Rose. I am so sorry." But not surprised, thought Rose. "Oh, God," said Amy, looking stricken. "That little bitch." Rose nodded. "How could she?" Rose shrugged. "After you gave her a place to live, and probably money, and tried to help her ..." Amy rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "What are we going to do?" "Never see her again," Rose said.
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"Yeah," said Amy, "I imagine this might make Thanksgivings pretty awkward. So where is Little Miss Hot Pants?" "I don't know," Rose said dully. "With my father and Sydelle, I guess." "Well, then she's already suffering," said Amy. "Now, how about you?" "Oh, I'm suffering plenty," Rose said, and sighed, and poked at her scone. "What can I do?" Amy asked. Rose shrugged. "Nothing to give it but time, I guess," she said. "And retail therapy," said Amy, pulling Rose to her feet. "The mall beckons. It'll cheer you up. Come along." All afternoon, Amy and Rose walked through the King of Prussia Mall. Rose eventually managed to fill three shopping bags with things she didn't need, with anything that caught her eye and gave her even a second's hope that her life—that she herself—could be repaired. She bought exfoliating scrubs and moisturizing creams. She bought candles scented with lavender and a beef-basted rawhide bone and a two-hundred-dollar beaded evening bag. She bought lipsticks and lip glosses and lip liners, three pairs of shoes, and a red cashmere ankle-length skirt that she couldn't imagine ever actually wearing. Finally, she headed to the bookstore. "Self-help?" Amy asked. "Better Sex through Yoga? How to Snare Mr. Fabulous in Ten Sneaky Steps?" Rose laughed a little, shook her head, and located Current Fiction. Ten minutes later she'd amassed a stack of ten glossy paperbacks about women who found love, lost love, and then found it again. "Just remember, I've still got that anchovy paste, in case you change your mind," Amy said as they walked through the parking lot. "And if you want an impartial third party to give Miss Maggie May a talking-to." "You aren't impartial," said Rose. "Well, no," said Amy. "But I play impartial on TV." She looked at her watch. "Do you want me to come home with you? Or do you
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want to come with me? I'm going to my mom's house for dinner ..." Rose shook her head. "I'm okay," she said, thinking she could do without a night at Amy's mom's house—the inevitable pasta supper, followed by a few hours indulging Amy's mom's passion for the posable dolls and jewelry from QVC. "Call me," said Amy. "I'm serious." Rose said she would. As her first step toward normal living, she presented the pug with the rawhide bone and forced herself to listen to all forty-three of her voice-mail messages. Sixteen from Amy, a dozen from work, three from her father, a handful from telemareters, a half-dozen from bill collectors, and a single inexplicable call from a manager at the International House of Pancakes telling Rose to come in for an interview whenever she liked. She left her father a message saying she was alive and well, deleted the rest, and slept for eighteen hours straight. On Sunday morning—the day she had decided would be her absolute final day of moping—she called Amy to let her know that she was still alive, if not well. She put on lipstick and the red cashmere skirt, tucked one of the books into her pocket, leashed the little dog, and walked to her customary bench in the park. It was time for a decision. "Pro," she whispered to herself. "I'm a lawyer, and it's a good job. Con," she said, as the dog snuffled at her feet. "It makes me sick to even think of going there." She opened her book, pulled a pen out of her pocket, and started writing next to the breathless quotes that decorated the first few pages of all the books she'd purchased ("A witty, sexy romp!"). "Pro," she wrote on the book's inside cover, "if I go to work I'll have money. Con ..." The little dog at her feet gave a short bark. Rose looked at her side and saw that a second dog, a strange, spotted, quivery-looking thing the size of a cat, had hopped on the bench and was now sitting beside her, regarding her with fearless black eyes. "Hello," she said, and allowed the dog to sniff her mitten.
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"Who are you?" She squinted at the tag around the dog's neck and wondered what kind of name Nifkin was. Foreign, probably. "Go home," she urged the spotted dog, whose whiskers trembled with each breath. "Go find your people." The dog merely stared at Rose and showed no signs of moving. Rose decided to ignore it. "Con," she continued. She closed her eyes again and felt a wave of sickness wash over her as she imagined walking into the lobby, getting onto the elevator, and stepping onto the floor and walking the hallways where she'd fallen in love with Jim and imagined that he was in love with her. "Con," she repeated, and opened her eyes. Nifkin was still sitting next to her on the bench, and now there was a little girl in a red coat standing in front of her. She had on red mittens and red rubber boots, and hair the color of maple syrup pulled into a thin carrot-shaped ponytail. Jesus, Rose thought, what am I? Snow frig-gin' White? "Dog!" the girl announced, and waved one mittened fist. "That's right," said Rose, as the pug gave a small, excited snort. The girl bent down and stroked the pug's head. The pug wriggled in pleasure. Meanwhile, quivery little Nifkin had hopped off the bench and was sitting next to the little girl, so both of them were staring up at Rose. "I'm Joy," the little girl announced. "Hi!" said Rose in a loud, cheerful voice. "This is . . ." Oh, dear. She still had no idea what the dog's name was. "This is the dog I walk!" The little girl nodded as if this made perfect sense, pulled on Nifkin's leash, and toddled across the park. Meanwhile, a white-haired woman in sunglasses was looking at them. "Petunia?" she called. "Is that Petunia?" Petunia, Rose thought. The pug looked back at her. Rose thought she could detect a hint of embarrassment on her squashed features. "Hi, Petunia!" the woman said, as Petunia gave a regal snort. "So is Shirley back from Europe already?" the woman asked.
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"Um," said Rose weakly. She hadn't counted on running into any of the dog's intimates. "I thought she was boarding her until next month," the woman continued. Rose saw a lifeline, and seized it with all her might. "That's right," she said. "This is actually a new service ... a daily walk. So the dogs can, you know, get some fresh air, visit their neighborhoods, see their friends ..." "What a great idea!" said the woman, as two other dogs—a large chocolate-colored dog with a broad, snaky tail, and a prancing black poodle with its red tongue lolling—came over to them. "So you work for the kennel?" "Actually, I'm . . . freelance," said Rose. She remembered reading a fairy tale where a princess was cursed, and every time she opened her mouth, frogs and toads would leap out. Rose decided that she had been similarly afflicted—when she opened her mouth, out came not warty amphibians, but lies. "I walk dogs for the kennel, but I also do, you know, house calls for individual pets ..." "Do you have a card?" asked an old guy at the end of the poodle's leash. Rose made a show of groping in her pockets and coming up empty-handed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I seem to have left them at home ..." The guy pulled a pen and paper out of his pocket, and Rose scribbled her home telephone number, then added the words Rose Feller, Dog Care beneath them. And soon she was standing at the center of a mad Maypole of leashes and fur and fast-talking owners, all, it seemed, in search of responsible pet care. Yes, Rose told them, she'd watch cats, too. No, she said, she didn't do obedience training, but she'd be more than happy to escort dogs to classes. "Pet sitter!" called a woman in a droopy green sweater. Her dog was as low to the ground as Petunia, but perhaps twice her size,
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with a deeply wrinkled face and drool dripping from his ponderous jowls. "Memorial Day weekend?" she said. "I'll be here," Rose said. Petunia and the wrinkly dog gave each other grave and solemn sniffs, as if they were members of the same club and giving each other the secret handshake. "Are you licensed?" the woman asked, in the quick staccato rhythms of a former drill sergeant. "Licensed? Bonded? Insurance?" "Um ..." said Rose. The crowd held its breath. "Just finishing the paperwork. By next week I'll be good to go," she concluded, making a mental note to figure out what it would take to get licensed and insured as a pet walker. "And your rates?" Rates, thought Rose. "Um . . . ten dollars per walk, twenty-five dollars for a full day's care." From the look on the pet owners' faces, Rose determined that she'd offered them a bargain. "It's my new-customer special," she added. "And of course, if you'd rather your dog stayed in the kennel, I can pick them up there and take them for a walk in the park every day. Kind of the best of both worlds. Just give me a call!" She gave a jaunty wave and hurried out of the park. "Who's Shirley?" she asked the pug, who made no reply. "Is your name really Petunia?" she inquired. The pug continued to ignore her as Rose made her way toward the Elegant Paw. The bells jangled as she pushed the door open, and the woman behind the desk leapt to her feet. "Petunia!" she cried, stubbing out her cigarette. Petunia barked once and began wagging not just her tail but her entire backside. "Oh, thank God! We've been going crazy!" "Hi," said Rose, as the woman rushed around the counter, knelt on the floor, and rubbed Petunia from head to tail. "Where'd you find her?" asked the woman. "God, we've been frantic! Her owner isn't due back for three weeks, but we didn't want to call her ... I mean, can you imagine? You drop your dog off at the kennel and fly to Europe, and you get a call saying that the dog's been lost?" The woman straightened up, smoothing her
