Must Love Otters (2 page)

“What the hell?”

“What is it?”

“Umm … my dad … you know that resort we were talking about?”

“The one up north?”

“Yeah.”

“What about it?” Keith shoves a fortune cookie into his mouth before his debit transaction has finished. He chews with his lips open. The young girl working the drive-through window looks unimpressed.

“He bought us a gift certificate. For four days, three nights.”

Keith finishes chewing. “What will we do about the dogs?”

I stare at him. Seriously? The fucking
dogs
? How about, “Thanks, Mr. Porter, for spending a grand on a weekend that will undoubtedly provide many opportunities for me to practice impregnating your daughter.”

“Well, uh, I don’t think the dogs are invited.”

“Does it say when we have to go?”

“
You
don’t have to go anywhere, Keith. If you’d rather stay home with your dogs.”

He stabs a straw into his soda cup, driving with his knee. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m sure you can get your sister to dogsit. It’s only four days.”

Keith stares at me, as if I’ve just asked him to donate a kidney to a walrus. “Uh, I don’t know if that’s possible. I don’t trust her to take proper care of them.”

“We’re not taking them with, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

He pauses too long at a green light. Someone honks behind us and he flips them off. But the vacancy in his eyes confirms that I’ve clearly just delivered terrible news. “Why not?”

“On a floatplane? And Yorkies on a romantic getaway for
two
is way not romantic and very much not a getaway. We might as well stay home.”

“I’m not comfortable leaving them behind, Hollie.”

“With your sister?”

“Yes, even with my sister. She kills things. You should see her plants. Nothing but stems and dirt.”
So this plan is better than I thought. We leave your three Yorkies with Yvette and come home to no Yorkies. I like this plan. So much. Must resist cackling and witchy wringing of hands.

“Well, then find a plan B. I don’t want to take the dogs with us.”

“But I wuvs them … what will they do without their daddy and mommy to tuck them in at night for a four whole days?”

“If you wuvs me, Keify, then you’ll stop talking like you’ve spent your childhood eating lead paint and find a dogsitter.” I quickly email my dad back and tell him I’ll call tomorrow, and
thank you but you didn’t have to do this
. I’m out of the car before Keith has it in park. My appetite has been replaced with annoyance.

Time to give this body some narcotic sleeping aids and put it to bed.

But before that, before I can sneak upstairs and sedate my frustration, I have to get past The Door.

Her
door.

A finger against my lips, I motion to Keith to shut up. At all costs, do not speak.

Squeeeeeak
, mutters the first step. Shit.

“Hollie? Is that you?” Keith shoves past me and bolts up the stairs. I throw my Chinese takeout box at him, hoping it will explode against his back. It does not. Merely bounces and flies over the railing, splaying open on the grass. Asshole actually laughs at me.

“Yes, Mrs. Hubert. It’s Hollie.”

A tiny wrinkled body that I think was at some point human shuffles to her screen door. She’s wearing the same housecoat as usual—snaps up the front, pockets bulging with spent Kleenex, her lucky, fifty-year-old Avon perfume pin clipped limply over where her left boob should be, if it weren’t dangling down around her belly button. Suntan knee-high stockings crumple around bony, knotted anklebones, her feet stuffed in slippers that were pink in their former lives. Behind her, a sickly meow echoes through the kitchen.

“Hollie, I need half-and-half and some frozen peas. And Mr. Boots needs wet food. Go get it.”

“Mrs. Hubert, I’m exhausted.”

“And I’m a lonely, dying woman who spends her days and nights praying that Jesus will come for her. Have you seen my hands?” She thrusts her hands through the gap in the screen door. Her skin is so translucent, it’s easy to trace the bulbous veins snaking up her arms and disappearing under yellowed sleeves. “Hurry up.
Jeopardy
is on soon and I don’t want to have to get up again.”

I lock eyes with this—this—
creature
, wishing the apocalypse would happen right this second and I would be saved from her terrible wrath. A look up the stairs proves that Keith is nowhere in sight.

Lifting my purse strap back over my shoulder, I do the only thing I know how to do.

I turn around and slither back to my car so I can go to the market to do Mrs. Hubert’s relentless bidding, hoping that while I’m gone, Satan will come and claim the prize that’s been missing all these years from his wicked collection.

“Take Mr. Boots too,” I mumble.

The dream is nice. I’m on a beach. Not a particularly warm one, but it’s pleasant. Serene. Subtle breeze. Water laps the shore. Not loud like the ocean—something less fierce, more poetic. And I smell trees. Big ones, whispering to each other about which one will fall next when the wind picks up.
Your turn … no, your turn …
I can’t see his face, but his breath next to my ear tickles. My face stretches into a smile. I giggle. He moves his lips to mine. His tongue … it’s rough.

Why is his tongue rough? And why does it smell like … I crack one eye open.

“God! Ew! Get off the bed!” Fucking Yorkies. I jump out of the covers and slam the bathroom door. I don’t care if I disturb Keith’s lazy ass. I have had it with those dogs. I’ve seen them lick each another’s butts—the last thing I want is one of them licking my
mouth
.

I’m more pissed off that they interrupted what had the potential to evolve into an awesome dream. I can’t remember the last time someone almost whispered sweet nothings into my ear. Still, I swish for four minutes with mouthwash, until my gums threaten to peel away from bone. I may have burned off another layer of enamel. (My dentist will nag. Again.) I’ll need extra Chap Stick today. But at least I won’t taste dog ass.

My reflection looks alien. Not like
an
alien—no extra eyes or scaling skin or oozing orifices. Dark circles, though. Probably anemic. I stopped taking the iron supplements because I couldn’t poop, not unless I ate, like, a gallon of that Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt, and it was making me gassy. Not great in my line of work. I got tired of panicking every time someone would walk by my console after I’d cut a squeaker. Some things I can’t blame on Les or Troll Lady simply due to sheer geography.

The face staring back at me looks … neglected. My eyebrows need threading. Haven’t had them done since the last wedding I went to for some girl who barely spoke to me in high school. Hey, if she wants to invite me to accost her open bar, who am I to deny? Said event was also the last time I saw my former best friend. I would tell you her name, but that’s like saying Voldemort out loud instead of calling him “He Who Shall Not Be Named.” If we give evil a name, it grows stronger.

My former BFF was evil.

Or that’s how I choose to see it. Because anyone who dumps you after you score them weed because you’re too weak to say, “No, we’re in a foreign country so we should probably not be buying drugs,” and then who gets mad at you because you don’t have enough cash to bail her ass out when she ends up in a Tijuana jail cell so you call her parents and her uncle lawyer hop-skip-jumps down from San Diego to save her from whatever was lurking in the dark shadows of that damp, dirty, bug-infested cell.

(Wasn’t that the right thing for me to do?)

She was the drunk/high one. She was the one who tried to dance on top of that cop car, even though I told her not to. She’s just lucky we didn’t end up as a missing persons’ case on
America’s Most Wanted
.

But even if there had been hope for our eleven-year friendship, it got squished when she married a guy who made her stop being friends with anyone who eats meat or lives in unmarried sin or cheers curbside in bustiers at the Pride Parade. (My bustier is gorgeous, for the record. Whale bone, red leather, lace … HOT.) I guess her man has a ginormous penis. Why else would she break up with fun-loving, ever-watchful me to marry such a wet fart?

Oh my God, is that a gray hair?

A knock at the door. “Hol … phone.” I open wide enough for Keith’s hand to squeeze through but not wide enough that one of his little shit-munchers can get in here and steal my dirty underwear from the pile of laundry next to the tub.

“Hullo?”

“Hi, Hollie Cat … I wanted to catch you before you left for work.”

“Hey, Dad. Thanks for the gift certificate.”

“I thought it would be a nice change. Get you out of town for a little while. I know things have been tough at work.” Dad’s the one I text when someone has croaked on my line. I figure if I can talk to my dad—a man who has seen a lot of death in his line of work—it’ll keep me from having to attend those therapy sessions Polyester Patty harps about.

“So, I was wondering if you and Keith could come over this weekend and help me move a few things. I’m not allowed to pick up more than ten pounds.”

“Why?”

“Hernia’s acting up.”

“Dad, you were supposed to get that fixed.”

“I am. I will.” For a nurse, my father is the worst damn patient. “Anyway, it would be good to see you kids.”

“Just me, Dad. Keith has to work.”

“The boxes aren’t heavy. I feel like an old man asking you, but at least I’ll get to see your pretty face.”

“You’re not old.” I hate it when he says that. I don’t want to think about my father being old. Old means broken. Old means closer to dead. He lives alone, except for the weekly visits from crazy Aurora who still owns half their house and thus uses it for her primal scream Thursday events. I don’t know how he stands her. “I’m not old
yet
, but I’m not getting any younger waiting for grandchildren. When is that boy gonna get down on one knee?”

And then it becomes crystal clear. The gift getaway to Revelation Cove has a purpose: he wants Keith to propose. To me. So I’ll get married, and then Dad can stop worrying about his only child, his little girl, floating around in the big bad world all by her lonesome.

Too bad Keith is too worried about his stupid dogs to get the message.

“Tomorrow morning … ten okay?” I say.

“I’ll make pancakes!”

Wow. Now the reflection in the mirror is really depressed. My dad’s practically punched Keith in the head with this opportunity, and yet … A spark glimmers momentarily that perhaps Keith
is
in on it, and he will be proposing. But I know that’s not even remotely possible because Keith can’t keep a secret to save his life. He almost had a heart attack last Christmas when he ordered me a boxed set of DVDs of some show I’d mentioned in passing. For him to hide an impending engagement, complete with a ring?

Impossible.

And do I really want him to propose? I spend an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about ways to remove the Yorkies from this apartment without getting arrested for animal cruelty. Therein lies my answer. If only I could adopt a brown bear or a cougar—now
that
would be a cool, multipurpose pet. If I could have a bear, I’d name her Bridget. We’d be the best of friends. And any time someone was a douche to me, I’d whisper in Bridget’s ear and she would eat the offending party. Or a cougar. Chloe the cougar, and I’d wrap a red bow around her neck and we’d walk down the street together and if anyone looked at me funny, she’d hiss and growl until they soiled themselves and we’d get the best tables at all the sidewalk cafés and I’d never again have to wait in line for my morning hazelnut latte because Chloe would use her long tail to swish all the other caffeine junkies aside. Move aside, bitches. Chloe’s in the house.

And when she was a good girl, I could feed her a Yorkie. BAM! Problem solved.

In between saving lives today, I will Google rules about keeping a cougar as a pet.

Or I can just wait another few years and the reflection in this mirror will be all the cougar I need.