Halle Butler - Jillian

“Yeah, hi. I think we talked on the phone.”

“You probably talked to our offices. I didn’t talk to anyone on the phone.”

“Ok,” said Jillian, but the woman was smiling so it was fine.

“There are so many dogs in this area that we all take turns fostering some of them. Come on in.”

“Oh, cool,” said Jillian. “I’d love to do something like this.”

She looked around the woman’s living room. It was carpeted and there were nice framed posters on the walls. The cream-colored leather couches were covered with blankets, and two dogs on the floor chewed rawhide bones.

The woman rolled her eyes and said, “Those things get so nasty.”

Jillian laughed and looked closer. The bones were dry and dirty on the bottoms, probably from the dogs’ paws, which held them pinned to the floor, and as she looked farther up the shafts of the toys she saw that the material became a lighter off-white color and then even farther up it was soft and foamy. The dogs worked the bones in semi-circles with their teeth, and a little bit of foam made of hide and spit dribbled from the dogs’ lips. The dogs didn’t look up at Jillian when she came near, they just gnawed their bones, breathing heavily, and making a rhythmic grinding sound.

“They’re so calm,” said Jillian.

“These are mine, Misty and Fancy Pants. See her pants?” The dog had darker fur on her hind legs that did look like pants. “They’re used to company. I’m Emily.” The woman held out her hand.

“I’m Jillian and this is Adam.”

Jillian was embarrassed because her hands were sweaty, she was so excited, but she had to shake this woman’s hand. If I pretend it’s not sweaty, then it won’t seem so sweaty, she thought.

Adam said hello but his attention was on the tv and the collection of videos underneath it. He didn’t recognize any of the titles, but he studied them anyway. He imagined the woman might invite him to watch a video and give him a sandwich, because most women wanted to do things like that for him.

“Let’s go out to the run,” said Emily.

Jillian’s heart was pounding, she couldn’t calm down. Who is this woman, what am I doing here? Ok, calm down, you know, it’ll be great.

The back door was off the kitchen. Jillian could see it from the living room because there was an open wall above one of the kitchen counters. They walked through the kitchen, which had several bowls of dog food and water on the floor on children’s place mats. The lower cabinets were held shut by rubber bands wrapped around the knobs. There was a loaf of bread on the counter. Emily opened the back door, turned and smiled at them and said, “This way.”

The back yard was nice and big and there were a few trees and a fence around the perimeter. It took a second to see where the dogs were. I guess this is what their natural camouflage is like, thought Jillian, noticing how the chocolate labs blended into the shaded dirt under the trees and how the yellow labs blended into the wood on the fence. A few white and brown spotted dogs, that Jillian thought looked like English hunting dogs, walked around with toys in their mouths. “Oh, those look like Fancy Pants,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Emily. “Which one do you want to meet?”

“Adam?”

“Choco,” said Adam. He pointed to the brown labs under the tree.

“I guess we want to meet those chocolate labs,” said Jillian. Emily led them back to the tree and explained that, at least during the good weather seasons, it was better for the dogs to stay in a house with a yard.

“You know, better for them mentally. My house doesn’t always look like this. I usually have nice hostas along that fence,” she said, pointing to a dug-up spot along the fence.

“This is a really great thing you do,” said Jillian.

Adam crouched in the shade by the labs, who were initially indifferent to him.

“They don’t bite, do they?”

“Not as far as I know. I think they’re pretty kid-friendly.”

“Hi, Choco,” said Adam. Choco raised her head. Adam crouch-walked closer to the dogs while the women talked about the rescue center.

“You’re Choco and you’re Crispy. Hi, Crispy. Hi, Choco the dog,” he said. Crispy got up, wagged her tail, and walked up to Adam and began to sniff his crotch. “Hi Crispy,” he whispered.

“That dog’s name is Peanut,” Emily corrected. Adam didn’t pay attention to her. “I named all the dogs,” she said to Jillian. “That dog responds well to Peanut. It’s best to pick two syllable names.”

Crispy licked the donut sugar off of Adam’s hands. Jillian gave Emily the money order, and then Jillian, Adam, and Crispy loaded themselves into the car.

“Hey, maybe we can talk about other names,” said Jillian.

“Why?” said Adam.

“Choco’s a cute name, what about Choco?”

“But, the other one was Choco,” said Adam. “This is Crispy.”

He was so delightful and strange. Her hands were still wet, maybe even wetter. She had enough cash, she’d made sure, to pick up dog food and a dog bowl and a leash at the Petco. The dog started trembling in the back seat and Adam unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed into the back and sat between his car seat and the dog and whispered “doggie” while he pet Crispy and Crispy began to hyperventilate.

“WHERE ARE YOUR COLLARS and leashes?” asked Jillian. She was bent over, holding Crispy by the shoulders and waddling towards the cashier.

“Right there,” said the cashier, pointing to them. Jillian put her arms around the dog while Adam picked out a neon green collar and a red nylon puppy leash that was maybe a little too short. Jillian attached these items to the dog and stood up. She stretched her back and Crispy shook her skin. They walked to the dog food aisle and picked out the food, two plastic bowls, and a fifteen-inch rawhide bone.

“This is our first dog,” said Jillian to the cashier. She looked around and half picked Crispy up. “Can you just ring up these things while they’re on her?”

“Can you just rip the tags off and hand them to me?”

“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Jillian. She ripped the tags off and the cashier beeped them onto her total. Everything was a little over a hundred dollars. It was more than the adoption fee, but fuck it.

“Ok, ok,” said Jillian in the car.

She walked the dog up the stairs to her apartment. “Welcome home, Crispy.” Crispy walked around the apartment and sniffed things and looked generally confused. Every minute or so she would stop and jump backwards, take a few steps sideways, look around, and then continue sniffing.

Jillian turned on the tv and gave Adam the remote. “Just let her sniff around a second, but let me know if she starts squatting.”

The house wasn’t picked up yet.

Jillian opened the kitchen window and walked around the house opening up the blinds. She set the Petco bags on the kitchen counter, got some scissors, cut off the little plastic loops from where the price tag had been and hung the leash over the kitchen door. She walked around the apartment picking up dishes, then she picked up stray clothing and put it in the hamper in the bathroom. She moved the damp towels from the floor to the hamper. She wiped the crumbs off the kitchen counters and the kitchen table and put the fistfuls of crud in the trashcan under the sink. She felt like she had to do this quickly, and she pivoted several times while she was holding the crud. Then she swept crud off the coffee table and side tables, then she went around picking up little wrappers and pieces of paper. She used a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner to dampen the counters and table, coffee table, and side tables. She glanced at Crispy, who was sitting underneath the living room’s dining table.