Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

“I’m not sleeping here with this smell tonight,” she says. “Get the sausage out!”

“Karen,” I say while I crank on the grinder, “This is my job. I have to. You know that.” Gus is still flailing around, and Karen has to hold his leash up high, above her head, to keep him from getting at all that meat.

She stares at me for a long time. Just stares, this mean, ugly stare that says Marty, I want to pound your face into ground mutton . I’ve never seen this from her before and didn’t know she was capable of it. She’s a librarian, but you know that.

I just keep on grinding out the sausage links, casing them up, twisting, and hanging. I have thirty pounds left, and I’m not wasting it. It’s my job. You have a job, so you understand, I’m sure. I wouldn’t tell you to stop docenting little kids at the museum. I wouldn’t tell her to stop shelving her books.

So she leaves. She puts Gus in my station wagon, and she leaves. In the morning, I find a note taped to the mailbox, detailing the atrocities I’ve inflicted upon her for the past six years: how I always smelled like I’d just rolled around in a bucket of intestines; how we were probably the only people in New York who consistently had pepperoni logs stacked on the nightstand; how I was in our bathroom one time, brushing my teeth while her cousin was showering, and I tripped and fell into the curtain and ripped it off the hook and then had to break my fall, and one of my hands ended up grazing her nipple on the way down. There are others, but you get the idea. She hasn’t been happy for years, our Karen. Apparently I’m like a contagion, and she should have quarantined herself a long time ago. She feels infected by me. And did I realize we haven’t even made love for over a year? It’s as if we just forgot to have kids. Mostly, we’re just a bad fit, always have been. Square peg, rhombus hole. Close, but a little cockeyed. She’s cosmopolitan, I’m rural.

But you, the bald museum docent—you’re quiet and kind, and you make her sizzle with life again. You keep your beard trimmed and watch Charlie Rose. You own a shoe polish kit and never eat fried catfish. She can’t waste any more time being unhappy and childless with me. Sizzle, she says. Do please understand .

And I know what you’re probably wondering: Did her cousin have big nipples? Well, I’m not talking on that.

The apartment is in her name. She makes most of the payments, and I can’t stay. I’d like to help you out, Marty, she says when I call to talk it over, but we’re moving to his place in Gramercy, and we need the equity to expand. Do please understand.

She never used to talk like that— Do please understand —but apparently you bald museum docents talk like snooty assholes, and you’ve already started to rub off on her.

Since you’ve evicted me from my apartment, I scan the Post for a new place, spend an hour calling around. Lots of places have been rented already, which makes me think I should learn how to use the Internet at some point. A studio in Hell’s Kitchen is listed at $1,600 a month, and this is close enough to Gramercy for me to occasionally bump into you in a planned-accidental sort of way.

“Any chance we could negotiate on the price?” I say to the woman. “I’m pretty handy. Can fix leaky pipes and trim you a nice pork shoulder each week.”

“How much were you thinking?”

“I could swing $800 a month,” I say. But even that would be pretty tight. Gus would have to eat squirrels from the park.

Then I try a studio over in Hoboken, but it’s still over $1,000 a month. The first thing I think is, No way I’m paying that much to live in New Jersey. I’d imagine living in Hoboken is a lot like standing on a balcony that overlooks a killer party. And telling people you live there is a lot like telling them you have Ebola. But you know all about the Jersey issue. You live in Gramercy.

Then I find an ad from out in Changewater. Way out in western Jersey, not far from where I grew up. I don’t want to move that far away, but I also didn’t want my wife to drop me and start playing kiss-me-where-I-pee with one of you bald museum docents. This is what the ad reads: Quiet NJ Livestock Farm. No noise, no polutn. One month labor for one room to sleep. No kids, no yap-dogs . I call. I can tell it’s an old man because he speaks slowly and sounds angry that he’s still alive. And he clicks his teeth, adjusting his dentures. It’s an unmistakable sound, like ice clinking into a glass. My father used to do it. “It’s a nice enough piece of land,” he says. “You have to work it with me. That’s the deal.”

Apparently his daughter takes care of him, but she’s a teacher and is leading a group of snot-noses on a trip to Europe for an entire month. He’ll trade a month’s rent for a month’s work.

“Changewater,” I say. “Is that near Califon?”

“No,” he says. “Near Hampton.”

“Oh,” I say. “Near Asbury.”

“No,” he says. “It’s near Hampton.”

And that’s how he talks. Kind of refreshing compared to you bald museum docent types but still kind of enough to make you want to murder his fucking rooster.

Then he tells me I can’t be a city priss, have to be willing to kill hogs and fix fence rails and do other man-type work that you couldn’t even spell. And I tell him that’s why I called, that I grew up nearby, and I run a butcher shop in the city. I can swing an axe and pull nails and hang drywall if he needs it. I can probably even show him a few things about butchering. I’m the perfect tenant for his situation. It’s lucky our paths crossed.

“I don’t like city people,” he says. “You live there long enough you forget how to do anything but eat cheese and talk about paintings.”

“I do have a dog,” I say. “The ad says no pets.”

“No,” he says. “It says no yappy dogs. Is it a real dog or the kind that rides around in a purse?”

His name is Linus Houghton. Have you ever met a Linus? Or are they all Reginalds and Chesterfields at the museum? He walks with a jerky limp and has a splotchy, squished sort of face that looks a lot like a tomato left in the sun for a week. He’s short and wiry and has perfect posture. He rarely speaks, but he sometimes gets this mischievous grin on his face, like he farted on your pillow when you weren’t looking.

His place is tucked way off the main road, halfway up a hill and with thickets all around. Can’t even see there’s a house from the road. Driving up the long lane is like driving through the Holland Tunnel. The trees overhang and actually catch on the roof of my station wagon. Then I emerge into a wide swathe of pasture, hilly and green and muddy, bordered by a rickety split-rail fence. Hogs I can’t see but I can smell. Sheep in the far pen and a few cattle beyond them. And for a moment it’s refreshing, like walking back into my childhood. That smell.

This is the thing, bald museum docent: I slowly became one of those New Yorkers who never left the island. I made jokes about Jersey and sometimes wore a scarf. I stopped eating so much bologna. Thought playing the part might infect my blood somehow, squeeze the rustic out of me, morph me into a better husband somehow. I would have done way worse for our Karen. No such luck. She found you at some point. God knows when, but clearly long before the sausage incident. Probably closer to the nipple incident.

But here I am now, back in the country, breathing air so clear it feels cold as it hits my lungs. It reminds me real air shouldn’t smell like soy sauce and burnt Styrofoam.

Linus stands on the porch. An unlit, hand-rolled cigarette hangs from his lips, and he talks as if he doesn’t even notice it there.