Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

The first few days I showed up, Owen was at the door to greet me, always polite, always grateful, and somehow rueful that I was doing this task for him, as if he felt he should be walking his own dog. But gradually, as I became a fixture, I saw less and less of him. Most days as I walked up the front path, I would see Bandit through the large living room window dancing with excitement, running back and forward from the window to the front door. As I would let myself in, Owen would yell hello from his office but not emerge.

My relationship began with Bandit and that was fine with me. It was no accident that I was struggling to master a profession that required a single-mindedness of purpose and a self-imposed isolation. I relished the solitary hours each day broken only by conversation with the canines I walked. People were harder. I exhausted myself trying to meet expectations I was sure they had of me — perpetual good humor, constant attentiveness, smart conversation, and never a moment of neediness. All the dogs asked of me is that I show up on time and get them out of the house quickly. That I could do without breaking a sweat.

WALKING BANDIT MADE IT ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that Owen wasn’t much good with boundaries. The Briard was affectionate and rambunctious but obviously believed he had as much right to make decisions and lead discussions as I did. He would not turn left when we hit the sidewalk in front of the house, because the dog park loomed several blocks to the right. He would listen to my firm and calm voice telling him to sit at each intersection and then blithely pull me across the street. No one had broken the news to him that he was a dog and, as such, was supposed to take his lead from the humans in his life.

I could tell without ever sharing a personal conversation that Owen valued spontaneity over protocol and exuberance over orderliness and that rules held no sway in his universe. I had found my polar opposite.

For most of my life I felt as though I was in the middle of a military maneuver — doing what was asked of me, never straying outside the lines, and avoiding anything that would garner undue notice. The only time I ever felt free was when I was writing. Maybe because it felt like a secret and slightly subversive activity, I carried no rules over to that realm. And allowed no one else in. I was still at that tentative, terrifying stage where I wanted to be able to write but had no confidence I would be able to master the mystery of it. I carried the kernel of that desire within me at all times. Sometimes it was all that pushed me forward — that incipient desire.

AS I LOOK BACK ON IT NOW, the first strong feeling I had about Owen was envy. When I would let myself into his house and gather Bandit’s leash from the front hall closet, I would often hear Owen laughing on the phone, a rolling, infectious sound that ended with hiccups of glee. It was the freedom in that laugh that drew me in. And I would hear it a lot. If only, I thought at times, if only I could be free enough to laugh like that.

I gradually picked up, from overheard snippets of conversation, that he worked in the nonprofit world grant writing or fund-raising, something like that, something that relied on social skills and networking and a passionate belief in the goodness of the cause. I heard the charm and the laughter in his voice and the long periods of listening he did on the phone often punctuated with “Yes, that’s exactly right!” making the listener feel he had managed to say something brilliant.

It was his voice, I would have to say, that first drew me toward him, his voice which carried the lilt of his spirit. I would often stop with my hand on Bandit’s leash and listen to the rise and fall of Owen’s voice and wait for the laugh and the “Yes! Yes!” as he validated whoever was speaking, and then I could snap the leash to Bandit’s collar and let him lead me out the front door.

I didn’t give all this much thought at the time. I was supremely self-involved, as only beginning writers can be. My few friends from college who would have forced me outside my isolation had scattered after graduation — back to hometowns far from L.A. or to jobs in other big cities — making it only easier to ignore the rest of the world. Only Jennie, my college roommate, was still close by, but she had moved in with a new boyfriend and had very little time right then for our friendship.

I didn’t mind. It felt as though all that was essential for my survival happened in those quiet morning hours before the rest of the world was stirring and my obligations began. From the corner of my tiny second-floor bedroom where I had set up my desk, I would watch the sky lighten and the sun spill over the Hollywood Hills in the distance and I would write and despair and write some more and finally despair too much. Had I managed to write an acceptable paragraph in three hours? Should I pare down the opening of my story? What happens next to my characters? What happens?

My head was always full of a completely made-up universe that felt so much more compelling than the mundane world I inhabited. That may be why, one day when I went to return Bandit, I didn’t notice glass shards glistening along the driveway like a trail of diamonds.

Owen had been gone when I picked up Bandit. That wasn’t unusual. I knew immediately when I let myself in that the house was empty, Owen’s absence as great a presence as his actual being. Bandit more than made up for the quiet with barking leaps of happiness. He jumped as if his legs were made of springs, encircling me with a pent-up energy that directed me straight to the dog park.

We were gone a little more than an hour. That’s usually the time it took for Bandit to flop down at my feet, long pink tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth, utterly spent from running circles around the perimeter of the park and tumbling across the grass with whichever dog would comply. His prostrate body was my cue to stand up, attach his leash, and begin the slow walk home.

I was filling Bandit’s water dish in the laundry room when I heard Owen’s car pull up. I lingered. I had to admit to myself that I lingered so that we would see each other as he came in. Our conversations were always inconsequential, but something about them sustained me through the rest of my solitary day. Often he’d tell me something he’d just done and I would laugh with him. Or I would give him a report on Bandit’s exercise and he would listen as attentively as if I were divulging national security secrets.

This day, though, he came into the house, worried, his face dark and his energy tight.

“There’s glass on the driveway.”

And in the next second his eyes found the broken kitchen window and his face melted with recognition. It was only then that I also saw the vandalism.

“It must have happened while we were gone. Bandit wouldn’t have let anyone in otherwise.”

“Unless it was someone he knew,” Owen said as he walked through the kitchen and into the other rooms of the house. He didn’t invite me but I followed, and when we ended up in his office I saw that one of the windows in that room had been left open, the screen pushed out, as if someone had exited the house that way.

Owen scanned his files, the paperwork on his desk, double-checking that it was all there.

“Is anything missing?”

“No.”

And then his eyes settled on the bookshelf where the bottles of wine from the kitchen had been arranged on the top in the shape of an arrow pointing to the open window. “This was meant as a message.”

“Telling you what?”

“Just announcing his presence.”

“You know some strange people.”

“I used to.”

And then, because there was a moment of awkward silence — I didn’t know what to say and he wasn’t about to elaborate — he asked me, “Would you like a cup of tea?”