An Order of Things
Gerald felt rather ashamed that he couldn't come up with a good name for his dog. It was a chocolate lab, an elderly dog, "on its last leg" as the humane society volunteer had noted, and Gerald had felt an immediate desire to give the dog a good final week, month or year. He had paid the fees, signed the papers and brought the dog home. Howard, his roommate, had felt rather betrayed at the idea that Gerald would bring home an elderly dog.
"You know my cat Sweeney had just passed away," Howard had said.
"I do." Gerald responded. He led the chocolate lab across the small two bedroom apartment, and let the dog get acquainted with the softness of his bed. Gerald could tell that the old animal had spent some time in a human bed before. He walked around in circles, prodding each of his four paws into the comforter before laying down slowly, with a deep and grateful sigh. The dog fell asleep.
"He's sleeping like a baby in there." Gerald told Howard as he came back out into the shared dining space.
"I can't believe you'd bring a already dead in the ground mutt like that here." Howard wrote bitterly in his physics notebook, a page from his jack-priced textbook sitting open in front of him. His eyes had met Gerald's only once before glancing back down at his pages.
"No one was going to adopt him." Gerald had approached the table, gesturing toward the bedroom even though Howard was paying him no mind and wouldn't have seen the direction of Gerald's hands. Gerald wiped his palm down his mouth, as if to give himself a fresh set of words, and then pulled a chair down and sat. "Why are you so upset about this?"
"I'm not. Not in the grand scheme of things." Howard tried to keep his eyes down on the page where his pencil lead scribbled out notes of mass, and velocity or what Gerald had thought were mass and velocity. It was all foreign language to him.
"You just barked at me, the second I walked in the door," Gerald said, his head tilted to the side trying to capture the top of Howard's eyeline, Howard looked up, Gerald continued, "So your cat died. Cats die. Dogs die. He doesn't deserve to rot in that jail cell."
Howard shook his head a moment, he scoffed a second, and turned his attention back down to his ruled paper pages, and set himself to start writing. He tapped his pencil twice against the sheets and tossed his pencil onto the table over his notebook in defeat. "Okay. Gerry."
Gerald sat back in his seat and waited for the onslaught of emotions.
Howard took a deep breath, pinched the bride of his nose, and obliged Gerald with a tirade:
"When Sweeney got hit by that truck, I nearly lost it. He was a young and vibrant animal. A saint. Sure, he pissed in your plants, and liked to track cat litter onto the counter tops, but that was part of his charm. I just, I see him all over, and now you bring a dog here. An emotional needy stray who needs our love as he passes on. It's like were a hospice for canines. After this one, you're going to want to bring another one in. I can't handle all of that death in this place, not right now. Do it on your own time. Let them die with you alone, without me."
Gerald sat back in his chair. He nodded in contemplation to the words Howard had spoken and he said in response, "Wow. Howie, you are one selfish son of a bitch."
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