My phone pings. It’s Witt.
going to meeting tonight. promise.
I put the phone in my back pocket, pick up my clippers, and go to work on Zeno. He’s a goldendoodle. His curls are a challenge, and goldendoodles can be a restless breed. But he stands still on the table, staring straight ahead as I clip away.
My phone pings again. I take it out and glance at the screen. Another one from Witt: clem? you’re coming back, right?
I put the phone on the table, next to Zeno’s left forepaw.
Another ping. This time it’s my mother: Clemmie. Please say you’re not going back there.
And yet another. Witt again: did u tell Addie?
Addie’s my mother. And, yes, I told her. It was a mistake.
One more ping from my mother: He’ll say he knows what I’m saying. Don’t listen.
And one more from Witt: i know what she’s telling you. don’t listen.
“That’s a lot of pinging,” Faizah says from the next table over.
Faizah runs the place and is clipping away at a Komondor’s thicket of mop-like dreads. For this alone, she should be awarded a Purple Heart.
Another ping. I don’t look at my phone. At least they’re not calling. I told them phone calls were prohibited at work, and they believed it. For the next few minutes, there is only the sound of clipping—until the next ping. I hear muttering. It’s Luna, working at the third table down. She’s got it easy, a Boxer named Sinbad with a short coat that doesn’t need much trimming. This won’t improve Luna’s mood. She’s a dog groomer who doesn’t particularly like dogs or grooming.
I finish up Zeno’s cut, get the nail clippers, and hold up his left forepaw. I finger each nail, find a good cut line away from the quick, and work my way through all five.
One more ping. Luna mutters again. I put the phone on mute. I could have done it sooner, but I like annoying Luna.
“Anything wrong?” Faizah asks. “I’m not being nosy. I’m just being inquisitive.”
This makes me smile. She knew it would. I still don’t answer. This doesn’t offend Faizah. She knows a little, and she’ll find out more during our next smoke break.
I work my way through Zeno’s nails, then lower the table and unhook his collar. He steps off the table, shakes and stretches. I give him a treat and lead him to the little fenced-off waiting area in front. Doris is working the desk. She doesn’t look up from her phone as I pass by.
When I get back, I clean up my station and take a look at my phone. Two more messages, the first from Witt: it’ll get better. you know that. The next is from my mother: This won’t improve. That’s for certain.
“You got a free hand?” Faizah asks.
“I’ve never done a Komondor,” I say as I pick up my clippers and go to the table.
“No big deal,” Faizah said. “Just take the cords down to the skin, like this.” She shows me. “They want them kind of thick,” she adds.
“How thick?”
Faizah holds up her thumb and forefinger and presses them together.
“That thick.”
I start in on his back. Faizah watches for a few moments. She doesn’t say anything, which means I’m doing it right. We work in silence. Luna finishes up with Sinbad, lowers the table, and leads him out.
“What you got next?” Faizah asks her.
“Another Boxer,” Luna says. “In about a half-hour.”
“Can you do some restocking? Got some merch in this morning.”
She lets out a sigh, nods her head, and goes to the stock room.
“Who gets two Boxers in a row?” I ask after she’s left.
“Luna,” Faizah says. And then: “It’s what she can do.”
The Komondor takes a step forward. He’s getting restless. Faizah starts chanting Marcus, Marcus, Marcus. The dog settles down. We keep clipping. The names suddenly register.
“Marcus and Zeno,” I say.
“What about them?”
“Zeno and Marcus Aurelius. They were Stoics.”
“Huh?”
“Philosophers.”
“That so?” Faizah says. She looks over at what I’m doing. “That’s good. It’s short enough.”
I stop clipping. Faizah finishes up with his neck and lowers the table.
“Can you take him out front?” she asks.
I slip Marcus a treat and walk him out to the waiting area. Zeno is already gone. I shut the little gate.
“How many more?” I ask Doris.
“Three,” she says. “A Lab, an Airedale, and a Boxer.”
“When?”
“About a half-hour,” Doris says. She hasn’t looked up once.
When I get back to the grooming area, Faizah is taking off her smock. She’s wearing a T-shirt that shows a glaring Popeye making a fist. Underneath it says: Don’t fuck wit’ me spinach.
“How long?” she asks.
“Doris says about a half.”
“Let’s hit Shangri-La.”
She means the alley in the back of the store. I take off my smock and follow her out. We walk a few feet away from the dumpsters and she holds out her pack of Newport 100s. I take one. She plucks another out with her lips and lights us up. We savor the first few pulls in silence.
Faizah looks up at the sky, her red Havana twists popping in the sun, and lets out a long, narrow stream of smoke.
“Nice day,” she says. It’s a mellow late autumn afternoon, warm with no humidity. “Won’t be long,” she adds.
“For what?”
“The cold,” she says, taking another drag. “Hate the cold.”
“Same here,” I say.
“I’m gonna do it. Maybe next year.”
“What?”
“Head south.”
“South where?”
“Where it never gets cold.”
I think about that. South. So south it never gets cold. We take a few more drags and watch our smoke twist and curl in the sunlight.
“Stoics,” Faizah says.
“Hm?”
“You were saying. Marcus and Zeno. What were they selling?”
“Virtues,” I say. “I think there were four.”
“Which ones?”
I have to think about it for a moment. Freshman philosophy was a long time ago.
“Courage, wisdom, justice and another one. They said you need them to lead a good life.”
“No shit,” Faizah says.
I take another long drag, trying to remember the fourth virtue.
My phone vibrates. It’s from Witt: clem, it was one slip – one time.
I put the phone back in my pocket, drop the cigarette butt and grind it with my shoe. Faizah holds out her pack. I take another cigarette. As I’m lighting up, I feel my phone again. I hand the lighter back and look at my phone.
Mother: This will happen again. And AGAIN.
“That your boy?” Faizah asks.
“Yeah. And my mother.”
“Let me guess: he slipped?”
“Something like that.”
“Something?”
“Ok. That.”
“How much did he drop?”
“I stopped counting.”
“What’s he saying?”
“It won’t happen again. That kind of stuff.”
“And what does Mom say?”
“That I shoulda bailed yesterday.”
My phone vibrates. I don’t look at it.
“What’s his game?” Faizah asks.
“What isn’t?”
Faizah gives me a look. She wants more.
“Started with blackjack and Texas Hold’em.”
“Was he good?”
“No. He was lucky. For a while. And then he moved on.”
“Sports betting?”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s everywhere.”
“Everywhere and anywhere.”
“And he emptied your cupboard?” she asks.
“Ours and everyone else’s.”
“Who’s everyone else?”
“Witt was a CFP.”
“A what?”
“Certified Financial Planner.”
“Sounds like a certified shitshow.”
“It was. College funds, investment accounts, beneficiary IRAs. He dipped into everything.”
“How long before he got caught?”
“A few months.”
I found out when I came home early one day and found him sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch. We were weekend drinkers, but it was Wednesday, and the bottle was half empty. I asked him how much he took. When he told me, I helped him finish off the scotch.
“They prosecute?” Faizah asks.
“His firm didn’t want the noise, so they went with a threat: pay up or else.”
“And you came up with the scratch?”
“Most of it.”
We sold our house but were still short, so I cashed out our 401(k)s and sold my share in a burgeoning PR business I’d started with a college friend. She wasn’t much of a friend. After the sale was closed, she fired me. Witt left his firm for “personal reasons” and joined Gamblers Anonymous. I packed up our house, found a cheap apartment, and started looking for a job. Any job. When I walked into Tails-a-Tappin’ Groomers after an exhausting string of rejections, Faizah looked me up and down.
“What’s a dewclaw?” she’d asked.
“A kind of claw high up on some dogs’ legs.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I read about it somewhere.”
“You read about dewclaws?”
“I read about everything.”
And then she hired me.
My phone vibrates. Witt: i was weak. just for a second.
Faizah grinds out her smoke, pockets her pack and turns toward the door.
“Time’s up,” she says. “You’re on the front.”
I relieve Doris at the front desk a few days a week, where I book appointments, handle clients picking up their dogs, and close the store at the end of business hours. I feel my phone.
Mother: He’ll never stop. He’s so frail.
As we walk back into the store, it comes to me.
“I just remembered the fourth virtue,” I say.
“Let ‘er rip,” Faizah says.
“Temperance.”
Faizah starts laughing. “Hey. Good luck with that,” she says.
When I get to the front desk, Doris is on the phone. Marcus, the Komondor, is gone.
“Who’s next?” I ask.
“The Boxer, then the Airedale and the Lab,” she says as she grabs her purse and heads for the door. Doris isn’t one for lingering.
The next hour goes quickly. Gunner, the Boxer, arrives right on time, quickly followed by the other two. Luna takes the boxer while Faizah starts with the Lab first. He’s a wash and a light trim, which will be a quick job. The Airedale stays in the little pen across the room, sitting perfectly still and staring at me with his dark oval eyes.
I take a few calls, answering questions about specific packages and store hours. Luna comes out with the Boxer and puts him in the holding pen, then takes the Airedale back to wait for Faizah to finish with the Lab. Luna’s day is over. I hear her say goodbye to Faizah and then head out the back. The Boxer is picked up a few minutes later, just as Faizah comes out with the Lab.
“Last one’s always a tough one,” she says as she takes the Airedale back to the grooming room.
After the Lab is picked up, my phone stays silent. All I hear is the sound of Faizah’s clipper. I switch my text alarm from vibrate to chime, just for the sake of change, then go to the chess app and start playing. I’m a mediocre player, but it relaxes me.
I’ve made two moves when my phone chimes.
Mother: Come work with me. Fresh start.
She’s a realtor, owns the firm and has dreamt of my taking it over when she retires. The thought of studying for a realtor’s license, showing Tudor-style homes to balky young couples, and chattering away about square footage and wainscoting makes me want to stick my head in an oven. I switch back to the chessboard.
The front door opens, and a young woman walks in. She looks to be in her late twenties, with a burgundy bob, pleated olive shorts, and a navy tank top. Her dog looks like a Lab, but it’s got a reddish brindle pattern, larger ears, and a slimmer body. She’s holding the leash in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I’m about to tell her she can’t smoke in the store when I notice the fingers holding the cigarette. They’re shaking.
And then I see the bruises on her right inner arm, billowing little thunderclouds of dark mauve, ochre, and garnet. I switch my gaze to the dog and its light brown eyes.
“Hanover,” she says.
“What?”
“She’s a Hanover Hound.”
“My first,” I say.
“Yeah. They’re kinda rare.”
I don’t answer. I’m trying not to look at her inner arms, though I’m sure she knows I saw them.
“Can I get a wash and trim?” she asks. “And her nails. They really need clipping.”
“You have an appointment?” I ask, though I know she doesn’t.
“No, but your sign,” she says, nodding at the window. The sign says: We’re Happy to Take Walk-Ins.
We’re not happy to take walk-ins. In fact, we hate them, especially when it’s busy or nearing the end of business hours. But there’s still about an hour left, and Faizah says the store’s monthly numbers are dragging. That means walk-ins are welcome.
As she’s paying in cash, the dog takes a few steps toward the door.
“Clover,” she says.
The dog doesn’t respond.
“Clover,” she says again, and gives a gentle tug on the leash. The dog comes back to her and sits.
“Just get her?” I ask.
“Hm?”
“Did you just get her?” I ask again.
“How’d you know?”
“She’s not responding to her name.”
The woman looks at the dog, then at me.
“Yeah. Just adopted her. Beta. That’s her original name. At least that’s what the shelter people told me.”
“And you changed it to Clover?”
“No. The family that had her before me—they did. Before them, I think the police were training her.”
“Like a drug dog?”
“Something like that. But she didn’t work out.”
I knew the rest of the story without asking. Beta washed out as a drug dog, so the police found a family to take her. The family was all fired up about their new dog, until they weren’t. Dogs are expensive. Dogs are work. The shelter came next. And this one, Ms. Burgundy Bob with the technicolor inner arm, had her own reasons for adopting a dog. Loneliness. Desperation. Addled impulse purchase. Take your pick.
She signs the standard waiver, hands me the leash, and starts for the door.
“One more thing,” I say as I walk behind the desk, Beta in tow.
She stops at the door.
“Your information,” I say.
“Information?”
“I need your phone number.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
She pauses for a moment and recites a number. I enter it into the system. By the time I look up from the screen to read it back to her, she’s already out the door.
I watch until she walks out of sight. In another minute, a black Jeep shoots into view, then starts pulling out of the parking lot. I try to get the license plate, but another car pulls in behind her. I put Beta in the holding pen, then go back to the desk and dial up the number. An electronic voice sends me to a voicemail box that’s not working. I swipe off the call and look at the signature on the waiver. Jane Seymour, it says.
I take a few steps and swing open the door to the grooming room. Faizah’s back is to me. She’s still working on the Airedale.
“Got a walk-in,” I say.
“Ok. What’s the job?”
“Hanover Hound. Wash, trim, and nails.”
“Hanover,” she says without turning. “Haven’t seen one of those in ages.”
And then I add: “This may be a five-eighty-six.”
Faizah turns to face me and waits.
“She paid in cash,” I say. “She didn’t ask how long it’d take. The phone number doesn’t work. And I think the name on the waiver is bogus.”
“What’s the name?”
“Jane Seymour. She’s an English actress or the queen of England from the 1500s.”
“You get a plate?”
“No. She was fast, and another car blocked it.”
Faizah looks at me, takes a deep breath, and turns back to the Airedale.
“Okay,” she says.
Five-eighty-six is shop code. It means a dog has been abandoned. In the time I’d been at the store, it’d happened twice: once with a cantankerous miniature Schnauzer, and once with a snappish wire-haired Dachshund. Store policy is spelled out in the waiver: after making “reasonable efforts” to contact an owner, the dog is taken to a shelter.
Whoever is closing business for the day—and today that is me—is tasked with making the delivery. The shelter is located about 10 minutes away on Route 586. We all know what happens if the dog is not adopted within 72 hours. That’s why some people opt to abandon them at the groomers. It’s also why we call it a five-eighty-six. Both actions obscure an ugly fate.
Sometimes the dogs get a reprieve. Faizah adopted the cantankerous miniature Schnauzer and renamed him Hadean. The Dachshund wasn’t as lucky.
Faizah comes out with the Airedale and places it in the holding pen. She looks at Beta.
“That’s a Hanover, alright.” She looks out the window and shrugs. “Well, we’ll see what happens.”
She takes Beta to the grooming room while I go back behind the desk. I don’t feel like playing chess, so I just stare out the window. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe Ms. Burgundy Bob. My phone chimes.
Witt: why are u so quiet?
The Airedale’s parent, a woman in her fifties wearing a Cape May Exit 0 T-shirt and an onyx nose stud, comes in cooing his name. It’s Theodore. His tail chops the air. The woman asks me how everything went. I smile and say what I always say: Just fine. He was a sweetie. After a few more moments of aimless chat, she leaves with Theodore.
My phone chimes.
Mother: Why aren’t you answering me?
I put down the phone and keep looking out the window. The last hour before closing usually drags. This one doesn’t. Faizah comes out with Beta and puts her in the holding pen. She looks out at the parking lot.
“Anything?”
“No,” I say.
She goes back to the grooming room to clean up. Beta sits still, looking at me and then out the window. Cars pass on the highway but none pull in. Faizah finishes up and comes back out to the front.
“Gotta go,” she says. “Mom’s waiting.” Faizah’s mother has MS and lives with her. She can’t be late.
“Ok,” I say. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long should I wait?”
I have to ask. I’ve never had to deliver a dog to the shelter. The last time it happened—with the wire-haired Dachshund—Faizah did the dirty work.
“An hour,” Faizah says. “After that, whatever feels right.”
“Whatever feels right,” I repeat.
“Yeah. You know.”
“Sure,” I say, though I don’t.
Faizah goes up to Beta and pets her. “Good luck, kiddo.” She turns to me. “You never know.”
“Know what?”
“She’s a Hanover. They may try to sell her instead of…” She stops there. We look at each other for a few moments. “I’ll lock up in the back,” she finally says. “See you later.”
“Sure thing,” I say.
“Ain’t no such thing as a sure thing,” Faizah calls back as she walks through the swinging doors.
I hear the back door shut. After a few minutes of silence, the store phone rings. A woman asks if we have evening hours. I say no, and she hangs up without saying goodbye. My phone chimes.
Witt: can i call??
Beta sits perfectly still in the holding pen, staring at me. I grab a treat from the jar, walk over, and hold it out. She sniffs but doesn’t take it.
“Maybe later,” I say, putting it on the floor beside her.
I go back to the front desk, pick up the store phone, and dial Jane Seymour’s bogus number. It’s still bogus and directs me to the voicemail. My phone chimes.
Mother: I’d like to hear your voice. Will you call? Or should I?
I look over at Beta. She’s laying down now, eyes closed. Reasonable effort.
“Reasonable effort,” I say aloud. Then I pick up the store phone and dial Jane Seymour’s number yet again. Same thing. I hang up.
The mandated hour will be up in 20 minutes. My phone chimes again.
Witt: i made a bad choice. but not the last choice.
A car pulls into the parking lot. It’s not the black Jeep, but a beige Toyota. It’s just turning around. The store phone rings. I pick up, say the store name in as chipper a tone as I can muster—“Tails-a- Tappin’. Can I help you?”—and wait. Someone hangs up. I look at the number ID. It’s blocked.
“You think that was her?” I ask Beta. Her eyes stay closed.
My phone pings.
Mother: He does this because he wants to. There is no changing him.
I stare out the window, waiting for another car to pull in. Any car. There is nothing, and then a chain reaction of pings:
Witt: i want you to come home.
Mother: I want you to come work with me.
Witt: do I have to beg?
Mother: What? You think I’m going to plead?
Witt: calling. right now.
Mother: Clementine. I want to hear your voice. I’m calling.
I press the power button on the phone and hold it. The screen goes black. I slam it down on the counter. Beta’s eyes snap open.
Ain’t no such thing as a sure thing.
I take a long look at Beta.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay then.”
I grab my purse out of the bottom drawer and drop my phone inside, then walk over to Beta, open the pen, and take her leash. The treat I’d placed on the floor is gone, so I grab a few more out of the jar, set the store phone to voicemail, and turn out the lights.
When I’m outside with Beta, I lock the front door and slip the key into my purse.
“You ready?” I ask. She looks up at me. Her tail twitches once.
I take her to the far corner of the parking lot and point to a dented red Hyundai.
“That’s our ride,” I say.
I open the back door and dig into my pocket for a treat, but Beta doesn’t need it. She hops right in. I give her the treat anyway.
We pull out of the parking lot, turn left, and head toward Route 586. I fiddle with the radio, can’t find anything I like, and turn it off. We stop at a red light just short of Route 586. I look into the rearview mirror. Beta is curled up on the seat, but she’s staring at me in the mirror. We look at each other in silence. The car behind me honks. The light is green.
South. So south it never gets cold.
The car honks again. I press the gas, come up on Route 586, but keep going straight. I look into the mirror.
“Clover’s a shit name,” I say. “You’re Beta again.”
We drive for another 10 minutes until I see a sign for the Turnpike.
“How far south is south enough?” I ask Beta.
Her tail starts tapping against the seat. It’s rhythmic and solid but somehow lulling. I keep following the signs. They’ll point us in the right direction.
We’ll follow them right to the very end.