His name is Pancake.
He is forty-two pounds of brindle rescue mutt with one blue eye and one brown eye and ears that do not match each other. He came home with us in April, from the shelter three blocks from the practice rink, after Maddox spent two weeks pretending we weren't looking at rescue websites and I spenttwo weeks pretending I wasn't catching him at it. The shelter lady put Pancake on the floor in front of Maddox, and Pancake walked straight into Maddox's lap and sat on both of his feet and looked up at him with the blue eye, and that was the end of Maddox Creed the bachelor and the beginning of Maddox Creed the man who carries a mid-sized dog up the three flights to our apartment because Pancake is lazy in the afternoons and will not take the stairs without moral support.
I open the bedroom door in boxers and a t-shirt and Pancake loses his mind.
Tail first. Then body. Then a full run across the hardwood with his nails clicking and a small controlled leap onto the end of our bed where Maddox is now sitting up against the headboard in sweats.
“Hi, bud. Hi. Hi. Okay. Hi.”
Pancake steps on Maddox's sternum with all four feet because he has no understanding of geometry, and Maddox makes a smalloofand collects him under one arm and rubs his ears.
I pour the coffee.
I have been pouring the coffee first for a while now. It used to be that Maddox made it and I drank it and we treated that as a normal division of labor, but in April I learned he takes his with a little less milk than I had been giving him, and in May I learned I like the beans from the place on Gleason Street more than the ones he'd been buying, and by June we had a kitchen that was ours instead of his, and the coffee schedule had shifted.
The apartment is small. Two bedrooms we don't both use; the second one is an office and a guest room and a place I write the papers for the two online classes I started in May. The kitchen looks out at a maple tree. The maple is in full leaf. A bird I've learned is a cedar waxwing is on the railing of our tiny balcony. Pancake sees the bird and his whole body goes electricand he forgets Maddox and flies off the bed and crashes into the sliding-door glass, where he stops, puts his nose to it, and watches the bird like it's the only job he's ever been given.
Maddox comes up behind me at the counter. He puts his hand on the back of my neck. He kisses the top of my head.
“Hi, baby.”
“Hi.”
He yawns against my hair.
“Dog shit his brains out yet.”
“Pending.”
“Romantic.”
I hand him his mug. He takes it. He puts his free arm around me. His chin goes on my shoulder while I slice an apple, and we stand there at the counter in the pale yellow July morning, in the apartment we rented two days after we flew here from Frosthaven, and I feel my ribs do the thing they do every morning now, which is sit lower in my chest than they used to.
I let Pancake out into the yard.
The “yard” is the ten feet of grass between our building and the alley that the landlord called “a private green space” in the Craigslist ad. It is not private. It has four dogs in rotation and one raccoon that lives in a tree and a kid next door who we've taught to give Pancake one treat per visit. It is exactly the right size for a dog who was raised in a shelter kennel. Pancake charges into it and immediately does the pending thing and then starts sniffing the fence line with the intensity of a detective.
I sit on the back step in my boxers and watch him.
My phone buzzes.
It's Paul. It's a text. It says,Saw the highlight. Nice pass Thursday. Dad.
I look at it.
I look at the tree.
I look back at the phone.
I type:Thanks. How's the knee?
Three dots.Old.
Three dots.Better some days.
I type:Come out in August. Diane wants to. Come with her.
The three dots pulse through three cycles. They stop. They start again. They stop. My coffee gets cold on the step beside me. Pancake rolls in something.
