BACHELORING IT

Someone came into my backyard tonight while I was at work and left the gate open, a gate I never use. So when I let the dogs out at 1:45 a.m. they ran away. I did not discover this for a few minutes, until I went to let them in and they weren't there. Usually they are eager to come back in at night. They haven't seen me in six or seven hours. They want to come in and knock me down. I thought maybe they found something interesting in the yard — a dead bird or a snake — so I went out to see if they were conferring in a dark corner of the yard. Nothing. As I turned back toward the house I saw the south gate was wide open. My heart hit the ground.

They had never run away at night. The neighborhood was asleep. I couldn't call for them. George was asleep. I couldn't call him. It was too dark to walk around looking. The bars were closing. I sat on my front porch and softly whistled for them.

Then it dawned on me again: Someone opened the gate. I walked around to the backyard to see if anyone had broken into the basement or stolen the bikes chained to the fence. It didn't look like it. Was someone watching me?

I sat on the front porch some more. They'll come back. I'll sit here all night. Finally, I can't take the waiting. I get in my car, even though I know it's futile, and even though I know they might come back when I'm gone — and find me gone and leave again. I drive around the neighborhood in ever-widening squares. I can't see anything. My dogs are black. I make passes by the house, in case they returned. I drive and drive.

This is a shitty time to live alone. Earlier in the day a colleague was complaining to me that his wife was out of town caring for her sick mother and that he was "bacheloring it," i.e., that he did not have a woman around to care for him. I just nodded and tried to fake a smile. He’s my superior; he doesn’t have a sense of humor. He must have seen my "sympathy" as sincere, because he went on about the hardships he had been enduring the past three or four days. "I've been too busy to get anything done (including the professional thing we were working on together). I've found that now I have to take care of the lawn — and the lawndry," he says, proud of his pun. Poor guy, I thought, how will you survive? I bet you're wishing your mother-in-law will hurry up and kick the bucket so your wife can come back and start caring for you again and you won't have to live alone. He starts to tell me what he's been eating without a woman to cook for him. I start talking to someone else.

No dogs. No dogs. No dogs. Then suddenly, in a big parking lot under a street lamp, there are my dogs. My heart swells. I pull up and call to them. They come running, like "Where have you been? We’re having so much fun!" They jump in the car and lick my face. They've been swimming in the river. They are sopping wet and reek of dead fish and river mud.

We drive home. They drink from their bowl and frolic wildly with each other, energized by their late-night outing. I sit down and write this in lieu of smoking a cigarette, in the time it would take to smoke a cigarette. Then I collapse on my bed at 4:30 a.m., on my sheets that need lawndering, between my two best friends, who are sopping wet and reek of dead fish and river mud.