Carver’s Dog

Trace hit the hotel bar early that night. He was there at six o’clock sharp when Jose opened the double doors to the windowless den with a frayed pool table, a jukebox stocked with rock classics, and uncomfortable chocolate brown vinyl booths on either side of the room.

Trace poured his weary frame into a stool at the bar and ordered a tall bourbon and water. His mood was as shaky and delicate as a fault line. Earlier in the day, his editor had bumped his two front page features to the next issue, which meant he had to make a quick duck into the porno ghetto in order to pay the rent on his room that month.

“Would you like to write an all-girl strap-on movie?” his friend Norman, the porn director, asked when Trace called pleading for work. “Not a lot of story but enough to make a cable sale.”

“Give me a few hours to think about it,” Trace had said.

Thirty minutes later he called Norman back.

“We’ll do a spoof of Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ called ‘Strap-On Club’,” Trace offered.

“You mean the movie ‘Fight Club’?” Norman replied.

“The movie, the book, whatever, the idea remains the same. A secret club to help vent frustration but in this case it’s chicks instead of guys and instead of fighting they screw each other with strap-ons.”

Trace’s left ear, always prone to infection, throbbed at the violent burst of laughter coming through the phone receiver.

“That’s a terrific idea!” Norman enthused. “Go write it up and I’ll have a check for you on Monday.”

Three hours later, with the script complete and delivered, Trace sat in the hotel bar nursing his third bourbon and water, trying to chase the “Strap-On Club” dialogue out of his head.

TAYLOR BOURON: I want you to fuck me as hard as you can.

SUSAN: What? In your ass?

TAYLOR BOURBON: Surprise me.

SUSAN: This is so fucking stupid.

By the time he asked Jose for a sixth bourbon and water, “Strap-On Club” had receded to the back of his mind.

And then the dog appeared. As usual, Trace smelled the dog before he saw it. The animal was so old and decrepit that Trace couldn’t determine the mongrel’s age but clearly it was a very aged hound. It’s brown and black coat had huge patches of fur missing and the exposed skin was red and scaly. The dog’s black eyes were wet and glassy. Its left leg was game and its back was contorted in a painful arthritic hump. A tongue hung loose from the animal’s moist, saliva-strewn mouth as if it were trying to escape the two rows of rotting teeth. And the smell of the animal was simply ungodly.

The dog’s owner, by contrast, was a clean-cut, barrel-chested man in his late fifties. With the dog’s leash firmly wrapped around his left hand, the dog owner occupied a stool next to Trace and ordered a beer. The two men exchanged a curt nod.

“What’s the deal with your dog?” Trace blurted.

“How’s that?”

“I can tell when you and your dog have been in the elevator because the smell lingers for an hour.”

The man drank his longneck Budweiser straight from the bottle.

“The dog’s old and sick,” the man said blankly.

“How old is he?”

The man hiked his shoulders. “Don’t know. He was a pup when I got him in ’88 but he might have already been a year old then.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bath.”

Trace laughed. “Isn’t that ironic?”

“How’s that?”

“You never bathe the damn thing.”

“Can’t. He’s in too much pain. Can’t touch the poor thing really.”

“Cancer?”

“Don’t know, can’t really afford to take him to the vet.”

Trace then felt bad for both the dog and it’s owner. The man spoke again after another pull off the beer bottle.

“Not exactly ironic in the literal sense of the word.”

Trace hated having his talent with words challenged.

“Well, sure it is,” he said. “When you got the dog I’m sure you didn’t think that the day would come that he’d be so sick and decayed that you couldn’t bathe him. Hence, the name Bath is very ironic, I would say.”

The man ordered another beer and contemplated Trace’s words for a moment.

“I named him Bath after a Raymond Carver short story called ‘Bath’. I got Bath in Port Angeles, Washington, in 1988 right after Carver died. That’s where he lived, you know, Port Angeles.”

“Uh-huh.” Trace signaled Jose for a refill.

“I was doing yard hauling for a guy who lived down the street from Carver. He got three dogs from Carver’s dog’s litter and he said I could have one if I cut my rate just a little bit as he was on a limited income.”

“Wow.” Trace regarded the pile of leashed mange on the floor with new respect. “Raymond Carver’s dog, huh?”

“Yup.”

“But why Bath?”

“It’s my favorite Carver story. You know his stuff?”

“Absolutely.”

“Bath is the story about the mother who orders a birthday cake for her little boy but on the way to school on the morning of his birthday party the boy is hit by a car and –”

“Yeah, yeah,” Trace interjected. “I remember that one. Altman used it in ‘Short Cuts’.”

Two Union Pacific railroad workers swaggered into the bar. One of them fed a dollar into the jukebox and punched up “L.A. Woman.” Trace knew the two men. They would shoot pool and play Doors songs all night long.

“Well, goodnight.” he said to the dog owner as he slipped off the bar stool.

Back in his room, Trace searched his book shelves for the Carver volume. There were books everywhere in his room. In the entranceway there was a bricks-and-board shelf laden with books. One of those Office Depot particle board bookshelves stood next to his bed. More books were piled behind the ratty sofa and even more rested in boxes in the closet.

After an hour of searching he finally located the dog-eared paperback of Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” He stretched his legs out on the bed – they were throbbing from the psoriatic arthritis – and lay down on his back with the Carver book in hand.

Instead of reading, though, Trace fell asleep and he dreamed about naked women with large strap-on dildos being chased by an insane and rabid dog.