Rufus stops at the clearing in the woods every day hoping Lola will come down again, just like that one miraculous morning when she suddenly appeared among the towering bamboo stalks and he fell in love for the very first time.
“You’re a hopeless romantic,” I often say to him, then he wags his little tail and we continue on our walk and I hope he’s over the disappointment.
Rufus and Lola were made for each other, both tiny and adorable; she a chihuahua mixed with Boston Terrier, he a chihuahua mixed with God-knows-what. With big dogs he had always been either terrified or inadvisably aggressive, with little dogs he was mostly indifferent. Until Lola.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked her that first day while she blinked at me with her big eyes. She’s perfected the art of puppy dog eyes, I thought. After some initial sniffing, she and Rufus got up on their hind legs and half-hugged, half-boxed. When they were done she led us through the clearing and up to a small cottage tucked into the woods.
“Thanks for bringing her back,” said a sturdy gray-haired woman sitting on the front porch, a laptop in front of her and a pitcher of iced tea nearby. “She likes to roam and there’s so many good sights and smells here I feel guilty keeping her tethered.” That’s how I met Maureen. “Financial adviser wouldn’t have been my first guess,” I said, after she told me what she did. “The folksiness puts people at ease,” she said. It was true, I felt more relaxed just being in her presence. She poured me a glass of iced tea and we watched the dogs chase each other in circles.
Maureen was from a large family in West Virginia. She called the little cottage she rented and its surrounding property “the holler.” Hannah and I went to a few of the parties she had there. There was always a bonfire and free-flowing booze and eventually someone would pull out an acoustic guitar and play something by Joni Mitchell or CSNY. She had a ton of friends from all over and they were all interesting and accomplished. “Now you’re part of Maureen’s circle,” somebody said to us once. I’m not really the circle-joining type, but this one didn’t seem so terrible. Everyone loved Maureen and Lola, but nobody loved Lola more than Rufus.
Maureen was incredibly busy so we’d rarely see her and Lola, but every now and then they’d drive by in Maureen’s old convertible Mercedes. Maureen would sometimes pull the car over. Lola would blink her big eyes at us and I’d pick Rufus up so they could play a little. “Hannah and I need to have you over for a drink,” I’d always say to Maureen. “That would be wonderful,” she’d say. She looked tired and her skin was getting as gray as her hair. “Work’s insane,” she’d say by way of an explanation and then flash me a big grin to let me know that everything was alright, not just with her, but with the world. Then she and Lola would drive off. “Just like Thelma and Louise,” I’d say to Rufus.
They had the celebration of her life at the holler. Hannah and I brought Rufus, thinking it would be nice for him to say goodbye to Lola before she moved to West Virginia with one of Maureen’s sisters. People told funny, heartbreaking stories about Maureen: what a great friend she was, how much she did for everyone she knew, what a privilege it was to be part of her circle. No one talked about her legal troubles, how she’d been about to be convicted of fraud for bilking a bunch of seniors out of their retirement savings. No one mentioned the rope. It would have been weird if they had.
Rufus went as far away from the crowd as his leash would allow. He turned his back on everyone there and lay down. Hannah and I went to pay our condolences to Maureen’s family. Before we left I brought Rufus over to see Lola. She growled when he got too close and he made a little crying sound. I got a few sideways glances from Maureen’s friends and I realized the circle was closed and I was on the outside. The three of us headed home.
I was telling the story about Maureen to my friend Henry. It was a good story and I’d been telling it quite a bit lately, usually prefaced with, “you never really know what someone’s like” or some similarly trite statement. Henry knows a lot more about finance than I do and suggested that Maureen probably never meant to steal money from those people. She likely just borrowed some funds from here to prop up some other funds over there, he said, and it all got out of hand. I didn’t know Maureen that well or that long but I’d like to think Henry was correct: that she always meant to make things right, until it was just too late.
The other day was the first day Rufus didn’t stop at the clearing. He marched right past it and that was that. It made me feel a little sad that he’d forgotten about Lola and that I didn’t think about Maureen much anymore. “I promise I’ll never forget about you,” I said to Rufus. He wagged his little tail and we continued on our walk.
Simon Nadel‘s short fiction has been published in Every Day Fiction, Literally Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Close to the Bone, and Spillwords. His debut novel is now available. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C.
Patreon keeps us going. You can be part of that.
