Love Is the Best Medicine Read Free Page A

Bandanna finally got ahold of herself.
    “No need,” she said. “I know the dog you’re talking about. Friendly, fat, likes to work her booty.”
    “The very same.”
    “She’s a regular, always coming by, waiting by the back door, looking for scraps.” She turned to the kid.
    “If Chef ever catches you feeding her he’ll threaten to fire you on the spot even though we’ve all caught him giving her leftovers.”
    Then back to Ben.
    “Restaurants and stray dogs don’t go well together, you know. And if you ask him, Chef will reckon you’re a health inspector and deny ever knowing her.”
    “This explains the love handles,” thought Ben before asking, “So where does she come from?”
    “No idea. But this place is out in the boonies, on a busy highway. Nearest house is half a mile that way.” She thumbed over her shoulder.“So if she’s wandering that far, this often, she don’t gotta be getting fed at home. Why else would she come here?”
    W HEN Ben returned, the car was engulfed in exhaust smoke, idling, the windows fogged into frosty beer mugs. He tapped on the driver’s door, heard the central lock mechanism release, and jumped into the rush of warm air.
    As soon as he sat down he was assaulted by an intense aroma, fetid and pungent and normally restricted to wildlife. Ben noticed the absence of his wife in the passenger seat next to him. As he twisted around, she appeared over his shoulder, seated in the back with her new canine companion, the dog lying not on the tired cloth of the back seat, but instead strewn across a special plaid blanket, a blanket reserved for the loyal Newfoundland who would be there to greet them as soon as they got home.
    Eileen might have imagined her husband was grasping for the right words, words of admonishment over the temporary betrayal of their darling Didi, as this little interloper, this furry hobo usurped a favorite travel rug. In fact he was gagging on the overpowering smell emanating from the backseat.
    Like hot water leaching the full flavor from tea leaves, the warm air circulating in the SUV had ripened the poor creature’s cornucopia of aromas into one foul, potent, and unremitting stench.
    Ben brought his cold hands up to his face, covering his nose.
    “Tell me you smell that,” he said.
    Eileen let her chin fold into her neck, rolled her eyes up.
    “She just needs a bath, that’s all.”
    He fanned a flat palm below his nose. The smell had a depth, a maturity, a bouquet combining the ripe pungency of a wild animal with the acerbic whiff of the foulest dog breath.
    “You mean a Meryl Streep,
Silkwood
, nuclear-decontamination-type bath?”
    Eileen knitted her brows and covered the dog’s ears with her hands as though sparing her the embarrassment.
    “We’re ignoring you. What did they say?”
    “They said she doesn’t live here. But she comes round all the time looking for food. They don’t know where she’s from.”
    Eileen worked her lips into something between a pout and a frown, and the spaniel seemed to sense her concern and a need to reassert a presence, leaving the blanket and crawling into her lap.
    Ben felt the “Now what?” moment hanging between the three of them, as he watched Eileen and the dog. It was getting late and he couldn’t deny there was a small part of him that felt like the stinky, if affectionate, intruder in the car was becoming a bit like that uncle who overstays his welcome at the family Thanksgiving party and just as you think he is going to ask for his coat he troubles you for a double espresso!
    But then he took in his wife and the dilemma written across her face. Once again Eileen had stepped up and taken action without having to decide or debate because the right thing to do would always be the right thing to do.
    “What are you thinking?” said Ben, adding, with a smile, “Or should I say, what do you think
we
should do with the dog?”
    Eileen read the beginnings of acquiescence in his eyes and nodded her