“There’s my girl. You’re beautiful, you are. Gimme a squeeze. Ugh. Mwah. God, I’ve missed you.”
“Christ, Paul, you make it too easy.”
She says it down to where he’s kneeling, face in Grizz’s ruff. Her eyes have rolled to a stop.
“Sorry, who’s too easy?”
“Oh, blah.” She taps ash.
“I have missed her though. How’s she been?”
“No, Paul. No. We’re not talking. Assume she’s been fine. I’ve kept the routine up. I’d tell you if something was off.”
Grizz leans into Paul’s chest once, then twists free and drags toward the grass. They let her go.
“Smoking again?”
“Clearly.”
“Not worried about your teeth?”
She blows though a grimace. “White as a bride, see?”
“You look like a shark. You could have them filed into points next time they whiten them.”
“What, so I match the stories you tell about me.” She looks him up and down. “Christ. When did you get so fucking frightened all the time?” Then: “Have you been going in to work? Give them a new next of kin. I’m not your mother, Paul.”
They walk. Grizz quartering ahead, nose down, tail level, busy with messages from a hundred absent dogs.
“I’ve been talking to someone, actually.”
“Oh God. Is it what’s-her-name? Pencil skirt? Does she agree how bad you’ve had it? What a bitch I am?”
“Jen, she’s called. It’s not Jen. I’ve actually… you’ll hate it but I’ve been chatting things through with AI and it’s actually really-”
“No. You haven’t been chatting.” She stops walking. Grizz goes on three paces before noticing, turns back. “You don’t talk to anyone unless it’s work or your mum calls. You mean you’ve been typing. Typing to.”
A jogger goes past with music leaking from his earbuds. Grizz bounds after him a few paces, takes the pat on the head, stops and turns back.
“You lost everything,” she says at last. “You lost me. And what you’ve learned… is that you needed more screentime? Christ.”
Out on the water a family of four in a hired kayak drifts sideways.
Paul watches them. He gives a half-laugh. “Remember when we-”
“Ah-ah. No.” She starts walking again. “You had me dragged to the ED on Boxing Day morning thinking you’d croaked, then judged as the cheating whore by the doe-eyed nurse you had babysitting you, so no, I don’t think I’ll remember when we right now, thanks.”
Grizz loops back from the jogger, tongue out, pleased with herself and panting. She goes to Paul, who looks stung and for a moment seems not to remember what to do with her.
“Fuck, look what you’ve done,” Carla says to her, and then to Paul: “Buy me a gelato, you sad loser.”
They take the bench facing the water, shade enough for Grizz underneath it if she folds herself right. Paul sits with his knees apart, the gelato already softening in his hand. Across the path an old man has his face tipped up to the sun, eyes closed. A teenager buys his girl an ice cream and smiles over his sunglasses. Deeper in the shade, a man sits with a toddler asleep between his legs, one hand spread over the child’s shoe. Paul’s gaze moves between the three, head still.
“And how’s the boy wonder?” he says.
“Don’t do that. He’s barely seven years younger.”
“Aha. Do you drop him off at hockey practice?”
She looks out at the water. “Give up on the age thing. Or get yourself a pretty young thing, or a nice naughty auntie. Something, fuck.” Taps ash.
“Touched a nerve?” He does the smirky eyebrow.
“Happiest I’ve been in years, actually. Genuinely.”
“I’m glad.”
He licks at the side of the cone, misses. Vanilla runs cold over the web of his thumb.
“Does he mind, the youngster?”
“Mind what? Mind paying attention? Being present in his own life? Mind showing the receipts he’s actually living?” Deep breath. Sigh. “No,” she says. “No, he doesn’t mind that.”
“I was going to say does he mind that you’re barren?” Tiny smile. “Or will he? I mean he is so much younger. When you’re fifty and he’s- what? Thirty-eight?”
The stillness in her is so complete it takes a second to read as fury.
“Oh, we could do that if we wanted. Even now.”
“Cures withered ovaries as well as middle-aged boredom, does he? Waddaguy!”
“If you’d ever come to an appointment with me, you’d know there’s not as much wrong with my ovaries as we thought. The whole suite, actually. Just a compatibility thing.” She turns to him then. “I mean anyway- a baby? Your baby? It always felt like bringing a hostage into the room.”
Something in the silence after offends Grizz and she huff-whines, head lifted. She looks up at Paul, then Carla. Two women pass with a pram, laughing at something on a phone. Grizz turns. Carla puts a hand down onto her shoulder without looking, and the dog stays where she is.
Paul’s gelato has melted over his fingers.
“No,” he says, low and slow. “Not even you’re that fucked up.”
“Aren’t I?” she says. “Will you be checking my socials? Scrolling late at night looking for an ultrasound pic, just in case?” She cackles, waves the cigarette.
“You awful fucking bitch.”
“There’s my boy.”
Grizz huffs through her nose. They all get up and walk on.
Grizz catches scent at the base of a fig tree. They stand and wait while she works the ground with her nose and one paw.
A couple passes holding hands, carrying matching coffees. The woman says something and the man throws his head back laughing.
Grizz, done, trots on towards the banks of the pond. They follow.
A small boy cuts between them without introduction and so abruptly that they almost trip over him. He opens a grubby hand to Paul. Cicada shells. Two small, one large, all perfect.
“Aww, mate! He’s a beauty, this one,” Paul says, turning the big one carefully between finger and thumb. “You gonna keep him?”
The boy nods, solemn.
His parents catch up.
“Sorry!” says the mother. “Ben love, are you going to ask?”
Ben looks from Paul to Carla to Grizz and back again.
“Go on!” says the father. “You not going to ask kiddo? He’s obsessed with doggos just now. Yours is safe?”
Carla smiles at once, no points- just white. “She’d love to meet you. Grizzle! Grizz! Here! Now!”
Grizz comes off the bank at speed, all shoulders and wet chest and absolute commitment. For half a second the boy’s face is delight and alarm, mixed. Then Grizz brakes, sits, drops a slimy stick, and grins.
Ben buries both hands in her mane.
Grizz leans back into him, shameless.
Paul holds out a treat. “Here. Her name’s Grizzle, or Grizz. Let her see you’ve got it, and say, ‘Grizz, turn.’”
The boy draws himself up. “Grizz, TURN!”
When she spins, he lets out one clean peal of laughter.
“How about this,” Paul says, smile wide. “Grizz. Middle!”
The dog barrels through the small boy’s legs and nearly takes him with her. The grownups laugh quadruply.
“She’s beautiful,” says the mother. “Is she always this good with kids?”
Paul opens his mouth.
“Thanks! We think she’s a beaut, but I guess we’re biased.” Carla says, looking at Paul. “She’s the best thing we ever did together.”
The family moves on. Ben turns every three steps to wave. Paul throws the stick hard and Grizz tears off after it.
“Sweet kid,” he says.
“Yeah. Nice family.”
“He was handsome.” He says it sideways, waits.
That gets her. A laugh out of nowhere. “And at ease. Ten times the father you’d have been.”
“You’d have driven the kid into juvie by ten.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, and you.”
That gets him too. For a second they are both laughing and she’s shaking. The laughter fades, the shakes continue and there’s a gasp.
Paul’s hand turns palm-up on the bench between them. She looks at it and with two fingers only, like checking whether a plate is still hot, touches the heel of his hand once before she takes hers away.
Grizz comes back, drops the stick, stands between them, panting.
Carla wipes her eyes. “I’m not seeing him anymore.”
Paul goes still. Grizz goes still. Grizz’s ears go back, as do Paul’s.
“Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing. Watched him go.”
He nods once. Looks at the sky. The February sun is everywhere at once.
When he bends for the stick, her shoe gets there before his hand and skids it away over the grass.
“Maybe I won’t give her back.” He looks at her.
Now she looks at him. “She’d be chewing through the door by the end of the week.” She turns. “Wednesday, loser.”
She flicks a butt over her shoulder. It catches his shirt and drops between his shoes.
“And try not to be so fucking small. You’re embarrassing your dog.”
She starts away, then without looking back: “Bye, Grizz. Good girl.”
Grizz and Paul watch her go and there’s a low groan from one of them as Carla disappears behind the Pittosporum.
Then she noses the stick against Paul’s shin.
