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* * *

On a Sunday our neighbor came over to inform us that his dog had unexpectedly died. He was patting his pockets nervously on our front step. I imagined his wife had sent him.

“OK,” I said.

“I just thought you should know,” he said.

“Thanks for stopping by,” I said as I closed the door.

I lost my temper and approached it with a list of questions. “Are you sacrificing animals?” I asked. “Where did our silverware go?” “Why do you always have dried blood in your hair?”

She came up to us. “What are you doing?”

“I’m talking to it.”

“How was your weekend?” she asked it.

“Stop,” I said.

It snuck away, muck-gummed and sweaty, raking against our carpet. The speed was different. It seemed wound up.

* * *

Breakfast was bad. Lunch was bad. Dinner, too, was bad. “I don’t like dogs anyways,” I said.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said.

“There’s no proof,” I said and pretended to relax on our sofa. “Thousands of dogs die every day.” I gave her a reassuring look.

Evening settled through our window. “I’m sick of eating potato chips,” she said.

We went to bed with our clothes still on. I couldn’t fall asleep. Stars came out, spun. “Are you asleep?” I asked her.

“What do you think?”

* * *

The next day I found a marrow-sucked bone poking out of the turned up dirt. I rubbed the bone  clean with my thumb and looked around. The view of our yard was blocked off by a row of thistle bushes. I dug my own hole and tucked the bone back in the ground.

Our doorbell rang. I opened the door. The moon was extremely bright. I could see every house on the street.

A new neighbor was singing the same song. “Our mastiff—we need to talk,” he said and stepped in. He was angry. I lit a cigarette.

“That’s my wife,” I said.

“Hi,” my wife said.

“My daughters are—the mastiff was—I’ve been talking to the other neighbors and—”

He was staring at the bareness of our home. Styrofoam and trash were scattered about like things dropped off a cliff. There was blank space where a TV used to be. He kept looking around and finally saw it, under a coffee table, pulling air into its mouth, holding the air in its stomach, glaring.

My wife and I made eye contact. She picked it up and brought it over.

“He is really cute,” the neighbor said, visibly alarmed.

“He?” I asked.

“It’s dented here and here,” she said, pointing at the head, twice.

“It thinks it’s a shovel,” I said.

“What do you suppose it is?” she asked the neighbor.

“I—”

“Its face always reminded me of a zipper,” I said. “But tell us about your dog.”

“Um—”

In my wife’s arms, it behaved like a live mouse in water. Its muscles clutched at nothing. She kissed it fully with her mouth. “I can’t let you get away,” she said. It began to hiss. Our neighbor looked ready to hide himself behind a locked door.

“What were you saying?” I asked him.

“Oh. I wasn’t saying anything,” he said.

“You’ve got a nice-looking yard,” she told him.

“I agree,” I said. “A well-groomed ground, you have.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like to hold it?” she asked him.

“That’s—it’s getting late,” he said.

We stood around for a minute or two. It was taking so much air in that everything else seemed quiet. Its tongue slid around. I dropped my cigarette on the carpet and put it out with my foot. We were done here. Our neighbor’s legs didn’t seem to work.

“When it runs out of dogs it might bury us,” I said.

He took the cue and I opened the door.

My wife said, “We were good at that.”

“This,” I said.

“We are good at this.”

She let it out of her arms and it thumped.

John Maradik grew up in Wisconsin. He is currently in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst.

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