I like temptations like strawberry tea
Sugar and wine and origami
Draw the line baby just try and stop me
Draw me a glass and I'll spill the tea
I like temptations like upscale hotels
Bellhops and bathrobes and whistles and bells
Nonrobotic wake up calls and no alarms
Bill to the room but it's not on my card
I needed to earn my room and board- and so far, it felt like I was in debt. I don’t like feeling like I owe anyone anything, so when R asked me if I would watch her dog for two weeks while she went to Greece, I immediately agreed. At last, we’ll be even. The scales might even be tipped in my favour by the time this gig is over.
For the longest time in life, I thought I was a dog person. But then little by little, I realized I just liked the idea of being a dog person. If you’re picky about what is and isn’t an acceptable breed of dog (with the sole exception of chihuahuas– but everybody already knows that), then you might just not be a dog person either. If you feel the need to wash your hands after you’ve pet a dog, then you might not be a dog person. If you stare at your blanket/couch/bed after a dog’s had contact with it and wonder if they’re now flea infested, yep- probably not a dog person. And the final and most vital test of all: If internally, and no matter how much you suppress it, you don’t actually enjoy being licked by a dog on the feet/hands/(gasp)FACE, then I’m sorry, but you’re just not a dog person. Conditional dog love just isn’t dog love.
R left on her trip to Greece with the 87-year-old boyfriend. Mind you, R is 80, so this isn’t as scandalous as it seems. These folks are so active and fit, it’s putting my 30-year-old body to total and utter shame. It’s just myself and Gypsy now. Gypsy the dog, that is. Gypsy the German, coil haired teckel. She’s scruffy and desperately needs a bath, but R, despite her typically anal cleanliness standards, is anti dog-baths. “Long hair keeps dogs cool in the summer.” And warm in the winter? Mmkay. I obviously don’t understand how this works.
The days without R creep forward slower than I’d have imagined. Gypsy, or “la Mistinguett” as R. likes to call her (after a risqué Parisian entertainer from the late 19th century) needs to be walked/escorted to do her business 4-5 times a day. There’s the 9 o’clock session, the 12 o’clock session, then the ones at 3pm, 6pm, and a final one at 9pm. This is full-time work. I slip on her bright red collar and her front leg hair sticks out of the collar’s sides- she resembles a hairy-shouldered Mediterranean man. I picture him full bellied and all.
I enter the world of dog socialising. A world I had been shielded from until then. It is automatically assumed that I am Gypsy’s owner. The horror. She looks like an old-lady dog. She behaves like an old-lady dog. Gypsy is stubborn and will tug me this way and that. She will make damn well sure I know when she’s had enough and she’s not moving another inch forward. G prefers human companionship to that of other dogs- figures herself superior, it seems. Then the usual small dog antics- howling in disguised fear as larger dogs mosey on by, those sorts of things. People of all ages walk up to me at the park to greet Gypsy. They ask me how old she is, what breed of dog she is, and I’m expected to follow suit and pose similar questions about their dogs. The small talk is unbearable. “Comment ça va, petit chien?” they ask, and I’m left there thinking, ‘wait. The dog doesn’t speak- and I’m the only other person here who does.’ Oh my god. WHY. “She’s doing well today. Excited to go on a walk,” I say, in the chirpiest voice I can muster. I mean, what other choice do I have?
Soon enough, I discover from the neighbours that if I leave her on her own for longer than an hour, she starts howling at any passerby. Mind you, we live on the 6th floor, and quite a bit passes by. Sorry, neighbours- I swear she’s not my dog... I’m just watching her. I certainly didn’t raise her to be this needy. It's painful when I have to go into town and I’m obligated to take Gypsy with me. My God, how can anyone live a normal life when they’re being held hostage at home by a 5kg dog? I hop on public transport otherwise Gypsy pulls at every scent all the way down to town, and it becomes a game of tug of war. But by far the worst part about public transport are the cute boys. I know they’re judging me. My eyes are screaming ‘she’s not mine! I swear! This isn’t an accurate reflection of who I am!’ Do they understand? Probably not. I’d be judging me too.
My mornings, afternoons, and nights have become all about Gypsy. My social life has become all about Gyspy- “can I bring a dog with?” I ask my friends. “Can I bring a dog with?” I ask my church’s music group. “Can I bring a dog with?” I ask restaurant owners. I fall asleep and Gypsy’s trying to hop into bed with me. No way, chica- It’s no mystery to me, your owner’s philosophy on dog hygiene. I get woken up in the middle of the night because Gypsy’s hopped onto a corner of my bed, as if I wouldn’t notice. I push her off with my foot and she drops to the ground. The definition of a rude awakening, my awakening, that is. I wake up in the morning and Gypsy wants to be let out. My god- It never ends.
This break from R was supposed to be refreshing. Instead, I find myself YEARNING for her return. Why would anyone WILLINGLY get themselves a pet and put themselves through all this? Isn’t life challenging enough as it is??
Sometimes I wonder, Is R spying on me through Gypsy’s eyes, all the way from Greece? Sort of like those teddy cams, but inside a dog’s head instead? Does she know how much I’ve come to hate her dog? I’m becoming increasingly paranoid.
Starting about day 3, when I realise Gypsy can’t be left at home alone, my mind begins to think of possible solutions. Afterall, I’m a very solution-oriented person. Immediately I think of ways to put her to sleep while I’m out, to buy me more time. I google “how to tranquilize a dog”. Alright, maybe I should amend that slightly: “How to tranquilize a small dog”. A list comes up. I don’t have any of these drugs in my drug cabinet. She’s certainly not worth a visit to the pharmacy, nor any of my precious money. Mmkay... how about “natural dog tranquilizers”? Apparently, Melatonin will do the trick. But I would need to give her a dosage that’s proportional to her size. She’s fairly small, and even though I have Melatonin on my bedside table, a friend had given it to me, and I have no idea what kind of concentration we’re dealing with here. I could chop it into smaller bits and just test it out?
But what if I get it wrong? What if I put her to sleep… permanently, that is? My mind jumps to possible explanations I could give: “She must have eaten something poisonous”, “an unidentifiable object at the park”, etc. The fact remains though, even if I’m declared innocent, R would forever associate me with, and probably secretly blame me for Gypsy dying on my watch. Life at home would become miserable. There’d be no more distractions from R and my’s awkward silences. No more buffer to turn to. R’s coldness would take over the flat in full force. Perhaps better that I don’t take the risk.
The longest two weeks finally come to a close. I wake up to a new day, and to plans to go out; REALLY go out this time. No more hindrances, no more shame, setting my own walking pace. Cute boys: I am BACK! Sweet, sweet freedom. I see I have a missed call from a foreign number, and a voicemail on my phone. It’s R: “The flight’s been cancelled, and we’ll be back tomorrow instead of today.”
I can’t handle another day. I pull up Google on my laptop. Right click, New Incognito Tab.
“She was always pulling tricks like that man,” Kory said as he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes.
“More like trying to teach us a lesson,” corrected Janice.
“Yeah, this one time,” Dan piped up, “She caught me reading Hillary’s diary.”
“Are you serious?” Janice said incredulously and there was a general murmur of dissent among the cousins, but Hillary laughed.
“It was just sitting there out in the open! And you know how you used to write with red gel-pens, Hil? The ink was all sparkly, enticing me to read the juicy secrets.” His sister snorted at the idea of anything she once wrote being alluring.
“What did Nana do?” Kory wanted to know.
“She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Do you want to know your sister’s thoughts? Okay.’ and I thought I was lucky because she didn’t tell on me or yell at me.
“But then that night when Hillary came home from practice I started hearing her thoughts. Like, not out-loud but in my brain.”
Now Hillary wasn’t laughing.
“Are you kidding me? You never told me this!”
“Yeah, it was embarrassing! And it got worse. Like, at first I could hear them only when you were around, but I started to hear them all of the time, and trust me–dealing with your own internal monologue at that age is not great, but having to put up with a 13-year-old girl’s is even worse. This went on for weeks before I finally put together that it was Nana’s doing and begged her to make it stop. Never read anyone’s private property again.”
Everyone nodded knowingly, ushered into contemplative silence by memory of their Nana, but the quiet moment was interrupted by Patrick, eager as always to share his story and even more so having already been cut off three times.
“You guys remember how I used to love white chocolate?”
“You hate white chocolate,” said Janice.
“Yeah, well I do now,” said Patrick. “It was just after Easter and remember how my mom and dad used to buy everyone chocolate rabbits? That year they had found me a HUGE white-chocolate one. I was so excited to eat it, but they told me I was only allowed to have little chunks at a time. But of course I snuck and ate most of it when they weren’t looking one day. It wasn’t one of those hollow ones either–it was totally solid. They had put it in that cupboard where they kept the peanut butter and graham crackers,” He hardly took a breath as he spoke, not about to give anyone the chance to usurp his monologue now that he had the floor.
“Mom and dad didn’t even notice I had been sneaking, but Nana must have. And to be honest, I already had a stomach ache enough to learn my lesson from eating so much sugar in that one go. She probably didn’t even have to do anything to punish me, but she totally did anyway.”
“She made everything taste like white chocolate!” Kory interjected. “Mom was ready to take you to the doctor and everything, you kept saying you were sick and couldn’t go to school and you wouldn’t even eat chicken nuggets without looking nauseated.”
“I’m telling the story! But, yeah, it was pretty bad with everything I put into my mouth turning into that sticky, sweet, treacly…” he trailed off and shuddered. “It only lasted like three days, I think she knew I would’ve starved if that kept up.”
“I used to sneak out of bed to play final fantasy. I told you guys about this, right?” Missy leaned in and put her elbows on her knees as some heads shook and some nodded.
“Well for those of you who aren’t familiar, I used to play video games really late and I was obsessed with this one RPG and always put up a huge fight when it was time to go to bed. My mom and dad started making bedtime earlier and earlier every time I gave them attitude to try to get me to go quietly. So I started actually setting an alarm for midnight after I knew everyone would be asleep and getting up so I could keep playing.
“Then one night I had been playing for like an hour and a half and finally turned it off to go to bed but when I turned around Nana was sitting right there on the couch behind me. I think she had been there the whole time. It was so spooky, she didn’t even say anything and I didn’t say anything. I just went straight to my room.
“I laid off setting my alarm for a while until a few days later when I figured it was safe–I checked for Nana first and she wasn’t there, so I went right back to playing. I thought I got away with everything.
“But then the night after that I was trying to get a good night’s sleep because I had a spelling bee early the next morning and I wanted to wake up fresh and ready to beat Georgia Fisher–that girl was so aggravating, she needed someone to put her in her place. But then every time I was finally about to drift off, I would hear the Final Fantasy victory music blast SUPER loud and it jolted me back awake. It happened every single time I was about to sleep. I swear I only got like five minutes in, it was dreadful. I slept all the car ride to the spelling bee and totally lost, of course.
“But it didn’t stop there. Every single night after that for months and months–or at least it felt that long–the victory music would blast right at midnight and it usually took me significant time to go back to sleep each night even though I wasn’t sneaking out of bed anymore. I learned to value my sleep a lot earlier than most of my friends because of that.”
“Man,” said Kory shaking his head, “We got stuck with Nana. Other people’s fairy godmothers made their wishes come true.”
Hillary thought for a moment and said, “Isn’t that what she did too?”
Set your alarm with enough time to hit snooze,
Take some breaks from your work to scroll through vacationer posts,
Stop by the sign that says “on sale” for the things you don’t need,
Curse profusely with the windows closed at the guy who cut you off,
Polish off the low fat oreos while watching just one more episode,
Obsessively check the profile of the one who never called you back.
But don’t give into real temptation,
You’re better than the people that do.
Skin of the thumb runs a sprint
And blisters down the ridges
A flash and a sniff of smoke
Brighten the eye and rouse the nose.
Bite of the filter gives, lightly,
A gentle chew, like a fluff of the pillow,
Before a deep exhale of sleep
Or, this, the deeper inhale of Effect.
Delicate, orange flame dances on the end
And the breath of life draws, stingingly,
To ignite Effect and blow off steam;
Steam from this overheated engine.
Replacing the radiator costs too much
So one simply opens the hood,
Inhales… and blows off steam.
•
Separately, similarly, the silky temptress—
Chestnut brown, fragrant, spiced—
Tinkles into shining crystal
A sparkling bath of stillness.
Ridged glass rests in the palm
Vapors, venting upward to arouse
Viper’s bite on the tip of the tongue
Venom? Or Elixir? Either one.
Through the week at breakneck pace
Leaves desire for reprieve
Senses flare and memory tempts
Haunts, entices, makes a move.
In the end, pulling plastic off the fresh pack
Squeaking, noisy cork from tapered neck,
Brings forth Elixir and Effect;
Resistance waits, alone on deck.
Three days deep in the wilderness, the soul-searching wasn’t going well. She stared at the scattered contents of her bear bag. Plastic ziplocs had been ripped open by tiny teeth, leaving scraps of noodles and tuna melting into the dirt. She salvaged a few granola bars, but the decimation was shockingly thorough. The tree had looked sturdy enough in the twilight.
The coffee lay untouched. Soon she was squatting in the tangled meadow grass by her camp stove, waiting for the water to boil. Morning fog trickled down from the peaks into the mountain basin. The crimson tent beside her stood out against earthy greens and greys. The solitude was picture perfect. The last thing she wanted was to cut the trip short, when revelation and self-discovery could be lurking around each new bend in the trail. She imagined driving the five hours back to civilization, back to a nothing job in a nothing city without any inkling of what to do differently. Why did the branch have to break?
Static crackled nearby. At first she thought the stove was sputtering, but a voice followed thinly as through a radio: “It wasn’t me.”
She jumped to her feet and looked around. “Hello?”
“Maybe it was God,” the voice continued. “I mean, how could you tell?”
She searched the surrounding meadow and found a small walkie talkie set upright on a rock. She picked up the receiver and squeezed the talk button. “Who’s this?”
“Morning star, baby. Adversary.” His voice was casual, nondescript. She stared up into the low bank of clouds. The air felt wet and cool.
“What do you want from me?”
“Your water’s boiling,” the devil said. She looked down, and cautiously knelt to pour it over the grounds. The radio was silent for a moment while she brewed the cup.
“What do you want from me?” she repeated. She sat on a log, holding the mug in one hand and the radio in the other.
“I want you to stay one more day,” he said.
“You can tempt me on the hike back to my car.”
“It wouldn’t be the same. I want to know the real you, so you’ve gotta be hungry.” She considered this. It probably wasn’t wise to deal with the devil, of course, but a metaphysical struggle would be better than leaving empty-handed.
“What’s in it for me?”
“You get to know you, too. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“What if I starve?”
The devil laughed. The laugh ascended into the interrogative, like a man pretending to understand a joke. “You will not surely die.”
She raised the radio to reply but he laughed again. “Okay, so we both know that’s not true. But you won’t die out here. You’ve got water.”
“How faustian is your agenda?”
“Details to come. And you know what they say about details.” The devil bade her farewell, and said he would catch up with her on the north trail.
She packed up the tent, still wet with dew. But the loss of food made her backpack light. Once everything had disappeared into her bag, she was alone in the clearing, backpack on and radio in hand. She found the north trail quickly and began to hike. A faint breeze murmured through the scrappy pines, and she had time to reflect as she navigated the rocks and roots.
Thirty minutes in, the fog had slipped from the mountains entirely, revealing distant banks of snow. The radio crackled. “I’m back,” said the devil. “You’ll be on this trail for a while yet, so let’s get to know each other.”
“Okay,” she said. “So what’s your favorite way to lead people astray? Do you influence a lot of pop culture?”
“Of course. Have you seen Herbie Fully Loaded?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of unrealistic beauty standards in media.”
The devil groaned. “So pragmatic.”
She mounted a hill and paused to catch her breath. The morning sun grew hot and the trees were too small to shade her. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“A parable for you,” said the devil. “A young man, a very beautiful man, goes on a walk in the woods. Hey, kind of like you’re doing. Except he wouldn’t be caught dead in those wind pants you’ve got on. I mean tell me honestly: did you give up fashion for lent?”
“The parable,” she interrupted.
“Oh yes. The young and beautiful man realizes someone’s following him through the woods. Calling after him. No, pining after him. But he can’t be bothered. Says, ‘no thanks,’ and keeps walking. It’s kind of a hot day. I mean, he doesn’t break a sweat like you, but he gets thirsty. He’s in luck. A deep, cool glen in the forest, with a glassy pool of water. The tiniest ripples from a spring, but otherwise a perfect mirror. He stoops down for a drink, but stops short: such a beautiful face in the water.”
“Your parable is Narcissus?”
“I take it you know the rest,” he said. She started walking again.
“I’m not here to navel-gaze, you know,” she said. “I’m just trying to get a few things figured out.” The devil laughed.
“But I swear, and this is God’s truth–beauty demands a witness.” She squinted at the path ahead, uncertain. “Tell me,” he said suddenly. “Do you believe in God?”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“I know you do,” he said excitedly, “You’re playing coy.”
“Maybe like in a Pascal’s wager kind of way,” she said angrily, suddenly hating his familiar tone.
“Now I know that’s not true!” He started to say more, but kept breaking off into laughter. Finally, catching his breath: “Only man could twist his uncertainty into certainty, just so.” Then the radio went quiet for a moment, as if he were thinking. “I shouldn’t have laughed, I shouldn’t have. But Christ dying for Pascal’s wager has to make a devil smile.”
The devil led her up a narrow mountain pass. It took a long time, and she had to stop often for water. The view from the top was stunning. Before her, steep switch-backs wound down through boulders down into a forest. On the far side of the wood was an emerald green lake. It sparkled keenly under the cloudless sky.
The radio crackled. “You’re more than halfway,” encouraged the devil. Coffee had suppressed her hunger through most of the morning, but after the ascent she suddenly felt ravenous. She chewed on a granola bar, one of four. For the first time it hit her how serious it was to not spend every moment getting back to the car.
“Maybe you could turn some stones into bread?” the devil suggested. Again, the interrogative laugh.
“You act like you know all about me,” she said, staring at the lake. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Should I work hard to pursue a real career, to develop my talents for all they’re worth? Or should I find a humbler path that helps people more directly?” She continued, lost in thought. “Should I settle down and raise a family? Or should I do all of it at once?”
“I’m quite sure that in any case, you’ll manage to feel both discontented and superior.” She was surprised.
“So knowledge is a part of this bargain after all?”
“You’d expect knowledge to be more healing. But I'm betting the revelation itself will be enough to satiate.”
The devil led her down the switchbacks and into the forest. Her stomach began to hurt on the descent–a hollowness at first, but it quickly grew sharp. She resisted eating another bar in hope of saving them for the long journey back. The backpack became its own burden, digging at her shoulders no matter how many times she stopped to adjust it. “It’s so easy to feel good when you feel good,” the devil said.
Hemlock branches loomed over the trail, casting a heavy shade that grew so thick she lost track of the time of day. There was a slight crunch of needles underfoot. The smell of pine was faintly sweet, but was soon interrupted by something rancid. Ahead on the path, flies buzzed around a small dead rabbit. She stepped around it and looked at the radio in her hand.
“What, you into omens or something?” said the devil.
“No,” she said irritably, continuing down the path.
After what seemed like hours in the forest, she came into a small clearing. “Pitch your tent here,” said the devil.
“And then what?” She dropped her pack and sat on it, resting her head in her hands. Her stomach launched into another spasm.
“Rest up,” he said. “The lake isn’t much further.”
“Where’s God? Can you put him on?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere, muttering about headship or something. I’ll let him know you want to chat.” She forced herself to get up and unpack the tent. The aluminum poles clicked and clacked as she unfolded them and began to build. “Is midnight the witching hour, or is it three?” the devil continued. “Meet me at one of those tonight. By the lake. See you then.”
She finished setting up the tent and unrolled her sleeping bag inside, and sat down in the doorway. The meadow was pleasant enough, with a sprinkling of blue flowers around the edges and a slice of sky overhead. She felt it couldn’t even be dinner time yet, but she caved to the pain in her stomach and ate another granola bar. A small birdsong started. She drained the rest of her water and leaned back in her tent, feet still poking through the door. The sun baked through the nylon, but she felt too heavy to care. Her mind floated through a familiar delta of dreams, duties, and careers; a dozen streams at once, all winding toward a vast ocean of sleep.
She woke as large drops of rain began to pelt the tent erratically. A cold drop hit her ankle and she reflexively pulled her feet inside the tent. The open doorway was a gaping hole in the darkness. She zipped it shut, and then dug around her backpack for a headlamp. She clenched it tightly while she wiggled into the sleeping bag. She resisted the temptation to flick the light on, and instead focused on relaxing her tensed muscles. Each drop seemed to hit louder than the last. The heavens collapsed in a roar and all sounds became one. She tested her voice against the torrent, but could only feel the words buzz in her chest. She visualized her car in an empty dirt parking lot so many miles away.
She listened to the nylon flapping above her. She reached a hand up to feel the tent poles buckling under the wind. The tent was a vessel being thrashed out at sea. Time became a blur, and she was asleep again before noticing the rain had finally slowed.
This time she awoke to complete silence, and hunger. She opened her eyes but could see nothing. There was a flicker of static from the radio. She turned on the headlamp and sat up. The radio lay in the corner of the tent, unnatural as her only non-possession. She squeezed the button to talk.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded so disruptive in the stillness that she didn’t try again. She unzipped the tent and shined her flashlight across the clearing, all color drained by night. After a brief struggle with socks and shoes, she ventured further along the path. Hunger followed. She would have turned stones to bread.
She kept her flashlight mostly on the trail, out of necessity but also for fear of the tricks her eyes might play in the shadowlight. She could hear the trees dripping water all around, a soundscape betraying the depth of the woods. At last she saw a faint wash of teal ahead.
She emerged from the forest onto a narrow rocky shore. The lake sprawled out before her, only a few hundred yards across, and intimately enclosed by trees. A half-moon had emerged from the clouds, but the lake was too still to sparkle. It was a dark and perfect disc; a mirror.
“Look into the water.” She felt a pang in her gut. The voice came from the woods behind, thick and layered, pushing the surrounding silence deeper still. The stench of the rabbit returned, heavy, warm and wet. She would have rather died than look over her shoulder. In an instant she regretted the entire journey.
She obeyed and approached the edge of the lake. She stepped onto a large flat rock in the water and looked. The clarity of the reflection was lovely, and as she studied it her surroundings melted away. She stared into her own eyes and felt herself sinking into the blackness of the pupils.
Inside, she was holding a press conference. A burst of camera flashes illuminated the podium and twenty hands shot up in unison. She could see blood on their hands and hunger in their eyes. Hungry for her words or her flesh, it didn’t matter. She knew they had come to trap her.
She called on a sharp blue suit in the front row. He raised a question about her financial state. Easy. She lashed out with a single sentence. Next she called on a smart young woman holding out a microphone, who challenged her voting record. Barely worth the words she spoke. The questions accelerated, digging deeper into her work, her personal life, her memories, all of them overlapping into a furious interrogation. But her own words flowed elegantly and certainly. Out of the blue, someone asked if she knew her college roommate had died in an electrical fire. The news was a shock and her only stumble, but she recovered swiftly and her words came back stronger. Her voice itself was impenetrable.
The press conference ended when she decided it would. She stepped down from the podium and returned to the edge of the lake, exhilarated by the vision. She looked around the moonlit scene, flushed and shivering. She felt she might laugh.
The deep silence had left. Crickets hummed from the shelter of the trees and water lapped at the edge of the lake. She took the radio from her pocket and found the battery was dead. Feeling alone, she looked back into the water. She saw herself again, but this time just as she was: hungry. Hugging herself in a t-shirt that wasn’t warm enough. And uncertain.
On a sudden compulsion, she called out across the lake. “Is anyone out there?” An echo lilted back, softer and gentler: “Is anyone out there?”
She padded back through the forest to the clearing and crawled into the tent. She wasn’t sure how far it was back to the car, but one thing was certain: the walk back.