Another Beautiful Day in Les Baux

Well, it’s one of those beautiful days again in Les Baux and in news that will surprise exactly no one, Jacques has moved into my life with aplomb and there is nothing I am wanting or willing to do to stop it.

Yesterday he scared me though.

It was grocery shopping day.

I walked from my front door to the car, armed with my t-shirt mask and dwindling supply of hand gel.

He was laying out in the sun, front of the potted pansies, spotted me and bolted for me, whimpering and scratching and trying to jump in to the passanger seat.

“Sorry bud.” I told him. “ No dogs at the market. Also people are coughing there. Not safe.” I slammed the car door shut.

And as I turned the key in the ignition, I could hear him scratching and crying and running all up under the wheels of my car.

“ BUD.” I said. “ Are you nuts. I could run you over. I could kill you. You gotta stay away from the car.”

I put the car in first gear, and realized if I just drove really fast, I could outrun him and thus not risk hurting him.

So I bolted—first in first gear, then immediately putting it in second and doing about 40 miles an hour.

But Jacques ran as fast as his short white legs would carry him, chasing my damn car with all the might in his little body.

I was pretty freaked out, very much not wanting to run over my current BFF, so I drove faster to avoid hurting him, put the car in third gear but Jacques just ran faster, yelping at me, like:

“ You said we were friends. What the hell are you doing, going to do stuff me. This is not how friendship works in my world, lady.”

So I stopped the car and opened the door.

At this point we were in the middle of the country road, at least 1 km from home.

He looked up at me with his weirdly long-lashed brown eyes, tail wagging, and I could see the whites of his eyes, a little, which made him look human.

“OK get in.”

He leapt in joyfully.

“ But you have to stay on the passenger seat. You may not sit on my la—“ But Jacques had already settled in my lap, put himself in a little bagel, with his head tucked under his leg like a duck.

“ No. No. I cannot drive A STICK SHIFT CAR with a dog on my lap. This is a no.” I picked him up and placed him next to me.

He promptly returned to my lap. I placed him next to me. He promptly stepped back into my lap.

We proceeded back and forth like this, Tom and Jerry style, for about 5 minutes.

You’ll never guess who won.

I drove all the way to town with him curled up in my lap.

Once at the market I realized we had a problem.
Namely, no leash. On top of that, when I opened the car, he leapt out and bolted across the parking lot.

“ JACQUES, NON” I shouted. But he kept bolting, for the abandoned town with all its shuttered shops.

“ Come here boy. No, no. Come back. I chased him. He ran away. The one day I had forgotten to put salami in my coat pocket. Not a thing to bribe him with.

Finally he paused long enough to sniff another dogs butt, for me to sweep him up, and carry him four blocks back to the grocery store parking lot.

“ You gotta stay in the car.” I said. “ Humans might be coughing in there, and anyways dogs aren’t allowed even in non-pandemic times.”

I rolled the windows enough to give him air but not enough that he could pull a Houdini on me.

Once in the grocery store, I paused in front of the pet aisle, staring at the leashes.

I almost bought a long red nylon one, but decided against it. Who was I to buy a leash for a dog that had humans that loved him already? I did buy a beef jerkey stick cause I felt like he deserved a little treat for staying in the car.

Once back in the car, he devoured the beef jerkey while I loaded groceries.

“ This time, passagenger seat. No lap.” I told him in as authoritarian a voice as I could muster.

I put the beef jerkey in a zipped up bag on the passanger seat and that seemed to do the trick. He sniffed and scratched at it. Eventually he got bored, settled into a bagel and slept like a perfect angel while I drove us home.

And that was beautiful, driving along these open country roads with the windows open, a week worth of delicious food in my trunk, with this little animal resting calmly beside me, and for a minute on that drive up the mountain I felt blissful—in the middle of corona virus, in the middle of exile, in the middle of unemployment, in the middle of not knowing when I can go home, sing in a theatre, get a massage, have a hug, in the middle of end times—bliss still showed up with the groceries, the drive, and Jacques with his long-lashed brown eyes and his white-dipped tail.