Greetings from Les Baux, France, where in the local news, Jacques showed up at 10:00 p.m. at night in the pouring rain.
Again.
I half-expected him to bust out an 80’s style boombox and a poster board sign clutched between his little white paws. Full-on John Cusack style.
I opened the door because I am not a monster.
“We cannot keep meeting like this,” I told him. “ You have a home. You have a human. Come on.” I finished my cup of chamomile tea and he leaped in my lap as if he intended to sleep there.
“OK. You can have a nap while I finish my tea. Then you go home”.
I put him back out, feeling like the monster I am not. Then the howls became even more indignant.
So I scooped him up and knocked on his human’s door. “Sorry,” I said in clumsy French, handing him over as if he has a loaf of bread “I just didn’t know if he was locked out or what, I just wanted to bring him home”
“Ohhhh, la la, ma pouce, are you annoying the neighbor?”
“No! He’s no bother, I adore him I just….thought…..”
Tell her, a voice in me whispers urgently. Tell her that you and Jacques belong together. Tell her it’s a love that was meant to be. Tell her he should just move in with you.
“Um,” I say helplessly. “ If you are ever too busy or overwhelmed with stuff, he can always stay at my place.”
“Mais non, non, non ca va! I am always here. But thank you anyway.”
“Bonne nuit”.
I walk home in the rain and as my hair gets soaked, I wonder: Am I the Other Human?
Today I walked into the vineyard, which is greener and lusher with every day and thought: enough of all this silliness. There must be some polite way to ask if he can just officially be my dog? Doesn’t she wonder why he is at my house all day?
– “Um, your dog and I love each other very much….we spend all out time together….it just seems like you should know….” I imagine myself saying to her.
–Ugh, you cannot say that, Reasonable Sara thinks.
-But it’s true, Unreasonable Sara points out.
–YOU AND JACQUES ARE NOT ROMEO AND JULIET.
–Don’t you mean Pucci-o and Juliet? Get it Pucci, like pooch…..
–I get it and his human will not find that amusing.
–OK, ok calm down. We can continue just as we are.
This morning a ten-year-old girl with a swingy, brown ponytail appeared in front of my stoop. She was walking Jacques on one of those retractable leashes. I opened the kitchen door and Jacques lunged for me.
“Non Jacques. Non!” cried the little girl.
“It’s OK”, I tell her. “He visits me every day.”
“Do you live here?”
“For now, I do.”
She is alarmingly close to me for Corona Times and I want to tell her to back up but she’s just a little girl and I also don’t want to appear unneighborly.
“Jacques is my dog”, she said, simply. “He lives here with my Grandma and I get to see him whenever we come here.”
“Ah!” I said.
I said ah because I will not say what I mean which is: that information is completely heartbreaking for me, little girl.
“He wants to come in your house”, she giggled. “Look, he doesn’t want to leave you.”
And it was true. She kept trying to tug him along, but he just pulled towards me and my stoop.
“Do you have children?” She asked.
“No. Je suis chanteuse”, I said as if that somehow explains it.
“Oh!” She perked up at this; apparently found that information glamorous.
“Que’est ce que vous chantez?”
“La lyrique. De l’opera.”
She gazes at me with shiny brown eyes. I’ve impressed her. She’s a cute kid. She loves Jacques. Their family is complicated. That’s not her fault. She probably looks forward to seeing him. I soften a bit more. I can love him. We can all love him. He can be her dog and in a different way maybe he can still be mine.
“Want to walk with us?” she asks.
“You go ahead,” I told her, gently. “You don’t see him that often, go enjoy.”
I watch them disappear down the dirt road until they are just little pinpoints on the dusty, clouded be-olive treed horizon.
