Chapter 5
Bridge had her baby just after eleven o’clock.
She weighed seven pounds, and I had no idea why I knew that, or rather why I’d been told that, because while I was sure it was relevant for health reasons or whatever, I didn’t really have a metric to compare it to.
It was sort of like when people wanted me to be really interested in the horsepower of their car.
Because I don’t really know how powerful horses or cars are meant to be.
We all bundled in to wish a tired but happy Bridge congratulations and say things like “Oh, she’s beautiful” and “She has your eyes,” even though—to be honest—all babies looked the same to me. Sort of small, rumpled, and shouty. Maybe it felt different if it was your small, rumpled, and shouty.
Then Oliver and I dashed into the car so we could dash all the way round London to dash to the dog shelter in time for our appointment.
Given the amount of paperwork, home visits, and general checking up we’d been through—none of which had in any way increased my faith in my dog-having abilities—I was pretty sure turning up late would be a dog-jeopardising move.
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding passive aggressive,” remarked Oliver, “but I do rather wish we’d had a full night’s sleep.”
He was right. He hadn’t known how to say it without sounding passive aggressive. “Hey,” I tried, “you don’t get to play the this-is-bad-but-I-know-it’s-bad-so-it’s-okay card. That’s my card.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re not wrong, though,” I told him. Because he wasn’t. “I’m seriously worried I’m just going to collapse on top of the dog and drool.”
Oliver considered this a moment. “I suppose that is at least a fairly natural dog-parenting arrangement?”
“I think the collapsing part might be a bit suboptimal.”
“Suboptimal?” repeated Oliver, with a tired laugh. “When did you start saying suboptimal?”
“You’ve been a suboptimal influence on me.”
Slightly too sleep-deprived to play the using-suboptimal-in-increasingly-suboptimal ways game, Oliver gave an affectionate if slightly distracted smile and kept his eyes on the road.
I, meanwhile, took advantage of the fact I wasn’t driving and tried to get my head comfortable.
Turns out, I got it so comfortable that I didn’t wake up until Oliver was gently nudging me into consciousness.
“Nnnneruurgh,” I said, rising semi-erect like a—actually I’m not going to finish that. “Where are we?”
“We’re there.”
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I think it was just a reflexive shit.” Levering myself still more upright, I flipped down the sun visor and squinted into the vanity mirror. “Shit,” I muttered, less reflexively. “They’re never going to give us a dog. I look like a heroin addict.”
Oliver undid his seat belt and passed me a bagel he must have bought while I was sleeping the sleep of a selfish bastard.
“I’ve worked with quite a lot of heroin addicts and, like most people, they’re a diverse group of individuals.
I think what you mean is that you look gaunt, raddled, and interesting.
Which is how you’ve always looked, and it suits you. ”
“Thank you for the bagel,” I said meekly as I unwrapped the wax paper, filling the car with the scent of pickles, mustard, and pastrami. “Really, thank you. This is actually perfect.”
He blushed slightly. “Well, I do know you rather well at this point.”
To be fair, the fact I’d want to stuff my face with salt and meat the second I woke up after an impromptu all-nighter wasn’t exactly a state secret. But that didn’t make it any less thoughtful. “What about you?” I asked through a massive mouthful of cured beef.
He waved his own less-delicious-smelling parcel at me. “Hummus, tomato, and rocket.”
“Didn’t they get to number six in 1973?”
“Yes, with the psychedelic hit ‘Plant-Based Groove.’”
Between the food and having the best boyfriend in the universe, I was perking right up. “Shame their second album flopped. In hindsight, Hail Seitan wasn’t the right title for its era.”
“And Hardcore Quorn was banned in thirteen countries.”
I gave a nostalgic sigh. “Whatever happened to those guys?”
“Hummus and Rocket quit the business, and Tomato died of a tofu overdose. Tragic really.”
“I’ve always said we needed tougher tofu regulations.”
Oliver gave me a play-serious look. “Lucien, surely you know that every attempt to legislate away the tofu issue has succeeded only in stigmatising tofu users and driving the market underground.”
“Oh, fuck me.” I let my head thunk back against the seat.
“What’s wrong now?”
The now was doing a lot of work in that sentence, but I chose to ignore it. “Nothing. I just…” It was kind of hard to roll your eyes at yourself because they were already inside your face. “I, you know. Love you. Like. A lot.”
“Come here.”
I leaned over the gearstick, and Oliver leaned over to meet me, and we kissed way more lingeringly than made sense when one of us tasted of hummus, and the other tasted of pastrami, and the one who tasted of pastrami was being half choked by the seat belt he’d forgotten to take off.
Eventually, we remembered that we were in a car park in Battersea and that, hilarious as the irony would be, we didn’t want to get arrested for dogging.
“I love you too,” said Oliver, with far less um-ing and like-ing and y’know-ing than I personally considered normal. “Now let’s go get Spud.”
* * *
Much like when we bought our car and, indeed, our house, Oliver dealt with the paperwork, and I sat in an uncomfortable chair watching Oliver deal with the paperwork.
I wouldn’t say that, out of all the things I could watch Oliver doing, it was the most attractive, but it also wasn’t the least attractive.
There was something inherently cool and slightly alien to me about someone who looked like they knew what they were doing in an administrative context.
Or, for that matter, any context. Probably including sex contexts.
Because Oliver flipping me over like he was about to sign me in triplicate hadn’t got old in five years of fucking.
Eventually, after long enough to feel like they were taking the piss but not quite long enough that you could say anything about it without looking like a prick, we were allowed to leave. And when we left, we were allowed to take a box with us. And the box was allowed to have a dog in it.
We secured Spud’s crate in the back of the car and stood for a moment contemplating the fact that our car had a box in it and the box in the car had a dog in it. I squeezed Oliver’s hand.
“We’ve got a dog,” I told him.
“Yes,” he replied.
Spud was looking up at us through the little window like an incredibly trusting prisoner.
We’d called him Spud because, when we’d first seen him at the shelter, he’d been smaller and rounder, and looked a whole lot like a potato.
And, while Oliver had wanted something more subtle, like Edward (as in King) or Maris (as in Piper), I’d wanted to just steer into it.
A few weeks further on, he was still small, and still brown, with big dark eyes and an exceedingly waggy tail, but he was notably more animal-shaped.
“I’m fucking terrified,” I said.
“Mruff,” Spud replied.
“Lucien, it’s fine.” It was Oliver’s should’ve been tired of reassuring me by now but somehow wasn’t voice. “People far more irresponsible than us get dogs every day.”
“No, they don’t. They vet you like whoa.”
“Then shouldn’t you take the fact that you’ve been vetted like whoa and they’ve still let you have the dog as evidence that you can, in fact, look after a dog?”
“I think they probably averaged us out.”
“I’m certain they didn’t,” he said firmly. “If they thought one of us was a danger to the dog, the dog would be in danger, irrespective of the good intentions of the other.”
“What if he doesn’t like me?”
“Dogs are pack animals. They like the people they live with unless the people they live with are completely terrible. And,” he went on before I could make the obvious objection, “despite what you might say and how frequently you might say it, you’re not completely terrible.”
“I’m a bit terrible.”
“Aren’t we all.” And with that, Oliver carefully shut the door. “Come on. We should get him home.”
* * *
Watching Oliver with a puppy was, if you can believe it, even better than watching him fill out paperwork.
We’d set up a kind of playpen in what was nominally my study, although it was more just the room I sat in when I was meant to be working from home.
It had toys and bowls and a blanket, and, once we’d got in, we’d set Spud’s box in the corner, letting him come out at his own pace, as the books recommended.
Well, as Oliver had informed me the books recommended.
Spud’s own pace had been “immediately” because, like every dog I’d ever met, he’d taken one look at Oliver and decided he was clearly Best Human.
Not that I blamed him. I’d come to a similar conclusion myself, even if it had taken me slightly longer.
Initially, Spud had been keen to explore the room, but he’d soon decided he’d rather just explore Oliver, and now the pair of them were folded in a pile of adorableness on the floor.
After what felt like six million years, Oliver looked up from the dog. “You should probably say hello, Lucien.”
“Hello, Lucien,” I said from the corner. It was safe in the corner. You couldn’t accidentally fuck anything up in the corner. Even if it meant you didn’t get to pet a puppy. Your puppy.
“Don’t confuse him. He’s too little to understand irony.”
“And boundaries,” I added as Spud rose up on his stubby little hind legs to lick Oliver’s nose.
“This is normal bonding behaviour.”
“You say that, but if I licked your nose, you’d get really cross at me.”