Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Leo
Answer: it’s very hard. Extremely fucking hard.
I have to reschedule my client meetings from daytime to evening, so I can attend to my dog-walking duties. Luckily, my virtual PA Tara is incredibly efficient, but I don’t tell her why she has to reschedule my meetings.
I also spend an awkward thirty minutes in TK Maxx, trying to work out what a dog walker would wear.
In the end, out of desperation, I grab sweatpants, a gray hoodie, and sneakers that squeak when I walk.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the dressing room mirror and genuinely don’t recognize the man staring back.
He looks like he might own a golden retriever and have opinions about hiking trails.
When I arrive back at the apartment, Archie is in full business mode.
He’s commandeered the sofa with his laptop balanced on his knee, phone charging beside him. His ankle is propped on a cushion, and he’s wearing a faded T-shirt that says Captain Giggles Fun Factory with a cartoon version of himself giving a thumbs-up.
He’s also hand-drawn a map, complete with a color-coded legend of pickup points and timing estimates marked in precise handwriting.
He looks up and grins at me, and I have to blink a few times before I can focus on his briefing.
“Your first pickup is Muffin. She’s a Yorkshire Terrier and is pretty much three kilos of pure rage. She believes she’s the apex predator of North London and will not tolerate disrespect from dogs, humans, or pigeons.”
I look at the photo of the tiny dog on his laptop. She has a pink bow in her white fur and looks like she’s been styled for a magazine shoot.
She also has the cold, dead eyes of a killer.
“Then you’ll collect Douglas and Daisy from the Bedingfields.
Douglas is a basset hound, and he moves at the speed of continental drift.
Douglas rushes for no man.” He clicks to the next photo.
“Daisy is a springer spaniel. She has two settings: asleep and absolute chaos. Unfortunately, walks activate the chaos setting.”
I can feel my eye already beginning to twitch.
“So I’ll have a tiny aggressive dog, a dog who refuses to move, and a dog who can’t stop moving?”
Archie gives me a thumbs-up. “You’re catching on so fast.”
“The logistics of this seem impossible.”
“It’s all about lead management. Muffin goes on your right, where you can keep an eye on her. Douglas in the middle as your anchor. Daisy on the left with a firm grip because she will try to chase literally anything that moves.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I can feel a headache forming behind my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Archie says cheerfully. “I’ll set myself up on a bench in Hampstead Heath, and you can call me if you need me.”
“This is insane,” I mutter.
“Probably,” he agrees. “But you did break my ankle.”
I’m still slightly bewildered about how I got steamrolled into moving into Archie’s apartment, taking over his dog-walking duties, and helping him with his children’s entertainer duties.
Becoming Captain Giggles’s clown assistant is an idea so ludicrous that I’m currently pushing it out of my mind.
That’s Future Leo’s problem. Future Leo can deal with that.
Actually, I do know why I agreed to this whole thing, and it’s not just because of my immense guilt over Archie’s broken ankle.
It’s what he said when he’d been trying to convince me.
“You can’t solve all my problems by throwing money at them.”
His words had stopped me short because they’d echoed something my sister Caitlin accused me of the other month.
“All you ever do is throw money at a problem and expect everything to be magically fixed. Life doesn’t work that way, Leo.”
And okay, the context in which Caitlin had said those words was extremely different, but Archie’s similar words had stirred an uncomfortable question inside me.
Am I turning into one of those people who thinks they can buy their way out of any kind of accountability?
I’ve encountered more than enough of those bastards in my journey through life, and I loathe them. I hate the idea that I’m becoming someone who mistakes a checkbook for a conscience.
Which is how I’ve ended up here, on my way to the wilds of Hampstead Heath.
Picking up the three dogs and the short walk to Hampstead Heath go surprisingly well. None of the dogs bolt, bite, or defecate on my shoes on the way to the park, which I take as a win.
I know better than to be lulled into a false sense of security though. I’ve dealt with enough hostile takeovers to recognize the calm before the storm.
I’d never spent much time around dogs.
I wonder if they can sense fear.
Once we pass through the entrance to Hampstead Heath, I take stock of my charges.
Muffin is scanning the horizon with the focus of a sniper.
Douglas is plodding along with the resigned air of a philosopher who has accepted that life is suffering.
And Daisy is doing something I can only describe as a full-body wiggle, her entire back half wagging independently of her front half, as if her excitement is literally splitting her in two.
While I was picking up the dogs, the plan was for Archie to catch an Uber to Hampstead Heath and then navigate on his crutches to a park bench just inside the entrance so he could be close by to give advice.
And sure enough, I spot Archie on a bench, crutches propped beside him, face tilted toward the weak London sun like he’s on vacation rather than supervising my humiliation.
The more time I spend with him, the less and less like Vaughn he seems, even though they look so much alike.
There’s a different energy about Archie, something warm where Vaughn was always polished and cool. Vaughn’s charm was a weapon deployed strategically and retracted when no longer useful. Whereas Archie gives his charm freely, even to men who accidentally broke his ankle.
I’m still not sure what to do with that.
A grin spreads across his face as he spots us approaching. Something loosens inside me at the sight of him. I have backup. Even if that backup is a man with a broken ankle who thinks Captain Giggles is an acceptable professional name.
When we reach him, the dogs immediately crowd around Archie like he’s a celebrity and they’re his adoring fans.
“There’s my beautiful girl,” he says to Muffin, who immediately abandons her sniper-like vigilance to scramble onto the bench and then onto his lap. He scratches under her chin, and she melts into a puddle of contentment.
Douglas lumbers forward for his share of attention, and Archie obliges, one hand on Muffin, the other rubbing Douglas’s velvety ears. A strand of Archie’s hair falls across his eyes, and he blows it away absently, still focused entirely on the dogs.
“Daisy-girl, are you being good?” he asks. Daisy responds by attempting to climb onto the bench as well, tail wagging furiously. Archie laughs, and my stomach does an inconvenient flip.
He looks up at me, still grinning, a tiny Yorkshire Terrier draped across his lap like a furry scarf. “They haven’t killed you yet. I’m impressed.”
“I’m impressed too,” I say wryly.
“Right, before you head off, I need to give you some instructions.” Archie fixes me with a surprisingly serious look, like he’s about to impart nuclear launch codes.
“Let them sniff,” is what he says.
“Let them sniff,” I repeat.
Is it possible to prevent dogs from sniffing?
“I mean, let them sniff as much as they want. I know it seems like they’re just wasting time smelling every blade of grass, but that’s actually the most important part of the walk for them.
Dogs have three hundred million olfactory receptors, compared to the six million humans have.
When they sniff a tree, they’re getting information we can’t even comprehend, like who’s been there, their age, their health, their mood. ”
“So, it’s like reading a really detailed biography written in pee?” I ask.
“Essentially, yes.” Archie’s grin widens. “Depriving dogs of sniff time is like putting noise-canceling headphones on a human and expecting them to navigate a cocktail party.”
I look down at Douglas, who is currently sniffing the bench leg with intense concentration. “I had no idea dog walking required such an advanced understanding of dog behavior.”
“It doesn’t. Just a little patience and a willingness to stand around while a basset hound contemplates the philosophical implications of another dog’s urine. And a realization that dogs need mental stimulation as much as physical exercise. A good sniff session is like Sudoku for dogs.”
“Sudoku for dogs,” I repeat.
“Yes. And my other main tip is to watch which direction their tail is wagging.”
“You mean left or right?”
“Exactly. Wagging more to the right indicates positive emotions, like happiness or excitement. Wagging more to the left suggests anxiety or uncertainty.” He points at Daisy, whose tail is currently a blur of wagging.
“See? She’s thrilled. But if you notice any of them doing more of a left-leaning wag, something in the environment is making them uncomfortable. ”
I watch Daisy’s tail for a moment, trying to detect directional bias in what appears to be a helicopter rotor. “I’m going to be honest, her tail is moving so fast I can barely see it, let alone determine its political leanings.”
Archie laughs. “You’ll get better at it. Eventually, it becomes instinctive.”
I find myself reassessing Archie Mansley as he leans down to check Daisy’s paw, turning it gently in his hand and murmuring something to her that makes her tail wag even harder.
When you meet someone who works as a children’s entertainer named Captain Giggles, you make certain assumptions. You don’t expect them to casually reference olfactory receptor counts or explain the neurological basis of tail-wagging asymmetry.
He’s not what I expected. I’m not entirely sure what he is yet.
But I’m intrigued enough to try to figure it out.
Which is not what I should be thinking in regard to Vaughn Mansley’s brother.