51
T he salted road crunches under the tires as Cholula and I leave the vet’s office. It’s a gorgeous winter day—perfect for the fair—but here we are, heading in the opposite direction.
“It wasn’t meant to be, huh?” I tell the poor pup in the seat next to me.
She lifts her head and looks at me solemnly. She’s being so good, leaving the bandage alone, and according to the vet, the fever is gone. She’ll make a full recovery.
“We’re back,” I call, carrying Cho into the back hallway of Happy Paws twenty minutes later.
No one answers.
I shrug out of my jacket—no easy feat with a lax twelve pounds in my arms—and make my way through the store. “Pop?” I look up the stairs. Still nothing. At least nothing human—only Boris lifts his head on the landing above and licks his snout.
I ascend the stairs, trepidation filling me at what I might find. “Where is he?” I ask Boris when I pass him, searching. But the place is empty. Cap is gone, too.
As I stand in the middle of the room trying to make sense of this, my eyes land on the idle stairlift that’s been left in the downstairs position. I didn’t notice that earlier. Could he have taken Cap for a walk?
I leave Cholula on her bed and jog back down. No, he couldn’t have. He’s not reckless, and he’d never leave the store closed on a Saturday for something as mundane as that. This doesn’t make any sense.
I’m scratching my head, searching the space for clues, when my phone rings in my purse. Micki’s name flashes on the display.
“Harvey is missing,” I answer in a rush. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Hello to you, too,” Micki says, lightly. “He’s here with me.”
At the fair? I pace toward the windows. This is so confusing. “But we agreed he wasn’t going to work the booth this year. Why is he…? Is something wrong?”
“He’s fine.” Micki laughs. Behind her, the crowd cheers. “Dude, you need to get your butt over here stat.”
“Why?”
“I’ll show you. Hang up and I’ll FaceTime you.”
What is she talking about? I do as she asks, and when she calls back, my screen fills with a shot of the agility course in the Winter Fest barn.
“Pair number eight is next,” the MC’s tinny voice says over the PA system. “And boy, these two are something—Captain Spots von Puppington handled by John Leopold Eustace Salinger the third. My mouth is going to need a nap after that.”
There, on my tiny screen, are Leo and Cap in the lineup of competitors waiting their turn, and I think I must be hallucinating.
Micki’s exuberant mug returns. “Can you believe it?” she hollers. “He showed up at the booth an hour ago looking for you, ran off when I told him what had happened, and now he’s doing this.” She gestures to the arena where I see several jumps, a tunnel, posts to weave through, and a seesaw.
“With Cap?” My slack jaw barely forms the words.
“Something about Tilly not cooperating unless Cholula is around?”
That’s right! But instead of giving up, he’s taking a chance on the improbable. For me.
“They’re up,” Micki says. “Can you see okay?”
I don’t know how to stop shaking my head as I watch the slow-moving disaster that is Cap in an agility course. He barrels straight through the first obstacle instead of jumping over it while Leo runs beside him shouting orders. The audience laughs. And Leo, who hates making a spectacle of himself…
“It’s a sprightly performance by Captain Puppington and his handler,” the MC says. “Oof, there goes another jump. This pup must have a steel plate in his forehead.”
“Oh my God.” Micki giggles. “I can’t.”
Somewhere next to her, I hear Harvey’s deep guffaws, too. At least he’s okay.
Cap is in the tunnel now, but Leo can’t seem to make him come back out. He tries both ends, but not until he pulls out a treat, does Cap obey.
“Come on, bud,” I whisper. “You can do it.” Something between a chuckle and a sob fights its way up my chest. Leo is back. And he’s… Yes, what exactly is he doing?
On my screen, the crowd cheers as Leo and Cap run the last stretch toward the finish, Cap, to my surprise, nailing the slalom obstacle.
The camera flips, and Micki’s face fills the screen again. “Did you see that?” she shouts. “Get. Over. Here. Now! Gotta go.”
She hangs up, and I waste no time. My tires spin against the slushy pavement as I peel out of the parking lot.
Between freeway congestion and the general haze of misfortunes that’s surrounded me like an ominous cloud lately, I’m convinced I’m going to miss the talent show until the moment I pull into the parking lot and Micki calls me again yelling about how they’re about to go onstage any minute.
The fairground is teeming with people dressed in winter coats and scarves, hats and mittens. Kids wear Santa hats and reindeer headbands with antlers, and the sun shines on it all, making the white ground sparkle.
The archway at the entry is clad in pine branches wrapped with a wide red ribbon, and two volunteers dressed as Christmas elves are handing out maps of the grounds. At regular intervals, the backdrop of cheerful voices is interrupted by the sound of sleigh bells coming from the pony-riding event to the far right of the parking lot.
“Candied nuts and pretzels!” a vendor calls out as I pass the first booth heading into the maze of festivities.
Dodging sugared-up children, bargain-hunting grandmas, and heart-eyed couples, I weave down the main lane past homemade ornaments, baked goods, and antique knickknacks like a gladiator through a gauntlet. The red barn rises like a friendly colossus in the distance, getting closer by the moment. I can do this. I can make it.
“Our favorite polyonymous pair is up next,” the MC calls, as I push through the doors and search the crowd nearest me for a familiar face.
“Cora, over here!” Micki is three sections away, halfway up the temporary stadium seating, waving like a maniac.
“’Scuse me. Sorry, I’m just gonna…” I squeeze up the risers and make my way to her. In my peripheral vision, Leo and Cap walk onto the stage.
“You made it.” Micki squeezes my arm.
I unravel my scarf and tuck it in my lap. “Don’t ask me how.”
“Let’s see what Captain Puppington has in store for us, shall we?” the MC muses.
“Why is he calling him that?” I ask Micki. “I registered him as ‘Cap.’”
“I may have elaborated.” Micki smiles. “Now shush. Things are about to get interesting.”
“You don’t actually think they stand a chance? Cap doesn’t have a talent.”
Micki shrugs. “The crowd loves him.”
We turn to the stage where Cap and Leo both look like they’ve stared too long at Medusa’s face. When the music starts, their rigid forms look even more out of place.
“He didn’t,” I gasp as the first few lines of Leo’s chosen song resound over the loudspeakers, and we all hear how they’re too sexy for my love.
Leo scans the crowd and runs his hand through his hair several times.
“Why aren’t they moving?” Micki asks.
“He’s freaking out.” I shove my knuckles between my teeth. “Shake it off,” I mumble. “Let your overachiever freak flag fly.”
Just then, Leo squares his shoulders and turns to Cap. He says something I can’t hear and gestures for Cap to sit.
Nothing happens.
“Oh no,” Micki whispers.
Leo tries again, this time using the hand signal to lie down, but Cap still doesn’t move. A snicker travels through the audience and hits my very core. This is painful. Leo’s stage fright is going to be quadrupled after this—it’s exactly what he wanted to avoid.
Leo’s face gets redder and redder as he tries, in vain, to get Cap to do even one of the tricks we’ve worked on at the farm with Cho and Tilly. And the more embarrassed he gets, the more my heart melts because he’s much too concerned with appearances to be doing this for fun. He’s doing it for me.
No sooner has this revelation sunk in than Micki leans forward, her hand coming down hard on my leg.
“Ow. What was that for?” I ask.
“Look at Cap.”
I do, and what I see brings me to my feet. His head has started twitching—incidentally in time with the music—and one of his legs moves in and out. He’s having one of his episodes.
I’m torn between running up on stage and calling out to Leo, but before I can react, Leo looks from Cap to the audience, sees me, smiles, puts a finger up as if to pause me… and starts dancing.
One of his shoulders goes up, the other goes down, then his arms bend at the elbow, and his feet move sideways as if pulled by an invisible string.
“You never told me Leo knows how to pop and lock,” Micki hisses next to me. “He’s not bad, actually.”
A sigh goes through the audience before the first cheerful “whoop” rises into the air.
“Ah, here they go,” the MC says quietly. “Had me worried there for a while.”
Leo makes his way around Cap, seemingly matching the pup’s movements with his, and the crowd goes ballistic. There are chest pops, hip gyrations, and even a poor moonwalk attempt before Leo bends his elbows ninety degrees and wiggles forward on stiff legs like a musically inclined C-3PO. Fully in the zone now, he links eyes with me, cocks his head to the side, and lets the movement travel down his joints to end with a flick of his foot before scooping Cap up into his arms and accepting the audience’s standing ovation.
I have never loved a man more.