Chapter 2
Repeat Client
By eleven, Frankie had done two Pomeranians, a Newfoundland with the size and disposition of a damp sofa, and a schnauzer whose owner had asked — with a straight face — if Frankie could make him "look more confident."
"He's a dog, Gary. His entire life is confident. He licks himself in the street."
That was the job, mostly. Not the grooming — the grooming Frankie could do in his sleep, had done in his sleep, probably.
It was the translating, taking whatever a person wanted for their dog and figuring out the real ask underneath it, because nobody ever came in wanting what they said they wanted.
The woman with the anxious greyhound didn't want a nail trim; she wanted somebody to tell her she wasn't a bad mother.
Gary didn't want a confident schnauzer; Gary wanted to feel less alone in his condo.
Frankie gave them the dog and threw the rest in for free, and it was the free part, honestly, that kept the regulars coming back through a door with a chalkboard that told them NO.
Dez said he was too soft for it. Dez said it while doing exactly the same thing at the next table, so Frankie had stopped taking the note.
Now the schnauzer was fluffed into a state of aggressive self-regard, Gary was gone, and Frankie had his arms in a sink full of Newfoundland when the mail came through the slot and hit the mat with the sound he'd learned to hate.
That specific thwap. Heavy envelope, good paper.
Nobody ever put good paper in a nice envelope to tell you something you wanted to hear.
"Dez. Mail."
Dez came out of the back with a towel over one shoulder, picked it up, and went still in the exact way that meant it was the landlord.
"Just tell me the number," Frankie said.
"You want to sit down for the number."
"I'm holding a hundred and forty pounds of wet dog, Dez, I'm not going anywhere. Give me the number."
She gave him the number.
Frankie kept his hands moving through the Newfoundland's undercoat, slow and even, because if he stopped moving he was going to have a feeling, and he had a strict policy about feelings during business hours.
The number was a thirty-percent increase.
The number was a building that had quietly sold in July to a company with the word Capital in its name, and a "market adjustment," and a renewal deadline that gave him six weeks to sign for a rent he couldn't cover or start packing.
"They can't just—"
"They can, though." Dez set the letter on the counter face-down, like that helped. "It's Leslieville. It's a dog neighborhood with a subway coming. They can do whatever they want and rent it to a natural-wine bar in a month."
He knew what she wasn't saying, because she was too decent to say it, which was: this is the part where it'd be nice to have a partner. Someone to split the panic with. Someone whose name was also on the lease.
There had been, once.
Frankie didn't let himself go all the way into it — he had a Newfoundland — but it went through him anyway, fast, the way it always did when money got scary.
Two years ago there'd been twice this square footage and a name that made him wince now, Paws & Effect, God, and a build-out that cost more than his parents' first house, and Damien standing in the middle of all that raw new space with his arms spread wide like he was gifting Frankie the future.
We're going to be the place, baby. Not a groomer.
An experience. And Frankie, twenty-eight and stupid with it, had signed everything Damien put in front of him.
Then a better experience had come along — a bigger investor, a shinier city, a man with better shoulders — and Damien had gone to be somebody else's future, and the lease and the debt and the raw new space had stayed exactly where they were, with exactly one name on them.
He'd sold off half of it. Kept the good half.
Painted it white, hung the wall of shampoos, put up the chalkboard, called it Clip Joint because it made him laugh and because it was a little mean and because it was his, every square foot, no one else's name anywhere.
He'd built the whole thing back from the studs of the worst year of his life, alone, and it worked, and it was solvent, and it was —
thirty percent short, apparently, of staying open.
"Frank."
"I heard you." He lifted the Newf out of the sink. "I'm fine. It's fine. I'll figure it out. I always figure it out."
Dez looked at him for a second, and didn't push, which was the whole reason he loved her. "Yeah," she said. "You do."
***
The follow-up appointment was at four, and Frankie had, professionally, forgotten about it right up until the door chimed at three-fifty-eight and the whole shop filled with the smell of good cologne and money.
Because of course he was early. People like that were always early. It read as considerate and it was actually control.
"We're back," Malcolm Reeves said, "and this time nobody smells like a war crime."
He had Nigel under one arm, the dog restored to full pompous glory, fawn coat gleaming, ears up, the picture of a creature who had never encountered a skunk in his life and would be offended by the suggestion.
Malcolm himself was in a soft gray henley and dark jeans and a jacket that had probably cost what the Newfoundland's entire grooming package had, and he was doing the thing again — filling the doorway, easy and unhurried, warm as a porch light — and Frankie felt the specific irritation of a man watching a very nice trap set itself.
"He looks great," Frankie said, flat, taking the dog. "So. Genuine question. Why are you here."
Malcolm blinked. "The follow-up. You said his coat—"
"I said the recipe strips the coat and he'd be dry for a few days.
A few days of a Frenchie being slightly less shiny.
" Frankie set Nigel on the table and ran a hand down his back, and the dog leaned into it and made a noise like a rusty hinge.
"This coat is fine. This coat is thriving.
This is a dog who does not need a forty-dollar conditioning treatment, and you're a smart man, so on some level you know that, which means—"
He stopped, because the smart move was to not finish the sentence, and finishing sentences he shouldn't was Frankie's oldest and most reliable flaw.
"Which means?" Malcolm said. Not defensive. Curious. Like he genuinely wanted to hear where Frankie was going, which was worse.
"Which means you booked a made-up appointment," Frankie said. "That's all. Just noting it. For the record."
There was a beat. Frankie kept his eyes on the dog. On the counter, Dez had gone conspicuously silent in the way of a woman pretending very hard to reorganize the treat jars.
"Okay, yeah," Malcolm said, and the easy admission of it was so unexpected that Frankie actually looked up.
Malcolm was smiling — not a big one, a rueful thing, hands going into his pockets.
"He didn't need it. You got me. In my defense, the alternative was booking nothing, and then I don't have a reason to be standing in a grooming shop in the east end, and that seemed sadder. "
Do not. "Do not," Frankie said, out loud, apparently.
"Do not what?"
"Be — that." Frankie gestured at all of him with the grooming brush. "Charming. About it. You don't get to be caught doing a weird thing and then be charming, it's not — pick a lane."
"I only have the one lane," Malcolm said, mild. "It's a real limitation. Ask anyone."
And Frankie laughed. It came out before he could stop it, a real one, short and involuntary, and he hated it, because he'd spent two years training himself out of exactly this — laughing at the shiny ones, letting the porch light in, standing in his own shop grinning at a man with a hotel key and a plane ticket and a whole other life two thousand kilometers south.
He turned it into business. That was the move. You feel the thing, you turn it into business.
"Fine," he said, brisk, snapping a comb off the tray. "You want to be here, you're paying for a real service. Full conditioning treatment, since we're pretending. Sit down. This takes a while, and I'm not talking to you the whole time, I've got a landlord to be furious at."
He hadn't meant to say the last part. It just fell out, the way things did around a man who listened like that — and Malcolm did listen like that, Frankie was realizing, with his whole still body, like whatever you were saying was the only thing happening in the city.
"Landlord trouble," Malcolm said, sitting. Not prying. Just leaving the door open.
"Everyone's got landlord trouble." Frankie worked the conditioner through Nigel's coat, and the dog sighed and melted, traitor. "It's Toronto. It's a competitive sport."
Malcolm let it go, which Frankie respected and also resented, because now he wanted to be asked. He clamped down on that. He was not going to be a man who unloaded his lease anxiety onto a customer. He had a policy.
"So," Malcolm said instead, "the skunk recipe. Where does a person learn the real one. Because I googled for an hour and got tomato juice and lies."
And that — okay, that was safe. That was dogs. Frankie could talk about dogs until the sun went out.
So he did. He told him about the peroxide chemistry, about why the pink stuff was a scam that should honestly be a criminal matter, about the vet tech in Parkdale who'd taught him the real recipe eight years back, when he was twenty-two and knew nothing except that he loved this and would've done it for free.
"Would you, though," Malcolm said. "Do it for free."
"God, no. I said would. Past-tense idiot me. Present me has a rent problem." He caught the comb on a tangle and worked it loose. "Why? Looking to diversify? Producer, financier, dog conditioner?"