Friends With Dogs

MILO HAD found an ingenious soft-sided crate that folded up into his briefcase/satchel, along with Julia's favorite blanket and a couple of her most comforting soft squeaky toys. He even had treats and poop bags in his pocket, and he'd mentally rehearsed a day with a break every two hours so they could both visit the restroom, so to speak. The campus of the ad firm he worked for was actually lovely, with a nicely landscaped lawn, complete with picnic benches and a little walk through the modest hedges in the back. Not that he'd let Julia loose there, but they could have a periodic stroll when they needed one, and hopefully this whole endeavor might not end with embarrassment, tears, and the circulating of his admittedly impressive resume for consultant jobs.

He actually liked working for H3Art of U Inc. They were sort of a boutique company that catered to small businesses with limited budgets, and they tended to hire some of the best and brightest copywriters, artists, and PR people in the area. It wasn't a bad place to hang out, all in all, with one or two possible exceptions.

"Milo!" cried one of the two exceptions as Milo and Julia walked gamely up the paved path to the front office. "Is that you? I didn't recognize you with your hair, uhm, brushed."

Milo regarded Rick Kasich unhappily as he stood blocking the entrance. Rick liked to talk. Loudly. And usually he reserved his garrulousness for people who returned it, but sometimes he liked to get in Milo's face to "bring the little guy out of his shell."

"Yeah. I got it trimmed," he said, referring to his hair, although "trimmed" meant Mari had come over two nights before with a pair of scissors, and they'd sacrificed a garbage bag. The good news was, Mari knew how to hack beyond the standard bowl cut—she was good at layering the top and using clippers on the sides and back so it appeared as though Milo actually cared about his appearance when that was just what his hair did . Next to him, Julia let out a kind of hamster-using-a-chainsaw sound, and Milo tightened her leash.

"Julia," he warned. "Leave it."

"And who do we have here?" Rick Kasich liked to work out, and he did all sorts of grooming things to his hair and his skin and his nose hair, and the result was he looked really good and he knew he looked really good in a sort of blond, European perfection way. He was unafraid to push his presence, his person, into any space, whether he was wanted or unwanted.

Milo had a sudden panic about how much Julia did not seem to want Rick Kasich in her space.

"Julia, leave it!" he snapped, tugging on her leash and squatting to put his hand on the back of her neck. "Rick, I'm sorry," he said, trying for diplomacy as Julia's hamster ramped up the chainsaw. "She's in an unfamiliar place, and she's not up for meet and greet right now. I'm trying to introduce her slowly so she can sit at my desk while I work on meeting days."

"But I'm not a threat!" Rick laughed loudly and thrust his hand into Julia's face.

Milo yanked on her lead before her teeth clicked together, his heart hammering in his ears.

"She doesn't know that!" he cried. "Rick, please. Give her some space. If she bites you, I have to take her back to the shelter, and they'll put her down, and it will be your fault because I'm begging you to back off."

"Okay, okay!" Rick said, taking three steps back and regarding Milo with an absolute mask of hurt. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was trying to be friends!"

Belatedly Milo recognized that Rick had probably been trying to be his friend for the last three years, but Milo hadn't responded.

Oh. Would he forever be knocking down turkeys who didn't deserve it?

"I know," Milo said, tempering his voice. "And I appreciate it. Hold on a sec." He rummaged in his pocket for a treat and handed it to Rick. "Here. Stand back about three feet and hold this out to her. Don't talk loud—sort of be soft. Hold your hand out flat and make sure she sees it."

"What do I do if she takes it?" Rick asked, sounding almost awestruck, like Julia was a capybara or an anteater or something that didn't normally crap on every sidewalk in America.

"Tell her she's a good girl," Milo said. "But if she doesn't, simply back away. We can try during lunch."

Rick gave him a quick smile over Julia's head, and Milo realized the hamster chainsaw had subsided somewhat. "Yeah? You don't usually talk to people during lunch."

Milo gave his own small smile. "I'll probably have to," he conceded. "I thought I could slip inside and have a dog at work, but look at me. I couldn't even get through the front door."

Rick kept his voice pitched low as he continued to offer the treat. "I was worried," he said. "You didn't show up last week. You've been looking sort of, you know. Rough. I was afraid we'd have to call the police or something to do a wellness check."

Milo's stomach sank. "I'm sorry," he murmured as Julia stretched out her neck and lipped the treat off Rick's hand. "Good girl," he crooned, and Rick said the same thing.

She ate the treat and gave Rick a glare of contempt that stated patently that she thought he was a sucker, and suckers gave out more treats. Milo shook his head and tugged at her leash, and Rick stepped aside to accompany them in.

"My friend brought me the dog for the same reason," he admitted. He hadn't realized his breakup had been so apparent. "I didn't want to leave her home alone last week, so I kept her home until I could figure out an alternative. I called in to Angela. She knew I was fine."

Angela was the other reason Milo hadn't wanted to come into work today. She was his team leader, fiftyish, fit, and tanned from a "hobby" job of teaching aqua aerobics in the mornings and on weekends, she tended to hover over any of her team members if they weren't fit and chipper.

He'd been avoiding the hover for the last two months, but he'd just shown up with a hamster-chainsaw mammal, and he knew there would be some explaining to do.

"She may not have sent the fire department," Rick said, pushing the door open for them, "but she really doesn't think it's all fine. She's going to want to talk to you." Julia had apparently decided that being able to take a deep breath between her and this new person made him tolerable, because she kept her basic leash plot going. As long as Milo kept the lead adjusted so it didn't fall across the back of her ass, she kept trucking.

"Well, that's why I'm here," Milo said, although his heart wasn't in it. "I guess it's to talk to people."

"Yeah, sure," Rick muttered. "That's why you brought an attack Chihuahua… sort of. A giant attack Chihuahua? An attack capybara?" He paused to stare at Julia, whose ears had gone flat and straight out to the sides in what Milo thought of as "airplane mode." "No, seriously, Milo, what kind of dog is she?"

Milo, who had spent twenty minutes that morning rubbing her tummy while her head flopped to the side and she drooled slightly, gave a small smile. "She's an Attention Hound," he said soberly, and felt a small shaft of pride when Rick laughed. He didn't make jokes often—he should use that one on Garth.

He'd already heard Garth laugh. It was pretty impressive, rumbling out from his stomach, echoing up from his chest. It had made Milo warm all over. Rick's laugh didn't do that so much, but Milo was surprised to realize that he could make somebody besides Mari and, well, Garth laugh.

As he continued to walk through the office building, giving shy smiles and waves to his other coworkers, all of whom regarded Julia with interest, he wondered why he couldn't remember making Stuart laugh.

"Good one, Milo," Rick said as they were walking. "See, I knew you were funny."

"My drawings are funny," Milo said in surprise.

"Well, yes, but you don't ever… you know, say these things."

Milo blinked. It was true. Before the breakup with Stuart he'd been working on a series of humble animal comics, thinking about putting them up as a web series. He'd run them by his crew and had gotten laughs—and some tears—and had generally been confident that his sense of humor wasn't completely alien to humans, but that had been before he'd dropped off the map.

But he didn't talk about those drawings, or the moment they occurred to him, except to Mari.

Stuart used to say he should keep that stuff to himself.

He wondered if he should pull those comics up and start it again. Maybe it would make him feel more… more connected if he used his art for fun again as well as for work.

"I think they have to percolate," Milo said, and some of Julia's airplane-eared dignity seemed to stiffen his spine. "But I'll try to share them more often."

Rick shook his head. "I'm really glad you're back," he said after a moment. "Last week we had a strategy meeting for the new account—"

"Organic baby products," Milo said promptly.

"Yeah, that was the one. And the six of us were all spitballing and spinning off into the stratosphere—"

"You do that every strategy meeting," Milo told him, surprised. Rick was upfront and in your face, but he was also, like most of the people in their specific marketing group, creative and enthusiastic about his job. It helped that Angela tried to orient the company to healthy, environmentally friendly products, and her staff had an age range. She had recent college grads and a couple of people she called out of retirement to show everybody how it was done. She liked to shuffle the groups now and then, which was a nice way of letting grudges fade and old acquaintances seem new and vibrant again—or that's what Milo heard.

He generally sort of spaced out on the task and came back with some ideas.

"Yeah, we do," Rick agreed. "But generally you're there with a couple of sketches to pull us back down to earth. We look at the sketches, and even if we don't agree on them, you're like our ‘Runners take your mark!' call when we've been wandering around the track doing stretches and shaking out our muscles. We didn't notice it until last week when we realized we'd spent the entire session off in outer space, and you weren't there to pull us back." He let out a burst of air. "And then we all started talking about how you'd gotten even quieter in the last two months, and how the week before you'd shown up in your pajamas with some sort of gum in your hair."

Milo grimaced. He'd hacked that out before Mari had arrived at his place with intervention on her mind. "I don't remember how that happened," he said truthfully. He was half afraid it was toothpaste and he'd fallen asleep on the toilet while brushing his teeth.

"Well you had us worried," Rick told him. "So what are you going to tell Angela?"

Milo swallowed. "My boyfriend moved out in August," he said baldly. "I was… not prepared."

Rick stared at him. "I had no idea you were even in a long-term relationship," he said, shaking his head. "We're not real to you at all, are we?"

Turkeys squawking! Feathers everywhere!

"It's hard," he said, his voice so quiet he was surprised when Rick turned to meet his eyes. "To talk."

Rick blew out a breath. "Yeah," he said, taking in Milo's appearance once again. "Is that what the dog is for?"

Milo peered down at Julia, who regarded him with that baffled sort of dignity that seemed to envelop her. "The dog was to get me out of bed," he admitted, still gazing at her. Out of nowhere, she took two quick steps in his direction and bounded into his arms. He caught her, startled, and she resumed her stare of baffled dignity, but this time she touched her nose to his.

"Hello, Julia," he said, and she snuggled in a little closer.

"Wow," Rick said, watching the two of them. "Would you like a room?"

"She's not my type," Milo told him. "I'm a great believer that interspecies relationships should remain fully platonic."

Rick chuckled. "See? Funny. Can I grab your satchel?"

Milo realized that the thing had slid down his shoulder when he'd caught his dog.

"Yeah. Let's get her crate set up by my desk so she's got a home," he said, carting her awkward twenty-pound-dog body toward the back of the offices where his own workspace sat.

"Where did you learn all this stuff about dogs?" Rick asked, doing exactly what Milo asked.

Milo paused. "The internet," he said. "My friend who brought me the dog. People at PetSmart." There were some super-hot young men at the one by his house who were always sweet and ready to help, and normally this would have had him all flustered, but it helped that he was pretty sure none of them would even look twice at him, and, well… there was Garth. "The guy who was walking his Daniffweiler in the park when Julia decided to go all commando on his ass."

"Was walking his what ?"

Milo set Julia down and patted her head in reassurance. "Here," he said absently. "Hold her leash so she can't go walkabout. It's a Great Dane, mastiff, Rottweiler mix, and me and Mari—my friend—decided it was a Daniffweiler."

"Wow," Rick said, holding on to the leash like he'd been given the Ark of the Covenant. "What's that dog look like?"

Milo blinked at him. "Like it could eat your car," he said, nodding. "But he didn't eat Julia, so right now he's sort of a golden dog god in my eyes." Milo should have been thinking about Chad, and how the dog came to his waist and had feet almost as big as Milo's own and who probably outweighed Milo by about twenty, thirty pounds. But instead he was picturing… well, Garth, six feet plus, tan, brown hair streaked gold by the sun, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, and the level patience in his eyes as Milo tripped on Julia's leash for the fifty-dozenth time.

In fact when Milo thought about the two of them, he wasn't sure which one conveyed the most forbearance—the giant handsome dog or the big handsome man.

But he wasn't going to tell Rick that.

"I'd like to see that," Rick said, smiling slightly. "Where do you walk her?"

"Garth, the big dog's owner, is sort of giving me dog walking lessons," Milo said hastily as he pulled the crate assembly out of his knapsack. "It's probably best we go alone."

"Oh," Rick said glumly. "Sorry. Didn't mean to intrude on your space." His shoulders drooped, and Milo gazed at him in consternation while he shook the crate's frame out.

"We're going to a dog park—sort of an enclosed space for them to play, but Julia's on the small dog side and Chad is on the big dog side. If that's not a total and complete disaster on Saturday, maybe you can come one day." While he spoke he tucked the blanket into the big fabric box and then added a couple of toys.

Rick looked at him oddly. "Why can't I come help it not be a total disaster?"

Milo stared at him. "I don't know how to manage more than one other friend and my dog," he said, thinking this should be self-evident. "I'm not quiet because I hate people, Rick. I'm quiet because I'm a class five introvert. I like people, but I also like ducks, and I don't know how to talk to them either."

Then he stared at Julia who, upon seeing the crate and all the comforts of home, wandered inside, curled up on the blanket, and began chewing fitfully at the squeaky.

Rick's puzzled expression relaxed some as they both stared at the contented dog. "You do fine, Milo. But I get it. Too many stressors in one place. Just…." His face did something complicated then. "Just give other people a chance, would you? I'm not even trying to hit on you when I tell you this. You're funny. You're interesting . Don't assume we wouldn't miss you if you crawled into your home and stayed there forever, okay?"

Milo nodded. "Thank you," he said, meaning it. "That's kind." He glanced at his desk and pulled his laptop out. "I'm going to clear out some of my paperwork before the meeting," he said apologetically. "I'll see you there."

"What are you doing for lunch?" Rick asked.

Milo pointed to a foam lunch container. "Casserole," he said. Mari had brought it over when she'd cut his hair.

"Eat it for dinner," Rick said. "Angela and I will take you out. Don't worry, just us. I'll get some sandwiches, and we can eat by the picnic tables with the dog. It'll be fun."

Milo glanced at Julia, who was still chewing her squeaky. "We'll be there," he promised. Julia didn't seem to object, so he left it at that.

MILO WASN'T sure how Julia did it—mostly she hung out in her crate and chewed her squeaky, with occasional forays outside to water the flowers—but she seemed to have a fan club by the time she was done with her first day at work.

And Milo was surprised at how productive he was, even with her next to him. Maybe especially with her next to him. He couldn't woolgather as much because he had to have his tasks done before he took her on her little walks, and when he did woolgather, it had to be the planned kind that would result in those wandering sketches he did that pulled a concept together. By the time the last hour rolled around, he was waiting on responses from the rest of his team, so he spent a few minutes with his tablet and stylus and drew… well, Julia.

His first sketch featured his Attention Hound with slightly crooked airplane wings for ears. She was in mid leap, soaring above the clouds, her head at that odd, downward tilt as she searched the earth below her for squeakies.

Milo put little labels on the sketch—her paws were "landing gear," her eyes were "squeaky identifiers," and her ears were "fondling platforms," and, well, her back end was the "unpleasant biscuit manufacturing plant." He chuckled a little to himself as he wrote that label and then started working on her background.

The result was an almost WWII era comic, with his "Biscuit Bomber" searching for Target Squeaky. He grinned when he was done and saved the thing, and over his shoulder his boss said, "I love it. Send it to the group, Milo. She's become our mascot."

Milo smiled at her, not able to hide his happiness. "She was so good today," he said. He'd been pleased and surprised. "I'm so glad. I didn't want to leave her alone, and finding a dog sitter sort of freaks me out."

"So I gathered," Angela said dryly. "Why didn't you call me and ask me, Milo? If she's your emotional support animal, we could have figured this out last week."

Milo gave her a fleeting smile but didn't meet her eyes. "She's not officially my emotional support animal," he said. "My friend brought her to my house to get me out of bed."

There was a speaking silence over his shoulder, and while his mom hadn't been great at the job, he did seem to remember that sort of silence had strings attached. With a sigh he swung his chair around to face his boss.

"I was going to talk to you during lunch," she said, pulling up a spare chair from the back of his cubicle. Their floor plan was semi-open—they were given partitions if they wanted, but nobody was allowed to wall up in isolation. He liked to keep a partition behind him and to his left, which was the main passage through the office space itself. That way he could turn inward and ask his colleagues questions or hear their off-the-cuff creative chatter if it pertained to him, but he wasn't constantly distracted by traffic through the office.

For the most part, it worked. As introverted as Milo was (he didn't deny it), the compromise kept him engaged with his team but not freaked out by all the people. In this instance, because many of his colleagues were off on the yoga mats in the far corner of the office doing some afternoon stretches, her move gave them privacy.

"Sorry," he said automatically, and she grimaced.

"I didn't because Rick was there, and you like to stay private, but we've been worried about you these past months. When you took last week off…."

He let out a breath. "Yeah, I know. You thought you'd never see me again. I didn't know what to do with the dog." He gave her a hesitant smile, hoping that would be it, but she shook her head.

"That's last week—"

"I got promoted!" he protested, suddenly super embarrassed. "I mean, I couldn't have been that depressed, right?"

The look she leveled him was as sober and as tragic as he'd ever seen. "Tell that to my sister," she said softly. "The one with the scars on her wrist and the 4.0 college GPA. Don't joke about this, Milo. We were worried."

Milo sighed. "My… my boyfriend moved out in August," he said. "After a super heinous fight. I… well, I didn't deal with it well."

"Aw, Milo," she said. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Milo considered that seriously. It wasn't like he'd thought of work as the enemy, was it? Suddenly he heard his mother's voice in his head. Nobody wants to hear about your stomachache, Milo. Why didn't you do the dishes? Who cares about the flu, Milo. B's aren't acceptable. It's an enlarged spleen, not congestive heart failure.

Oh God, he'd almost forgotten about getting mono in high school. Mariana had gotten it from her sister, and it wasn't like Milo and Mari had ever drunk their own soda after that first meeting at Milo's locker.

"Programming," he said now, faintly. "Not supposed to let outside problems interfere with your performance, right?"

Angela's expression grew soft. "Yeah, I've heard that, but mostly from people my age." She gave an almost manic pixie grin. "Don't mess with Gen X, Milo. I played softball finals with a burst appendix and spent half my senior year with a shunt coming out of my stomach. We're hard-core."

He laughed a little. "Yeah, well, Millennials have their moments."

"And we all have our damage," Angela said softly. "But… but Milo, if you're sad, or struggling with work, you should come to one of us. I mean, I've never let you think you're not wanted, have I?"

Milo shook his head. "I love working here," he said, surprised to find it was true. "I'm proud of the work I do." This was also true. "I just… you know. Was sad."

"What was the argument about?" she prodded. "I hope you don't mind me asking. Some breakups can be worse than others."

"He… he wanted me to break up with my best friend," he said. "I… I think he was threatened? I don't know. And then he wanted to tell me how to spend my money. And then he said I wasn't worth his time if I didn't listen to his advice. And then he said…." He shook his head, not wanting to go there, just like he hadn't wanted to go there when talking to Garth. It was so pathetic. "Anyway, I should have seen him for what he was a long time ago, but—"

"Nobody likes to be alone," she murmured.

"He took my cat," he blurted, because those moments when he'd realized that Chrysanthemum was gone had been some of the worst, the lowest and darkest, of the breakup.

"Oh my God. Did he like the cat?"

"No!" Milo said, and while he heard his voice pitch, he couldn't stop himself this time. "He just… his sister came by for the cat's stuff and said he'd brought the cat to her, and she couldn't give him back or her brother would get mad, and… and he took my cat to be an asshole." The wonder of it would not leave him alone. "Who does that?"

God, he still missed his Mumsy. Chrysanthemum had rich chestnut fur and was one of those flat-faced Persian cats with the enormous feet and lack of motivation to go anywhere besides the food bowl. Sort of the anti-Julia in the four-legged pet department. He'd groomed the cat and fed the cat and trimmed his nails and had fallen asleep to the cat purring when Stuart was out late with his friends or staying up late to work on stuff he'd brought home. Milo had loved the dumb cat, and Stuart had felt entitled to walk away with him.

"People who are angry and hurt about something else often feel entitled to hurt you," Angela said staunchly. "Jeez, Milo, I'm so angry for you! Is that why you got Julia?"

Milo glanced down at the dog, who was lying in an awkwardly stiff position, legs straight out and poking at the soft sides of the crate. She appeared to be asleep; she just didn't appear to be relaxed.

"My friend—"

"The one you wouldn't give up for your controlling asshole boyfriend?"

He smiled. It did feel nice to have a consensus among his friends that this had been the problem, not the things Stuart had said on his way out about how awkward Milo was, how underdeveloped, how incapable of talking to other humans without being an asshole. "That's the one. Mari showed up at my house two weeks ago with her." He laughed a little. "She was wearing cat ears. You know, to make up for the fact that Chrysanthemum was gone."

"The friend or the dog?" Angela asked, but her eyebrow was arched, so she was obviously teasing.

"The dog," he said, pleased that he could tell this story and make it funny. "She looked adorable." He gazed down at her some more. "She's very sweet," he said. "But, you know, even though she's young, she was abandoned for some reason. She's got damage. She wants to kill all the squirrels. She thinks other dogs are assholes. I thought she was going to eat Rick when we first got here."

Angela laughed into her hand.

"It's not funny!" Milo protested. "I mean…." He gave her a pleading look. "He's got that note in his voice…."

"The one that seems like it should be making all the windows vibrate?" she said. "Yeah, I know. Some people are just… vibrant. Rick's vibrant. We like him that way, but it's like Tajín in lemonade—it's an acquired taste."

"They have that?" he asked, baffled.

"Yeah, not as bad as it sounds. Anyway, so Rick came on a little too strong, and Julia almost ate him—"

"I would have had to have her put down!" he squeaked.

Angela grimaced. "Well, I would have thought twice about letting her come to work, but if you're taking steps to modify her behavior—and given that she was taking treats from Rick all through lunch, I'm going to assume you are—"

He nodded. "Oh yes. I like her. I just…." He glanced at her again. "I worry."

"Good," Angela said. "It sounds like your friend knew what she was doing when she brought Julia over. If you can be proactive for your dog, you can be proactive for yourself. I'll put in the paperwork to call her an emotional support animal, so if she, you know, loses her mind and piddles on the carpet, we can get the carpet changed." She grimaced. "It's sort of an ugly purple beige anyway. I almost wouldn't mind." Then she sobered. "But seriously, Milo, you were in a dark place, and you didn't come to anybody here. We were worried. We try to respect your boundaries, but I don't know if we can do that if you drop off the map again. I'm going to be calling you on off days from now on, to make sure you're still functioning, okay?"

Milo knew his ears turned pink. "Honestly," he said, "you don't have to do that, Angela. I'm better now."

"Yeah, but I like talking to you." She glanced around. "I mean, I like talking to my whole team. On the one hand, I'm blessed because you all work so well on your own, we only have to meet once a week, and you all produce wonderfully. But on the other hand, one of the best things about a five-day-a-week office was that everybody got to communicate . Don't make me bring everybody back for another day a week—I'll be despised ."

Milo gave her a small smile. "I wouldn't despise you," he said loyally. Angela had hired him, had looked at his drawings, had laughed at his jokes. He did love working for her. "Especially not if you let me bring Julia."

She laughed loud enough to make the dog snort and half struggle to her feet before collapsing back in her stiff-legged, dead-dog posture.

"As long as you can keep her from eating Rick, that's fine," she said. "Maybe we can get her to fetch the—"

Milo flailed, holding his finger to his lips. "No!" he whispered harshly. "Don't mention fetching the s-q-u-e-a-k-y. She'll drive us all batshit. I swear!"

Angela gave him an evil smile. "Julia," she sang. "Get the squeaky!"

At the word "squeaky," Julia scrambled to her feet and grabbed hold of one of her favorite toys. Happily, she stuck her face out of the crate and gnawed on the squeaky, making the noise and begging Milo with her eyes. Before Milo could grab the toy, Angela—moving slowly and talking in her most soothing tone—urged, "C'mon, girl, give me the squeaky. I'll throw it for you. Let's fetch the squeaky!"

Julia gazed at this new friend with worship in her eyes, and in short order Angela was throwing the squeaky down various corridors of the enclosed office space, and Julia was scrambling over empty chairs and under empty desks and around partitions to get to the toy of her dreams. Angela was laughing so hard she almost couldn't throw, and still Julia ran, as enchanted with this game and this new player as she had been with Mari and Milo.

Milo watched them play and laughed and thought that maybe bringing her to work was genius, and he couldn't wait to tell Garth.

And Mari, of course, but also he couldn't wait to tell Garth.