Satine: A Good Boxer

We didn’t have any pets. We had full ashtrays on the counters and empty gin bottles around the sink. The walls were bare. There was a crack in the bay window where the glass had been caulked cheaply. The cold slithered through with a sardonic whistle we pretended not to hear. My mother bought us a snake plant. She repotted it and said it needed water once a week but we never gave it any. It became a cactus. It was the closest thing to life in our apartment. We were addicted to everything, so there was no life left in us. I woke up one afternoon and looked at my girl. This needs to change, I thought.

I left and bought us a dog.

New Jersey separates its tax brackets with highways, and we lived in the one furthest from any country clubs. There were a plethora of dogs for sale, but the basements and shelters were full of pit bulls. Dobermans. “High Risk Dogs” our apartment complex wouldn’t allow.

I drove to a derelict town whose name backward sounds like “Grub-Snake.” In the 1950s it had been America’s premier bayshore town. Now, it’s the place teenagers move when they accidentally knock up their girlfriends. A few days earlier I’d seen a sign nailed to a telephone pole that said:  “Boxer Pups For Sale.” I found the sign again and wrote down the address. Then I went to the bank and emptied my account. 

I parked in front of a trailer with tires half-buried in the front yard. I tucked most of the money into my sock and let myself through a short chain-linked fence. An old couple opened the door and showed me the only dog left - a little red boxer, maybe fifteen pounds, chewing on a sneaker.

“She’s the last one,” the woman said. “We’ve been calling her Bambi.”

The woman clapped her hands and Bambi looked at us. She dropped the sneaker, yawned, and took a piss right there on the floor. 

“Ohhh no,” she said. “I swear she never does this.”

I handed her my last $200. “I don’t care. She’s beautiful. I’ll take her.”

As I drove home I pictured the mascara on my girlfriend’s face. How it was probably running freely down the deep indentures of her cheeks and chin. The aftermath of another bad night.

When we had been introduced her mouth made a half-smile. Like the whole thing was in there but I didn’t deserve it all yet. And on that fall night, shaking hands with her for the first time and watching her red hair set against the red maple leaves falling like some kind of fire rain, my purpose suddenly appeared before me. What my first 21 years had been had been preparing me for: seeing that smile. And in those early months she’d show it to me sometimes - on long nights when I was losing faith in the world; the early mornings when I’d pick up my hammer and go into the world to chisel out our rent. I promised myself I would never take that smile for granted, but of course I did. And I hadn’t seen one on her face in a long time.

When she opened the door and saw the dog, she laughed.

“Well done,” I said to Bambi. “You’re already doing your job.”

That night we sat on the couch, the dog asleep between us, and tried to think of a new name. My girlfriend changed the channels on the television and Moulin Rouge came on. The dog’s fur was the same color as Nicole Kidman’s hair. For some reason this made us start pointing at the dog and saying, “Satine” back and forth to each other in British accents. We were very good at doing different dialects. We developed these backstories for Satine full of crime, STDs, physical ailments, etc, until we’d lose the accent from laughing too hard. My girlfriend held her nose and said, “Oi, am Sat-een”, in a really gross voice and Bambi woke up and tilted her head like she recognized the name from a past life. “Zats whut uh munkay wants, innit?” she asked Bambi. “Ta be named Sat-een?” The dog sat up and slapped both of our faces with her wet boxer tongue until we were dripping and howling.

She’s been called the name of a prostitute ever since. 

We didn’t have any money, but my girlfriend had an expensive collection of shoes with French names. Our dog shared a similar taste for high fashion. Her $200 price tag quickly spiked in damages. Every time we went out, we’d return to find the dog shredding leather and gnawing on Yves Saint Laurent heels. 

My girlfriend began to hate the dog. She became “my dog” whenever something valuable was destroyed. I spent most nights sleeping with Satine on a love seat that sagged in the middle. Something needs to change, I thought. 

I went out and bought a fish tank full of fancy guppies.

My girlfriend didn’t laugh that time, but she let me sleep in our bed.

Housebreaking the dog was impossible. Satine tried. She wanted to be a good dog. She’d soak the rug and then run to me and apologize. I’d point at the rug and say, “Bad dog.” Then I’d take her outside and point at things and say, “Good dog.” Her cropped tail beat around like a helicopter, telling me she understood. Then we’d go back inside and wrestle. I’d throw a ball across the room and in mid-run, she would piss. She’d freeze immediately and look at the puddle, ears pulled back, eyes wide. If she could cry, I’m sure she would have. 

It went on like that for weeks, and I became the whipping boy for “my dog.” The fights could flare up at any time, and, “Everything would be easier if we’d never got the dog,” became my girlfriend’s mantra.

Satine did another running pee one morning and I took her outside to do the whole routine again. But I didn’t clean up the mess before we went out. My girlfriend came home while I was pointing at bushes and saying, “That’s where a good dog goes.” The dog wagged at her and I stepped up for a kiss but she ignored both of us. Then she went inside and slipped on the pee puddle and fell through the glass coffee table. 

I heard the crash through the closed door. I grabbed the dog and kicked the door open with no idea of what I was walking into. My girlfriend sat there on a pile of broken glass, eyes closed and blood oozing from both of her palms like she was in the middle of a Stigmata. 

“That dog has to go,” she whispered in anger. “I hate it.” 

I held Satine and explained how hard she was trying.

“Get rid of it,” she said. “And don’t come back with any more pets.”

My girlfriend was a cat person. I wasn’t. I looked at the empty walls and decided to do the next best thing. I went to an antique store and bought a painting of a really ugly cat whose eyes followed you around the room no matter where you stood. It cost a whole week’s rent, but I bought the stupid painting.

She didn’t laugh and I didn’t get to sleep in our bed.

But I was allowed to keep the dog.

The weeks crawled by and Satine put on some pounds and started getting rebellious. One day, I opened the door to pick up the newspaper and she squeezed between my legs and ran away.

“Let her go,” my girlfriend said. “We can say she ran away. It’s not our fault.”

I chased the dog around the apartment complex, then across a highway. She’d let me get within a few feet and then take off running again. Finally, I caught her and dragged her back home by her neck. My girlfriend sat on the couch with a joint hanging off her bottom lip, laughing. And since I couldn’t hit my girlfriend, I hit the dog. She didn’t even yelp; she was too surprised. She just stared at me the way people stare at UFOs and tornadoes. Like her whole construct of what’s real and safe had just been obliterated.  

I did that to my baby. I took her innocence with that hit. I broke our bond.

I spent the whole night cuddled on the dog bed with her. Apologizing. Smoking cigarettes. Crying. And since dogs are better than people, she forgave me. But I never forgot.

I bought a crate to put Satine in while I went to work. The dog could not be housebroken, and I didn’t want to give my girlfriend any more ammunition. Boxers have severe separation anxiety. We came home one night and she had broken out of the indestructible cage. There were blood stains on everything. A lamp was broken. Feces smeared across the floor. It looked like a bomb had been dropped in our absence.

I ran to Satine and saw that two of her teeth had been ripped out.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to her. “I’ll never lock you up again.”

“You’re apologizing to the dog?” my girlfriend screamed.

“She’s just a baby! She thought we’d left her forever. She didn’t know we were coming back.”

My girlfriend finally gave the ultimatum: “Get rid of the dog… or get rid of me.”

Satine usually skulked off to her blanket when we fought. And we fought constantly. She knew this one was about her, though, so she got brave. She sat right next to me and pushed her brown nose against my hand.

I didn’t have to think about it, but I knew it was one of those moments that would live in our memories forever. I wanted to get the climax just right. 

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s figure out who gets what.”

“What does that mean? Don’t tell me that means what I think it means.”

I looked around the apartment. We didn’t have anything important. A TV. A fish tank. Some books.

“It’s all yours,” I said. “I just want the dog.”

I went outside to call somebody for a place to crash. I took Satine with me. The sun set and I watched the gray clouds crawl in from the east. I was waiting for a sign, but the sky was blank with indifference. If there were a desert nearby I would have walked us into it. But there was nothing brutal or wild, it had all been tamed. The only madness left in the world is going on in our own brains. I thought about my dog’s heart and how the only thing it beat for was me. I thought about the progress of mankind. About how many chances people have been given to do the right thing, and how often we actually do. Why did God ever let evolution go any further than the dog?