Star's Yearning

Even though I'm a dog, I understand everything my master Ozzy says. I relax my neck and my head droops. I shake it as if it’s all noise. 

“I’m sorry, Star,” Oz says. I wish you understood. Grocery stores, pharmacies, the post office wave a no flag at dogs. When it's hot I’d be leaving you in an oven car where you could die.”

Oz has dated a number of women, but none have lasted to walk the aisle to join him at the altar. How can they compete with a basset hound who sits beside him on the couch, my head on his lap. When he sits in his red rocker-recloiner, I look up at him worshipfully and wag my tail. I lick his bands. 

”You’re a beautiful basset, Star,” he’ll say. When I look at myself in his bedroom mirror at my mahogany head and legs plus white chest with black dots, I agree. 

After my master’s last woman left, leaves turned red, brown, and orange and zigzagged off trees. My feet felt cold when Oz walked me. My osteoarthritis hurt more. Oz’s too. When he read or watched TV, he draped his knees with a heating pad.

“You’re taking Rimadyl for pain, Star.”

Enter dog-heaven buster breaker Valerie Collins, an attractive, blue-eyed blonde. She’s almost as tall as Oz, the tallest man I’ve seen. Oz forgot me and routed his 

affection to Valerie. She scratched my ears and belly. I showed her affection. I danced when she entered our house. She smelled consequential. I never smelled her real-flower perfume before, and I’m a smell expert, being a basset, a scent dog. I always feel special: s-e-n-t to s-c-e-n-t.

I stopped running to Oz when he returned from somewhere with a new smell stuck to him. I stopped shaking hands, rolling over, barking on command, and lying on my back, and peddling when scratched on my peddling place. 

“You’re breaking my heart, Star,” he said. “You’re in love with Valerie, and your heart’s too small to include me. Instead of being jealous of Valeri, you’re jealous of me. You’ve clubbed my heart with irony. I’ve talked to my friend, Jerry Thomas, a farmer who lives in the country. He and his wife, Marge, are going to take you.”

I wish I’d been able to say, “You started it, forgetting me in the affection competition.”

At the beginning of Oz and Valerie’s romance I had hoped Valerie would be expelled. Dumb dog I, was the feeling that consumed me in Oz’s pickup’s back seat when we drove to Jerry’s ranch aka farm. I heard my master tell Jerry that Valerie stood under the shower of affection that had once been his. 

I could see Jerry and Oz through the pickup’s back window. Would I ever again smell Oz’s pickup’s dust, the Spearmint gum he chewed, and coconut lip balm? 

What happens if Star misses you and can’t be consoled?” Jerry said.

“Give us a call in the early morning or in the evening when we're home from work,” the words rushed out of Oz. “We'll be at your door in twenty minutes.”

A month later, on a chilly, sunny day, Ozzy returned. When I snuggled against his leg, he recoiled and pushed me away. Hurt my nose. I wagged my tail, metronome-like. I licked Oz’s hands. Valerie's scent was on him. Ther men sat on a bench under a white oak tree. 

”If I return dogless, Valerie’s gone,” Oz said. 

“Why

“She’s never had a pet she loved this much. Star’s an impossible dream, that such a flow of affection, two beings to each other, makes her feel at twoness with the universe, whatever that means.”

“We also love Star,” Jerry said. 

“Meaning it’s going to take multitudinous dollars to renown her?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re going to prove it by your exorbitant price?”

“Amen.” The men stared at each other. They coughed simultaneously.

“Four hundred dollars,”Jerry whispered.

“Beyond our means.” Oz stood and walked toward his pickup. 

“I’m pulling your chain,” Jerry called to Oz’s back. “Marge yearned for a dog but Star gives her endless spiritlessness. I was planning to bring her back to you.”

This old dog’s new trickery worked. I’d miss the farm smells: cattle, sheep, hay, straw, oak leaves, barnyard, and manure to roll in. On the drive home, Oz’s lap pillowed my head. 

The End