Frequent Flyer

Because I asked her to marry me, because she said yes, because my wedding suit was not my own and a tailor had to alter it, because the tailor was out of town, because we were driving on the highway, because we saw him panting in ninety-eight degrees, we had to stop for the dog on the side of the road. Because no shelter would take him, because they were full, because everyone has a beast they’d rather lose sooner than later, because it was late and she couldn’t let the dog go, we had to take him home. Because when he leapt out of the car, because it was dark, because our neighborhood had no streetlights, because we were too poor for the city to waste money on, because he was fast and I was stupid, I ran after the dog, because I couldn’t bear to lose someone else’s dog that was lost in the first place. Because it was nighttime all the nocturnal creatures were keeping foul watch, because the dog was a dog he chased a skunk, because I was chasing the dog in my wedding shoes the skunk branded both of us, because I cared too much about my body and was always running in the first place I kept up with the dog for miles, because I could see him, because his white fur glistened like sun off a snowbank, because he bobbed slightly when his paws graced the leaves, because even though this wasn’t my wife’s dog I thought her heart would explode if I didn’t get him back, because there are many other things I’d like to catch for her but can’t, I couldn’t let him go, because I already called her “wife.” Because after forty minutes I finally said, “god, enough,” enough, let him disappear into thicket and marsh, because I knelt down and rubbed the stitches blooming on my side, because maybe I uttered, in my desperation, “wait,” the dog reappeared like a ship stern rounding an island. Because he held an oak branch in his teeth, because his damp and putrid tail was wagging, because I smelled like sulfur myself, because we made eye contact like kin when he offered me the stick, because I, of all people, should not have underestimated the importance of play, because suddenly I trusted him, because I didn’t grab his frayed leash this time, because we walked back all the way home, because my wife was angry, because in my past life I was not a husband, because I had forgotten my cell phone and could have gotten hurt, because first I felt defensive and then I felt adored, because she and I weren’t yet married but still I felt obligated to save the dog, because he was now, truly, our dog, because even though we would return him in the morning to an old and confused woman we superimposed all sorts of meaning onto the dog, because the dog later should have been in my wedding vows but wasn’t, because my stomach was clanging with butterflies and hunger and envy for the cheeseburger we’d fed the dog but not ourselves, because we would later learn that he was an animal shelter “frequent flyer.” Because now the three of us smelled like the devil and the devil doesn’t easily dissipate, because we spent hundreds on a new vacuum cleaner, because we weren’t allowed animals in the apartment, because we didn’t yet wear wedding rings, because we scrubbed the living room inside out like surgeons, because she hates mess and I hate dogs, because we were in love, because we were in love with our love, because I feel—even now—the need to impress her, I keep one hand on the wheel and the other in her hand, her eyes signposting the future.