Page 41 of Just One Look
Not the La Perla!
All righty,then.
Luka laughed. How could you help it? In answer, she flashed her blue eyes at him, drew in her breath with spectacular results, and said, “Excuse me? I almost killed him the firstday.Now what, he’s going to die of an intestinal obstruction?” Her mouth wasn’t exactly under control, though, and as he grinned at her, she gave up, laughed helplessly, sank into the chair, grabbed the remains of his beer, and drank it down with the kind of reckless abandon a man appreciated.
“I need whiskey,” she informed him, setting the glass down. “Or vodka. Something like that, and probably from the bottle. And, yes, you can ask me why I came to find you instead of driving the dog to the vet. The vet’s closed, because of course the dog did this on a Sunday night. I could take him to an animal hospital, but you seemed to know dogs, so I thought I’d consult and see if there’s something I can do. That’s what you do if something’s out of your normal area of expertise. You consult. People bring their kids to Emergency all the time and wait three hours for answers like, “You’ll need to have him poop in a bucket for a few days and check for the coins to make sure they all come out,” but nobody I know has ever swallowed underwear. An engagement ring, yes. We had a few of those while I was a resident. He puts it in the bottom of her wine glass, she doesn’t see it and swallows it, and … not so romantic anymore. Here’s a tip: use champagne in that situation. Very transparent, champagne. Red wine, though? Risky.”
“Ouch,” he said. “Memorable, though.”
“Definitely. Also, if you can laugh about that, I guess your marriage might last. If your husband-to-be offers to do the searching, even better. We had one laugher and two angry criers. Marry the laugher, that’s my advice. Swallowing undergarments, though? Not so far, and I don’t know much about the canine digestive system.”
“Probably about like a human’s,” Luka said, “and that dog has to weigh fifty-five Kg’s. Most women I’ve dated have weighed less than that dog.”
“I noticed,” she said. “Thanks for that. Extremely tactful. They told me he was a Golden Retriever mix.”
“Mixed with Newfoundland, maybe. And in case you haven’t noticed, I asked you out.” He was going to say more about that, but if she thought theothercomment wasn’t tactful, what would she think about what he wanted to say about her … curb appeal? Better to shut up on that score. He’d tell her later, when they weren’t discussing intestinal blockages.
“Anyway,” she said, “it’s one o’clock in the morning in Georgia and I don’t know any vets even if it weren’t, so who else would I consult? Also, I told you I’d meet you, and I didn’t want you to sit here thinking I didn’t like you.”
“Nah,” he said. “How can you help but like me, with all our history?” She glanced at him, looking startled, and he said, “Joke. Sounds like he almost gothimselfkilled to me. Dog’s got a death wish.” He stood up. “We’ll go get my car, make a quick stop for supplies, and then see what we can do.”
“Can a dog vomit up underwear, do you think?” she asked. Which had to be the most random first-date question ever posed.
“Depends how big the underwear are,” he said.
* * *
What sheshouldhave done,of course, was to bundle Webster into the car and take him to the emergency vet. What shewasdoing was hurrying along beside Luka along a couple of blocks lined with more upscale villas and modern houses, with feathery-leafed trees and palms in profusion, and stopping outside a blank brick wall with a wooden door set into it while he pushed buttons and a garage door slid open to reveal a black SUV.
“Hop in,” he said, and she did.
Barely ten minutes later, after a stop for hydrogen peroxide, about which she’d said, “You’re kidding. It’s dangerous,” andhe’dsaid, “It works, though, and it’s also exactly what the emergency vet would use and charge you hundreds for,” he was pulling up outside her house and following her inside.
Webster, of course, greeted them with his usual furry ecstasy, particularly Luka, whom he addressed by promptly sitting down on his butt and grinning at him. She said, “He doesn’t do that forme.”
“That’s because you don’t have my tone of command,” he said.
“Now,” she said, “there, you’d be just exactly wrong.”
“Hmm.” He got his usual half-amused, half-bird-of-prey expression, which always confused her. “I’m not addressing that.” Then he scratched behind Webster’s ears, gave him an assessing look, and said, “He’s not dying yet, anyway. Will he have been inside all this time?”
“No. He has a dog door.”
“Let’s look outside, then,” he said, “and see whether he’s made our lives easy and got rid of them.”
A quick scan of the little patch of grass proved that, no, he hadn’t, and they headed back inside again, with Webster romping along like he was thrilled by this new game. Luka said, “Before we try anything, we’ll look around the rest of the house to make sure he hasn’t done the job in some corner.”
“You can see just about all of it from here,” she said. “The bathroom door and the one to the second bedroom are closed. There’s just my bedroom.” Which wasn’t any big deal. It wasmedical.
She took him in there. He didn’t stare in excitement at the discarded clothes on the bed, because he wasn’t sixteen years old, and she wasn’t any kind of irresistible bombshell.
“Nothing on the floor in here,” she said, “so they’re still inside him.”
“How long ago did he eat them?”
“Twenty minutes? Twenty-five max.”
“Then we’re in time. First, though, show me how big these undies actually are.”
