The Luck of Woodrow Romine & Trouble O'Keefe: Dogs to Whom Things Happen

PART II:

Song of the Irish Whistle

Trouble could not find another game of Mario Kart in him, so he rolled onto his back, against the brown leather sofa, and stared at the ceiling, waiting for someone to scratch the white diamond of hair on his chest, filling the room with farts until it would be hard put to say he was not a farter. Asked by his master, Lord Ed, to step outside if he was going to continue to try to kill him with the mustard gas that seeped from his behind, Trouble thought of demanding satisfaction, but like all who have acquired a title through noble means, Trouble O'Keefe had second thoughts about killing the man who feeds him.

It is quickly forgotten about when Trouble discovers an envelope of barbecue sauce beside his pool. An invitation from his cousin, one Woodrow Romine, to join him that afternoon at Cafe Lyndon in the southeast corner of the dog park. A who’s-who of butt sniffing to which Woodrow was a member, and Trouble was not.

Born to a single mother, Trouble and his 14 siblings decided to part early, and part from each other, for they were strays. Where Woodrow was educated and slender, Trouble was big and… well, he was big. Though Woodrow had also grown up in poverty, he was picked up at the pound, whereas Trouble had to acquire such a privilege through many trials and errors with only a guinea to his name. When he first met his master, Lady E, via a hair stylist who had found him rummaging through the wardrobe of a film set, it was love at first sight. Still, it was almost not to be, for she was an owner of property, and as an owner of property, her husband, Lord Ed, played video games.

“No way, get this dog out of your house! I’m this close to being world champion in every conceivable Nintendo game!”

But Ed had not yet looked into his dog's eyes, and when he did, he wrapped his arms around him and gave him his name.

“You’re Trouble. Trouble O'Keefe.”

“Woof,” said Trouble, and that night, the three of them sat in their backyard and enjoyed a milkbone.

Though the invite was delicious, Trouble rolled his eyes, knowing what his cousin wanted to discuss. He had been barking about it for months. To acquire and sell plots in Greenland to dogs that didn’t know any better. Woodrow had overheard his step-father, sometimes Lord and Irishman, Matthau O’Grady, after a particularly lengthy binge on the sauce, discussing a proposition with his drug-addict friend, the gambler, Nicholas de Chevalier.

“Nye is the time to go where no penguin has gone before, Matthau! Greenland.”

“Hand me some more barbecue sauce,” replied O’Grady.

But perhaps Woodrow simply needed to get out of the house, thought Trouble. Based on what he had tasted, this was the last of a bottle of barbecue sauce, and if there is one thing all dogs know, it is best to keep your distance from one Matthau O’Grady when he is dry-rubbing chicken.

While Trouble waited outside Cafe Lyndon, for Woodrow’s collar was to get them in, he heard a particular tune he had not heard since he was a pup, Women of Ireland by Seán Ó Riada. Overwhelmed with an emotional resonance that at once barked back to his puphood while plucking the strings of his very being. Trouble looked for its source but found no instruments, only an unspayed bitch, a lass with the hair of his blood. Her collar said, Rose.

Before Trouble introduced himself, he looked into a bowl and made sure his tri-corn hat was at an angle that would not rouse any suspicion from the mother and street from which he came, for Rose looked like a Lady. Her black hair, the same black hair as he, was cut, and her whiskers had a feminine quality seldom seen outside the cafe. Trouble approached.

“Woof.”

“Woof,” she said.

“Woof, woof.”

“Woof?”

Trouble left, much to Rose's surprise, and came back with a gift, a dirty baseball. She smiled.

“Woof?”

“Woof,” said Trouble, and pushed the ball to her with his wet nostril.

Women of Ireland blared through her master’s speakers as they lay in the park, side by side, woofing about doggie things. When a squirrel came dangerously close about 300 yards away, Rose was impressed with Trouble’s restraint and got up.

“Woof.”

“Woof?” asked Trouble.

“Woof.”

They spun in circles, smelling one another’s buttholes. The Irish whistle was as strong as the wagging of their tails. This was more than puppy love, and no one saw that better than Woodrow Romine, chewing a pipe that squeaked when he bit it.

Mandatory 15 Minute Intermission

Through Bluetooth speakers, Sarabande by George Frideric Handel played behind Woodrow. It wasn’t that Woody, as he is affectionately known in the Cafe, was jealous, oh no, it was that many guineas were to be made. In his opinion, formed by the university that he and his master, Lady Deanna, walked. He was seldom not in the company of unspayed others, woofing and smelling. “Woof, woof,” he barked.

Trouble looked at his cousin, leaving the plentiful aroma of another dog’s anus, and a Lady dog at that. Woodrow, with his ruffles, powdered face, and cosmetic black spots, a trend of the time, did not hesitate to call out for his cousin again.

“Woof, woof!”

Rose, not knowing they were blood, wondered whether Trouble would demand satisfaction. She certainly sensed it, but as Women of Ireland picked up behind them, she saw an Irish rogue who was more gentledogly than a butcher. “Woof,” she said.

“Woof, woof,” said Trouble.

“Woof?”

“Woof.”

They licked amongst the tin whistles n’ strings of an Irish spring. “Woof,” she said.

Trouble looked for the baseball but could not find it.

“Woof?”

“Woof, woof,” she said.

Trouble looked harder until she raised her back leg, and revealed it next to her butthole. Trouble took a whiff.

“Woof.”

“Woof, woof.”

Trouble did not want to leave, but not a guinea to his name, and not wanting his pups to leave so abruptly and wander the streets of Los Angeles until they stumble upon a film set and meet an actress like he had to, went to his cousin, vowing to return to Rose, after they sold some of Greenland.