Man’s Best (Worst) Friend

Jeremiah plopped on the couch, sending dust and strands of fur into the air around him. He needed a lint roller, or maybe to call a cleaner. Easier said than done these days.

Milton lay on the couch just one cushion over, snoring and occasionally farting. A boxer. The dog kind. So peaceful. So… stinky.

When are you going to start paying some bills around here? Jeremiah thought as he pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through job listing forums. It’d been three months since he’d been laid off. He was beyond the point of relaxation and well into the point of, Oh shit—how am I going to pay my bills?

Countless times he’d reworked his resume, tailoring it to perfectly fit job descriptions, and countless times the only thing he heard back was an “I’m sorry, but…”

It was time for a strategy change. Maybe the old-timers were right. Maybe he just needed to print out a resume and show up uninvited to a few places. That would do it. Hell, the embarrassment of being laughed at as he dropped his resume off at a place would at least give him some peace of mind that he was doing all he could.

Jeremiah locked his phone and let it collapse on his chest as he slumped deeper into the dog-scented cushion behind him. A second later, it slid down his chest and onto the floor with a dull thud.

“Great,” Jeremiah said, leaning up. “A broken phone, just another thing I can’t afford to deal with.”

Milton’s eyes cracked open at the sound, one ear twitched, and he lifted his head.

Jeremiah looked at him, and the dog huffed, tilted his head, and lay it back down, the white patches on his brown face bunching as his jowls collapsed into the suede gray cushion, leaking a little drool.

The phone would be a later problem. Jeremiah couldn’t bear to look at the damage right now, and his stomach wasn’t as much growling as it was groaning. He’d been skipping breakfast for the past two weeks, and as it turned out, he’d accidentally skipped lunch today.

Once he’d made his way to his modest kitchen—plain brown cabinets, white appliances—he opened the fridge and his mouth matched the groans of his stomach. There wasn’t anything in there worth eating—even in some kind of apocalypse scenario. Just condiments, some leftovers in a plastic container that’d been there for longer than he could remember, and a single egg.

Jeremiah shrugged and grabbed the egg. And the ketchup. Ketchup was good. Vitamins.

He’d have to go grocery shopping sometime soon. Melanie could wait on the rent. A starved-to-death man wouldn’t be able to pay it anyway. Mom always said a full belly is better than a roof, because a full belly can at least find one.

The egg wasn’t good, but it did its job, partially. Jeremiah went back to the living room. His phone was buzzing on the wooden floor, inching slowly across it from the vibration. Milton was on the couch with his butt in the air and his front paws and head low to the cushion.

He was going to jump on the phone.

“Milton! No!” Jeremiah shouted, but he was too late. Milton had made his mind up. The dog launched from the cushion, throwing it off the couch, and landed right on Jeremiah’s phone. A sharp crack came muffled from under the boxer’s paws.

Jeremiah stared at the phone and moved over to the dog quickly, but Milton stood firm over it.

“Buddy,” he said, leaning and reaching toward the phone. “Get off of it.”

Milton eyed Jeremiah, paws not moving an inch.

“Off. Now.”

The dog finally did get off of the phone—in a way. He began to pounce it like it was a mouse that’d walked into the wrong neighborhood, growling in a playful manner while he did it.

“No!” Jeremiah nudged the dog away with his leg and scooped the phone up. But Milton kept going after it, jumping toward Jeremiah’s waist and trying to knock it out of his hands.

The screen was shattered, and there was no way to tell if it was Milton’s fault or if the damage had been done after Jeremiah had dropped it. Either way, the dog certainly hadn’t made it any better.

It was still vibrating in Jeremiah’s hands, but aside from a faint light coming from the screen, nothing on it was legible. He swiped it to try and answer whoever it was that was calling, in hopes that maybe it was all just visual damage, but it didn’t work.

That could’ve been a job. Some mid-level manager calling him to schedule an interview.

“Why did you have to do that?”

Jeremiah ran his hands through his hair while Milton wagged his tail like he’d done something good. The dog disappeared as Jeremiah stood in front of the couch in disbelief at the mess in his hands. And almost as quickly as the paws tittered off, they returned, and Milton stood in front of Jeremiah with an orange and blue, slightly damp ball in his mouth.

“No, Milton, I don’t want to play right now.”

The dog whined, pawed at him.

“No.”

Jeremiah sat back on the couch after fixing the cushion Milton had disheveled and reached for the TV remote sitting on the glass coffee table in front of him. He clicked the TV on and tossed the broken phone back to the ground. Milton watched, then happily walked over to Jeremiah and put his head in his lap, dropping the ball.

Jeremiah slid the ball off of himself and Milton gave up. Instead, the dog hopped back onto the couch too and rested his head on him. His fingers ran through Milton’s fur out of instinct. He couldn’t be too mad at the dog.

They lingered on the couch for a few hours before Jeremiah wandered to his desk, tucked into a corner behind the couch. He printed out several copies of his resume, using all the paper he had.

It was getting late, and between stress and insufficient nutrients, Jeremiah was pooped. He did his normal rounds on the house, making sure the doors were locked and all of the lights were off, before he realized he’d been holding all of the copies of his resume during it all. As he turned off the light to the living room, he dropped the pile of papers onto the coffee table and went to bed.

The next morning, he was woken up by hot dog breath tickling his nose hairs. Usually, that was a terrible start to the day, but he’d normally use his phone as an alarm clock, and seeing how it was broken and still on the living room floor, for the first time in his life, Jeremiah was happy to smell it. He waved his arms around with his eyes half-open like he was looking for the snooze button, but Milton didn’t have one. The dog evaded all of the attempted swats and made sure Jeremiah was up by jumping on the bed and smacking him with his paws.

“Alright, alright, I’m up.”

Jeremiah stretched his arms wide and threw his thick, cozy, green comforter to the side, wishing he could stay in bed for a few more moments.

Milton jumped off the bed and followed Jeremiah through the doorway of the bedroom, trotting closely behind and occasionally getting stirred up with his ankles.

There was nothing in the kitchen, of course, but Jeremiah checked the fridge anyway. Milton stuck to him like a shadow. Jeremiah filled his bowl with kibble and sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen with a glass of water as the dog ate. When Milton was finished, Jeremiah let the dog out and watched as something came out of him that was inconceivable.

How do dogs even hold that much inside of them? He thought. Gross.

The back door was connected to the kitchen, so once the two came back in, that’s where they were. The clock on the stove was just a little past ten. Jeremiah needed to take a shower, grab his resumes, and head out for the day. First stop would be the phone store, though. It wouldn’t do any good to drop off the resumes without a way to be reached.

As he walked through the kitchen toward the living room, he thought he remembered something he saw in his still half-dreaming mind. A mess.

He picked up the speed a little, got to the living room, and turned on the light.

“Oh… my… fucking…”

Milton stood at Jeremiah’s side, wagging his tail. He’d done a good job, at least from his perspective.

The entire living room was trashed. Every resume was torn to shreds. Remnants were all over the place—the couch, the floor, everything. There were even wet pieces of paper on the TV. Oh, God, Milton, how did you even manage that?

Jeremiah was motionless. He took a deep breath. After all, it was his fault he’d left them there. Milton loved to eat paper. The dog probably thought it was a treat for being so good at breaking the phone. A late-night snack.

He closed his eyes and lowered his shoulders. He was out of paper, so he wouldn’t be able to print anymore, but he could still at least introduce himself at a few places. Maybe stop by a printing shop and make more copies.

After he gathered himself, he stuck his finger out to Milton’s nose and pointed with his other hand at the mess.

“Bad, Milton. No!”

Milton wagged his tail, farted, returned to his bowls in the kitchen, and started loudly lapping his water.

Jeremiah sighed and made his way to his room, grabbed his nicest clothes, and laid them on the bed. His bathroom was connected to his bedroom, and after laying the clothes out, he took a shower, shaved, and made himself look nice and smell nice. But when he came out, Milton was at it again.

The dog was stretched out over all of the clothes on the bed. The clothes were covered in fur. Jeremiah gritted his teeth, but this was another instance of knowing that it was his own fault. Milton always laid on his clothes when he left them on the bed. He should’ve brought them into the bathroom.

“Milton, off.”

The dog lazily jumped off the bed and stood near Jeremiah while he dressed.

“Okay, buddy, I’m gonna be gone a while. Be good while I’m out.”

Jeremiah picked up his phone from under torn papers on the living room floor and headed out. Milton followed him to the front door and whined as he closed it.

The phone store was the first stop. Luckily, they had a deal where he could trade in his broken phone and get a new one. Then, he went to the copy shop, and finally, he stopped at a few places and introduced himself, covered in fur and probably reeking of Milton. But based on the interactions, it seemed everything went mostly fine.

It was around one in the afternoon when he got back home, and Milton was waiting for him patiently. Of course, Milton’s “patience” meant jumping all over the place and covering Jeremiah in even more fur the second he came inside.

It had been a productive day. Jeremiah was feeling good, and when he was feeling good, that meant the backyard and a game of fetch. Milton could sense it and see it on his face. Either that, or he needed to take another shit, because as soon as the jumping subsided, the dog ran through the living room, kitchen, and straight to the back door.

They went outside for a while. Milton ran around the sole tree in the fenced yard over and over before he picked up his outside ball and brought it to Jeremiah. It was a tennis ball, but worn by the elements. More gray now than the yellow it had been, and it was covered in dirt, but it was the dog's favorite.

Jeremiah tossed it, and Milton caught it, brought it back. They did that for an hour before his shoulder grew sore.

Milton ran through the grass and dropped the ball in front of Jeremiah’s feet. The man leaned over, not to pick the ball up, but to pat the dog on the head and tell him something.

“You know, buddy, you can’t keep sabotaging me. I gotta get a job at some point,” he said, scratching Milton’s ears.

Milton whined and tilted his head, urging Jeremiah to pick the ball up and throw it at least one more time.

In his pocket, Jeremiah’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out and saw he was getting a call from another unknown number.

He locked the phone, tossed it back in his pocket, and picked up the ball as he stood.

“Alright,” he said. “One more.”