Ralph

It was love at first sight.

The coffee shop was unusually crowded for a Wednesday morning. I had to wait ten minutes for an opening—sharing a table with an elderly woman who was dropping more muffin crumbs on the table and the floor than she managed to eat.

I sat down opposite her, brushed the mess to the side, and dug my laptop out of my bag. “Wait,” waitress Mandy said as she cleaned my side of the table. “Iced decaf latte?” she asked. My usual.

“Yes, please, and a raspberry danish,” I said as I set up my laptop. I had a complete story in my head and wanted to get it down quickly before it slithered away.

I was two paragraphs into it when the old woman finished crumbling her muffin, placed a quarter tip under her plate, and glared at me, daring me to steal it. I smiled at her and went back to my story, but made a mental note to include her as an antagonist in my next story.

She was immediately replaced by a well-dressed man in his mid-thirties who asked, “Do you mind dogs?”

“No, I love them,” I understated and looked down at the snuffling noise at his feet.

And there he was. The new love of my life, an overweight English bulldog, a sack of potatoes with a pug nose. “Hello, darling. Aren’t you gorgeous!”

He took that as an invitation, rightly so, and climbed into my lap, tipping the table and spilling my drink onto my laptop.

“Ralph, no!” his owner yelped, trying to pull him off me. But I wrapped my arms around him as he snarfed down my pastry and planted a sticky raspberry kiss on my nose.

Mandy hurried over to clean up the mess. The owner switched his apology stream to her, promising a big tip. She chuckled and skritched Ralph behind an ear.

He responded by throwing himself back in my arms, exposing his plump, white belly. I know it’s technically not true, but sixty-five pounds of solid dog seems a lot heavier than a sixty-five pound bag of, say, feathers or hair.

I almost dropped him, but I managed to brace my elbow on the windowsill and hold onto him. And I gave him the belly rub he was asking for while telling him what a good dog he was.

Ralph emitted a low grumbly noise that I swear was a purr.

The owner gave up and buried his face in his hands. Mandy placed a mug of coffee in front of him.

“He’s overweight,” I accused.

“I know,” he said. “He’s my sister’s, but she never exercises him. In fact, she keeps him in a crate all day.”

I could feel the blood rush to my face and tears fill my eyes. “That’s cruel!”

“I think so too. I take him out whenever I can, but my job is very demanding. I’m trying to talk her into giving him up, but she can’t stand the thought of him going to a shelter. God knows why. It wouldn’t be much different for him.”

“I’ll take him,” I cried, impulsively. And also foolishly, as my apartment doesn’t permit pets and, since I had only sold two stories so far this year, I could barely afford rent.

Hope lit up his features. “Really?”

Ralph struggled up to a sitting position and licked my nose. “Really,” I said.

I knew what I had to do. My mother had been urging me to move back home ever since my brother joined the Coast Guard and deployed to the Bering Strait. My older sister was married and producing the next generation in Washington, DC, and Mom described herself as “rattling around like a ping pong ball” in our family home in the suburbs.

I could forsee problems. First, Mom loved to talk, gossip mostly, but also lots of outmoded advice and old wives tales, food planning, and more. She considered anyone who was reading or working on a laptop as not really doing anything and so available for chatter.4n ²is +

And second, she doesn’t really like dogs. My older sister left her Cocker Spaniel behind when she moved out, and Mom begrudgingly took care of the dog for ten years. She didn’t even try to hide her relief when Lady passed.

But still, I thought it was doable. I might have to lock myself in my room when writing and keep Ralph away from the kitchen, her command central.

I told the owner—or rather the owner’s brother—that I wanted a formal, legal agreement to surrender him. I didn’t want his sister coming back later and asking for her dog back. Luckily, he was a lawyer and wrote it up himself when he got to his office. I signed, his sister signed, and their office notary stamped it official.

And so Ralph and I went home to the burbs and lived happily ever after.