are built into your bones—you were born into being hated in this way, so now at least when you fall in love with women you are making a choice. You’re saying, Go ahead, hate me. Just try. Try to hate me for how much I love.
And if I’d loved you less, I’d have told you that you didn’t answer the question.
It is August and the air is in stasis. It is too hot to move without reason; we act like camouflaged soldiers, housing ourselves in the earth until we must move or die.
I bury my face in Zeus’s neck and I let his proximity take away my eyes, my nose, my mouth. In these moments he is soft and warm—he is the world. He smells like dog shampoo and wet earth and I’d have stayed like that forever, his coiffed fur tickling my ears, if Jeremy hadn’t nudged my shoulder with a stack of papers.
“You’re all good then?” He hands me the papers. “You’ll take care of him?”
I glance at the papers—instructions. Walk, feed, water, treats are here, poop bags there.
“I’m not picking up any shit,” I say.
Jeremy mimes plugging his ears. “Plausible deniability,” he says. “You do what you want.”
I shrug and scratch Zeus behind the ear. He snorts and leans his heavy head against my hand.
“Are you sure this is kosher?” I ask.
“Of course it is,” Jeremy says. “You’re Jewish.”
I feel my jaw tense and lock the way my mother’s used to when I was being insolent. We all say we won’t be like our mothers. It’s old news.
“You know what I mean, Jeremy. This woman hired you to take care of
12 | Psychopomp Magazine