Read Online Dog Bless You by Neil S. Plakcy - Free Book Online

Or
did I just not like people telling me what I could and couldn’t do? Was that a
remnant of life behind bars, or had I always been that way?
    “Remember, these kids are coming from the inner city,”
Lili said, sitting up. “They’ve probably got a good idea of what life is like
already for these characters. You don’t want to talk down to them. Try and let
them lead the conversation.”
    “This won’t be my first time at the rodeo,” I said. “I
do know how to teach.”
    “I’m not saying you don’t. Just that these kids are
different from the ones you teach at Eastern. They’re younger, they’re probably
more jaded, and they see difficult things all the time.”
    “Oh, you mean like finding dead bodies?” I said.
“Creepy hands rising up from unmarked graves?”
    I turned my hand over in a mimicry of the one we’d
found at Friar Lake.
    “That’s just tragic,” she said. “Get the dog’s leash so
we can get moving.”
    We walked Rochester together, and I was glad to have
Lili there for company. Despite my joking, I had been unsettled by that
disembodied hand in the muck at Friar Lake, and didn’t want to worry about
every stray noise in the dark.
    After Rochester had left all his doggy messages, Lili
and I went back up to the bedroom, where we put the books aside and enjoyed
each other's company before we went to sleep.
     The next morning, Rochester gobbled more of Lili’s
chicken and rice, and I continued to give him the medication the vet had
prescribed. I wasn’t taking any chances on a repeat performance. We played out
the same routine – I hid the pill in a chunk of peanut butter, which he ate, then
he licked my finger clean. Then he spit the pill out, and I had to drop it down
his throat. You’d think one of us would learn.
    I liked the fact that Lili had begun leaving a few
clothing and toiletry items at my house. It made our relationship seem that
much more solid, and when she stayed over she was able to get ready for work
with me and we could ride up to Eastern together.
    As I pulled into a parking space behind Fields Hall,
Lili said, “Remember, I’m going into Philly this afternoon to see my friend’s
gallery show, and then dinner with some people. I’ll call you when I get home.”
    “Have fun.” We kissed and then got out of the car.
    “Remember what I said about thinking this job offer
through,” Lili said. “Don’t just jump at it because John Babson says so. You
have skills and you have options.”
    “I wish I had your confidence in my abilities,” I said.
“But don’t worry, I’ll think.”
    As I walked Rochester to my office, I thought about
what Lili had said. Did she really have faith in me – or did she just have her
own vision of the person I could be? That was the case with Mary, for sure. It
took me a long time to understand that when we met, she saw me as a ball of
clay she could mold into her idea of the perfect husband. When I resisted her
efforts – to get an MBA like my friend Tor or to seek a promotion at work—she
got angry. Part of the reason why our marriage failed was because I couldn’t
conform to the man Mary wanted me to be.
    I didn’t want to recreate that pattern with Lili. I
needed her to see me as who I was, warts and all. While Rochester sniffed
around the base of a pine tree, I wondered if what I saw was the real Liliana
Weinstock. Because we shared a Jewish background, she was familiar to me in
many ways; but because she had been born in Cuba, and grown up in a
Latin-influenced household in the US, she was also exotic. That blend was fascinating
to me.
    She’d been married twice and divorced both times, and
had pursued a career in photojournalism around the world before choosing to
become an academic. Sometimes her intellect awed me; she had a PhD, took
amazing photos and then manipulated them into awe-inspiring art through her
computer skills. I had relied on my intelligence and skill with words and
computers to slide through life