Read Online Savage Love by Douglas Glover - Free Book Online Page A

losers. You spend your life trying to get a handle on things, then you die, or worse, you die in some long, painful and humiliating manner. Maybe I was scared before this and didn’t know it. But now I knew it. I looked down the road and I felt sick.
    I looked down Pulver now and saw my dog exiting the chow’s driveway on her way home, looking businesslike with her tail up. Isobel said she thought the hamster had moved. It wasn’t dead after all. Sophie looked asleep, white as an egg. The dog’s nonchalance enraged me. I sipped my drink and thought about scaring the dog with the car, just nudging her into the ditch to remind her who was the boss, that the angel of death hovered over her shoulder too. I grabbed the car phone and speed-dialed the Saab.
    Ellen answered. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’m at the ER. You said you’d meet me.”
    â€œI got delayed,” I said. “We’re on our way.”
    I gunned the engine. The dog trotted toward us down the middle of the street in the summer twilight. I could hear children’s laughter, their taunts and shrieks. Down our street toward the cul-de-sac they were playing kickball, a game that seemed to go on all summer.
    Isobel said, “Daddy, watch out for the dog.”
    â€œWe’ll be right there,” I said into the phone. “I just have to take care of one or two things.”
    â€œHow’s Sophie?” my wife asked.
    â€œShe’s asleep,” I said. “Exhausted.”
    â€œI talked to your friend Lily,” said Ellen. “I don’ t blame her. I don’t even blame you. But you have to get out now.”
    I hung up, sipped my drink.
    I had the dog in my sights. I was waiting for the twilight to fade so I could safely call it an accident. For a naturally inquisitive dog it was a long haul down Pulver, what with the garbage cans out on the curb and miscellaneous piles of crap and urine markers to identify. I just hated that dog. Every ounce of frustration, anger, envy and resentment focused like a laser beam onto that dog. Of course, it was my wife’s dog — maybe that was part of it. I just fed it, housed it, cleaned up when it vomited on the carpets, slept in a bed covered with dog hair, smelled of dog. I gunned the engine and inched forward, nosing into the middle of the street.
    Isobel said, “Pinky’s shivering. His legs are shaking.”
    â€œPinky’s a girl hamster,” I said. I glanced over at the cage where the hamster was spasming her last, back legs outstretched, reaching for some unimaginable purchase. Lucky hamster, I thought. Found your reward.
    The dog saw me coming. She was bending to sniff at the base of the Rexforths’ County Waste can, then she sensed the oncoming Subaru and glanced up. I was just going to nudge her. I don’t know what happened. Blackout, or something. My foot went right down on the accelerator. Isobel shrieked. Sophie started awake and braced her hands on the dashboard, her eyes wide with horror under that bloody towel turban. I hit the brakes. The tires squealed. There was a thunk as I went over something in the road. Then I kept moving, the car somehow processing sideways, which seemed against the physics of wheel alignment. I took out the Rexforths’ mailbox with the passenger door, bumped up onto their brick-terraced perennial garden, and finally came to rest against the trunk of a pine tree.
    Time to take stock, I thought. Slow down and take stock. Katie and Isobel in the back seat were on their knees looking out the rear window. Sophie was slumped against the passenger door, her turban undone, fresh blood welling out of the wound on her forehead. The passenger window glass was cracked and starred. I touched her shoulder, and she turned slowly to look at me. She had her mother’s eyes, I thought. Unfriendly, calculating — that what-have-you-done-for-me-lately look. This is what marriage does to a