T
he man and the dog are looking out the window. The dog sits quietly at the edge of the man’s chair, his muzzle graying and his body less muscular than it was some years ago. He is still an impressive animal, weighing nearly as much as a small woman.
A small woman walks by on the sidewalk outside, her blouse cut low and her hips swinging gently as she walks. The man leans forward in his chair and watches her keenly, as she stops for a moment and bends at the hip to brush off a leaf clinging to the hem of her skirt. Her hair slides forward over her shoulders and glints red-brown in the sunlight. The outline of her thigh is visible through the sheer fabric as the sun hits it just so.
The man growls slightly, a bass rumble that is transmitted through the legs of his chair, through the floor and the dirt beneath, into the earth. This is where earthquake fault lines come from, the aggregate disturbance of a million lusty male rumbles, stored in the earth’s long memory and causing tectonic plates to rub and rise. Causing, occasionally, a frustrated volcanic eruption.
The woman continues walking and the man watches until she rounds the corner and is out of sight. He leans back in his chair and waits. The dog lies down, drowsy from the sunlight. His paws twitch with the memory of red-brown fur. In a moment, the man’s woman knocks at the door. The dog knows who it is before the door is opened and does not bother to rise, though he opens one eye and wags his tail politely. The small woman kneels and strokes his head gently and says, what a good dog, in a low voice meant only for him. He can smell a thousand things on her skin: the sunlight, her soap, her lunch, the high sweet smell of the woman's heat, a smell he understands to be a response to the man. It’s not the smell of a bitch’s heat, but it has a similar top note.
The man pulls her up to him and says, smiling, “You always greet him first.” She laughs. Then, he pushes her arms back until he is holding her slim wrists behind her waist, and he kisses her urgently.
The woman is surprised, and says, “A bit of spring fever, my love?”
She does not resist when he pushes her backwards, towards his bed. He places her down, her arms still pinned behind her, and lifts her skirt up over her hips. He cups her pubic bone in his hand and uses his thumb to stroke her as he kisses her deeply. She closes her eyes and deliberately surrenders to his hand and mouth, her body soft and boneless beneath him. She feels herself come alive to him, pressing her hips up into his hand, sucking on his tongue like a nursing child. He begins to twiddle her nipple roughly and she tries not to cry out. He is rougher than usual and she knows her skin will be bruised.
The dog dozes by the window, unconcerned.
The man groans and moves upwards on the bed to straddle the woman’s face, forcing her mouth open with his fingers and thrusting his cock in. Her lip scrape across her bottom teeth and begins to bleed. The pain focuses her consciousness into a single, sharp point, and then she allows herself to melt out of it. With his groin pressing into her face, she cannot see anything. She can only feel him going down her throat, her hands pinned behind her and unable to control his depth or tempo. Her blood mixes with saliva and sweat as he fucks her face. He stares at himself going in and out of her mouth, and he can see that her eyes are closed and her jaw is strained with the effort to accommodate him. He can see a tiny sliver of blood at the corner of her mouth.
By the chair, the dog abruptly lifts his head and looks out the window. Another dog is on the street outside, her tail high, the scent of her heat reaching him, impossibly, through the closed window—in the same way that two electrons can affect each other across a distance with no physical connection. He knows this dog. Her scent is imprinted on his brain, from a time long ago when he had his balls and his youth.
He rises shakily to his feet, rumbling a deep bass rumble. The earth listens and waits. The dog paws at the window and whines, watching the dog outside, her red-brown fur gleaming in the sun as she sniffs the base of a tree. The dog begins yipping urgently and pacing in front of the window.
On the bed, the man says “shit,” and rolls off the woman. She opens her eyes and wipes her mouth, and watches as the man walks to the back door, opens it to let dog into the back yard, then shuts it again quickly. The dog goes out, moving faster than he has in years, his nose on fire with the smell of his attractor. He takes the back steps at a trot and heads straight for the low fence around the corner of the house, the one the man believes he can no longer jump. He is at a full run by the time he gets there, barely clearing the fence as his shaggy coat billows in the wind and his tail flags behind him.
Inside, the woman says, “What was that about?” The man shrugs, frustrated and irritated. He says, “Who knows what goes on in that dog’s brain,” as they laid down next to each other and began kissing again, but slower this time. He runs his tongue across the cut inside her lower lip. She winces but does not move away. He pulls her closer to him and combs his fingers through her hair, sucking her lip, smelling her, becoming aroused again. He will not forget her scent or her touch. The man and woman begin to rock against one another.
Outside, the dog gallops unevenly down the sidewalk, his nose leading him as though it is connected to the other dog by an invisible wire. He sees a flash of red-brown fur across the street and takes off faster, feeling himself to be young and invincible again. He smells the lovely outdoor and imagines he can still feel the sway of his balls beneath his tail.
The young driver never sees him. She feels a heavy thud against her car and stomps on the brakes, terrified that she has hit a child. She throws open her door and stumbles out of the car, running around the front and catching her breath when she sees long golden hair, then letting it out again when she realizes it is only a dog. His back legs are twisted up beneath him and he is staring at the sky, his nose twitching, a small trickle of blood coming out of his mouth.
He can still smell her, his red-brown bitch, over the smells of exhaust and his own loosed shit. He remembers how it felt to lope alongside her, to smell her fur and her sex. He remembers the feel of her tongue on the side of his mouth. He remembers nuzzling her, wrestling her, dominating her.
Now, he feels the earth shifting and rumbling somewhere deep below him, opening up to embrace him in its own warm smells. He closes his eyes and lets go, as the earth shifts to make way, and the man and woman move together as a single magnificent animal.
Originally published April 2009