It had been a full twenty-four hours since that last meeting and now Lucy waited, tapping her steering wheel while watching a group of dogs play in the side yard next to the South Central Wisconsin Humane Society. She checked her watch and fiddled with the clasp, unlocking the silver linking mechanism, locking it back, finally pinching the tender flesh of her wrist after the fourth time. It was as if the watch had slapped her and said, enough.

Lucy didn't know if Mark worked, slept, or polished his guns in the afternoon. She figured the less she knew the better. If he showed, fine. If not, she could breathe a sigh of relief, pick up an application to volunteer at the shelter, and report back to her brother Charles. She tried to silence all the fussbudgets in her mind.

One thing she knew for sure, though. Waiting around by herself for ten minutes in a parking lot was a whole lot better than riding with Mark and trying to make unscripted conversation with him as they drove together to the humane society. Twenty-five minutes of tongue-tied driving and self-conscious stuttering would likely undo her. She'd probably steal his tree-air freshener and then have to do hard time for it.

Lucy touched her late husband Richard's gift, riding shotgun next to her, and fished out a CD from her glove box: Speak Mandarin in 500 Words. She shoved the CD into the player. A musical woman's voice came loudly through the car speakers, "Hu?nyíng."

"Hu?nyíng." she said aloud, matching the woman's volume.

There was a rap on the window and Lucy whipped her head around. She opened the window and the voice said, "N? j?nti?n? How are you today?"

Mark stood smiling, his face unguarded. A little boy expecting a puppy at the end of the day. "How do you say ‘excited’ in Chinese?" he asked.

Lucy shut the volume off on the CD and opened her car door. "You look like Christmas morning."

Mark gave her a bashful look. She’d read him too accurately. "Nah, I'm a hard-hitting cop. Takes a lot more than a dog to soften this hide."

"Ok, tough guy. Let's go pet some puppies."

Notices for classes of all kinds papered the glass doors of the humane society: Teaching Kids Kindness, Big Dog Agility training, and one with a large block letters that advertised placing old dogs with old dogs. Lucy stopped to read a hand written notice on a page from a yellow legal pad. It was taped slightly askew, as if its author had been rushed – and maybe a little conflicted, too.

Five-year old male goose, very good watchdog, not friendly, not good with kids, not good with anybody. Just a good watchdog (goose). Needs a good home in the country. Needs to go soon. FREE

"Hey this one looks like it’s for you! You're kind of a watch goose yourself."

Mark read the note and turned to her in mock outrage. "How do you know I'm not good with kids? For your information, kids love cops. We're the good guys. I always do career days at the elementary school. Let them sit in the cruiser. Let them feel up my steering wheel with their sticky hands. Check their parents out in the system."

"You don't, not really."

He smiled at her. "Not the parent check thing, okay, but the rest of it, yeah. I don't let them wear the hat any more, though. Learned my lesson the hard way, combing my hair for nits."

"Ah, lice. The gateway STD. Show me a kid with lice, and I'll show you a future herpes sufferer."

Mark gave her a sidelong glance and Lucy added, "Naw, I'm kidding."

"Doctor Peterman, you're a few clicks off."

"You are speaking from a glass house."

Mark winked. "And you're just the rock to break it."

A tiny thrill ran up Lucy's spine.

A woman sat at the front desk. "May I help you?" she asked. On her shoulder a tiny puppy sat with its eyes closed in blissful sleep. The woman wore pink hospital scrubs and long, dangly earrings resembling fishing lures. Her eye lashes were thick with mascara, and her yellow blond hair looked like it had been styled that way since high school. Lucy wondered if she’d been homecoming queen. Her nametag said Marilyn.

Mark smiled "We'd like to take a look at the adoptable dogs. please."

"Very nice. We're a little short-handed today, so we aren't giving any tours, but you can wander back in the kennel and visit our friends. We ask that you keep your fingers away from the cages, and if you have any thoughts of feeding the dogs, you leave that thought with me.

"No ma'am. I wouldn't dream of feeding them." Mark gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at Lucy. "I can't vouch for her, though. She's always got something in her pockets."

Lucy shoved Mark. "Not true,” she said. “I follow all dog-rules."

Marilyn frowned. "This is serious. You can't feed them. These dogs are going through a tough time right now. Many of them have separation anxiety and post-traumatic stress syndrome. They haven't a clue where their next home will be. You feed them something you think is no big deal" – she emphasized her words with an outrageous expression widening her eyes – "like a Slim Jim or a Vienna sausage, and we're cleaning up a shit storm at 2 a.m..

Mark and Lucy both blinked, assured Marilyn that neither of them had even the smallest of sausages between them, and walked into the doggie viewing area. "Shit storm,” Mark said. Is that the clinical term, Dr. Peterman?

"We call it a code brown at the hospital."

Past the front desk, Lucy peered into a room with a large picture window. Inside sat a worn, overstuffed couch with bites taken out of each foam-filled arm. A panel on the door read Privacy/Separation Room. There was a chew toy tossed in the corner and a box of Kleenex perched on a small shelf. Probably all kinds of tears being mopped up in that room, thought Lucy. She felt Mark's eyes on her and she met his gaze. He nudged her with his shoulder. "Don't go getting soft on me already. I need you to yay or nay my selection. I can't be going home with some basket case because you got all weepy looking at an empty room."

"Bring it on, pal, I'm tougher than I look." As she spoke, Mark pushed his way into the room that held the kennels, and her words were completely drowned out by barking dogs.

They passed the first kennel, empty except for a steel water bowl. The space, lined with cement block, was clean, spacious, and shut off from the viewing area by a chain link fence. The second kennel held a ginger scruff of a dog that resembled a loofa in Lucy's shower that she just hadn't gotten to throwing away. The dog stood within an inch of the chain link and let out a series of ear-splitting yips. The index card clothes-pinned to the fence read, Trixi, stray, no tags, awaiting health clearance.

Lucy pushed Mark forward to the next dog. "Keep moving."

The next kennel held a black retriever with a head the size of a Volkswagen. He lay with his enormous cranium on flatbed paws, with his hind feet daintily canted to the side like a woman riding sidesaddle. After a moment Lucy noticed his other distinguishing characteristic. He had a penis and scrotum so large it looked like a wrinkly toddler nestled against his side.

Lucy cleared her throat and said, "This guy's for someone suffering from small-man syndrome."

Without taking his eyes from the dog, Mark said, “I'm here to tell you that we can move right along. I'm good. "Lucy tore her eyes from the dog's package just as he gave her a trucker-in-a-stripper bar grin and dropped his tongue in a yawn, as if to say, You just say the word, baby.

Lucy said, "I feel a little violated."

Mark laughed. "So do I."

The card on the next fence read, Bella. Relinquished in home foreclosure. Neutered, cleared, ready for adoption. Inside stood a full-grown dog with a tennis ball in her mouth holding it up as if waiting for her owner to come and play. Her tail was in full wag, her throat stretched and accommodating as if to say, Here, let me get this. She might have spent her lifetime posing this way, waiting for the loving approval of her owner Lucy's breath caught.

"This one would drag you from a fire, call 911, and give you CPR until the ambulance came." She dropped her gaze and noticed a bandage on her dewclaw, "Oh, she's got an injury. What'd you do to your paw, Bella?" She glanced at Mark, started to speak, and then looked more closely at him. His eyes had a special brightness to them – a misting before a sun shower.

"So, I'll go tell Marilyn this is the one, huh?" Mark nodded. Lucy tugged at Mark's sleeve and said, "This one'll break your heart a hundred times before Sunday, If you like that kind of thing.

Mark smiled and said, "Turns out I do." view abbreviated excerpt only...

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