Tiffany Jimenez

Animal Lover

Alice pages me throughout her shift whenever she wants me to come see something. ‘Are you an animal person?’ she asked me on my second day. ‘You look like you’re an animal person.’

Alice, one of the booksellers, pages me for every puppy. I’m sitting at my desk when I hear the page for what will become the Australian Husky. ‘Miranda, please come to Reg. 5. Miranda, Reg. 5 please.’

My office is in the corner of the building she is usually stationed at to sell books for children, books for travel, and books for art enthusiasts.

I can see that she’s been watching my office door since she paged me because I lock eyes with her as I exit. Her smile is crooked, and her hands are balled together below her chin as if she’s trying to keep herself still. I make sure to skip towards her to show that I’m happy she thought of me.

She extends her long arm and points towards the patio. I notice how unchanging her gestures are each time she pages me to show me the most beautiful Great Dane, Great Pyrenees, or Saint Bernard. I notice that puppies are a free-for-all, cute no matter what, but when it comes to dogs, Alice tends to call me for the big ones.

I look where Alice points, and watch a young woman crawling underneath a table where two older women are eating, taking picture after picture of the small Australian Husky. It jumps over the table legs teasingly, and the girl bumps her head. When I look back at Alice to affirm the cuteness level, she’s rummaging through her purse until she finds her phone. The way her long bent arms swing at her side makes her look like she’s marching, her phone swinging up past her nose at one point as if she’s hailing a near victory. ‘I’ve got to get a picture to show my daughter.’

Her daughter, Angeline, plays the cello for the orchestra. She travels all over the world. She’s Alice’s only child, and when I first met Alice, I remember how energetic she was next to the shorter woman who I don’t remember other than she was a woman shorter than Alice, a blank face, blurred, compared to Alice’s, whose brown hair defies the gray that has swallowed the rest of the heads at this store, and whose mouth always speaks and laughs from the side, who on that day said, ‘You can’t forget me. Just think of Wonderland,’ and I wanted to ask her how she knew I loved Alice in Wonderland.

I watch the young woman crawl away from the puppy who has noticed Alice’s square body approaching. The puppy sits, and I can almost hear Alice cooing at it as she snaps, snaps again, and then snaps one more photo before she finally pushes herself up from her bent knees and compliments the owners. The puppy flops down, and if Alice hadn’t shuffled off, I’m sure it would have used her foot as a rest instead of a knot in its leash.

Alice tells me that she loves to travel. ‘I've actually been to many places.’ She does not look at me as she says this. She looks past the register, fist beneath her chin. When I ask her about her husband — I wish I could remember my phrasing, which I’m sure if I remembered would make me ashamed of my tactlessness — she says she’s divorced.

‘Good for you, Alice.’

She doesn’t laugh; she just rolls her eyes and lets her voice slowly rise in an aged, ‘Not really.’

Alice pages me for every dog I have seen in the dog shows on TV.  She always takes a picture of them for Angeline. And she always shuffles to the dog as if they’ll disappear before she gets to them, and always slowly wobbles back with phone held tightly in both hands as she types and attaches and sends the photos to her daughter.

Wobble is not a good word, though. I thought I noticed a limp once as Alice prepared to leave work for the day. When she walked away, her body tipped from left to right, akin to the walk of a penguin.

I’ve never asked her if she has any animals. I add it to my mental list of things to bring up when I see her, but somehow always forget. While I don’t have to assume anymore that she’s an animal person, more specifically a dog person, I actually can’t imagine her with her own. I picture Alice in a small flat house, drapes drawn closed, and if there were a large dog there, I’m afraid it would rush towards her bad leg and run her down. I forget where she said she lives now. I want to ask if I can visit her, but then I remind myself I shouldn’t assume she’s lonely.

I ask Alice her favorite place she’s traveled. She tilts her head as she takes a moment to think about it, and then she says, ‘Nepal.’

‘Yeah?’ I can feel my cheeks stretching wider because I’m trying hard to remember where Nepal is.

‘Even though it was very cold, I remember it being the place I laughed the most.’

When I get home that day, I ask my boyfriend if we can go to Nepal. I’m looking at a world map when he says, ‘Why would you want to go there?’ Who knows what he would’ve said if I told him that Alice has never been to the only place I’ve been, and I want to know what she does.

Alice remembers it was my birthday the day before and wants to know how the party went. I tell her the same thing I’ve told everyone, in the same order because once I’ve got my script down, I cannot switch it up or else I’ll inevitably lose my place and lose my audience to loose smiles and averted eyes.

‘How lovely, Miranda. Do you always get so many people to turn up for your birthdays?’

I stumble and let out an ‘Ummm…’ paired with a matching smile, and end up responding, ‘I don’t really know — remember. Yes?’ Alice has caught me off-guard. And as I think about it more, I start to wonder if I missed some sarcasm. I tend to do that, miss the joke.

On my way back to my office, I tap the heads of all of the stuffed animals. A new display of finger puppets has gone up, so I tilt my head slightly to welcome the new gang: an owl, his cousin owl, a rooster, and a hard to distinguish hedgehog or porcupine.

My office is small, and has been rearranged multiple times due to construction that once done doesn’t really make any impact other than the fact that the windows are bare, everyone can see the cramped office with five people stepping over books, and boxes, stacks of paper, and some miscellaneous binders. We are the people who run the programs that make money because books, who buys books anymore?

It’s hot inside of the office. We put up clearance blinds and a fan bought at a discount because it has a tiny dent near the bottom of it. The girl closest to it likes to call it ‘Vor.’ The blinds and fan seem to help, but by the next day I can’t tell if I made it all up. Sweat overtakes me as I type away at my computer, checking dates in the calendar, checking nonstop emails, waiting for an instant message from Derek to tell me what's for dinner. ‘Should I pick something up on my way home???’ I asked two hours ago.

And the sun has won. The heat is hard to work in, and I realize after a while that my chair keeps pulling the curtain covering the window closest to my desk open, making me visible to all seated outside, eating and chatting, some with dogs panting in the heat.

The fan also makes it hard to hear the pages, and I’ve already missed one before Alice is suddenly next to me asking if I missed her page.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Alice. I never heard it!’

Before I can find a face that truly matches the despair I’m in, Alice almost reaches for my shoulder before turning away and waving me to follow because she says there is a beautiful dog outside I’ve got to see. ‘It’s a Saint Bernard.’ Alice nods her head with the straightest smile I’ve seen on her, while I ask where the Saint Bernard is because I don’t see him anywhere through the floor to ceiling windows. ‘In the corner,’ she says.

I go outside, look left then right. Then I see a dark movement behind a man seated at a table of three, and I say, ‘I hear you’ve got a beautiful dog out here.’

‘We do?’ the middle man says while the others continue to talk to one another. And then there’s the dog. ‘Ah, yes,’ he says as the dog moves toward me on cue. ‘Seems we do.’

I pet him furiously, rubbing his sides and patting his back as he circles me for more. The dog is beautiful. I cannot determine who the owner is, and try not to look at the three men when I ask what ‘this beautiful dog’s name is?’

The man in the middle says, ‘Otis.’

‘What a perfect name, Otis,’ I tell the dog before I press my cheek to his head and pat him once more. ‘It was so lovely to meet you.’

As I walk back into the store, I see Alice standing in her usual spot by the register and I tell her his name.

‘Oh my gosh, how cute.’

I tell all of the people I pass by: ‘Alice showed me the most beautiful dog outside,’ and before I can tell them they must go see it, they rush past me.

Sometimes I walk into the store and Alice isn’t there. She’s told me her schedule at least twice, but mine has changed so much, I can’t remember what she said anymore. It isn’t until I venture to the other side of the store that I realize half of the time I think she isn’t working, she’s actually working at the other register.

‘They took you from me, Alice?’ I ask her as she’s gift-wrapping a book for a customer with a dozen beaded necklaces on.

‘No. I asked to be here.’ She doesn’t look at me as she rips pieces of tape from the dispenser nor as she uses it to seal the wrapping paper together. Not even when she puts the final piece of ribbon on it and turns to give it to the customer.

‘Oh.’

I cannot think of anything funny to say, but as I turn to leave, Alice says, ‘Can’t stand the construction. Too much noise.’ She then smiles as she places one hand on her hip and the other up to the air for a half shrug. A sudden sense of relief flushes through me, and if she hadn’t said that, I wonder how the rest of the day would've felt.

There’s a girl who comes to the store at least twice a week. She has a handsome white dog that is so large it stretches past the width of the table. I compliment his stature and gentle nature, which is evident through his round eyes that follow and squint at you like a cat’s eye kisses. I note that Alice hasn't shown me this dog before.

The girl tells me about how she’s always loved large dog breeds. How her fiancé doesn’t get it. ‘I love their wet noses and slobbery kisses. My fiancé says they have bad breath.’ I laugh because this girl seems so cool. She lives in a school bus, and before that in a studio in the Midwest. ‘He liked it better there,’ she tells me about her Great Pyrenees. ‘It wasn’t as hot.’ She pats the dog's head, and then adds, ‘Although you’d be surprised at how humid it is. Nobody expects it. But it snows.’

I immediately tell Alice about the girl and where she lives with her dog. ‘Oh really?’

‘She used to have a Great Dane as well.’

‘Wow.’ The way Alice’s smile stays plastered on, and the way her words come out of the side of her mouth makes me wonder if Alice has memorized a script, too.

I run out of things to tell her, so I make my way back to my cramped office. I have always been a cat person, but have not let this slip to Alice. When I tell Derek that we should get a Great Pyrenees, he laughs. ‘And where do you suppose he’ll live?’

I look around our studio and wonder about the girl, her fiancé, and her two large dogs. ‘I know someone who lives in the trailer park by my job, in a school bus, and she has a large dog.’

‘Come on, Miranda, you know that’s not fair to the dog. Plus —’ he grabs my hand and rubs it with his bony fingers, ‘we can’t afford it.’

I’ve been at the bookstore for more than three months now, and during my time, five people have left. None of the elderly women, who make up the majority of the staff anyway, but most of the pre-thirty crowd, some of whom had just started. They leave so unexpectedly that I only gather that they’ve split when I overhear the others talking about it. ‘Do you know why she quit?’ I ask about one in particular.

‘No,’ they shake their heads. ‘She just called in and said she won't be coming back.’

I begin to look more closely at everyone's faces, scanning them for dissatisfaction and boredom. Most of the staff look tired. While Alice gets excited when there’s a puppy or dog, the others seem uniformly excited by children. I imagine the bookstore as a cover for witches in need of the children's youth to stay alive. The store’s celebrating its fortieth year in business soon. Then one of the women who has been here since the beginning starts talking about this new book, and I remember it’s the books. The books are what whispered sweet nothings into all of our ears.

But the boredom is killing me. It’s the same clientele, the same programs, and the same schedule that keeps things all together. I take lunch later and later so that the last part of my day is easier to get through. The books do not seem to be enough.

There haven’t been many new dogs lately, either, so I haven’t received as many pages. My office has been rearranged again, but the floor space is still limited. Boxes of promotional materials for our upcoming children’s event are everywhere. We don’t care that we keep tripping over them. That the cardboard has cut at least one of our legs. We just leave them there, only sometimes pushing them closer to whatever they’re up against. I’m slightly ashamed at my ambivalence. When I first started, I thought this mess was promising.

When Alice takes me aside one day, I get an overwhelming feeling that she adopted a dog. The sleepy Australian Husky comes to mind, and I start to think of ways to finally invite myself to her home. ‘Miranda,’ she starts and then she looks around us. We are in the break room, and I too start to look around and listen for any rustle, any indicator that someone’s listening. I don't register what she says until she asks in a whisper, ‘Do you know why Mallory left?’

‘Isn’t she on vacation?’ I wrack my brain for more, hoping it will come fast, but that’s all I know.

‘Hmmmm, I don’t know about that,’ Alice pulls up her shoulders as she giggles. I let myself laugh, too. Alice’s two front teeth are longer than the others. She reminds me of a rabbit. A new hire walks into the break room before I can keep this secretive conversation going. As Alice leaves, she lightly grabs my shoulder. I wonder if she can feel how brittle I am.

I see Alice checking her watch as I pass by her at the register, but she doesn't look up. In about a year, I will leave this job.

I try hard to picture her daughter, Angeline. I try hard to just picture a younger Alice. But all I see is Angeline seated in the middle of a stage, her orchestra flanking her at both sides. Her long neck hugs her cello like I imagine Alice would hug the numerous dogs she sends Angeline pictures of. The musicians each turn into a different breed of dog, intently playing their part in the song. Her smile is caught at the side of her mouth as her phone buzzes in her pocket over and over again.

Tiffany Jimenez is from Oakland, California. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz, and her MFA from Saint Mary's College of California. Other than being an ardent supporter of the imagination and the art of storytelling, she writes a lot, laughs a lot, startles easily, and loves potatoes.