Page 38 of The Good Boy

Rory kicks off his shoes at once and rushes toward the water, whooping and yelping for joy.

“Did you bring the ball?” he asks me when I eventually catch up with him as he dances and skips in and out of the waves.

“Er, no...” I say.

“Why not?” He is instantly sad. “How can I chase a ball if you haven’t brought it?”

“Because... humans don’t tend to do a lot of chasing balls.”

“Er, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, rounders...”

“I mean, people don’t chase balls just for the sake of it.”

“Er, football...”

“Fine, you win,” I say. “But I forgot the ball. Just run around, pretend there’s a ball. Pretend the moon is a ball!”

“Are you having a breakdown?” Rory asks, bemused, as the water foams around his ankles. “The moon is a great big lump of rock in the sky. Anyway, you should play ball with me next time. It’s great—you see the ball go, you get the thrill of running really fast and getting to it before all the other dogs, and then it is yours and you are the winner and you get to do it all again!”

“When you put it like that...” I say. “I’m sorry, Rory. I didn’t think.”

“Oh well, we’ll just have to play in the water, then,” he says,wading in deeper until the water is at the bottom of his shorts. “Come on, Genie!”

“I’ll watch you from here,” I say.

“No.” Rory shakes his head. “Nope.”

“What do you mean, no?” I ask him, taken aback. I am not sure that Rory has ever really refused anything before unless you count his worming tablet.

“I mean that before when you stood on your own throwing the ball, or on the edge of the sea, watching me play, you never seemed to understand when I was asking you to play with me, no matter how hard I tried. But now I have words and I can say it out loud and I want you to play. And it’s your fault that I have these words. So just come and play with me, Genie. Just come. Please?”

It’s the last word, so determined and hopeful, that gets to me. Before I know it I have kicked off my trainers and am wading into the water. The North Sea is always bloody freezing, even in the height of summer and especially at night. At first it takes my breath away, and I want nothing so much as to turn around and go back. Rory keeps calling me forward, though, his arms outstretched, a delighted smile on his face.

Eventually the water is around our waists and he ducks right under, emerging a second later, making a huge splash of freezing moonlit drops that cascade over me.

“Jesus effing Christ!” I squeal, and laugh at the same time.

Let the splash wars begin.

I don’t know when we stop splashing and just start to wallow, but I do know that I haven’t laughed so much for such a long time. Now, as we float in the palm of the sea while it gently rocks us, I can see why Rory was so determined to give me this. I feel calmand connected to everything, from the gleaming white tops of the lapping waves to each star that sparkles overhead. For a few seconds it seems perfectly logical that magic is real, and that nothing is impossible. Not even happiness. Not even love.

“See how much more fun life is when you play?” Rory asks.

“I do,” I say. “I see all the beauty in the world.”

“I think happiness is a thing that you can catch in your teeth, if you are always on the lookout for it and ready to jump,” Rory says.

Is it possible that my dog is the wisest human being that I have ever met?

Chapter Fourteen

I feel sorry for Mondays, I do. Imagine being the most universally hated day of the week. Even if you work weird hours like me, and sometimes have a Monday off, it still comes weighted down with that whole, oh-god-not-this-crap-again feeling. Look, I’m not a philosopher or an academic, but it is always on a Monday that I most wonder what the point is: of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe someone should look into that and see if there’s a correlation or something. Between Mondays and existential crisis.

(Sidenote: it turns out this state of being is highly exacerbated by the knowledge that you accidentally turned your dog into a human being.)

Rory, however, does not have this problem. While my fleetingly smug feeling of oneness with the universe that came from our midnight dip has evaporated with the dawn, my darling dog still thinks the world is a constant delight, even on a Monday.

“I’m ready!” he declares cheerfully as I shamble into the living room to find him already dressed in a fresh set of shorts and a bright shirt and some shades he’s found somewhere that are adorned with rhinestones on each batwing corner. They suit him.There’s a plate with the remains of some sort of concoction that I don’t want to think about on the counter.

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