Oops, He Did It Again

he's not that innocent

Thank goodness the h is a ‘get it done now and don’t wait til later’ kind of a guy. The other day Jake’s Air Tag fell off.  The h quickly located the pieces and glued it all back together and tested it to make sure it is working again.

melts in your heart, not in the sun

There was no reason to worry - since we moved over to the garden apartment of the quinta, Jake has been free to roam but hasn’t; every time I look out in the courtyard he’s there, sniffing the air, ignoring the roosters, craning his neck a bit at the sound of Tiago and Gianni working up the hill at the cottage.

There was no reason to worry because Jake has not been anxious to walk around in the blazing Portuguese sun, seeming content to wait until the cooler hours for his walk.

Which is why we were not only not worried but utterly taken by surprise when someone called the h to ask, Do you have a chocolate Labrador named Jake? And also why we were able to see right away via the Find Your app where the call was coming from, about a mile away. We didn’t even know Jake was gone ‘til the h got the call. 

The h went to fetch him. Jake was all nonchalant, Oh hi daddy then back to sniffing whatever he was sniffing. The h was outraged and turned his furry butt back towards home.

Did he even act sorry, I asked the h.

NO, the h said. He clearly wasn’t sorry AT ALL. He was talking uncharacteristically loud. He glared at Jake who was at that point sitting safely in the corner, unhurt and trying to show us he was sorry the h was mad but was also hongry and could I please get his dinner?

It’s my fault, I said to the h. I kept promising him a walk and didn’t get to it and so he took himself for a walk. That’s what he always does, it’s predictable as soap.

this is just how he looks, right before disappearing

Before you look at his boopable nose and take his side in the matter, I assure you all these weeks he could be seen sitting placidly on the patio he was in fact just lying back in the tall grass waiting for his opportunity to slip away. He remembered what it was like living at the palaceta all too well - no way did he forget the very great lengths we went to to prevent him from wandering away again, as no less than five gates had to be repaired or wholly constructed. Everyone pitched in, having had at least one experience of me rushing up with a tear-stained face ask-yelling “Have you seen Jake?” and sprinting away before their head shake was complete. Everyone has had at least one experience of all work grinding to a halt as everyone spreads out, me running on foot, the h in a borrowed car circling the neighborhood, Alberto and Tiago and Paulo calling Jake but with their accent sounding like Zhayk, or even Zhack. Sometimes, Jake came back on his own, usually within two or three hours. But once, he did not come back. After many hours the phone rang - Jake had made his way all the way to Continente, the supermarket where we do our weekly shopping.

What was your end game, Jake? the h asked.

Maybe he was going to put the yellow chair on layaway, I suggested. Yes, friends, the yellow chair is back in play. After a brief absence from the front window - an absence that was noted but not remarked on by me (if one is to win, it is essential not to show emotion over such things) - a new, additional display was added near the front of the store. There, in the center of a mini bedroom setup and a mini patio setup was a mini desk setup, the yellow chair looking wistfully summery under a spotlight. We saw it as we entered the store on our previous visit - a visit we were making not on foot, but with the use of Tiago’s car. Heck, Tiago practically forced us to use his car. It’s as if he knew we might have an extra heavy load this time.

The Chair Itself

Of course I noticed the chair right away as we walked past, but I turned my head in such a way as to make it seem to the h that I didn’t see it. I can pinpiont the exact second the h saw it; I saw him double take to be sure, and made sure when he slyly checked to see if I was noticing what he was noticing that I appeared to be looking at a bin of notebooks on sale. My ruse was so successful the h ended up buying half a dozen notebooks, at my urging. I thought you’d like them, I said modestly. The h was clearly touched that I had remembered his preference for note-taking on graph paper. I myself prefer lined; we both eschew blank pages.

We shopped, buying almost exclusively heavy things: boxes of juice and coconut milk and oat milk, juicing oranges, dog food, heavy bags of dishwasher pods, an enormous bottle of bleach. As we approached the cashier I covertly watched the h to see if he would remember the chair and either check the price and ask for a further discount, or (dare I say it) have it rung up.

Reader, he did neither. As we left the store we walked directly in front of the chair, the h saying nothing. I was not about to let him pretend he hadn’t seen it when I’d already seen him seeing it so I quipped Do you think they have that chair boxed in with all that other merch trying to trick people into thinking it’s popular and won’t last long at this price?

We both noted the price tag now read Sale, 25% off. Was 229 Euros, now 179 Euros. As if re-presenting the math behind the 179 euro would freshen the image of the chair and inspire FOMO instead of a vague sense of horror as fall turns to winter and yellow chairs go from seemingly cheerful to vaguely bacterial.

They aren’t even trying to move the chair, I complained to the h. Somewhere the rock bottom price for the chair was set arbitrarily at 179 euros. Who made that decision? I imagine a manager, tall, a man who worked his way up through the ranks, a company man with a wife and two kids. I imagine him in his rumpled shirt and well-pressed vest buttoned all the way up, seeing that chair in the back, where such unsold things are remanded, watching it as the seasons change. Did the constant sight of that chair mock him? Did it fill him with foreboding? Rage? Resignation? Despair? That he wouldn’t lower the price to a more reasonable 149 Euro suggests (this is just a theory mind you) that there is something vendetta-like in his feelings toward the chair.

My beauty

That’s when I started feeling a sort of solidarity with the chair, so stalwartly cheerful despite the manager’s lack of understanding of price elasticities (and the h being such a cheap ass) being the only thing standing between it and a happy life at the hearth of someone’s home. Someone who traveled a long way just to be here and would be delighted every time she looked at the cheerful yellow chair in her spartan apartment where the only other chairs were wood or metal and not at all a place you would read, for example.

Hang in there, little chair, I whispered as we passed by. I flashed it the yellow power sign.

Back home a few hours later the h said, out of the clear blue, You’re right the yellow chair would look good in here. Mmmm, I said, noncommittal. Instinctively, I stayed calm. But inside, reader, never have I felt so close to victory.

As for Jake the days of lounging on the patio without a leash may be at an end. Or, maybe I’ll have Tiago install a gate where Olive Tree Lane passes through a pinch point with the great Monterey Pine on the left and an old stone wall on the right. We have another bit of decorative gate that could be hung there, blocking what is now Jake’s sole point of access to the Back 40. Or we could stretch some plastic fencing across the space - it won’t take much to dissuade Jake. He’s resilient - finding the way to freedom blocked, he’d just lay down in the sun next to the fence and doze off waiting for someone to notice him.