Free Stay by Allie Larkin Page B

where a thousand of them equaled a dollar. I thought about looking it up, but my vision was starting to blur, and I wanted a dog. Now. I didn’t want to wait any longer than I had to. What if someone else was sitting around in their pajamas watching the Rin Tin Tin marathon, realizing they needed a dog too? What if, in the time I took to look up the conversion rate, someone else bought my puppy? Someone else would get to cuddle up with that little ball of fuzz. Someone else would get sloppy dog kisses on their cheek. Someone else would have a true and loyal friend who would hop over burning hay bales for them, and I’d still be alone. It was probably really cheap. Cheaper than buying a dog from the United States even, I was sure. I grabbed my purse off the coffee table and riffled through the mess of business cards and discount cards, dropping them all over the couch, until I found my credit card.
    Ha, Diane, I thought, remembering the time my mom asked her if we could get a dog. I was eleven and had just read The Call of the Wild in school. I spent an entire weekend planning for my puppy: where he would sleep, how I could pay for his food with my allowance. I made a chart of how I could squeeze in homework and take him on long walks, and Diane stuck a pin in it in two seconds. “Dogs are filthy. They lick their assholes. You can’t be serious, Nat,” she said when my mom asked her.
    Well, this was my house and my dog, and Diane was done with me anyway.
    I had to type my credit card number into the website four times before I got it right and it went through, but finally, it worked. The site said to expect a confirmation e- mail shortly.
    Holy shit, I thought, as I flipped my credit card onto the coffee table. I just bought a dog. I felt like I should be panicking, but on TV, another Rin Tin Tin episode was starting. A tinny horn played a revelry while soldiers scrambled to attention, and a noble-looking Rin Tin Tin stood high on a rock watching them all, the breeze blowing his fur ever so slightly, a flag waving in the background. I could feel the excitement building. I was going to watch this episode carefully. I had to learn about German Shepherds.
    I made myself another drink. I was almost out of Kool-Aid, so this one was mostly vodka. I sat down again, clicking the refresh button on my e- mail compulsively, waiting for information on when I could pick up my dog. But ten minutes later, there was still no e-mail. Fifteen minutes later, nothing. Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes, then a half an hour and still nothing.
    What if there is no dog? I thought. What if this was some kind of scam like those Nigerian prince e-mails? What if some Slovakian pervert was using my credit card number to buy porn and crack? I could picture him, in a dirty white undershirt, drooling over disgusting pictures in a dimly lit room. Maybe he wasn’t even Slovakian. Maybe there was some kind of messed-up crime ring that preyed on lonely women watching dog movie marathons by pretending to be dog breeders in post-Communist countries.
    I took another chug of my drink. Even though it was light on the Kool-Aid, it was starting to taste like cough syrup. As soon as I got it down, it started to come back up. I tasted it in the back of my mouth, and ran to the bathroom.
    I heaved and heaved. Toilet water splashed up in my face. My hair got in the way and ended up covered in purple puke. Finally, I felt like I came to the end of everything that was left in me. I spit into the toilet and started crying.
    I cried about everything from way back when Diane told my mom I couldn’t have a dog, to Peter and the wedding and the check, my mom dying, the photo booth picture, and the Slovakian pervert. I cried because I really had no one. There was no one on my side. No one rooting for me above everyone else. There wasn’t even anyone rooting for me to come in second place. There was no one to hold my hair back, or wipe my forehead with a wet washcloth. All