Free Best Friends by Martha Moody Page B

throwing myself on the bed in despair that he might not show. He didn’t always. For all the times he surprised me from the shadows as I left a movie theater, there were whole evenings of plans when he simply didn’t arrive. Marriage was unpredictable, he said.
    I thought at the time that my loving Dan was a tribute to Sally, because I really did love him, madly, especially his hands and eyes; I lusted after him and enjoyed every libidinous moment in a way I never had before. In fact, I could have an orgasm simply thinking about him, as I did several times in physical chemistry class. I was proud of all I felt for him, this intimacy, this letting go, which maybe I couldn’t have experienced without knowing Sally. She was my first real female intimate, so I had been primed for a male. “Get over here,” I’d say on the phone, “I want to jump your bones.” Or words to that effect.
    Our two-bedroom bungalow was at the south edge of town, and I could afford it only because Sally paid three quarters of the rent. We were the only two Oberlin students I knew with a house to ourselves. In size and atmosphere, our house was very much like a lakeside cottage (wood paneling, mildew), but I thought it was fabulous. Its only drawback was a dog run next door with barking day and night, a problem our landlord tried to solve by giving Sally and me white-noise boxes to keep in our bedrooms. The white noise didn’t work for Sally. “I hate static,” she said. She talked to the neighbor who owned the dogs, Mr. Morgan, at least every other day, suggesting solutions from muzzles to canine hypnosis. She liked to catch Mr. Morgan in his driveway when he got home from work, before he could disappear into his house and take care of his sick mother, a shriveled woman who, on nicer evenings, appeared in a wheelchair on the porch as her son worked in the yard. “Maybe it’s like Psycho, ” I said. “Maybe she’s dead.” But she wasn’t dead, she actually cackled, and I had the feeling her son was afraid of her, running across the lawn to her whenever she made her screechy noise.
    â€œI doubt she can hear the dogs,” Sally said. “He could move the run over to her side of the house.”
    Mr. Morgan had three strands of long hair he combed over his bald head, a round belly, and a giggle. He worked as a clerk at the state liquor store in Wellington, ten miles down the road, and although I suspected he drank, Sally was less convinced. “They’re dogs! I tell you, dogs!” Mr. Morgan would say, giggling. “Dogs bark!” I remember watching from inside our house as Sally arrived home, got off her bike and locked it, and Mr. Morgan, spotting her, scurried behind his house to stand plastered against the back wall, arms out, palms flat on the bricks. But Sally had spotted him too, and soon she was behind the house with him, bobbing her head earnestly as Mr. Morgan made desperate gestures toward the house. They must have talked for twenty minutes, or Sally talked and Mr. Morgan gestured, as the evening came and the backyard darkened.
    â€œHe’s moving the run,” Sally said when she got back, her cheeks red with triumph. “This weekend.”
    And he did, although it was rainy and cold, and the job involved a dump truck, several other men, and a flat platform on wheels to move the kennel, which was the size of a small garage. I felt a rueful compassion for Mr. Morgan, running from side to side of his house, pointing, shouting, glancing over his shoulder to our windows. Sally had gone to the library to study. That night I didn’t notice much difference. The barking was slightly more distant but still there.
    â€œWell?” Sally said the next morning.
    I told her my opinion.
    â€œYou don’t think it’s better?” She looked incredulous. “It’s definitely better. I went right to sleep. It’s not perfect, I