Free Ham by Sam Harris Page A

Pat Chiang, leaning stiffly over my naked body with an accusatory Asian glare, accentuated by strict eyeliner lunging to her hairline like black knives. This wasn’t the first time I’d been awakened in this fashion—she felt she could come and go as she pleased—but it was always a startling way to begin the day.
    Her accent was thick as hoisin and her voice scraped the air like chopsticks on a chalkboard. “Ma h-h-h-husband saw white cat in your guys’ window! No cat allow!  ” she shrieked. “That Helen Funk in a-pot-ment in back have cat, I say no cat too! That Helen Funk, she a dirty woman. She have account at Kentucky Flied Chicken . . .” Pat Chiang paused, then added, inquisitively, “Your guys have pot parties?”
    We were forced to give Shana away and hoped the new family didn’t have other pets with suicidal tendencies.
    Cooper caught me choking back a tear but I put on a smile, continuing with a good story at last.
    â€œMy next pet was a dog. His name was Larry.”
    â€œLarry is my favorite name so far. I love Larry the dog,” Cooper said with glee.
    â€œI did too,” I said, relieved. “I had him for fourteen years.”
    Larry was a dog’s dog. A man’s dog. Scruffy and ragged. He was an old soul. My friend Delia gave him to me, and when Larry and I saw each other on the street for the first time, we ran together like slow-motion lovers in the movies. “He was the best pal ever. And then Uncle Bruce wanted his own dog and so he got a Yorkie named Ethel.”
    â€œLike Lucy’s friend?” Cooper asked. I was pleased at the reference.
    â€œWell, she was named after Lucy’s friend, but she wasn’t much like her.”
    Ethel was not an old soul. She was an idiot. She was in constant frenetic motion and always underfoot. She ran haphazardly into walls and furniture. When anyone entered the room, she choked and threw up from the excitement and then dashed to pee on their shoes. Ultimately, she was the reason I left Tara. “This house isn’t big enough for the both of us!” I declared to Bruce, though Ethel was only slightly larger than a field mouse.
    On a weekend trip to Big Bear in a car stuffed with five people and Larry and Ethel, I knew it would be a horror show and begged Bruce to get some doggy downers for Ethel from the vet. The dosage was based on weight, and Ethel didn’t fit into even the tiniest category, so I gave her half a pill. I swallowed the other half and another three or five. Somehow, I ended up with Ethel on my lap and an hour into the trip, I noticed she was strikingly still. I knew that Ethel was never motionless, even in sleep, her paws quivering as she dreamt of running into walls and furniture and vomiting and peeing on shoes. But now, draped across my lap, she was inanimate and her breathing was undetectable. When I lifted her tiny eyelids, I saw that her pupils had rolled back into her head. I didn’t want to alarm Bruce so I asked that we pull over to let the dogs pee and get some water. When I opened the car door and nudged her, Ethel fell onto the pavement flat, facedown, with an indistinct thud, her legs splayed symmetrically like a miniature bearskin rug.
    I didn’t know what to do. In a moment of subdued panic, I took a sip from my drive-thru Diet Coke and the liquid caught in that hollow place in the back of my throat like an emotion. The bitch was going to die and I knew Bruce would blame me. She needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but I couldn’t fathom how that was possible. Her entire head would fit in my mouth like a cupcake. I chewed on my straw and got an idea: straw-to-mouth resuscitation! I parted her black lips and found ample options to place the straw in the spaces where her teeth were missing—a result of too much Chinese food—specifically, General Tso’s Chicken.
    I tilted her head back and placed my pinky over her