June 17, 2006

My dog A. was fine when she spent her time shuttling back and forth between E.S.’s 396-square-foot apartment and my 815-square-foot apartment. Now that she lives in a house, however, she seems to be finding life very confusing and a little bit lonely–sometimes we are on one floor, for example, and she is on another, and she doesn’t know what the world is coming to.

So we’ve decided to get her a little brother or sister.

A. is a Maltese; at first, E.S. wanted to get another Maltese. “No,” I said, “because inevitably one of them will be cuter and we’ll love that one more and the other one less, and I can’t have that.” E.S. claimed not to understand what I was talking about, but I was adamant, so eventually he relented. We considered other breeds and ended up deciding on a Yorkie. Then yesterday E.S. and I had the following conversation:

E.S.: I’ve been thinking, maybe instead of a Yorkie we should get an Italian greyhound.
FAUSTUS: But you said a Yorkie.
E.S.: But one of the new pet therapy dogs in the hospital is an Italian greyhound and it’s so cute.
FAUSTUS: But I don’t want an Italian greyhound.
E.S.: But it was so cute.
FAUSTUS: Too bad. You already said a Yorkie, so we have to get a Yorkie.
E.S.: That’s very concrete of you.
FAUSTUS: What do you mean by that?
E.S.: “You said X, so we have to do X.” That’s a pretty inflexible position.
FAUSTUS: Have I ever done anything that led you to believe I was in any way flexible at all?
(Pause.)
FAUSTUS: I mean other than physically.
E.S.: Damn.
FAUSTUS: A Yorkie it is, then.