“Nietzsche?”
“That’s what my wife and I named our last dog. Nietzsche.”
Eric looked around my front room. A few scattered newspapers, a couch I’d picked up at a thrift store, a once-nice recliner with dark armrest stains from the oil of my hands, an assemble-it-yourself, pressed-wood coffee table, an ancient television with a rabbit-ears antenna and a dial instead of push-buttons sitting on a two-tiered rolling cart, a turntable underneath the TV, and a cardboard box full of old LPs. “You got a wife around here?”
“In Fresno. She should be moving down here any day now,” I said. I don’t know if either of us believed me.
Eric nodded politely. “That’s a lot of weight to put on a little dog’s shoulders, naming him Nietzsche.”
“I learned my lesson.” Though maybe I hadn’t. I named the new pup Clint Dempsey, after the kid who scored the only goal for the US national team in the 2006 World Cup. Clint Dempsey. Maybe that name is a lot of responsibility to give a dog, too. But if you didn’t see the US/Ghana game when Clint Dempsey scored, let me tell you, it was one hell of a goal. “Anyway,” I said, “it was a lucky coincidence, Dr. Bishop coming along with this pup when she did.”
Eric gave me half a smile, a little bit of bleached bones squeaking out. “Coincidence?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Coincidence.”
“If you study metaphysics, there are no coincidences.”
“I don’t study metaphysics.”
Twenty minutes later, Clint Dempsey and I walked through the park near my apartment. Eric’s truck sat parked in front of my apartment building. I did not know why but I didn’t give it much thought either. I threw an old tennis ball for Clint Dempsey. The tennis ball possessed him. Nothing would stand between him and that ball, once it started moving. He crashed through little stands of bushes, he danced over the century-old roots of a gnarled oak, he shaved the lint off the jeans of passing park goers. All in pursuit of that ball. He knew no obstacle. At one point, he even gathered such a head of steam going downhill that gravity thrust him into a somersault. He regained his feet and still scooped up the ball before it stopped rolling. Just like his namesake. Clint Dempsey would win the ball.
I sat at the top of the park’s hill, throwing the ball anew every time Clint Dempsey returned. The park spread out in front of me, lush and green. A paramedic lay in the grass, napping while his partner wandered around, listening to headphones. A couple held hands and meandered downhill. Four young men—flannel-shirted, beanies pulled down over their ears, fingers black from a day’s work on the row crops east and south of town—gathered around a park bench, a joint passing between them. Ancient flat gravestones caught the occasional flash of the waning sunlight. These gravestones had long been abandoned by loved ones, the graveyard too spooky to build on but too beautiful to leave alone. Hence, this park. On the horizon, the sun scraped the ridgeline of islands on the horizon, leaving the Pacific aglow in orange.
A beer would taste good right now. Clint Dempsey brought me the ball. I threw it. He darted off. A woman jogged by on the sidewalk below me. The #6 city bus shuddered to a stop in front of the park. The farm workers crushed their joint and hurried over, bus passes visible before the doors were open.
I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to look. Eric was back. He had a plastic bag from the nearby convenience store. “What’s the law on drinking beer in this park?”
“I guess that depends on who’s drinking it and how much they’re drinking.”
“You and me.” Eric pulled a large bottle of brown ale out of his bag and handed it to me. He stripped the plastic bag off a second, identical bottle. “And one apiece.”
I dug my key ring out of my pocket. I’d kept a bottle opener on the key ring from the days when drinking used to be a bit of a hobby. The bottle opener still came in handy occasionally. I opened my bottle and traded with Eric. He handed me the unopened bottle and I solved that problem. “I guess it’s all right,” I said.
Clint Dempsey came back and I threw the ball again.
“Tell me about metaphysics,” I said.
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s up with the camera you installed in my apartment?”
“Didn’t Dr. Bishop tell you?”
“She gave me a form to sign. I didn’t read it, though.”
“But you signed it?”
“Yep,” I said. “I didn’t care what the form said. I just wanted the dog.” Which was half the truth. I still wasn’t fully ready to face the other half. Just as I hadn’t been able to bring myself to drive to Fresno for Nietzsche’s last day, I couldn’t bring myself to read the form Dr. Bishop had given me. That little something in my psyche prevented it. For the third time, I acted counter to my typical self. The third presence of that little voice in my psyche left me a little worried.
“He’s a good dog,” Eric said.
I watched Clint Dempsey leap over the napping paramedic and snatch the ball on a short hop. “That he is.”
Eric lifted his baseball cap, scratched his gray-blond hair, and replaced the cap. He sipped his brown ale. He dug his work boots into the park grass. He did not say anything more about the camera. Clint Dempsey came back. I threw the ball again.
“Southpaw?” Eric asked.
“I don’t know what kind of dog he is,” I said. “Mostly mutt, I think, but it looks like you can see a bit of hound in his face. Those droopy eyes, you know.”
“Not the dog. You.” Eric mimed a throw with his left arm.
“Yep. I’m left-handed.”
A moment of silence passed. In honor of what, I don’t know. The earth kept spinning to fill the space between the sun and me. I asked Eric again, “What’s up with the camera?”
“I’m not good at explaining it.”
“Do your best. No judgment here.”
Eric fiddled with the bill of his ball cap. “Dr. Bishop is doing an experiment about the way we talk to one another without talking. Nonverbal communication.”
“Okay.”
“Like, do we talk to our dogs?”
“We give them commands. I know that’s verbal but I don’t think they speak the language.”
Eric smiled. “But beyond that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure our body language says a lot.”
Eric shook his head. “Dr. Bishop is looking for something less direct. She’s trying to figure out if we talk to them in another realm of communication. Like, do they know when we’re coming home? Can they somehow sense this?”
“How could they?” I asked.
Eric paused and took a sip of beer. Clint Dempsey returned with the ball. I tossed it down the hill. He took off in hot pursuit.
I asked, “So what’s this other realm of communication? Telepathy?”
Eric winced. “Not telepathy. Dr. Bishop hates that word.”
I smiled. “Okay.” A little, embarrassed laugh slipped out. “So she’s not testing to see if we’re all sending telepathic messages to animals like we’re Aquaman. But she is seeing if there is some sort of non-verbal, non-physical communication that we have with our pets.”
“Something like that.”
It all seemed