Just got my hair done.

Henry here, the dog.

Each month Carll takes me to Ruff Cuts Dog Salon and Boutique in Hopewell Junction for my wash, cut, clip, and another procedure I’m disinclined to reference in polite company. I assume this company’s polite because Carll says so, but remember the old adage, “assume makes an ass of u and me”? Just saying.

Since Hopewell Junction is a twenty-minute drive from Poughquag, where Jane, Carll and I reside, Carll elects to await my reappearance, refulgent as Persephone after wintering in Hades, instead of yo-yoing between Poughquag to Hopewell Junction. How Carll occupies the three hours my coiffeuses require to bathe, snip and shave me to Hollywood perfection I’ve no idea and don’t care. I observe what I can detect. Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Otherwise are mythical kingdoms concocted by humans to spare themselves the Here and Now. Their wanderlust to hypothetical realms (wanderlust pronounced the German way) flays them with doubts and regrets, yet their resistless and mischievous intellects insist on playing hooky from the Real. Go figure. I like Carll when I’m with him – he feeds me and sometimes plays with me when he’s not staring into that tiresome gray box, flickering his fingers – his regularity reassures even if his verve disappoints – I’ve no idea how he compares with other dog-owners – owners, that’s rich! – but when he’s absent from my senses, I’m not curious about his activities. Either he is or he isn’t and if he fails to return, he was, and that’s that. Dwelling in a single location – the Here and Now – spares one angst, tsuris, agita, agenbite of inwit – pick your pout, they come in all languages – most anyhow, don’t know about Urdu or Swahili. Try rinsing your dreams of maybes and yesterdays, you’ll sleep better.

My three hours at the dog-spa are living lipstick. (Is “living lipstick” still a la mode? Strikes me as sixtyish somehow. Beware the dialect – and age – of one’s translator! Carll is old – and sometimes his argot sounds it – corrupted by his craving to sound au courant.) “A change is as good as a rest,” Churchill used to chortle, and the spa’s more than a change, it’s luscious immersion in soaking and stroking – in the delicious company of other canines conversing pleasantly. I could loll there all day, wagging my tail presto con fuoco, but then after a while, doubt niggles (Niggles? Isn’t this verb only used adjectivally – as in niggling?), towit: Where is Carll, anyway? Not that I’m curious, mind you – curiosity killed the cat – and plenty of dogs – it’s only that I hanker for the known, predictable, familiarity’s bliss – the consolation of actualities constellated around one’s presence like planets around the sun. “Home is where the heart is,” they say, and it’s true, not because home is better, but because it’s the one place on earth one has figured out. Door, field, water bowl, sleeping chair, and I are all where we’re supposed to be. Even smells console, even Carll’s feet, not for their sweetness (trust me) but their reassurance.

Home again, Jane greets me with extra joy. She’s always happy to see me, even when she isn’t, but now she really is. “Aren’t you the handsomest!” she tousles. Beauty does that to people. I am always eye candy – pulchritude, one might argue, is my profession, as it has been, say, Brad Pitt’s. If you’re a wow, you hardly need a bow-wow to draw attention. Beauty outshines talent any day.

I tell this to grungy Carll who grunts, “My salad days are over, pal.” Who was talking about salad?