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It all started as a prank. Ed had this puppy, a Golden, and were taking it out for a walk, Ed, Marin, and me. Then Marin says, "Hey, Ed, what if we chuck that puppy into the ravine?" Ha, ha.
What do you expect Ed to say? Ed is supposed to say, Marin, you bitch. It was Marin who had spent the morning with the puppy in her lap. She lacked a dog in her life, apparently, and was already thinking of correcting that situation because Ed's puppy was just so cute, so perfect, and gentle. We agreed it wouldn't be hard to take care of a dog alone, because Marin did live alone. And the dog wouldn't take much out of her earnings from the waitress job at Denny's. She did make good money, which will come as a surprise to some people. Marin was damned good, and if you are a damned good waitress you can always work, anywhere, and you will never be poor. That's something I learned from Marin, that waitressing for a woman is like house painting for a man, fulfilling the promise of democracy and allowing all those who choose it to tend their gardens in peace and quiet until the day they die.
But that's all theory. Marin doesn't work as a waitress anymore, and she hasn't got her eye on any garden. And Ed didn't tell her what most men in this world would have. Instead, Ed says, Ha! Ha! Dare you! We weren't losers, we weren't high, and until that very moment, not one of us had shown any inclination to excess. It was just one of those things you don't ever want to try to fully explain: Marin picks up the puppy and hurls it towards the ravine. Jesus Christ. It took my breath away. Only then the unexpected happens again, it happens like this: The puppy flies up into the air with one small yelp, but it hasn't got much arc, it's more like a wobbly bullet, more like a Billy Kilmer pass down the middle—Marin is a girl, after all. And Billy Kilmer was a quarterback that everyone has forgotten and I wouldn't know about either if my dad didn't have all those old Redskins videotapes, and if he hadn't made me watch them with him on Saturdays after he and my mother split. The thing about Billy Kilmer was he couldn't get a good spiral to save his life, and he really couldn't get it high into the air very well either. He just got the ball down there somehow, that was his trick. And that's how it looked for Marin's toss as well, for a while, but then that puppy got picked off by a sapling just short of the cliff and it hit the ground, and it whined.
The rest was inevitable. We rushed over and it was Ed who kicked it off the ledge. Three points! We were kind of laughing, kind of blowing a lot of air through our noses, having done this unbelievable thing. Then we did it again. You get a cheap puppy for about twenty bucks at the store, and you can pick them up free from people in the spring and fall as much as you want. Well, we only went through two seasons of this. There was a point when we had had enough. But before that point was reached, we became what I can now only describe as strange and serious. We didn't laugh again after the first time. We'd look at the puppy, study it, give it a name, and then throw it. There was something about the yelp, the impact, the bounce. And the silence afterwards. Did I ever think Ed or Marin was going to push me over the ledge while I was looking down? That they might plot against me, to take it all one step further? Or did I want to plot against one of them? No. It was just the puppies. I've got a dog now, and I love him. So even that wasn't taken away.
Marin went and got two years of college, and she's worked her way up to junior account executive in her company. Ed's famous for his backyard grill, a decent guy, and improbably devoted to his new wife. And I paint houses, interiors and exteriors, by the job. Fifteen days of work a month on average, my own operation, and I've got it made. I have my eye on that garden, and I will tend it, and I can't see any reason—with my modest expectations of life—why I won't end up happy.
Alexios Antypas writes prose poetry and short fiction, and loves his girlfriend Eszter and his three children. He lives in Budapest, Hungary, and teaches environmental policy at Central European University.