Other People’s Dreams by Emily Rinkema

When our dog, John’s dog, collapsed in the kitchen, we were all too drunk to drive. It was almost midnight, and we’d been celebrating Marty’s 40th birthday. There were five of us, John, me, Marty, Susan, and Father Ted, who had surprised us by coming up from Boston for the night, even though it was snowing. We hadn’t seen him in years and he insisted that tonight he was just Ted, just one of us, just like in college. John had been mixing drinks since seven, and we were sitting around the table telling old stories when we noticed that JoJo the Wonder Dog–that’s what Ted had named her–was swaying. At 14, she had many health issues, but this wasn’t a symptom of any of them. For a moment, we all laughed, watching her rooted to the floor, swaying from side to side.

“JoJo!” John said, trying to snap her out of it.

“Treat?” I asked, breaking off a piece of cookie. Treats were the way we connected, terms of a truce we’d negotiated over the years, but she didn’t even turn her head.

Then she fell over.

John dropped to the floor, Susan and Marty pushed back from the table, and I picked up my phone and looked up the emergency vet. Ted grabbed a blanket off the couch and gave it to John, who wrapped JoJo in his arms. I told the technician on the phone what happened, that yes, she was breathing, that no, she didn’t seem to be in any pain. Everyone listened as I said we were on our way, that we’d come now.

“She’s going to be okay,” Marty said.

“We need a driver,” Ted said, his hand on John’s back.

“I’ll call an Uber,” Susan said.

The mini-van pulled up and we all piled in, Ted next to the driver and the rest of us packed in the back. John and JoJo sat in the last row next to Marty. Susan and I sat in the middle row. She tried to put her seatbelt on without taking off her mittens and we laughed as if everything were normal, as if we were just friends headed out for the night.

“Is that a dog?” Our driver asked, looking in the rearview mirror. “No dogs in my car.”

“Just a baby,” said Marty from the back, and then, “It’s my birthday!”

The driver shook his head, but pulled away from the curb. “No throwing up in my car,” he said.

“Remember when John and Ted threw the costume party and Ted came as a sexy nun?” Marty asked. I looked back at him. He was holding the dog’s paw in one hand, John silent and focused beside him.

“Not now,” said Ted from the front. But Marty was off again, recounting the details, embellishing some, making some up completely. Susan turned around to smack Marty when he described what she had been wearing, and we did what we did when we were all together, we laughed just a little too loudly. Marty passed a bottle to me through the seats and I drank. I passed it up to Ted, who didn’t look at me as he took it.

“No drinking in my car,” the driver said.

“We’ve been best friends since college,” Ted said to the driver, who just shook his head. “We were inseparable,” Ted said, and for a moment it was quiet.

It was snowing hard when the car pulled up to the vet’s office. Ted got out and thanked the driver. Susan slid open the side door and climbed out, followed by Marty. I had always thought they would be good together, both so cheerful, so quick to forgive, but it just never happened. Maybe they were too alike. I looked back at John, but he didn’t move. He shook his head.

I leaned up to the driver.

“Can we take a minute?” I asked. “I’ll pay. Just to drive us around for a few more minutes.”

“What about them?” He gestured to our friends, who were standing outside the vet’s door.

I looked over at Ted. He started back towards the car, but I shook my head. I held up my hand, five minutes, and he nodded. I slid the door closed and the driver pulled into the snow-covered road.

Ted was the one who gave John the dog. He found her on the street a month after he joined the seminary. I had just moved away with John, a new city, a new start, and I was there when Ted’s call came, when he asked John to come. I told him it was wasn’t a good idea, that we didn’t need a dog. But it was more than that. It was Ted. It was John.

Love is complex.

John held JoJo’s body and I sat away from him, in the middle row, and talked to the driver. I asked him about his family, about his other job. He asked me what I did, where I’m from. We nodded and smiled, both aware we were just filling space.

“I had a dream like this once,” the driver said, and I closed my eyes. Nobody cares about anyone else’s dreams. As the driver talked, I listened to John behind me, crying quietly. I knew I should climb back next to him, put my arm around him and tell him she’d been a good dog, but I also knew that JoJo the Wonder Dog had never been ours, that it wasn’t my comfort he needed.

The driver laughed, “And I just kept going around the block, and I couldn’t find a place to pull over, and cars were honking.” He paused, looked at me in the rearview mirror. “I was so scared. I just wanted to pull over, but I couldn’t find a place to stop.” He turned the corner and I saw our friends through the lobby doors, huddled together, waiting for us.

“One more time around,” I said.

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EMILY RINKEMA — Emily lives and writes in northern Vermont. Her stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Phoebe Journal, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading, the Bath Flash Fiction, and Oxford Flash Fiction anthologies. You can read her work on her website (https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site) or follow her on X or IG (@emilyrinkema).

Art by AMANDA YSKAMP — Amanda is a writer and a collagist. Her artwork has appeared in such magazines as Black Rabbit, Riddled with Arrows, and Stoneboat. She lives on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, teaching writing from her online classroom and serving as a librarian at the local elementary school.