Then Victor realized that I must be using his hands-free headset, and he got all kinds of pissed off that I was “getting it sweaty.” And that’s when I hung up on him. Because getting a headset sweaty was kind of small potatoes compared to the fact that I was brandishing a machete at large raptors, while considering the pros and cons of hiring a pimp to dig up our dead dog. Victor kept yelling at me, though, since technically I didn’t actually know how to hang up a hands-free headset, but I explained that he was wasting his breath, because I’d already hung up the phone in my mind and wasn’t listening anymore. Then he got really shouty, so I started singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to drown him out, and that’s when my neighbor showed up again.
She seemed more concerned this time, possibly because I was belting out Bonnie Tyler and crying while swinging around a machete over a partially disturbed grave. Or possibly it was because she was thinking, “You’re totally getting that headset all sweaty.” People are weird, and it’s hard to guess what’s going through their heads. She looked up at the vultures and immediately realized what was going on, and brought over a giant blue plastic tarp to help me cover Barnaby. We put heavy rocks all around the edges of the tarp and the vultures looked pissed, but I was so grateful I cried. Then I went inside and took a very, very long shower. When I came back out I realized that vultures are surprisingly strong, and that the blue plastic tarp had become a kind of vulture Rubik’s Cube, each of the birds trying a corner to get it all solved. I was having a nervous breakdown, but at least I was bringing the vulture community together.
My friend Laura (yes, the same one who’d dragged me to wine country) noticed that my Twitter stream was filled with updates about vultures, and machetes, and dead dogs, and how glad I am that Cartoon Network exists, and so she called. I was all, “I’m fine,” and she very plaintively said, “Well, you don’t sound fine. I’m coming over to dig up your dead dog,” and I immediately said, “No! No one needs to see that. Especially you, because you knew him.” Then she said, “You sound terrible. We’ll be right over. I’m bringing my four-year-old. And a shovel.” And she did.
I couldn’t let her do it alone, so we put on a video game for Hailey and Harry and told them we were going gardening. Then we both put on gloves, and she put on a bandanna to mask the smell, and we did it. And by “did it” I mean that we dug up my dog and sealed him into an Igloo cooler. Except that technically I did it with my eyes mostly closed, because I couldn’t bear to look, and so Laura was all, “Okay, lift. Shovel to the left. YOUR OTHER LEFT. HOLY SHIT, DO NOT LOOK. Further . . . further . . . lower into the box . . . DONE! HIGH FIVE, TEAM.”
And then it was done, and Laura, an Emmy Award–winning cosmopolitan woman who owned shoes that cost more than my wedding, stuck her chin out at the vultures (who were all glaring at us from a few feet away) and muttered menacingly, “That’s right, assholes. This shit is over.” It was surprisingly empowering for both of us.
We sealed the cooler completely and carried it toward the garage, where it could wait in peace until the crematory came to pick up Barnaby Jones on Monday. It seemed both ridiculous and terribly sad, but then Laura looked at me with understanding eyes and said, “Aw. We’re Barnaby Jones’s paw-bearers. Get it? Laugh now.” And I did. I laughed for the first time in days as I carried my sweet, dead dog from his shallow desecrated little grave. And that’s when I realized how incredibly lucky I am to have friends like Laura. Because she took something traumatic and awful and made it . . . okay. And also because when I apologized—for the eighteenth time—for getting her into this, she said, “It’s totally fine,” and waved her hands in dismissal, as if I’d simply spilled my martini on the table. Then she said, “Dude. Your dog is like Jesus. He’s rising on the third day.” And then I told her she was like “Mary Magdalene, only less whorey,” and she was like, “Well, it’s not a contest.” Then we came inside and scrubbed our hands for two hours, and then she told me that she had everything in her purse to make fresh salsa, including beer and a tiny Cuisinart, because she knows I don’t own appliances. It was like her purse was magical, and I peered in, asking her where the pony was. “Ew,” she said, looking at me with judgment for the first time that whole day. “Who the hell puts pony in salsa? You really are a terrible cook.” And at the end of a week that was so horrific that I didn’t think I’d come out the other side again, I somehow ended it feeling something that I would never have expected.
I felt lucky.
I was reminded of something my father used to say when I would deplore his taste in friends (who occasionally turned out to be murderers and homeless people). For once I found myself agreeing with his mantra: “A friend is someone who knows where all your bodies are buried. Because they’re the ones who helped you put them there.”
He was right. And sometimes, if you’re really lucky, they help you dig them back up.
EPILOGUE: Hailey and Harry decided they needed to take a picture of Laura and me after we were finished “gardening.” It is the single worst and best picture I own.