All stories › Fantasy › Clean and Dry › Episode 3
The Banquet Room
Episode 3 of 3 of Clean and Dry by Mitchell Haas · free to read
The gray wool pants Celia Isley left in my grooming shop sat folded on my waiting chair for four weeks, right up to the day of her wedding.
She came in at 12:45 with her hair already done and her brother on a leash. The rings were tied to a satin bow on his collar.
“Lamb clip, clean face, round topknot,” she said. “You’re walking him in at four with the rings, so wear a jacket. The answer is still no.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it with your face.”
“Who’s walking you in?” I said.
“I’m walking myself in. I’m a grown woman with a retirement account.”
“An underfunded one.”
She looked at the pants on the chair and didn’t take them. Then she kissed the poodle’s head and left.
I put Bishop in the tub and wet him down.
“I’m not going to ask,” Vaughn said.
I worked the shampoo in. “Okay.”
The arrangement was simple. If I said yes in the tub, he got one hour as a man once the groom was finished and he was dry, and I got his nose for that hour. One drop of water ended it.
“She kept her promise for seven years. I can keep one no.” He looked at the drain. “I’ll carry the rings. I’m very good at carrying things. I’ll do it beautifully.”
Years in this job had taught me to read a dog in the tub, whether he was scared or sore or just done. This dog was a man trying hard not to want something.
“She wore her good perfume the last time she was here,” I said. “On a plain Saturday morning. To walk to the end of a strip plaza.”
“She likes that perfume.”
“And she left your pants on my chair.”
“She forgot them.”
“Your sister has never forgotten anything in her life.”
He didn’t answer that.
“Ask me anyway,” I said.
“Garrett.”
“It’s my nose. Ask.”
He looked at the drain again.
“Will you say yes?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be at the front of a room with eighty people and my nose.”
“I know.”
“There’s shrimp, Garrett. Catered shrimp.”
“I know about the shrimp.”
Then I got to work. A full groom on him took me two and a half to three hours. I had three hours and ten minutes, and I needed the last nail done at exactly 3:55.
I blew him out with the nozzle farther back on the legs, the way he liked, and did his face with a towel and the stand dryer. I did his ears, his teeth, the body, the legs, the topknot.
I ground every nail but one. I left the left front dewclaw, the little thumbnail on the inside of the leg, because the hour didn’t start until the groom was finished.
At 3:50 I laid my white shirt and my one good jacket beside the gray pants. That left me my clean shop polo. At 3:55 I ground the dewclaw.
The bleach bucket hit me like a wall. Vaughn stood up on my table, a naked man in a satin collar, and took the bow off with great dignity.
The pants fit. My white shirt nearly did. My jacket stopped two inches above his wrists.
We walked fast down the sidewalk past the laundromat. At the glass doors of the banquet room he stopped.
“Tell me what you smell,” he said.
“Lilies. Eighty guests. Buttercream. His mother’s hairspray.”
“And?”
“Shrimp that will be fine for exactly one more hour.”
“That’s my nose,” he said. “I’m proud of it.”
Celia was alone in the hallway in her dress, waiting to walk herself in.
She turned around and saw him, and for once she did not have anything ready.
“You’re dry,” she said.
“Bone dry.”
“I promised you.”
“You kept it for seven years,” he said. “Take one day off.”
I could smell salt then. Hers first, then his. He looked up at the ceiling and held very still.
“Don’t you dare,” Celia said. Her voice broke right down the middle. “Not one drop.”
“Not one,” he said.
She took his arm. They walked in together, in step, and I followed with the empty bow, and nobody in that room noticed the groomer in a polo shirt breathing through his mouth.
He held it through the whole thing. He handed over the rings at 4:20. At 4:24 he leaned over to me and said, “Now, please.”
I got him out the side door, down the sidewalk, and into my shop at 4:27.
Then his face crumpled, and there it was, one drop on his cheek. I was holding a standard poodle in a pile of gray wool and my good jacket.
My nose went back to being mine.
I dried his face with a towel and the stand dryer on low. I tied the bow on his collar again.
“You did it beautifully,” I said to him. “Like you promised.”
He licked my wrist, once, which from him was a speech.
Then I walked him down the plaza to the reception, where Celia saw us at the door and laughed with her whole face.
“You said yes,” she said.
“He asked nicely,” I said.