The following piece is published as part of our TLM Young Writers series, a dedicated section of The London Magazine‘s website which showcases the work of exceptional young talent aged between 13-21, from the UK and beyond.

Ashley D. Escobar 

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Our Dog Julio

Our dog Julio started smoking last week. It might sound silly, you might even think we’re irresponsible dog owners, but I can assure you we’ve tried everything to get him to quit. When I say we, I mean my friend Silas and me. We’re not married or anything, no, I don’t think it’s right to even say we’re in any sort of relationship. Except for the letters we write to one another; we hardly discuss anything in person. We never have the time. He works the graveyard shift at the postal office downtown and sleeps all day, while I work at an actual graveyard as a gardener. We named our dog Julio after the writer Julio Cortázar, so maybe the smoking was bound to happen.
…..We thought it was a phase at first, a dog equivalent to being a teenager. Social awkwardness, a need to fit in, but we thought Julio was different. He was never like the other dogs. He spent most afternoons asleep on a sunbeam, watching carpenter ants trapeze across our wooden floorboards. Silas was always meaning to call an exterminator, but we never got around to it and the ants became a friendly face around the otherwise empty house.
…..Julio started his smoking habit in front of a local gas station, loitering around until a sympathetic shopper, someone buying a Four Loko or paying for gas, threw him an eager cigarette. I think it was well-meaning; he didn’t intend to get our dog addicted. I know this is how it started because I was there. It was during our daily walk around the neighborhood, and this time, I let Julio sit outside while I scoured the convenience store aisles, without anything in mind.
….Well, I was supposed to buy eggs, but I thought it would be rather silly to buy eggs from a gas station. Perhaps that is what is meant by ‘convenience,’ but I thought against it and bought a pack of violet pastilles. I was feeling particularly lousy that day anyway. The cashier could tell. He was a tall figure, reaching seven feet. He asked me if I lived nearby. He had seen me before, not in the shop, but somewhere else. I shrugged and looked away at the rows of cigarettes behind him. American Spirits, Camel Blues, Lucky Strikes.
….‘Do you think I can see you again?’ he asked as he finished ringing me up. His accent as I had come to realize wasn’t from around here. I couldn’t place it, perhaps it was what people sounded like these days. I didn’t know. Something about the lilt was exciting.
……Before I could answer, Julio was coughing up a storm outside. I took the pastilles from the guy and stepped outside to see what all the fuss was about. Julio was gnawing a lit Gauloise in-between his teeth. I snagged it out of his mouth, and he tried to jump toward it.….
….‘No Julio,’ I said, examining the cigarette. It was strange to see Gauloises again. I didn’t think they sold them in this town. This drab little place. I thought I could love anywhere I went but I was beginning to resent that sentiment. Perhaps it was just end-of-the-year stress. ….
Julio watched as I took a drag without thinking much of anything. I didn’t notice the dog drool as I felt the warmth seep into my lungs. It had been how many years since I last smoked? A world before Julio, before Silas, now that seemed incomprehensible. Beyond my reach. ….
We weren’t in any rush home. Usually, Julio would race me to our yellow house at the end of the street, but he still had cigarettes on his mind.
….Silas told me later that night, before going to work, that he may lose his job by December. We had known there was a steady decline for a while now, but we had hoped the postal service could hold on for a little longer. He said all of this in his usual schoolboy scrawl on a mini legal pad set on the kitchen table. I didn’t think too much about it and left a frowny face on the next page.
….Julio began to reek of tobacco and smoke. He slouched around the house as the ants raced through his piles of ash. He became angrier, not at just us, but at the world. Silas was just happy he didn’t burn himself.….
….‘As long as we don’t have to pay for any medical expense, I don’t mind him smoking,’ Silas said with a yawn, turning to face me on our twin bed. I had become a stranger to his height.
….‘What about the future?’ I said, looking up at our popcorn ceiling.
….‘I’m sure he’ll be dead before he gets lung cancer,’ Silas said.
….‘Don’t say that,’ I said.
…. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, placing a kiss on my forehead, but I had already fallen asleep.
….Sometimes when I’m fixing the flower beds at the cemetery, I think of what kind of flowers we’d like to surround Julio’s body with. Silas acts like there’s no point in obsessing over the type––they were all simply flowers to him. I believed in the language of flowers, the fragile way in which they communicated. I had bought Silas red camellias when we first met to tell him he was the flame of my heart, but he set them on the mantel and never bothered to think any further about them. Lavender would be a beautiful sight on Julio’s grave, a sign of admiration, but yellow zinnias would be nice too.
….I thought I saw someone behind a mausoleum, a head peeking out in a red turtleneck. Maybe I had imagined it. I was accustomed to seeing shadows every now and then. I never pitied the dead. Only the living.
….Silas lost his job. With technology, no one in this country sent mail anymore. It seemed inconvenient, even inconsiderate to write to someone rather than call. He started joining Julio on the couch, and the nonsmoker became a smoker, and I worked longer hours in the cemetery.
…. ‘Julio’s getting picky,’ Silas told me one night. ‘He won’t smoke Marlboros.’
….‘It’s because he started with Gauloises,’ I said, placing their meals on the table. Julio had grown to love red wine too.
….‘Gauloises?’ Silas said, taking a bite from his spaghetti bolognese. ‘Where’d he get them?’
….I thought of the tall clerk at the gas station, how he hoped we would someday meet again.
….‘I can only wonder,’ I said. ‘Someone by the old gas station.’
….I went back to the station to find Gauloises because Julio wouldn’t stop barking at us until he got his way. He started wearing my scarves. He seemed to be growing.
….‘You don’t sell Gauloises, do you?’ I asked the man at the counter, but it wasn’t the tall one. It was a stocky teenage boy.
….‘No,’ he said. ‘What are those?’
….‘Cigarettes,’ I said.
….‘We sell these,’ he said, handing me a pack of Virginia Slims. ‘If you want something fancy.’
….‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It’s not for me….’
….I didn’t want to tell him it was for my dog. Our dog. I left the store in a hurry. I’d have to write to him, the tall cashier, in order to find Julio’s beloved Gauloises. So, I wrote a letter, asking if he knew where one could acquire them. In a whirlwind of fountain pen ink dripping on my fingers and bleeding through our shared notepad, I asked him to meet at the cemetery midday on Friday. I’d be working in-between the mid-century deaths.
….Silas was fast asleep Friday morning. Julio leaped all over our bed, trying to wake him for a morning smoke. I told Julio to wait but he ignored me. He lit a cigarette instead and smoked it in bed. I let him. By then, I was impervious to the whole affair.
….At the graveyard, I saw the tall cashier step into the soft beam of light right at noon. Funny how strangers could pay more attention to dates and details. Silas had forgotten my birthday. He wore a red turtleneck and held in his hand, a blue pack of Gauloises.
….He stood there, staring at me. Slowly, I took a step towards him, afraid if I went any faster, he would somehow vanish into thin air. Outside of the cemetery gates, all familiarity seemed foreign to me then. All that seemed to exist at that moment was this tall, strange man and me and the way the golden glow bathed his moppy hair.
….He stuck out his arm, the one holding the pack of cigarettes, before I could say anything. Even if I had managed to open my mouth, I don’t think there was anything worth saying. I heard the chirp of a distant bluebird. I heard the crackle of a leaf as I took my final step. I heard his soft breath.
….I felt something dizzy, then light, as the physicality of the box met my fingers. I remember staring into his eyes, but they were downcast and absent. Mentally, he could have been anywhere else. As I was too. I thought of our final days in Paris. I thought of how I kept falling in love with the city, watching the moon slowly disappear behind an elm tree over and over. I continued shouting out for Silas, but he wasn’t listening. In the distance, only seagulls flew as I read his last letter. They flew in pairs and I thought to myself––winter wouldn’t be so awful after all. I had caught a glimpse of a balloon before I walked back to our flat. Tied to the highest branch of the elm tree, it refused to come down or float away. I stretched out my arms, but the stretching was useless. I couldn’t reach it. I never could.
….‘Thank you,’ is all I managed to say.
….‘I think this will be our last time,’ he declared.
….‘But the world is big,’ I said. ‘We’ll manage to run into one another eventually.’
….‘I’d rather think of the infinitesimal,’ he said before turning around.
….I lingered in the silence for a moment, taking out a cigarette before realizing I didn’t have a lighter.
….I tossed one to Silas when I returned. He sat up on the couch, looking dead straight at the wall. I wondered what he was looking at. It was what he was avoiding that mattered much more. Julio lay still on the ground. It may as well have been a stillness that lasted forever.
….‘I’m sorry,’ Silas said. ‘I meant to tell you he only had a week to live.’
….I could have told him he was constantly meaning to tell me a lot of things. Instead, I grabbed a match from his pocket matchbook and looked into his eyes.
….‘Jacaranda,’ I said. ‘We’ll plant those.’
….‘You will,’ he said. ‘Rebirth.’
….For now, we sat in the living room–– soon to be someone else’s––smoking a desire from our days filled with only naïveté and bliss. Our dead dog marked a lesion in everything we knew and loved, but for some reason, it brought relief, and only relief. Without a car, it had seemed like I would never reach the motorways of farewells and goodbyes. But in that hovering silence, I knew I would have to walk after all.

 

 

Ashley D. Escobar is twenty-one years old and examines human connection and solitude at Bennington College. She was born and raised in San Francisco. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Wind-up Mice and author of SOMETIMES (Invisible Hand Press, 2021). 

 

 

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