A Dog Doo Afternoon
Dustin L. Mays
January decided to make brownies from scratch. The kitchen shelves were lined with old
cookbooks her mother had brought from her native England, but she decided to use a recipe from
a new cooking app she had downloaded to her smart phone. “This mixer is important! Not some
damn tea for English grannies, and who knows what half the crap is in those books anyway,” she
thought as she used her phone’s voice command feature to read her a brownie recipe.
As she pulled the mixing bowls from atop the refrigerator and gathered all the needed
ingredients she lit another cigarette to calm her nerves. January had smoked since the age of 14,
and twenty years later she was a up to two packs of Native Spirit Reds a day and had almost
completely lost her sense of smell. As she smoked, she separated the dry ingredients from the
liquid and moved the oven dial to what she estimated to be 375 degrees. She could not read the
numbers nor count the dial’s tiny notches since she refused to replace the pair of glasses she had
destroyed at a warehouse rave to celebrate her passing of the Illinois Bar ten years earlier. She
also assumed that she was using the right amount of milk and that she had used baking chocolate
and not some of her mother’s old almond bark. The only things she was sure of were that she
used a stick of butter and two eggs. “You can’t fuck up brownies,” she thought as she grabbed
hairspray instead of Pam to grease the pan, dropped her Native Spirit into the batter, and placed
her brownies in a 275 degree oven.
As the brownies warmed to to a chocolatey mud bath, January called her sister, k.d., at
the downtown architecture firm where she worked. “Swinton Firm,” k.d. answered in the deep
voice she often used when answering the phone.
“Kay, this January. I just put some brownies in the oven for the mixer, and I want to
make sure that you’re going to bring the tickets. I don’t want this to be like the time you said we
could get into that movie premiere...”
“Well Jans, first! I’m about to go into a meeting with Tilda so I don’t have much time.
Second, you’re welcome for the invite. Third, why in the name of Canadian independence are
you making brownies for a mixer downtown? The governor is going to be there! Fourth, it was
The Last of the Mohicans and we were like 7 so let. it. go! Fifth, there is a list so you don’t need
a ticket. Just bring some ID,” the older sister grumbled into the phone, already regretting getting
her sister onto the list.
“Where should we meet, and please tell me mom isn’t coming.”
“No, mother isn’t coming. I might have been drunk and invited you, but there is not
enough meth in the world for me to smoke to want to invite mother. Meet me at that drinking
fountain for horses by the water tower at 5:30. We will have to stop at Tilda’s so I can change.”
“I feel so special when you talk like that,” January said as she inhaled, “I’ll be there in
my Sunday best with my brownies.”
“Leave the damn brownies. What the hell? And Be. On. Time,” k.d. instructed as she
disconnected the call.
After her sister suddenly hung up January plugged her phone into a charger she kept in
the kitchen and went to her closet to pick out clothes. She decided on a Haute Couture black
leather cocktail dress that was a gift from the lead of a punk band she saved from a DUI charge,
pro bono, a few years back. The shiny leather stopped a tasteful 5 inches above her knees and fit
her toned figure like a wet coat of paint. The most important detail, however, was the pocket she
added just at the hip for her Native Sprits and a lighter. She decided to wear the only shoes she
had ever bought as a splurge, a pair of Nicholas Kirkwood open-toed four inch heels with a silver
sunburst pattern on top. After quickly trying on the outfit and catching a look at her hair in the
mirror she decided to make an emergency appointment with a goth stylist that owed her a favor.
“I’m a cat woman not a cat lady,” she thought as she went to the kitchen to grab her phone.
At the Swinton Firm’s office, k.d. was clearing all business for the following Monday.
Her boss, the only other person that was a member for the Swinton Firm, decided to give
everyone a three day weekend. “I’ve been meaning to go to Springfield and study the layout of
Lincoln’s tomb for a police station we are going to build on the north side,” the owner, Tilda,
yelled from her desk, “and I’m going to need at least three days to get there and back.” As k.d.
stood up to return to her desk Tilda’s emerald eyes grew wide as she said, “You should really go
down sometime k.d. Springfield has an animatronic Mary Todd Lincoln that I know you will
find interesting.” Tilda had been trying to get k.d. to go down to the capital ever since they
parted with the architecture firm in The Loop seven years earlier, and she always brought up
some historic marker or road side attraction as a lure. k.d. was raised in Canada and had no
interest or connection to the “historic” Route 66 or the life of Abraham Lincoln. Tilda, born in
London, had always seen America as an insane cousin that she couldn’t spend enough time with
and never realized that k.d. saw America as an older brother that got all the inheritance and was
always too loud at parties.
The Swinton Firm’s office was just a single room on the third floor of a building near the
water tower and shared a wall with a tarot card reader. There was a gay bar on the second floor
of the building that catered to old queens and closeted tourists that also offered cheap drinks with
clandestine indoor smoking. The two would often take breaks and smoke with the twenty-four
year old Romanian bartender that worked from lunch through happy hour when the firm’s
business was slow. Tilda’s skills as an architect were appreciated by herself alone, but her ability
to win no-bid contracts from various Chicagoland bureaucracies kept the business afloat. Her
mysterious connections also shielded her from prosecution when an Exxon station she had
converted into a Jesuit charter school exploded while the lacquer was drying on the floor of the
gymnasium she had built in the fuel tanks. Luckily the building was empty and the only known
victim was an opossum that had been creeping out the neighborhood.
k.d. looked at the office clock and realized it was ten minutes past five. “Tilda, we need
to get going. I’m meeting my sister at the water tower and I’ll have to change in your apartment.”
she announced.
“Calm down. The mixer starts at 7:30 and I think I’ll just wear this. You meet your sister,
change, and meet me downstairs for a shot and a smoke. We’ll cab it to Navy Pier,” Tilda
responded while she looked at a blueprint of a mausoleum she wanted to convert to a
switchboard building for Western Union.
Back in the kitchen, January was taking the brownies out of the oven as the buzzer
screeched to announce a visitor downstairs. It had been an hour since she called her stylist and
she was behind schedule. She pushed the button to buzz the stylist into the building and lit a
cigarette. When she opened the door January was dumfounded to find the stylist’s assistant, Nic,
standing there with a tackle box and sweat on his brow. “What the fuck are you doing here,”
January hissed while pointing the lit Native Spirit at Nic’s chest.
“Gwyneth is on a pilgrimage down the camino de Santiago de Campostella or whatever
and she called me in a panic and told me to get here,” Nic sassed.
“Dear god! Let me put on the dress and I need to be finished in about half and hour,”
January said in a panic.
“Ok, I’ll get things ready on the kitchen table while you change. Did you already try
something? It smells like burnt AquaNet in here,” Nic said moving to the kitchen. “Also, why do
you have an old word processor on the dining table?”
“It belongs to my mom. She still writes on that thing,” January yelled from her bedroom.
Growing up she had been kept awake at night during summers with her mother, a mystery novel
author, as she clacked away at her typewriter, and January praised the heavens when her mom
finally upgraded to an electronic word processor only to be kept awake at night by the trills and
hums of the new technology’s dot matrix printer. “You can push it out of the way if you want!
She’s in Maine for the week settling a score with an old sheriff or something.”
Nic pushed the gray hulking machine to the other side of the table and opened his tackle
box full of eye liners, bases, concealers, crystals, powders, and glitters. He pulled up another
chair so January could sit directly across from him when she was ready, and just as he got the
chairs situated she came through the door in the leather dress. “My face is your canvas,” she
sighed as she dropped into the dining chair. January’s porcelain complexion required none of the
bases or concealers so Nic went straight for the eyeshadow named “Indian Ink”. He then painted
a ninety degree triangle of pitch black over each eye with the ninety degree angle on the upper
party of the eyelid next to the nose and the point just beyond each eye. The shadow was the thick
and tacky consistency of asphalt and he decided to add a few crystals to the shadow for a “fierce”
effect. When he was finished with the eyes he pulled out a plastic jar of Lady Fiber, a product for
a “stiff hold and natural shine.” January had recently dyed her hair to a light ginger and cut it
above the ears. Nic arranged her hair in his signature “Oxford Bro” style. “It is what Prince
Harry would have if he didn’t have to cut his hair for the Royal Air Force or whatever,” he
explained.
When Nic was finished, January took a quick look in his hand mirror and glanced at the
oven clock. It was five and she needed to go. “This is actually pretty great,” she told Nic, “I
don’t have any cash because Gwyneth was supposed to do this for free. Leave your number on
the fridge and I’ll get in touch for a tip. In the mean time tell your boss I hope she chokes on
whatever it is Mario Batali is giving her in Spain.” She grabbed a new pack of Native Spirits, a
thin Bic lighter, her driver’s license, and a debit card and shoved them all in the hip pocket. She
then picked up the pan of brownies and headed out the back door and down the fire escape,
leaving Nic at the table to put the word processor back in its place and show himself out.
When she got to the street she sat the pan of brownies onto the hood a car while she lit a
cigarette. After her smoke was going and she was ready to walk she hoisted the pan above her
head and carried the undercooked sludge as if she was Big Boy and one of his burgers. January
had to cut through a leash-free dog park on her way to the nearest hotel where she could easily
grab a cab. The dog park was only grass, but she was not concerned about making it across the
patch quickly in heels. What she did not consider, however, were the moles. Halfway through the
park her right heel sunk deep into a mole tunnel and the pan of brownies hit the ground like an
egg hits a windshield. Refusing to lose face January shouted, “There it is!” and scooped the
brownies back into the pan. If she had never lost her smell she would have known immediately
why the woman with a CVS bag around her hand was staring in wide-eyed amazement as she
regained her balance and took off. The woman’s Boxer was still kicking the grass with his hind
legs as January reached the other side of the park to catch her cab at the hotel.
k.d. had only been waiting for a few minutes, but the smell of the horses and the jibber
jabber of the tourists next to the water tower were already grating. It was 5:37 and when she had
just about given up hope she saw her sister stepping out of a cab on Michigan Avenue. January
had barely been able to gaze across the park to look for her sister when k.d. grabbed her arm and
said, “let’s go.” They crossed the street to Water Tower Towers where Tilda owned a high-end
condo with a view of Lake Michigan. The doorman recognized k.d. and let them pass, but as
they got into the elevator the older sister noticed something off. “God on a wheel! It smells like
dog shit in this elevator. I bet it’s that damn 97 year old poodle Oprah left in her apartment. Also,
W.T.F?! I told you to not bring the brownies.”
“While you were making maple syrup and looking at the queen on your money in Canada
I was being raised with manners, and I never show up to a party without something offer,”
January shot back.
The two sisters were not raised in the same household, and neither had lived with their
mother, Jessica, before the age of eighteen. January was the daughter of Hillard E. Jones, an
expert on animal husbandry in Ballstaff, Maryland. Mr. Jones was run over by a horse the
weekend of January’s high school graduation. Luckily her mother was there to assist the
authorities and determine that it was actually his secretary that ran him over. The estate went to
January’s step mother, Barbara, who quickly sent her off to live with her birth mother. k.d. was
the daughter of Admiral Chester P. Lang of the Royal Canadian Navy and spent most of her
childhood in Newfoundland before moving to Ottawa when her father was placed on the Prime
Minister’s staff. k.d. was born on the first of July and even though she was much older than the
Canada Act of 1982 she still considered Canada Day her own private holiday. On k.d.’s 20th
birthday Admiral Lang was shot through the chest by a cannon that was supposed to have never
been loaded. k.d. took comfort in the presence of her mother in Ottawa that afternoon.
Especially after Jessica discovered that it was actually foul play. Lord Henri Chamberlain, the
Governor General of Canada, was later implicated because of Jessica’s hard work.
When k.d. opened the door to Tilda’s apartment January was startled by the decor.
Everything in the apartment was white. The polar bear skin rug, the couch and chairs, the door to
the bathroom, and even all of the books. When Tilda opened the bathroom door and stepped out,
January wasn’t sure if it was the fact that another person was suddenly in the room or if it was
Tilda’s bright red hair contrasting with the white that startled her more.
“I thought you were going to meet us at the bar,” k.d exclaimed, also in shock.
“I was, but I realized my hair is a mess and I haven’t showered in like a week so I came
home to freshen up. And who’s this vixen you’ve brought up to my lair?”
“I’m January, k.d’s half sister. From the American father,” January said as an
introduction.
Tilda looked amazed at the leather dress and eye make up. She took two curious whiffs
over her shoulder before saying, “It is nice to finally meet you. I would shake your hand but first
I need an explanation as to why you brought a pan of dog shit to my apartment.”