Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘divorce work’

Our Business Card (No Divorce Work, Please)

On Golden Pond

“The kind of deal,” Portia said, “where I walk away.”

“Sounds good,” Bernie said. “In theory.”

“What the hell does that mean?” said Portia.

I was kind of with her on that. Plus at that moment my mind was wandering back to the time I got nipped by a duck. We’d been working on a divorce case – we hate divorce work, me and Bernie, but our finances were a mess back then, and still are. Those Hawaiian pants … Anyway, we were out at a ranch where they had a nice little pond. I love swimming! And it was a hot day, so I jumped in for a quick dip. After a while I realized I didn’t have the pond to myself. There was this duck drifting around. A duck is a kind of bird and I don’t like birds much, but ducks like swimming and so do I, so I swam over just to … I don’t know, give the duck a friendly little bump or something. But I never got the chance because all of a sudden the duck squawked, started flapping its wings and paddling hard with its weird feet, and then zoomed right at me, opened its mouth wide – no teeth, what’s with that? – and nipped me right on the nose. More like a bite, really, even with no teeth. I’ve got teeth, big and sharp, but the next thing I knew I was swimming backward, real fast, the only backward swimming I’ve ever done.

But where were we?

Slide

Some question about what happened at the vet’s? I’ll try to remember. Meanwhile, Bernie says that finally there are some economists who believe in a steady state economy instead of growth. “At last,” he says. Do you understand any of this? Not me, but my guess is it has something to do with water and the aquifer. 

Meanwhile, we’re on a case – yes, divorce, which we hate, but right now we’re on a long drive with Elmore James coming through the speakers. The trumpet is my favorite instrument but right behind comes the slide guitar. The feeling that goes from deep in my ears and down my neck all the way to my tail – and then sometimes back up the other way, meeting the next feeling already zooming down! – hard to describe. Bernie sings along – The Sky Is Crying, Mean Mistreatin’ Mama, It Hurts Me, Too. Bernie has a real nice voice – have I mentioned that already? – but Elmore James has a voice a lot like the slide guitar, a voice that does things to me inside.

A Big Day

Bernie says this is a big day for us, not sure why. Certainly not on account of business. We’re down to one lousy divorce case. Yesterday we tailed this accountant, whatever that is, maybe something to do with numbers, where I always stop at 2 – which is plenty – to a motel out in the desert where he met his girlfriend, also an accountant. And so is the wife, Bernie says. He thinks that’s pretty funny for some reason. The accountant dude was pretty nervous – we see that a lot – and dropped the key when he was trying to unlock the door. “What would Freud say about that?” Bernie said. Freud? Had we taken down a perp by that name? I thought so. If Freud was back on the scene this case was more complicated than it looked. No problem. Bernie was always the smartest human in the room, plus we had my nose. If you want my opinion, that combo is the secret of the Little Detective Agency’s success, right there. And if Bernie says it’s a big day for us, then it is.