EuroDog and Peaches by John Talbird
Eurodog felt that Peaches had lost sight of the differences between right and wrong. She was going through a time in her life where she wasn’t too concerned with the consequences of fucking things up. She’d burst in on him at any time, day or night, and though he always knew it meant trouble, had to admit he was glad to see her. “What are you doing, sitting around the house feeling sorry for yourself?” she’d want to know, grabbing his hand and yanking him out of his complacence before he even had a chance to put on his watch or pick up his phone. He’d be out on some lonely wet street in New Jersey hearing a church tower chime three, broken glass on the pavement. Sometimes, in the distance, he could hear some guy screaming, “Aaaaaargh!”
One night, down at Coney Island, they saw a shark off shore. The only light came from the giant moon, but they were pretty sure it was a fin slicing through gray water. No one was swimming, in fact, they had the beach to themselves, but it was frightening nonetheless—for him, if not Peaches, since she said, taking off her clothes, “Nothing’s eating me.”
Eurodog had been living in New York for over a decade, but still had his East London accent. Peaches had hurt him multiple times—both physically and emotionally—yet he always answered the door when she knocked. New York kept him down year-round, especially during the bleak winter months, but since Peaches lived there, he stayed. He worked at the used record store down the street from his rent-controlled East Village loft. Peaches worked at El Padre Galleria in the Village where she helped hang art and sat at the front desk and greeted people, sometimes running errands for artists who were full of themselves. When Eurodog got off early, he would walk around the corner to the Chinese takeout to get Peaches some steamed pork dumplings and they’d eat them at the front desk staring at whatever ugly, expensive art hung on the walls.
Peaches was from rural Eastern Pennsylvania. She’d raise her glass and say, “Everything interesting about my hometown could fit into this shotglass.” Kicking it back, she’d add before her eyes even stopped watering, “And there’d still be enough room left to give me a buzz.” Eurodog still wanted to see it. When she went home for holidays—Christmas, a cousin’s birthday—he would hint not-so-subtly that he had nothing to do, but she never took him along. And so, one day, after dropping her at Penn Station, he circled back and bought a ticket for himself and got on a different car. It took about three hours to get there and during the time Eurodog’s emotions ran the gamut from elation to terror. He was shaking by the time they arrived and had sweated through the T-shirt beneath his button-down. When he stepped off the train and looked around at the rolling hills of farmland divided into squares, grain silos dotting the horizon and even, in the distance, what looked like a horse-drawn carriage, he might as well have been in Afghanistan, the world so strange to this city boy’s eyes. It occurred to him that maybe he had fallen asleep on the train and that this was actually a dream.
He was jolted back to reality by some old bearded man dressed in a broad-brimmed hat and suspenders, the only person on the platform, yelling, “Flannery!”
“Papa,” the smiling girl said, opening her arms wide for the hug, “I am so happy to see you! It has been far too long!”
And, of course, the girl—in gingham skirt, all the black makeup scrubbed off in transit, hair combed down neatly —was Peaches, who maybe saw Eurodog or maybe didn’t and so he got back on the train just before the doors closed, determined to ride it away even though it was going in the opposite direction from home. Still, maybe it was heading to a place that made sense, at least to him.
John Talbird is the author of the novel, The World Out There (Madville) and the chapbook of stories, A Modicum of Mankind (Norte Maar). His fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Potomac Review, Ambit, Juked, Riddle Fence, and many others. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and cited under “Notable Essays” for Best American Essays 2021. A professor at Queensborough Community College-CUNY, he lives with his wife and their two sons in New York City. More of his writing can be found at johntalbird.com.
