She sat down, preparing herself to make the call. She always found it difficult to confront Oaitse. He was so much smarter than her, older and more established. He usually talked her out of what she originally wanted to talk to him about, but not this time. This time she would be articulate and stick to her point, no wavering allowed.

Chompie sat sloppily next to her and lay his massive head on her lap, looking up at her with his “please-don’t-send-me-away” eyes. She looked away from him. She would no longer be manipulated by Oaitse or his very manipulative dog.

“Hello?” Oaitse picked up on the second ring.

“Hi Oaitse, it’s me.”

“Elizabeth…this is not a good time. Can I call you back later?” She could hear something in his voice. Was it irritation?

“Chompie ate my Prada handbag.” She was not budging, not today. She would not be bullied. She needed to get everything sorted out now not later. Oaitse always tried to put her off in that way, but not today. And what right did he have to be irritated with her anyway?

“Okay…,” he said not listening. She sensed he wanted to get off the phone. He was distracted. “I’m sorry about that I’m sure we can do something…can I call you back later?”

Then she heard it. A woman’s voice. A British woman’s voice. “Come back to bed, it’s cold,” she said.

“Who’s that?” Elizabeth asked.

“That? That’s the television. Sweetheart, can I call you back later? We’ll sort the entire thing out later. Promise.”

The British woman, who was definitely not on television, said, “Oaitse, come back to bed, baby!”

Elizabeth couldn’t believe it! She was in Joburg, waiting patiently for Oaitse to return, taking care of his big, fat slobbering, handbag-eating dog, while he was shagging some British woman in Oxford? And on top of everything- she no longer had a red Prada handbag! She began to cry. She couldn’t stop herself, it was all just too much.

Oaitse went into fix-it mode. “Elizabeth, honey, it’s not like that. You’re jumping to all sorts of conclusions. She’s a colleague at the college. That’s all. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Oaitse, you know what? ….You know what? I think….you…I really think…” She tried to think of the perfect thing to say, the thing that would put him in the place he belonged. A clever, biting comment that he would remember with a painful sting. But in the end all she could manage was, “Fuck off!”

She hung up and immediately called Marea back, waking her up for the second time that morning. And that was how she went from being almost married and not a dog owner, to being solidly single and the owner of a dog nearly double her size. Because in the end, through all of the sad, lonely nights that filled her days after that horrible phone call, she had to give it to Chompie, he was always there by her side, happily ready to lick away her tears, and you can’t ignore that kind of loyalty, at least Elizabeth couldn’t.

*****

Elizabeth parked her car, but didn’t get out. She watched as four white women passed each carrying in their arms variations on the theme “small fluffy dog”. Then an Indian man with a medium size, well behaved white dog with black eye patches passed by and eyed her, likely wondering why she was sitting in the parking lot of the dog school. She was slightly hopeful when a white man with a dog almost as big as Chompie passed by. At least Chompie would fit in size-wise. Then a coloured couple passed, they looked quite angry with each other, but their dog was lovely with long red hair. It nearly pulled them across the parking lot while they continued with an argument thrown back and forth between them at whispering level. Again Elizabeth was happy to see that not all dogs were well behaved. Some were behaviour-challenged just like poor Chompie.

But it was as she expected. There would not be a single black person at this dog obedience class. A dog obedience class? What had she been thinking? Despite all of the transformation, black people just expected dogs to behave. They didn’t have to pay to take them to school. She might as well accept it, she would be the one and only black person in the class. She might have known it before she signed up. She was going to stand out like a big, fat sore thumb. Besides the fact, by the look of things, no matter how she tried to pretty it up, Chompie was by far the most badly behaved dog, even compared to the lovely red head that had dragged its owners across the parking lot. She and Chompie were going to be the oddballs- the tiny, black woman with her massive, badly behaved monster dog. She blamed it all on Phodiso. She would have never come to the dog obedience class if it hadn’t been for her sister.

“If you’re keeping this dog you’ve got to do something,” Phodiso said as she looked down at her licked clean plate that a moment before held a bacon sandwich she was looking forward to eating. “He is not human compatible.”

Phodiso was always coming up with terms like that- human compatible– what does that even mean? “He’s okay. Besides, what can I do? It’s his personality. He’s jovial.”

“Jovial? Jovial? That behaviour is not jovial.” Phodiso looked over at her fiancé Odirile for some reinforcement. They were over to the flat for lunch after they’d taken Elizabeth out for the morning to “get her mind off Oaitse” even though the entire morning all Phodiso talked about was how sad it was that Oaitse would behave like that- “an economics professor and all, you’d expect better. Such a shame!”

Odirile shrugged his shoulders. “To be honest, I don’t know much about dogs. He’s a bit rambunctious but maybe it’s because he’s so big.”

Phodiso gave him a look. She liked him to agree with her. If he couldn’t agree, it was better he kept quiet. “You need to take that dog to dog school, Elizabeth. Antoinette at work said there’s a dog school in Sandton. They teach the dog how to be obedient. You need to get Chompie there before he kills you or someone else.”

At the time Elizabeth thought it seemed like a good idea. The woman on the phone had been friendly so she booked Chompie for two lessons a week for six weeks. That much education would have to have an effect on the dog, a positive effect Elizabeth hoped. She hung up the phone feeling good, like a responsible pet owner. She and Chompie needed to get on with life, their new life together. And if the dog school worked, they would be doing it in an orderly fashion, and Elizabeth was sure an orderly fashion was exactly the way she needed her new single life to proceed.

But now, sitting in the car in the parking lot, she was having second thoughts. Chompie was very set in his ways; he was already two years old, which was like nearly twenty in human years. Everyone knows you can’t teach a twenty year old new tricks. Maybe the whole thing had been a stupid idea. Then she remembered what the woman on the phone had said, “No refund”. The lessons were R100 each and she’d paid for twelve lessons, that was a lot of money. She and Chompie would have to suck it up. Maybe it would all work out fine. It wasn’t too bad being oddballs really. Who wanted to be like everyone else anyway? It was nice to be different.

Chompie had been keeping a keen eye on the passing dogs and knew exactly where they had disappeared to, so the minute Elizabeth opened the back door, before she could get a hold of the leash, he was off across the parking lot like a bullet and through the door of the school, a heavy glass door. Chompie pushed it with his nose like it was as light as a paper. Elizabeth slammed the car door shut and ran after him hoping she’d catch him before he ate someone. This was not the right way to start your first day at dog school, even she knew that.

She burst through the front door and looked frantically left and right. The nervously smiling woman at the desk kept quiet but pointed toward an open door at the back which led out into a fenced yard. Elizabeth rushed for the door. Things were not looking good.

In the yard, everyone stood with their dogs, but all of them were looking toward the corner. Elizabeth followed their eyes and there was Chompie. He had his big forelegs on the wide shoulders of…surprise, surprise… a man, a black man even! The only other black person in the class, as she’d expected. Despite being distracted by Chompie and his disruption of the class, Elizabeth couldn’t help but notice that the man Chompie had chosen was a very handsome, seriously well-built someone. She had to give Chompie ten points for taste. Next to the man sat a sad-eyed beagle, likely wondering what this big dog was doing to her poor owner.

“Chompie!” Elizabeth reached for Chompie’s leash and managed to pull him off of the man. “I’m so sorry! He got away from me in the parking lot. My dog is a bit of a handful,” she said.

“It’s okay. I felt sort of special the way he came straight to me.” The beagle owner smiled and Elizabeth suddenly felt unstable, as if her legs weren’t quite up to holding her. Wow! Could a smile really do that to a person? Kind, polite, handsome and a killer smile? Elizabeth was thinking maybe this dog obedience thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

She held out her hand to him. “Hi, I’m Elizabeth… and this is Chompie.”

“Realeboga and my little beagle is Bessie.” They both looked down at their dogs. Chompie lay on his side and Bessie lay with her head resting on Chompie’s stomach like a pillow. “I guess someone’s made a new friend,” Realeboga said.

Elizabeth smiled looking up at this very handsome man, nodding her head, not think about dogs at all. “Yes, I think so.”