the damned soap she’d covered me in.
“Con, close the door. The dog’ll get out and there’ll be hell to pay for it then.” She practically sang a ditty as she lathered me up.
“Ma, why are ye bathing Miki’s dog? That’s a bit of liberty, don’t ye think?” Con—that was Con. I recognized him when he came closer and I could peer at him through the lather. I tried giving him a tried-and-true sad puppy mourning face, but either the soap was dimming its power or he was immune. I was going to blame the soap. “Christ, he about tore Ian a new arse for fucking with the dog’s mind yesterday. Now yer going to piss him off by washing the Dude?”
“It’s just Dude. Not the Dude,” Brigid corrected him. She was right, but she didn’t have the inflection down. Miki seemed to be the only one fluent enough in Miki-ese to put the right purr on it, but I suffered the slaughtering of my noise about as well as the bath—silently and plotting a peeing in a shoe or two when I could. “And I had to wash him. He’d gone through the flower beds and rolled in the fish guts yer da put out there for something or other. I can’t have him smelling like a plate of hákarl when one of them gets up. They’ll think we can’t be trusted to watch the dog, and then where will we be?”
“Not watching a dog?” Con sounded as confused as I felt, and I tried to roll my eyes in sympathy, but sadly, my guts rolled instead and I felt a slither of gas escape me.
Revenge is a sweet, sweet thing—or rather a rotten thing best served after stewing in my guts and when Brigid, Mother of Rolling Tongued Horde and Betraying Cajoler, was bent over my ass to scrub my back legs.
Needless to say, she fled. Fled like the bacon-tricker she was, choking on my rank fur and even ranker, cabbage-laden belly. I cast a longing look at the now open door and then back up to Con, who was standing over me with a bemused smirk on his face.
“Aye, I know you did that on purpose, you mad bastard,” he laughed, sounding more like his father than before as he bent over me. “And no, you’ll not be getting out of a scrubbing. Come on, let’s finish you up. And none of your tricks. I grew up with a pack of brothers. There’s no stench you can come up with that even comes close to the boys after a weekend of Mum gone and frozen bean burritos.”
Nine
MIKI WAS full. Mostly of food but also of other things. Splayed out on a very comfortable sofa in the Morgans’ family room, he stared out of a bank of tall windows onto the backyard where Dude chased bird shadows across rain-damp grass.
“Here, ye look like ye could use one of these.” Donal placed a brown bottle of crème soda into Miki’s hand, then sat down on a wide chair set close to the sofa Miki’d snuggled into. “I’m taking ye like crème soda.”
“Yeah, I do.” He sipped, then wrinkled his nose at the bubbles. “Wow, strong. Fuzzy.”
“Kind of like yer dog there.” The head of the Morgan family chuckled. “Hope ye don’t mind, m’bride gave him a bath this morning. Seems he found a bit of fertilizer and decided it was his kingdom.”
“He hates baths,” Miki replied softly, taking another sip. “I always have to chase him around the house, and then once I get him in the tub, he stands there like I’m about to shove him in a microwave or something.”
“Well, ye’ll be happy to know, he also is quite fond of bacon, so Brigid coaxed him in with that.” Donal laughed at Miki’s horrified expression. “Let me guess, ye’ve never bribed him like that?”
“Seems kind of… fucked, you know?” He frowned, unsure if he liked what he was hearing. Knowing Dude—and the dog’s fondness of foul odors, he’d probably been at a nuclear-level of stench, but still, it bothered him. “It’s like lying, right? I mean, Carl… fuck, Kane probably—”
“He told me about the man.” The words were gentle, much more soothing than any piece of pie the Morgans forced at him after he’d eaten his third dinner. “Ye don’t have to talk unless ye want to, but know if ye do, it only goes as far as ye and me, a’ight?”
“Yeah, okay.” Miki nodded, sighing as Dude