The Puppy Love clinic on Prospect Park West sat between a chain coffee shop and one of those nostalgia studios where people went to make apps the old-fashioned way.  As Madison crossed the street, she noticed that the sign above the door was flickering with cubic artifacts, words flipping every few seconds.

MAKING PET PARENTS

MAKING ABOMINATIONS

MAKING PET PARENTS

MAKING ABOMINATIONS

On the curb, opposite the entrance, sat a table draped in a bright pink cloth. Last time she was here, the fabric showed gory propaganda videos, masterfully edited, of gruesome early experiments and failures of the implantation process.

At least they were only hacking the sign. A private practice in SoHo had its windows smashed out. Beverly Hills was hit worse: a vet, a client, two techs, and a dozen embryos were killed when a repro-rights activist tossed a firebomb through the front door.

Today, the cloth was inert and the protestors, along with their glass-jarred specimens hadn’t shown up yet. It was early, not yet ten o’clock. Even revolutionaries like to sleep in on the weekend.

Madison pushed the heavy door but it didn’t move. A paper sign, taped on the inside, apologized for the modified weekend hours. They’d be open at eleven.

At least the park was just up the street.

She thought about calling Logan, but he was out of town for work. Or so he claimed. Besides, she didn’t want him there. This was her decision, not his. She set an alarm and moved on.

#

Madison entered Prospect Park at Bartel-Pritchard Square, easing past the Sunday farmer’s market. Lily-white middle-aged hawkers shilled Gowanus-farmed oysters, while attractive German lesbians artfully scattered mysterious mushrooms, rippled and manifold, foraged from nearby Greenwood Cemetery, on battle-worn keffiyehs. Three black muslim teenagers carefully arranged the rooftop-grown produce from their newly co-op’d housing projects.

She leaned down to examine a particularly impressive heirloom tomato, scarred and rough, yellow and orange. In the summer heat, its scent bloomed, rising past the ubiquitous shit, piss, and weed, filling her head with visions of Roman villas and Mediterranean blue.

She heard a loud, unwelcome buzz by her ear, followed by a quick zip, and a gentle pat on her hand. She looked down: an enormous wasp spasmed and folded its legs across its carapace.

“You’re welcome.”

She looked back up. A boy in a football jersey blew across the top of a plastic gun.

“Uh… thanks,” she said.

He nodded. She smiled but he’d already looked away, focused on the gun’s open chamber and refilling it from a small tube of salt.

“Maddie! Grab that dog!”

Madison turned to see a lightning fast golden-brown furry streak run right at her. She bent down just in time and pulled up the wriggling, panting, tail-wagging bundle.

A hundred feet into the park was the real reason Madison came here every Sunday morning.

The Rescue Truck.

A dozen acrylic doors, in two rows, and behind each one a beautiful, irresistible, utterly-perfect dog. Some were obviously mutts, tough street-dogs that had enough charisma to avoid being put down by Animal Control. Others were abandoned. Some were Birthies. Most weren’t. But they were all wonderful.

She knew every one of the volunteers who worked there and they’d let her take the dogs for walks up and down the access road to the bike path, if there were no customers.

A wet nose snuffed and burrowed into her neck. She giggled. The escapee seemed like a dachsund-golden-doodle mix. Adorable and overly-friendly. Probably not an abandoned Birthie: the hormonal imprint from the mother meant they weren’t very open to strangers at first.

Madison carried the squirming Golden Dachs-a-Doodle to the truck.

“This yours, Caron?” she said, passing the dog over to the older woman.

“Thanks Maddie,” Caron said. “Appreciate it. Doxxie here is nothing but trouble.”

Caron booped Doxxie’s nose, clipped a leash onto her collar and put her on the ground. Doxxie immediately got tangled around her legs and sat down.

“Here to help out today?” Caron asked.

“Just going for a walk.”

Caron squinted her left eye, orbital skin gathering into vivid topographies.

“Don’t lie. I saw you up at Puppy Love.”

“What? I…”

“Relax. It’s ok. Everyone wants a Birthie. But seriously, are you going to say no to this?”

Caron shoved Doxxie’s face right up to Madison’s and the puppy licked her nose, breath slightly musty and reminiscent of fresh dirt.

Doxxie had the same color as Charlie. Six months since he’d died and Madison thought of him every day. Logan had never really taken to Charlie, but that didn’t matter. Charlie was hers, her last connection to her life before Logan, before she turned forty, before everything became so complicated. It’d been Madison and Charlie for fifteen glorious years, before Birthies became a thing, before yet another demand on her body became apparent.

If she was honest with herself, though, she’d know that even she began to doubt whether her love for Charlie was as pure as, say, Taylor’s love for Tuppy, her Birthie Aussie, or Bobbi’s for his Birthie Dogo Argentino. She could tell as her friends began to shift away from her at the dog run, making little comments, hugging their Birthies tighter, not letting them play with Charlie. The same people who, just five years earlier, just before Puppy Love made embryo implantation and Birthies a possibility, would swoon and crow over just about any puppy that showed up, the uglier the better… bat-nosed Frenchies and muscle-rippled, face-ripper Pit Bulls were particular favorites. Somehow nature wasn’t enough anymore. Beautiful things weren’t a marvel and a joy. The best was now manufactured, no surprises, no fate, no wonder.

She felt a growing pressure in her face, behind her eyes, that felt like imminent tears.

“Caron, I gotta run,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”

“Oh, ok. Bye-bye.”

Caron waved little Doxxie’s paw. Madison turned to hide her face and hurried deeper into a landscape created entirely by man.

#

Madison first met Logan at a Prospect Park Degrowth Rally, not far from the farmer’s market. This was ten years ago, when they were young and free, part of a group of wealthy urbanites firmly committed to never having children.

It was insane, as any idiot knew, to bring more people into a world that was clearly going to collapse within years, even if the deadline kept moving forward a little bit with every new UN report.

Only the selfish had children. Only the sadistic.

Only the stupid.

The earth was suffering, because of us, she told him.

Because of our technology. Children were a choice.

Logan told her that the sound of children’s laughter made his skin crawl.

Of course, the Global South could do as it pleased, she said.

Of course, he replied.

They fucked that very day, in a stinking blue port-a-potty with a long line snaking outside, to the sound of the crowd cheering and stomping. It was one of her happiest memories.

The Degrowth  movement continued, but as she got older she felt the pull of it ebb. Of course, she didn’t want children. Who could? And Logan was just as committed. He’d even joke that if he knew her body wouldn’t be destroyed by childbirth, he still wouldn’t want them.

Besides, she had Charlie… of the beautiful golden brown fur… of the morning cuddles and sneezes and wintry breathvisible walks through the manufactured wilderness of the park.

But it was when the Birthie movement began that things started changing in her social group. All of her friends had always loved Charlie, just as much as she did. But one by one, their old dogs died off, some earlier than expected, and they all ended up with Birthies. They slowly started excluding Madison and Charlie from their get togethers at the dog park, and on what they called their found-family vacations, where all of them, dogs and friends included, would rent houses by the beach, in the child-free beach towns, far out by Montauk. It’d been three years since she’d been out to The End.

Logan knew what the problem was and had been telling her for years to have a Birthie.

“I’d do it if I could,” he’d laugh, then get serious. “But don’t you miss how we were before? It’ll be like that.”

She did realize it’d been a long time since she felt happy.

“What about Charlie?”

“That’s up to you,” he said. “And the veterinarian. He’s old, though. Might be a blessing.”

The conversation went that way every time, and ended with her in tears. After Charlie finally died, Logan had given her a grace period of two weeks before bringing it all up again.

And now, he was out of town on some damn mysterious business trip.

“Fuck all this,” she said, startling a couple of tracksuited old ladies out for a power stroll.

Her phone began to beep. It was a quarter to eleven. Time to head back to Puppy Love.

#

#

Madison pushed the heavy door open and a strong breeze, cool and sterile, rushed out, tousling her hair and skirt.

The inside of the Puppy Love was empty and clean. Perfectly rendered dogs ran all along the off-white walls, barking, playing, nipping, trying to get her attention. As she approached a particularly frisky golden retriever, his bark grew louder and he wagged his tail ferociously as if he were real and right there and waiting all day for her to come home.

The other dogs ran off into the corners of the room and she was left alone with this magnificent golden brown puppy. He looked just like Charlie.

“Good morning. Welcome to Puppy Love.”

Madison turned, reluctant to take her eyes off the wall. A young woman stood behind the counter, smiling.

“Hi,” Madison said. “I’m here to finish up my application: Madison Swift. Is… uh… Liam in?”

“I’m afraid not, but I can help you. I’m Sophie.”

She stuck out her hand. Madison crossed the room to take it. She glanced back quickly at the wall, but the retriever was gone. A St. Bernard made eye contact and began to bound towards her.

Sophie picked up a tablet from the counter and began tapping.

“Do you have any?” Madison asked, her attention back on the wall, trying to make friends with a skittish Chihuahua that ran away every time she tapped at it.

Sophie shook her head.

“I’m still in college, so I can’t afford it. But I totally plan to.”

Madison’s eyes drifted to two Mastiff puppies, fighting and tumbling. They sensed her attention, stopped, and stared right at her, one upside down and pinned beneath the other. She giggled.

“Seems like Liam’s done most of the background stuff… addresses, education, credit, employment.  Oh… I see your partner, Logan Schwartz, isn’t here? You’re still together?”

“He’s just out of town.” Sophie scanned the file.

“This all looks fine. Only missing section is about previous pregnancies.”

Madison squeezed her right hand into a tight fist, imagining her skin paling, then turning blue. She saw Sophie’s eyes flick up, barely, towards her face.

“I’ve been pregnant before.” A Pug stared at her, tongue lolling stupidly.

“That’s no problem at all,” Sophie said. “In fact, sometimes that can help you come to term.”

“No matter how it ended?”

“No matter what.” Madison nodded.

“It says here you have a rescue at home, Charlie. You should know that his behavior may become more aggressive when you are pregnant. He’ll be able to smell the changes in your hormones, and the addition of canine ones can confuse him. It rarely leads to dangerous behavior, but if you want, we can…”

Madison shook her head.

“He died in March.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” Sophie said, looking down at the tablet. “It hadn’t been updated in the file.”

“It’s ok. He was old.”

“If you don’t mind, what was he?”

“He was a Golden Retriever… a rescue. I’d had him since long before Logan and I got together. He travels a lot so Charlie kept me company. Sort of a spirit animal for our relationship.”

Sophie nodded.

“I understand. I hope that your new dog will be half the dog Charlie was.”

Madison smiled, tears shining from the corners of her eyes. Her phone rang. It was Logan.

“Hey Logan. What’s going on?” Sophie looked down at her tablet.

“I just got a phone call, ” he said.

“I’m busy now. Can this wait?”

“You don’t understand, Maddie. It was from Dr. Kotb.”

She looked back at the counter. Sophie was busy dealing with something on screen. Or at least was pretending to be.”I have no idea who that is.”

“Sure you do,” he said. “He’s the vet from Maltese Mommies. He’s taking us on.”

“I don’t understand. I’ve never spoken with him.”

“That’s because it was a surprise,” he said, his voice higher than usual. “I’ve been negotiating with him for weeks now. Ever since you said you wanted to do this.”

“This isn’t your decision, Logan.”

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s our decision. We’re in this together.”

“You should have told me. I’m at Puppy Love right now.”

“Then leave,” he said. “This is the real thing, not some off-the-shelf, middle-class vanity pet. Kotb is a genius, Maddie. He gave Ali and Frank their twin Azawakhs.  He wants us to bring back the Turnspit.”

“Bring what back from where?”

“It’s an extinct working dog! Used to run in a little wheel, like a gerbil, to keep the meat turning on the spit. I’ll send you a photo.”

Her phone beeped. She looked down. The photo showed a small stuffed dog with a dull tan coat, a mix between a corgi, a terrier, and a weasel. The caption read:

WHISKEY: THE DOG THAT TURNS THE WHEEL “We’d be the only ones. Do you know how important that is? How important that will make us? You’ll never have to go through what you did with Charlie.”

Madison closed her eyes.

“Logan, I…”

“He can give us the greatest dog in the world.”

“It’s not about what kind of fucking dog it is, Logan. It’s about the dog being mine!”

“We’re saying the same thing. Come out to Venice. You’ll love him. His clinic is right by the beach. Besides, you’ve been to that shitty Puppy Love almost a dozen times and you’ve…”

She hung up.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”

Sophie nodded.

“No problem. I hope everything is ok.”

Madison walked to the door and opened it. The breeze blew past her.

“Are you here tomorrow?” Sophie smiled and looked at her tablet.

“How about noon?”

“Perfect,” Madison said, voice strong in the rushing air of the doorway. “I’ll see you then.”

Just after the reassuring hiss of the positive pressure doorway disappeared, her phone buzzed.

Logan again.

I know the previous photo wasn’t great, but look at this render that Kotb’s designer made. That’s us… holding our new Turnspit. Come on, Madison. Please. This is about making you happy. It’s all about you. And isn’t Whiskey the cutest name?

There they were. Madison. Logan. Whiskey. Gross little Whiskey who would be in her belly for months, growing, leaving bits of his… her… it’s DNA forever inside of her. For what? For happiness? For status? For love?

“Fuck Whiskey. Fuck Puppy Love. Fuck Logan.”

She turned the door. She’d cancel tomorrow’s appointment. She’d tell Logan to get fucked. And she’d go, next Sunday, to the park, and find the loneliest, most-abandoned, most in-need of love dog there and give it the home everyone deserves.

She didn’t see the truck as it swerved and crashed into her, through the sanitary doorway, into the Clinic. She didn’t see it explode.

#

#

Forty-five minutes later, a cop picked up a phone to try to identify the crushed and burned remains of the demolished building.

“Jesus. Hector, come here,” he said, waving over his partner. He showed him the picture on the screen. “Got a possible ID. But Christ, look at the hideous fucking dog. Who could love that?”

“Takes all kinds to make the world go around.”

“I guess so.”