I Asked For Vet Bills He Offered Ten Million novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Exact Change

At the vet, Truffle turns out to be neutered, the bill comes to $412.60 and Lacey makes change in coins, until Camille DeGraff posts the clip and calls Gerald hers.

On Monday at nine, Silvan Waverley walked into the Palisades Animal Hospital carrying a gym bag full of cash.

I was already in the waiting room with Truffle in my lap and a pad of invoice paper on my knee.

"You said to bring money," Silvan said.

"I said to bring a card."

"The card felt like it wasn't enough." He set the bag on the chair beside him.

Out the window, an SUV was parked at the curb with a woman in the driver's seat holding a tablet.

In the back window, Gerald's long black face was pressed to the glass, grinning at the building.

The woman behind the desk looked at the dog in the SUV, then at me, and wrote something down.

The vet called us in.

She was a calm woman in blue scrubs, and she examined Truffle from his ears to his tail.

"Heart's good. Hips are good. No bruising, no scratches, nothing at all."

"He was traumatized," I said.

"He's eating a treat off my floor."

Truffle was, in fact, eating a treat off her floor.

"Exam is a hundred and twenty-eight dollars," she said.

I wrote it down. "One twenty-eight, exam."

Silvan leaned toward the vet and lowered his voice.

"Could you not put anything in the file about a dog who, you know. Is the other dog."

"I put in what I see," the vet said. "Healthy dog. No injury. Two dogs in a play posture."

Silvan breathed out. I wrote that down too.

"Also," she said, flipping a page, "he was neutered at eight months. Has he been through puberty?"

"What?"

"Your dog is fixed. The rescue did it before you adopted him."

I stared at her. "He's twenty-one months old. Nobody has ever touched him."

"I'd say nobody has touched him in the way that matters," she said. "He's very safe."

Silvan made a small sound and turned it into a cough.

"Don't," I said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

The behavior consult was two hundred and ten dollars.

The behaviorist had a clipboard and a calm voice.

She told us that dogs who pin each other are usually just working out who is in charge.

"So who's in charge?" Silvan asked.

"Your dog," she said. "He had a lot of confidence."

"Gerald has never done this."

"Then it was a special occasion."

I wrote down: two ten, consult.

The calming chews were thirty-four dollars and sixty cents, because I was going to need them.

The groomer trimmed the grass out of Truffle's ears.

The front desk called it a dignity trim, and it was forty dollars.

I added it up on the pad, and then I added it again so he could see my math.

"A hundred twenty-eight, two ten, thirty-four sixty, forty," I said. "Four hundred twelve dollars and sixty cents."

Silvan looked at the number.

"It's four hundred twelve dollars," he said slowly. "Against ten million."

"It's four hundred twelve sixty."

"You could take the check."

"I didn't ask for the check."

"Why not? I would take the check."

"My father built decks," I said.

"A client paid him three thousand on a two-thousand-dollar job and called it a bonus."

Silvan waited.

"For the next six years he told my father he owed him. Then he sued him for the difference."

Silvan looked at me for a moment.

"So you charge exactly what it costs."

"And I pay exactly what it costs."

He nodded slowly. Then he unzipped the gym bag.

He laid out five hundred dollars in hundreds, setting the stack on the counter.

"Keep it," he said. "For the trouble."

"It's not what it cost."

"It's eighty-seven dollars and forty cents."

"Exactly," I said. "So you know I'm owed none of it."

I took out the freezer bag of change I carry for the farmers' market.

I dealt the first eighty-seven dollars onto the counter in ones.

Silvan watched every bill. He did not touch them.

A woman with a cat carrier stopped pretending to read a flyer.

"Take it," I said.

"I couldn't."

I took the ones back and counted out the same eighty-seven in quarters. It made a noise.

"That is a lot of quarters," a man said, behind us.

"Take your change, Mr. Waverley."

"I really couldn't."

I pushed the last forty cents across the counter, a quarter, a dime and a nickel.

I did not take my finger off the dime until he picked it up.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," he said, and he sounded confused about both.

In the parking lot, Dina caught me by the arm.

She was in her scrubs, just off the night shift, with her phone already in her hand.

"Lace. Don't freak out."

"I'm calm."

"Camille at Home just posted the clip."

She held up the screen.

It was my front lawn and my voice, screaming.

The first part was cut off, so it started the second Gerald was on top of Truffle.

The caption read: "Heartbroken to see my Gerald in this. Praying for the little spaniel. This is why I wanted him home."

Silvan had come out behind me and read it over my shoulder.

"My Gerald," I said.

He went very still, with the gym bag hanging from his hand.

"She's my ex-fiancée," he said. "And you're right. He was hers first."

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