About a year ago, a rumor started going around the neighborhood that I’d never brushed my teeth.

It was 100 percent true. Not that it was something I’d ever tried to hide. But for whatever reason, or reasons, people were just now finding out about it, just now spreading the word. 

One morning not long after the rumor broke, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table of a client. Although not my preference, and although I thought it rather old-fashioned, some of my clients insisted I visit them in person from time to time. Case in point.

Fortunately, this particular young woman lived only a block over—a minute’s walk from my cookie-cutter house in Midwestern suburbia. 

I took a sip of my coffee, nodded, raised my mug in approval. “Very good.”

Seated across from me behind her own mug, my client asked matter-of-factly, “Why don’t you have any clients?”

“Because I don’t provide any sort of product or service.”

“So why are you even here?”

“I’m here because you called me and asked me to come here. Because you’re one of my … my …”

She cocked her head, arched an eyebrow. “Your?”

“My … um, clients?”

“But you just said you don’t have any clients.”

“Indeed, I did.”

“If you don’t have any clients because, as you say, you don’t provide a product or service, it follows that I’m not one of your …”

She purposely left the sentence unfinished: She wanted me to fill in the blank, as if she were the oh-so-smart teacher and I her thickheaded student.

“Clients,” I responded grudgingly. 

I took one last sip of the Chicken McNugget-flavored coffee she’d served me, set the mug down, and rose from my chair. 

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Miss. Please, at the very least, take my card just in case you should change your mind.”

I reached into my shirtfront pocket, plucked out a blank business card, handed it to her.

“Change my mind about what?” She took the card and examined one unmarked white side before turning it over to regard the equally blank opposite side. She glared up at me. “And even if I did change my mind, what am I supposed to do with this?”

“Please don’t be an unkind person to me,” I pleaded as I backed away from the table, holding up my open palms in a disarming, placatory gesture. “And please don’t hurt this,” I added, referring to myself as this like pop stars do. I turned around and scrambled for the front door. 

***

As I stood on the sidewalk after making good my escape, I decided to go around door-to-door to show everyone in the neighborhood that the rumor was true: that I’d not brushed my teeth once in my lifetime.

“It’s true,” I said to anyone who opened their front door that day after I knocked or rang the doorbell. “I’ve never brushed my teeth. Not once. Neither have I flossed, rinsed with mouthwash, nor visited a dentist. See?” I’d then open wide, let them peer into the dark, rotten, foul-smelling circle that was my mouth—let them get a good gander at the splintered, turd-hued crags that were all that remained of my last seven teeth and the shiny, crimson-flecked, crude oil-like membrane that was all that survived of my necrotic gums.

Most of these people, these neighbors, looked at me in disgust before slamming their doors in my face. Others looked more confused than anything else before they shut their doors. Rarer still, some folks offered me looks of pity before abandoning me out on their doorsteps. Then there were the bullies, who usually responded to my spiel with scornful laughter followed by violence, which I did my best to take in stride. 

“Thank you, sir, for punching me in the stomach!” I might say, doubling over as I bumbled back to the sidewalk. 

Or, “Thank you, sir, for shoving me onto this hard ground!” as I crawled away in retreat.

At any rate, later in the afternoon, as I headed home after visiting every house in the neighborhood, I looked up from my shoes to see a little dog dancing a jig on a driveway in front of an open garage. Standing upright on its hind legs, its bent forelegs held out before it with the paws pointing down, this dog hadn’t been there when I’d stopped by earlier.

What a sight! I thought. To think of it—a little dog dancing a jig! 

Though I slowed my pace, I kept moving down the sidewalk, smiling and waving at the dancing dog as I passed.

The dog smiled back at me. 

As I moved farther away from the house, I kept smiling and waving, my head turning so that I could keep this wonderful spectacle in my field of vision for as long as possible.

At one point, I said aloud to no one, “That little dog makes me smile!”

At another point, I laughed and said, “That little dog makes me laugh!” 

At yet another point, sensing the dog might like me, I said, “I think that little dog likes me!”

When I was unable to twist my aching neck any farther to keep the dancing dog in my sight, I swiveled my body 180 degrees so that I could continue to watch it as I walked backwards. Moments later, I reached the end of the street and was forced to turn down the intersecting road to continue on my way home.

What a sight! I thought as I continued to walk home backwards just for the fun of it. To think of it—a little dog dancing a jig! 

***

I thought about that dog for the rest of the day: through the afternoon and into early evening, as I took my supper, as I watched TV, as I lay in bed staring up at the dark slab of my bedroom ceiling. 

It must be nice to have a dog, I thought in bed, especially a little dog that can dance a jig! 

That little dog even danced its jig in my dreams that night.

For seven days and seven nights I thought about that dog. I was thinking about it just after nightfall on the seventh night when I stepped out onto my back patio to smoke some crack laced with the tears of a clown. As I took a throat-searing hit of premium “clownk,” I espied the crescent moon hanging low, silvery, and C-like in the night sky. The moment I saw it, I plucked the moon from the heavens and slipped it into my shirtfront pocket—right next to my blank business cards.

By golly and by Josh, I’m going to visit that little dog tomorrow, I thought excitedly. 

And I’m going to give it the moon as a present! 

***

The dog was not in the driveway when I returned to the house the next day. A pleasant-looking elderly woman answered the door after I rang the doorbell.

“Yes?” she said.

“Hello. I saw your little dog dancing a jig the other day out here on the driveway. I just stopped by to give it this present.” I reached into my shirtfront pocket, pulled out the glimmering crescent moon, held it up for her to see. “It’s the actual moon! I’d like to give it to your dog!”

“I’m sorry. But that dog died a few days ago.”

“Oh, no!” I cried. “The little dog that was dancing a jig?”

“The same.”

“Why, that dog was the picture of health when I saw it! Had it been very ill?”

“The vet said the cause of death was likely just old age. Or too much jig dancing. Or heroin overdose. We just don’t know at this time. We’re still waiting on the toxicology report.”

“Oh, well, I’m so very sorry for my loss.”

“Did you mean to say ‘very sorry for your loss’?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Well, the funeral was yesterday. Everyone in the neighborhood attended. Everyone except you.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“No one had your phone number. And the business cards you passed out are blank, so …”

“Alack and curséd be the day I was born! Where is the dog buried?”

She pointed past me toward a two-hundred-foot-tall obelisk of polished, gold-flecked, black-green marble that had been erected at the center of her postage-stamp front yard. I’d failed to notice the thing until now.

“Would you mind if I dug up the coffin and put the moon inside it?”

The woman scowled. “Yes, I’d mind that very much.”

Leaving her standing in the doorway, I snatched a shovel from the nearby garden, went to the front of the obelisk, and read the inscription at the base.

Here Lies a Little Dog That Danced a Jig

I rolled up my shirtsleeves, got to digging.

The woman appeared at my side a moment later and said, “I don’t know if you heard me just now, but I said I do mind.”

“What’s that?” I was already breaking a sweat as I drove the shovel’s blade into the freshly turned earth with my heel.

“I said I do mind if you dig up the coffin to put the moon inside it.”

“Okay, yeah, sure,” I said, too consumed with grief and absorbed in the task at hand to pay attention to her words.

“I don’t want you to dig up the coffin! I don’t want you to put the moon inside it! Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, lady. Sure thing.” I kept digging.

“Stop digging, asshole! Get out of my yard!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever.” I kept digging.

Eventually, the tip of the shovel blade struck something hard. After I finished clearing the dirt off the dog’s small hexagon-shaped coffin, I pried the lid open with my fingers—just a crack—slipped the glowing crescent moon inside, and reclosed the lid.

I climbed out of the thirty-foot-deep grave and commenced shoveling dirt back into the hole. 

“I said not to do it!” the woman shouted, coming outside just as I finished backfilling the grave.

Leaning against the shovel, I wiped my sweat-drenched forehead on my grimy sleeve. “You said not to do what?”

“Not to dig up the coffin and put the moon inside it!”

“Oh, you didn’t want me to? Well, why didn’t you just say so, lady?”

“I did! I said so a million times!”

Damn it, I thought. I was exhausted and delirious as I took up the shovel again, driving it down into the earth to begin undoing what I’d just done.

***

The afternoon wore on, as they do.

The sky reddened in the west like a lobster on slow boil.

The sun set like a quitter quitting.

***

By the time I finished undoing what I’d done, it was well past midnight, and the night sky was dark and moonless and watchful and comprehending and judging and secretive.

In the general confusion and delirium of things, I’d buried myself at the bottom of the grave. 

Thirty feet above me, the crescent moon, the jigging dog, the small coffin, the obelisk, and the old lady held a graveside funeral service.

For me.

“We didn’t even know his name,” the obelisk said solemnly. “All we know is that he never once brushed his teeth. And now all that remains of him are these blank cards.” The towering phallic monument then dangled my cards above my grave, let them fall one by one onto the dirt like so many rectangular, white, cardstock flower petals. “Rest in peace.”

“You should probably put that dog back where you found it,” the coffin said to the crescent moon.

The moon nodded, gently lifted the little dog from the ground, tucked it into a cozy corner of the sky, whereupon the dog immediately commenced doing what it did best. 

What a sight! I thought as I gazed up through thirty feet of dirt into the sky. To think of it—a little dog dancing a jig!