My boyfriend is named Percocet," I say. "We're very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.

I say, thirteen is too many dogs for good mental health. Five is pretty much the limit. More than five dogs and you forfeit your right to call yourself entirely sane.
Even if the dogs are small.

I can't forget things, or ignore them-bad things that happen," I said. "I'm a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.

Gideon laughed. "I like to be direct."
"Okay," I said. "But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inserutable and generally send mixed messages."
"I doubt it."
"Human interaction is not my strong point," I told him.
"Not seriously."
"Seriously," I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn't know.
Gideon put his hand on my leg. "What's your strong point, then?"
"Goats," I told him. "I am excellent with goats.

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.