First Cooper made fun of her dog. We had no idea why she had her dog at the bar. We had no clue who this girl was. Cooper was very drunk and he was relentless in making fun of the dog. It was a small dog and he was calling it a cat. Then he asked the girl if her dog was allergic to Windex because he wanted to wash the windows with it. Then he asked the bartender if he had any cat food behind the bar to give to the dog. The girl began getting angry. She finally snapped when Cooper asked the bartender what would happen if he breaded the dog and put it in the deep-fryer, so the bartender made them both go outside.
          Through the outside windows we watched the dog girl poking Cooper in the chest. She was shouting at him and holding onto her dog by its red leash. The dog was idly sniffing at the straw wrappers and bottle-caps that littered the parking lot, and Cooper was vacant, standing there dumbly disinterested while the dog girl shoved him around. Clive and I decided that we should go outside to prevent anything bad from happening. But before we got there, Cooper was already walking in.
          "I took care of her," he said.
          We looked out the windows. She was nowhere to be seen.
          "She's gone," he said. "She won't be bothering us anymore. Let's have a drink."
          Two hours later, Cooper was in an even worse state. We were walking him back to our place so we could keep an eye on him. We didn't trust him walking home alone because he was such a tragedy. He kept asking us where we were. But then all of a sudden the dog girl, dragging her yelping dog behind her, ran up from out of nowhere and began throwing haymakers at him.
          He covered up and begged her to stop and he asked her who she was, and then he just apologized while her fists rained down on his head, neck and shoulders. It all happened in about three seconds. I don't think he understood what was really going on, apologizing only out of self-defense. But she stopped hitting him, and then they were talking. He was touching her arm while Clive and I watched, confused. Finally Cooper turned to us and ordered us to take off, to give them a little privacy. So we went home.
          Clive went to bed but I decided to try and stay up for a while to watch TV. Suddenly Cooper barged into the house with the dog girl. He was entirely not acknowledging me, grasping the girl desperately by the arm, trying to hurry her into my bedroom before she changed her mind. "What happened to the dog?" I asked him. Cooper looked at me with that far-away and intent look that he'd get and said, "You! Not now!" Then he pulled the girl into my room and shut the door behind him.
          I got up, hit mute on the television remote, and put my ear on the door. Cooper's voice was saying, "Hercules! Pericles! Adonis!" The girl said, "What are you talking about? You're scaring me."
          I ran into Clive's bedroom to wake him up. He complained, then said something incomprehensible, then told me to fuck off. I went back to my bedroom door.
          "Ride the horsey! Ride the pony!"
          "You're scaring me. Stop it."
          Two minutes later she was moaning. I slept on the couch.
          The next morning when I awoke Cooper and the dog girl were gone. Cooper's disappearance lasted for almost three days. When we finally caught up with him he swore he didn't remember a thing about the night. We filled him in on the details and he shook his head. He said he saw the dog girl laying there the next morning and thought to himself, Goodness, what have I done? He never adequately explained where he disappeared to, either. He disappeared from class, from his house, from all his friends…. Whenever it came up he would change the subject, and when people pressed him about it he would get angry and insult them until they stopped.
          The last time I visited him was a couple months ago, in New York. He works in finance now. He hardly drinks. He's lost about twenty pounds and he dresses better than most people I know. He has a young girlfriend who's a true sweetheart, too. We stopped for ice cream in the East Village and he surprised her with strawberry topping. She seemed to be so grateful that she had such a nice, considerate boyfriend.
          But he still loves to hear me tell that story about the dog girl—at least to hear me repeat the stuff I heard him say through the bedroom door, and especially if you can get a little alcohol into him. That's when you get a tiny flash of the way things used to be. He gets that wicked smile, and his eyes go all far away, and you can see him searching for something inside his head to sneak up on, something to caress for a little while, to run his fingers through, and then to slowly, mercilessly, tear it to shreds.