“Why don’t you like reading?” Karina asked Dorian after they finished watching the “The Return of the King.”
Dorian sighed. He walked to the microwave to wait for a fourth bag of popcorn. “I don’t relate to the characters. They’re always heroic. They all have too many redeeming qualities, or they get better. Villains don’t get stories. Well, there was one book I liked reading, a short one. It had a character I could relate to.”
“Beep-beep.” Dorian closed the microwave and saw his reflection.
“Except in appearance,” Dorian added.
“Which one” asked Karina.
“Which do you think?“
“I want to read it.”
Dorian shook his head. “The library got rid of it. They said it romanticized a sociopath, or psychopath, or whatever.”
He returned to the couch, and they stared at the credits in silence for a while as Dorian munched on popcorn.
“Are you going to tell me I could be like Sméagol?” he asked.
“No, you’re definitely more like Gollum.”
Dorian nodded.
“But they won the war because of Gollum. He was their secret weapon.”
Dorian stopped chewing and gave her a skeptical glance.
“You didn’t see it because you never read,” said Karina. “Gollum was the only character stupid enough to love domination itself even more than his own life. It didn’t make sense, which is why he died, but neither did trying to balance domination with life. Every other character wanted to harness the ring for something. Gollum just wanted the ring and didn’t care what else happened. He was an idiot, but a useful one. That’s why the heroes had to bring him with them. If they only brought Sméagol, the war never would have ended.”
Dorian wanted to say that stories aren’t real, but held his tongue to avoid another breakup. He stared back at the credits and forced more popcorn into his mouth.
“I know some books that have villains as the main characters.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I’ll get you one for your birthday. It has three villains.”
“But I didn’t get you a thoughtful gift for your birthday.”
“That’s okay.”
Dorian burst into tears and hiccupped, his stomach bloating from soda. “No it isn’t,” he said, coughing out a kernel of popcorn lodged in his throat.
“It is with me,” said Karina.
“It is?”
“Yeah. It is. You’re my chosen boyfriend.”
“That’s redundant.”
“Did you not read ‘The Fountainhead’?”
“No. It was for you.” Dorian put down the popcorn, saving the other half for the morning, and laid his head on Karina’s lap, sniffling.
“Make sure it’s one where the heroes win. I like happy endings.”
“Even if the villain loses?”
“If it makes the ending happy, yeah.” Dorian swallowed. “Just no dead animals. Every animal has to live forever.”
“They will. Everyone will get a happy ending. It might get bad in the middle. But you have to read to the end okay? Promise me you’ll finish it? Can you read one more book all the way to the end?”
Dorian drifted into sleep and had many dreams that he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
“We’ll finish it. Together. 我愛你 (I love you.)”
Dorian snored.
Seeing that its master had fallen asleep, a black shadow rushed to snatch the half-finished popcorn bag and ran upstairs with it.
“Of course.”
Karina prepared a fifth bag of popcorn in the microwave as the Groenendael scrunched and slorped upstairs.
“Beep-beep (Godspeed).”
She marched upstairs to Dorian’s pitch-dark bedroom and turned on the light.
The Belgian Shepherd was licking the inside of the bag for whatever butter was left. Taken aback by the light, and with the bag stuck over his head, he rolled and convulsed trying to find the enemy who had intruded on his territory.
Karina swiped the bag off his head, now splotched with orange popcorn-topping imitation butter. The dog lunged but froze when Karina shook the popcorn bag.
“EH!”
The dog gave a low growl as Karina removed one kernel.
“Sit!”
The dog stood defiantly. Karina put the kernel back into the bag and turned off the light.
”Shuffle.”
Karina dropped a kernel.
“Come, sit, paw, hodl, 坐下, 來…”
She led the dog to the downstairs kitchen, then poured half of the bag into a bowl for the dog to eat freely, and saved the rest for morning. She opened the refrigerator. There was one stick left of real, expensive butter. She took it in her hands and rubbed it over the fluffy dog’s fur, taking more sticks of butter from the fridge as needed until he was completely yellow.
“You’re clean now.”
The dog tilted its head 14 degrees to the left.
“我説你都乾净了 (I said you’re clean now.)”
The dog tilted its head 30 degrees to the right.
Karina sighed. “我們先睡覺吧 (let’s go to sleep).”
The dog nodded and joined them on the couch.
Karina picked up the remote and muted the TV. She scooped butter off the couch with her second hand and licked her fingers clean, eyes wide, then switched to the news, glowering.
Click.