Jake, Mary and Jim all studiously pondered the possibilities on their respective menus. Kev didn’t need one. He knew what he would be ordering before he set foot inside the front door. The Pit served a mean tuna melt on wheat, and Kev never thought to order anything else.

They all worked in the Loop in Chicago, for different employers, but within a four block area of each other. Kev was the common factor among them, having worked with both Jake and Mary though at different asset management firms over the past ten years. Kev had worked closely with each of them and so thoroughly enjoyed their comradery that when they had moved on to new firms and new jobs, they maintained a regular lunch date to stay in touch. Jim was an old college friend who worked for a magazine downtown and met Kev for lunch regularly, too. At some point, Kev started meeting two of them at the same time for lunch, sometimes Jake and Mary, sometimes Jim and Jake, sometimes Mary and Jim. While they would go to different places around town, the one venue that they all seemed to enjoy was the Pit.

They weren’t sure of its actual name, they always just called it the Pit. It was a basement level bar and restaurant on Madison in the financial district. Dark, low ceilings. Residual smoke from the years prior to the ban on cigarettes indoors still hung heavy on the yellowed, stained wallpaper. The wait staff were all seasoned, mature no-nonsense women not there to flirt or chat, just take your order and quickly, thank you.

They were all about the same age, Mary and Jim in their late thirties, Jake and Kev in their early forties. Jake was a couple of years senior to Kev, and, like him, was married with a young family in the suburbs. Mary and Jim were both single. At some point, Kev had thought introducing them might lead to some sort of romance. But there was a mutual disinterest between them. Their relationship over lunch in the Pit evolving more akin to brother and sister. Siblings who annoy and barely tolerate one another, yet relish in pushing the others’ buttons.

Kev yawned. Then Mary, sitting next to him in the booth, yawned. “Don’t yawn,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “My life is dull enough without you yawning to remind me.” She dropped her menu to the table. Jake peered around his to see what was going on. Jim remained hidden, as if he didn’t already have the menu memorized. They’d been coming to the Pit every Wednesday for more than five years. There were stains on the menu he’d recognize.

Mary turned to Kev, “So, what’s new with you?”

“I got dog troubles,” he said.

“What kinda dog troubles?” Mary asked.

“In a word: incontinence,” Kev said.

“That’s not a good word,” Jake said.

“What, did he pee on the floor?” Jim’s menu asked.

“Well, yeah,” Kev said, “but that’s not what’s bothering me.”

“The couch?” Jake asked.

“Been there, done that,” Kev said. “But not the raison du jour.”

Mary curled her left nostril a bit, “Not your bed?”

“Not just my bed,” Kev said, “but while in my bed, he peed on my head.”

“He peed on your head?” Jake asked, laughing.

“While I was sleeping,” Kev explained.

“Ooooo!!” Jim lowered his menu. Now he was interested. “Was it all warm?”

“Initially,” Kev said, “but cooled quickly. Got to take a real shower, do the laundry and bathe the dog all at two-thirty in the morning. It’s like having an infant again.”

“Did you beat him before bedtime?” Mary asked.

“I fed him pork chops,” Kev said, “and gravy.”

“Ungrateful cur,” Jake said.

Jim was openly laughing, “What did you do when he peed on you?”

“It was a difficult moment, to be sure,” Kev said. “He can’t help his condition. He’s diabetic. He’s old. I mean, we’ve had the little guy for over fifteen years. Longer than we’ve had the daughters. He’s a member of the family. He’s been sleeping in our bed for fifteen years, right there between our heads. So imagine the polarity of emotions surging through me last night as I held his little limp body, him looking pathetically and helplessly into my eyes, his tiny little neck in the firm grip of my hand. On the one hand I wanted to comfort him. On the other, I couldn’t help but think…just a tiny little twist and SNAP it’s all over. This thought came so easily as the urine dripped from my hair. I’m pretty sure he knew it, too.”

“Dog’s have a good sense for that sort of thing,” Jake said.

“A quick snap would be cheaper than a trip to the vet,” Jim said.

Mary snapped a glare at Jim, “That’s so cruel!”

“Every trip to the vet for him is a guaranteed three hundred dollars,” Kev said. “Minimum. Sometimes we’ll go a couple of months without taking him in, so they call us and say he’s overdue for some blood test or something.”

“Hey, they’ve got a boat payment to make,” Jake said.

“You’ve spent a small fortune on that dog,” Mary said. “Didn’t you drop like five grand on him a few years ago?”

“What?!?” Jim asked

“Six grand, actually,” Kev said. “We started calling him the Six Thousand Dollar Dog.”

“Six thousand dollars!!?!” Jim cried out. “Is he part bionic? Can he hump your leg at super speed?”

“Rips your pant leg clean off,” Jake said.

“No,” Kev said. “But he developed the super-canine ability to sleep. And urinate.”

“Seriously,” Jim said. “How do you spend six thousand dollars on your dog and not me?”

“It was six years ago,” Kev said, “right after Katie, my youngest daughter, was born. He was still a relatively young dog. And he’s small, only eight pounds soaking wet.”

“Soaked in urine?” Jim asked.

Mary glared.

“Anyway,” Kev said. “It was late Spring – April or May. Bucket just collapsed one day.”

“Bucket?” Jim said. “Your dog’s name is Bucket?”

“My wife insisted on a small lap dog. So we got a Maltese,” Kev explained. “But I got to name him.”

“And you went with Bucket?” Jim asked, still unable to believe.

“I dunno,” Kev said. “Seemed right at the time. Better than Fifi or Fluffy.”

“It’s unique,” Jim said.

“I think it’s cute,” Mary said.

“He collapsed,” Jake said, getting them back on track.

“Suddenly,” Kev said. “No accident, just stopped moving. Suddenly quadriplegic.”

“What the hell?” Jim asked.

“Apparently he had a seriously slipped disc,” Kev said. “Pinched off all the nerves from the neck down. The vet said he thought it was genetic. He was confident they could repair him, but they’d have to operate immediately. They gave my wife and me an hour to decide what to do.”

“And it cost six thousand dollars??” Jim asked.

“Oh, no,” Kev said. “Only about three thousand. Still, three thousand dollars. I asked the doc for odds of recovery. He said ninety-five percent chance of full recovery.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “It couldn’t be like fifty-fifty?”

“No. Ninety-five percent,” Kev said. “Pretty good odds. So we agreed to the surgery.”

“And did the vet lie?” Jim asked. “Not a full recovery?”

“Well, what we didn’t take into account was that full recovery was not the same thing as immediate recovery,” Kev explained. “Post-op we pick him up and he’s wearing one of those giant plastic cone collars so he can’t lick his wounds, but the rest of him looks like he’d been hit by a lawn mower!”

Kev unlocked his cellphone and called up his photos. He found one of his two daughters and Bucket. “See,” he said, “he’s a little ball of white, fluffy fur. Well, instead of shaving him all over, they just shaved him where they needed to, front right leg, part of the belly, most of the neck area. He looked awful. And he was sore.”

“‘Cuz he’d just had spinal surgery,” Jake said.

“Yes,” Kev said. “So every time he moved, even a little, he barked bloody murder.”

“Oh, well, that’s fun to have around the house,” Jim said.

“Katie, was still a baby and just starting to sleep through the night,” Kev said. “So for two weeks, I slept on the couch downstairs with the dog. Whenever he’d move and howl, I would immediately start petting him until he’d fall back to sleep. I’d carry him outside and hold him while he did his business. Fed him by hand.”

“He’s your little baby,” Mary said.

“He’s my little baby,” Kev said. “I took care of him. Before long, just like the vet said, full recovery.”

“And then?” Jim asked.

“October,” Kev said. “He stopped peeing.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“He’d stand by the door, give us the ol’ I gotta go look,” Kev explained, “but when he went out, just stood there.”

“Kinda the opposite of the present situation,” Jim said.

“Yes,” Kev said. “He’d strain, so it was obvious he had to go, but nothing was happening.”

“So, off for another boat payment to the vet…” Jake said.

“I swear this only happened on Sundays and holidays,” Kev said. “He had a blocked urethra.” Jake and Jim both winced at the word. “Kidney stones that didn’t quite pass. Little dog. Little urethra.”

Jim hunched his shoulders and wriggled his fingers like someone was scratching nails on a blackboard, “Please stop saying that word.”

“How do they, uhh, fix that?” Jake asked.

“They’d use a little poker,” Kev said, using his butter knife to accentuate the point, “to dislodge the blockage.”

“Yee-ouch!!!” Jim said, doubling over as he sat.

“This went on every so often over the course of a few weeks,” Kev said. “Each clearing incident was three hundred dollars.”

Jim repeated, “Yee-ouch!!!”

“Finally I ask if there was any other option open to us,” Kev said. “The vet says he has an idea. We could create an opening a little earlier in the plumbing cycle, allowing any stones to pass before ever entering the urethra.”

“Wait,” Jake said. “Are you saying, he had the ‘operation?’”

“Well, he’d been neutered as a puppy,” Kev said, “so this little operation essentially made him more of a little girl dog than a little boy dog.”

“Quite an expensive route to end up with a bitch,” Jim said. Mary glared at him.

“What happened to the uhh, original plumbing?” Jake asked.

“Still there,” Kev said, “just not active.

“Sure glad we’re eating,” Mary said.

“So after that operation, you’re up to six thousand dollars?” Jim asked.

“Just about,” Kev said. “Between the two operations and the multiple pipe cleanings, we were at five thousand dollars plus. Then he started urinating all the time. At first we thought it was a result of the sex change. Nope. He’d become diabetic.”

“What’s that mean,” Jake asked, “no more sugar in his diet?”

“Oh, no,” Kev said. “That means he has to get a shot of insulin two times every day for the rest of his life.”

“Shot?!?” Jim said. “You mean, like a syringe?!”

“Twice a day,” Kev said. “For the rest of his life.”

“I don’t mean to sound cruel,” Jake said, “but isn’t it at that point you just put the little guy down?”

“At that point?!” Kev shot back. “At that point we’d spent six thousand dollars on him! Oh, no, he was going to live!”

“This was how long ago?” Mary asked.

“Six years,” Kev said. “So the vet was right. He recovered from everything and has lived a relatively normal, healthy life.”

“And now he’s incontinent,” Jake said.

“He’s diabetic, right?” Jim asked. “Just slip him a little extra insulin and no one’s the wiser…”

“If he has too much,” Kev said, “he gets hypoglycemic and starts shaking and falling down and, gets incontinent.”

“So, you’ve already tried that,” Jim said.

“What happens when he gets like that?” Mary asked.

“We give him a spoonful or two of honey,” Kev said. “Followed by a scoop of Trix. Hand-fed.

“Trix cereal?” Mary asked. “With the silly rabbit?”

“I thought they were just for kids?” Jake said.

“Mind you,” Kev said, “these hand-fed honey and  Trix cereal moments generally come between three and four in the morning.”

“You’re like a dog saint,” Mary said.

“That’d be cool if you were,” Jake said, “‘cause then you’d be required to carry a barrel of whiskey with you wherever you go!”

“Of course,” Jim said, “you’d also have to be neutered.”

When Kev got home from work that night, Bucket was the only one to greet him. Jess was busy with dinner, the girls with homework. But there was Bucket, feeble, limping, moving in slow motion, but coming to say hello none-the-less, his little tail wagging with as much energy as he could muster. Not nearly at the speed it moved in his youth, back before the daily shots, the back surgery, when he lifted his leg to do his business rather than squat.

Kev picked him up and scratched behind his ears. Bucket lovingly licked him with his pink little tongue, huffing out his stinky dog breath. But Kev didn’t care. It was tough to stay mad at this fluffy little bundle of unconditional love.

Kev tried to remember that later when he stepped in a puddle at the top of the stairs.