People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann Read Free Book Online Page B

(we’re a couple of mouthy liberals living in the heart of red country), and we don’t give a shit about sports, especially college basketball and hypercompetitive soccer for young children, which are the favorites around here.
    When we first moved to Kansas City, we bought a house thatwas a huge compromise. The Hubs wanted a house with lots of mature trees, but this was Kansas. Our neighborhood was a cornfield two years ago. Trees are expensive, and homes with trees weren’t in our price range. We could afford bushes. I wanted something with character but not a fixer-upper. In the end we got a well-built beige cookie-cutter house without a tree in sight. It was in an area we liked and was close to my parents but not too close, it had a finished basement for the Hubs and his video games, and it had tons of beautiful landscaping for me to kill. It was in our price range and neither one of us hated it.
    We met our next-door neighbors, Nicole and Matthew, right after we moved in. They seemed like people we could be friends with. Like us, they were young professionals and childless, which was rare in that neighborhood. We were surrounded by stay-at-home moms whose children kept multiplying. As much as I hoped we could be friends with Nicole and Matthew, it didn’t take us long to piss them off. Although theirs was a child-free home, they did have a dog. A big, friendly yellow Lab named Daisy. About a month had gone by when we ran into Matthew and Daisy at the mailbox one evening. I noticed right away that the fur on Daisy’s back leg had been shaved and she had an enormous scar running the length of her hindquarter.
    “What happened to Daisy?” I asked.
    “Oh, it was terrible,” Matthew said. “She was chasing a rabbit and jumped off our deck and fractured her leg in several places.”
    “Oh wow. That is terrible,” I said. “Looks like she had to have surgery.”
    “Yes, she did,” Matthew said.
    “Your dog had to have surgery?” the Hubs asked. “That doesn’t sound cheap.”
    “It’s actually a sore subject with Nicole. We had to pay thirteen thousand dollars for her surgery.”
    “You paid thirteen grand for a dog to have surgery?” the Hubs sputtered.
    Matthew looked irritated. “Don’t you guys have a dog?” he asked.
    “No,” the Hubs replied. “We’re going to have kids.”
    “Well, you can have a dog and kids, you know. And if you don’t have kids, your dog can be like your kid. No one would question this surgery if Daisy was our child. The Bonds—the family who lives behind us—they paid ten grand for braces for their kid, and that’s just cosmetic. Daisy was never going to walk again without this surgery.”
    “Yeah, but she’s a dog . The Bonds’ kid is … y’know, a kid ,” the Hubs challenged.
    I could tell that Matthew was getting pissed off at the Hubs. I didn’t know what else to do, except dig our hole deeper. “So, Nicole wasn’t happy about how much it cost?” I asked.
    “No, she wanted to put Daisy down.”
    “Smart woman,” the Hubs said.
    “Look, man, I’ve had this dog longer than I’ve even known Nicole, okay? This dog is far more loyal and loving to me than my wife. If she needs surgery, I’ll do whatever I have to do to get her what she needs.”
    “A few months ago Nicole was telling Jen that you guys are thinking of moving in a year or so and she wanted Jen to list the house. She told Jen you were saving for a kitchen remodel,” the Hubs said.
    “Yeah. We were . We had to use that money on Daisy. That’s why Nicole is so pissed. She’s so caught up in stuff . She doesn’t give a damn about Daisy.”
    Never one to sugarcoat, the Hubs said, “Well, when you guys call Jen in to sell your house, I’m sure Nicole will be happy to remind you that your house would be worth about thirty thousand dollars more if you’d done the kitchen remodel instead of the surgery. Also? Daisy might be dead by then. She’s pretty old.” And there it was. The