They'd had the dog for three days and it still didn't have a name.
“We can’t keep calling it ‘the dog,’” Sara said. She was on the floor with the puppy, who was chewing the corner of a moving box. They’d been in the apartment for two weeks. The boxes were still everywhere.
“We could call it Dog,” Paul said. He was unpacking mugs. He’d found six so far and they only needed two.
“We’re not calling it Dog.”
“Hound. Beast. The Creature.”
“Paul.”
“Sorry. What about Max?”
“Max is a golden retriever name. This is a twenty-pound mutt with one ear that doesn’t stand up.”
“Max transcends breed.”
“Max does not transcend breed.” She scratched behind the floppy ear. The puppy rolled over and showed its belly, which was pink and spotted like a map of small islands. “What about Pepper?”
“That’s a name you give a dog when you’ve given up.”
“It’s a fine name.”
“It’s the name of a dog owned by someone who also has a cat named Whiskers and a fish named Goldie. It’s a placeholder name. A name-shaped space where a name should be.”
She looked at him. He was holding a mug in each hand, one from his mother’s kitchen and one from hers. He put them in the cabinet next to each other like he was introducing them.
“Okay,” she said. “What do you actually want to call it?”
He dried his hands on the towel tucked into his belt, the way his father did it. He’d started doing it after the funeral without noticing. Sara noticed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I keep thinking of names and they’re all… they all sound like we’ve already decided what kind of dog this is. Like we’re casting it in something. Max is a certain dog. Pepper is a certain dog. Once you name it, that’s who it is.”
“That’s how names work.”
“But we don’t know who it is yet. It’s been three days.”
The puppy had abandoned the box and was investigating the gap between the refrigerator and the wall, where previous tenants had dropped things: a bottle cap, a rubber band, a birthday candle. It emerged with the rubber band around its nose and sneezed.
“My grandmother had a dog named Tuesday,” Sara said. “Because she found it on a Tuesday.”
“We got ours on a Saturday.”
“Saturday is not a dog name.”
“It’s better than Pepper.”
She threw a sock at him. He caught it and put it in the drawer with the dish towels, which was wrong but neither of them had decided yet which drawer was for what. The apartment was still negotiating itself.
“What was your dog’s name growing up?” she asked.
“We didn’t have a dog.”
“I thought you said—”
“I said we had a dog for a while. A stray that came around. My dad fed it on the porch. It was there for most of a summer. He called it Buddy.”
“Buddy is—”
“A terrible name, I know. But I don’t think he named it. I think Buddy was what you call a dog when you know it’s going to leave. A name you can lose without losing anything.”
She was quiet. The puppy came and sat on her foot, which was its favorite place. It was warm and heavy and alive in the way that very young things are alive—without reservation, without contingency, committed entirely to the present square foot of floor.
“We could call it Mug,” she said, looking at the cabinet. “Since you care more about those than the boxes.”
“I’m unpacking what I know where to put.”
“You put my sock in with the towels.”
“I know where to put it. I just don’t agree with you about where it goes.”
She smiled. This was the thing they were doing, she thought—not unpacking boxes but learning where things go in a space that belonged to neither of them yet. The apartment was shaped by absence: no hooks by the door, no shelf for keys, no designated towel drawer. They were building the structure by disagreeing about it. Every argument was a tiny act of architecture.
“Mug,” she said again. The puppy looked up at her. “See? It responded.”
“It responded because you said a word. It also responds to ‘refrigerator’ and ‘earthquake.’”
“Mug. Mugsy. Mugs.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m not serious. But I’m also not ready. You’re right—we don’t know who it is yet.” She picked the puppy up and held it against her chest. It licked her chin with a tongue that smelled like cardboard. “We’ll know when we know.”
“And until then?”
“Until then it’s the dog.”
Paul put the last mug in the cabinet. Six mugs for two people. He’d get rid of four eventually. Or they’d accumulate more. One of those. He closed the cabinet door and sat down on the floor next to Sara and the dog, who climbed into the space between their knees and fell asleep, nameless, in the house that didn’t have hooks yet, between two people who were still deciding which drawer was for the towels.