Stepdog by Mireya Navarro Page B

the kitchen doorway, giving me an over-my-dead-body look. I had to step over him once again. All this jousting and it wasn’t even ten a.m. I had to do something about this dog.
    The dog was only one jarring aspect of my new life as a spoken-for woman. I was in a new time zone but lived three hours ahead, still on Eastern Standard Time, to keep up with the
Times
’s deadlines in New York. No more dragging myself out of bed at eight-thirty a.m. to make it to work at ten-ish. Now my home life superseded my social life. My immediate world consisted of Jim and work. No more staying up late hanging out with my revolving door of friends coming through the Big Apple. No more spur-of-the-moment whims, like rushing to the TKTS discount booth in Times Square just minutes before curtain to watch a Broadway show. No more me, me, me.
    Now I had a car and lived in the suburbs. Now I had a husband-elect, two kids, and a dog. But I didn’t miss New York, or “old me.” With L.A. and suburban life came a slower pace and different interests. I discovered the joys of hiking, which in L.A. came with the awe-inspiring payoff at the end—a view of the coast and the Pacific. In the consistently great weather of Los Angeles, we often grilled and ate outdoors.
    In New York, so many things and people competed for my attention that I never had time for movies. But L.A. was a movie-industry town that I now covered as a reporter. Jim also had many friends connected to filmmaking. Sooner or later, the latest releases always crept up into conversation the way Fidel does in Miami or real estate in New York. I kept up. I took to L.A. easily, except for one rather disturbing pattern—in a predominantly Latino area, I too often found myself the only Hispanic in a social gathering who wasn’t serving the meal. I made a point of making conversation in Spanish with “the help.” I wasn’t looking for a reward, but I always got the biggest shrimp.
    In spite of the jealous dog—watching, watching, always watching—and our shaky start, I loved our new home and surrendered to its rhythms. I had a half-hour commute—enviable by L.A. freeway standards—on the Pacific Coast Highway and I-10. I passed the ocean every single day. Sometimes I made it back early enough to catch a dramatic sunset. A right on Sunset Boulevard, a left on Palisades Drive, two miles up the canyon, and I was home.
    The house itself was an adjustment after apartment living. There was no super, no doorman, no co-op office with duplicate keys to make life easier. If anything broke, Jim tried to fix it or one of us had to stay home to let someone in, depending on what was going on with the workday. Eddie’s job, meanwhile, was to go batshit at the stranger in the doorway and invite lawsuits. He hadn’t taken a chunk out of any visiting human yet. His thing was more to intimidate, and he looked and sounded scary with that bark of his. But once petted by a visitor, he invariably calmed down and retired to the living room to pee on the carpet from all the excitement.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked Jim on one of our first nights home after getting into bed and hearing a noise above us.
    â€œSquirrels,” he lied.
    We had rats in the attic. I’m not sure where Jim got the reference, but the exterminator who eventually showed up at our door wasted no time telling us Mick Fleetwood was a client. We feigned awe and let the guy set up rat traps with apple slices. The guy promised to be back in a few days.
    â€œHow long will it take to get rid of the rats?” I asked him on his way out.
    â€œHard to say. It gets hectic,” Fleetwood Mac’s exterminator said, waving his hands for emphasis.
    Apparently, waging war on rats would take protracted battles and the signing of a peace treaty. He charged us two hundred dollars a month for coming by regularly to lay down traps and pick up casualties and wouldn’t commit