Managed Expectations, Part Three (A Serial Novel By Marisa Meltzer)

Creature Comfort was an expensive place, but it was the only vet clinic in Carroll Gardens with its own in-house hydrotherapy room and certified animal acupuncturist. As Nicole waited for a woman with a feverish Himalayan named Kat Cobain to finish checking in, she said a silent goodbye to the Bird sample sale, where she had intended to spend the last $500 she had available on her AmEx. But Toussaint's health had to come first. And maybe she'd get some of the money back; her dog had pet insurance, while Nicole paid her own ambiguously Eastern European doctor in cash for her trio of prescriptions: Singulair, Xanax, and Ambien.

An assistant led Nicole down a hallway lined with black and white photos of mutts and into a treatment room, where Jared was scratching Toussie's ears. Dr. Astrid Fowler-Davis, dressed in an unbuttoned white lab coat over a vintage Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and Cheap Mondays, was palpating the dog's stomach. Nicole made a mental note that if she ever decided to go lesbian, she was definitely going to hit on Dr. Astrid. Nicole hugged Jared and then scratched Toussaint under his chin.

"Is he gonna be okay?" she asked.

"As you two know, I always like to try a noninvasive approach and I would really like to avoid having to operate," said Dr. Astrid. This was how every conversation with her began and probably explained why Nicole's dog took more supplements on daily basis than any human she knew: St. John's Wort for mild OCD, Omega-3 to promote a shiny coat, a liver-flavored multivitamin, and Glucosamine for joints. "We're going to first to try to give Tous a few teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide to see if he'll throw up the hacky sack," she said. "Leave him with us for about half and hour and we'll call you with the results."

Jared and Nicole walked to Robin Des Bois on Smith Street and sat in the garden. After a kir-and-a-half of chatting about how Jared's younger brother had decided to become a tree surgeon and how Nicole thought she had seen her therapist when she was walking by Toys in Babeland, she decided to turn the conversation in a different direction.

"So how are things with you and Eva?" she asked.

"Oh, we're fine," Jared said.

"That sounds convincing."

"We had a fight." Jared looked down at his pint of Stella. "We were at this party for one of her square interior decorator friends and she kept trying to get me to dance with her to De La Soul. I had to tell her how much I hated positive rap."

"I always liked that about you," Nicole said. Even though Nicole often complained about what a typical Sag Jared had been during their years together, prone to flirting with Pratt students and getting drunk and reciting the monologue from the end of The Last Days of Disco, he had been, at times, a very good boyfriend. Like, one year, for her half-birthday, he had adopted a manatee in her name.

"Yeah, well, she told me her meditation teacher had instructed her to embrace the good in the world and that she was worried that she was spending too much time with someone with a lot of harsh energy," Jared said.

Nicole wanted Jared to be happy, at least in theory. But she couldn't help being a little bit relieved to know that his engagement was going through a rough patch. Just as the idea of making out with her engaged ex was starting to seem like a possibility, Dr. Astrid called to say that the hacky sack was out of Toussaint's stomach.

Nicole went and collected the dog, paid the $450 bill, and gave Dr. Astrid her word that she would call on Monday to book Toussie a few acupuncture appointments to deal with post-traumatic stress. Jared mumbled something about having to meet Eva at a dinner party in Greenpoint, gave Nicole a limp hug, and left.

As she and Toussaint made their way home, Nicole heard someone yelling. "Hey, you," said the voice. She turned around. It was Elias getting off his shift at Café Pedlar. Elias looked really good in plaid, could make the perfect leaf pattern on a latte, and had a tattoo of the rose from the cover of Depeche Mode's "Violator" on his forearm.

Also Nicole was pretty sure he didn't remember her name.

"Hey, are you going to Darshan's birthday on Thursday?" he asked. She had been really cranky about the party because it was deep in JMZ-ville in Williamsburg. North Brooklyn made her feel old.

"Definitely," she said, and smiled. "I'm super-psyched about it."

Marisa Meltzer lives in Brooklyn. Her next book, Girl Power, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February.