It's you and me, and all of the people
With nothing to do and nothing to lose
And it's you and me, and all of the people
And I don't know why I can't keep my eyes off of you
-From "You and Me" by Lifehouse
- - -
A soft ring was the sound that a confused Tony woke to. His surprise was not caused by the fact that his phone was ringing at 4:21 A.M., or that the quiet sound was enough to jolt him out of sleep, but that he'd managed to fall asleep in the first place. He stared at the phone for a moment before fuzzily deciding he should probably answer it.
"Hello?"
"Tony, it's me!" Abby's voice was frantic.
"Abbs, it's four in the morning. Not really in the mood to chat right now. Perhaps we could schedule a little morning tête-à-tête." His voice, though laced with drowsiness, was still dry and sarcastic.
"No, Tony, I didn't call to talk, this is urgent! Kate's dog, someone needs to take care of her!"
"Kate has a dog?" he asked, interested, forgetting all about his previous lethargy.
"Don't you remember Tony the dog?"
"Kate kept that beast?"
"Uh-huh."
"With that name?"
"Yup."
"And you want me to go take care of my namesake."
"Ye-es," Abby said in a pleading voice.
"Well, why can't you?"
"Because my car's in the shop."
"Wow," Tony said. "That's a really-" he searched for the right word- "normal reason. I was just waiting for you to say something about how your newest mad-scientist boyfriend blew up your entire apartment while mixing dangerous chemicals and you're too busy filing a destruction of property suit with your lawyer to go feed a poor little dog."
"Just go, Tony!"
Tony was left sitting in bed with a dial tone and a nagging feeling that he'd forgotten something. He quickly realized his mistake and swore softly.
"Address," he moaned.
This was how Tony ended up at the Naval Criminal Investigative Services main building at four-thirty A.M., shuffling through personnel files.
"Taylor... Thomas... Thompson... Todd, Caitlin."
He scribbled down her address, put her file away, and left.
Ten minutes later, as he stood outside her apartment door, he remembered that he did not possess an essential item to entry. Tony clenched his teeth and tried very hard not to yell. He dialed Abby's number on his cellphone and she answered.
"You don't happen to have keys to Kate's apartment, do you, Abby?"
"Spare's under the gardenia by the door, Tony. Didn't I tell you?"
He hung up on her.
No sooner had Tony crossed the threshold than a shrill barking began, and the skittering of nails on the floor trumpeted the arrival of the terrier.
"Easy there," Tony said, squatting down and reaching a hand out to the dog, who, regarding him suspiciously, sniffed it and bared her teeth. "I remember you all right, Little Tony."
It was a bit of a struggle to get the dog out to his car, and Tony didn't want to leave her there while he got dog food, but the supermarket wasn't exactly dog-friendly and he really had no choice. So he made his trip as short as possible, and to his astonishment upon arrival back at the car, Little Tony had not done any major or minor damage to the vehicle or its contents.
Sitting on his kitchen floor, watching the dog eat, Tony sighed.
"I guess I have a dog now. Little Tony. God, everyone will think I'm on some ego trip, naming my dog after myself. No, actually, it's my dead coworker's dog. She named it that as a joke, and after she got shot I took it in. There's a winning conversation for you."
Little Tony ignored him.
"I don't suppose I could change it at this point. What's a good dog name? I don't think we could get away with Old Yeller or Blue or anything like that... maybe just a human name? Oliver?" Tony suggested.
Little Tony continued to chomp on her kibble.
"Oh, right, you're a girl. Um... Chelsea? Sara? Natalie?"
Unsurprisingly, there was no response from Little Tony.
"Sadie? Sophie? I dated a girl named Sasha once," he said thoughtfully.
Little Tony's head snapped around to look at him.
"Sasha?"
The little white head cocked to gaze at him.
"You want to be named Sasha."
Apparently deciding that her food was more interesting than Tony, the dog went back to eating.
"It's six in the morning, my coworker died yesterday, I've been having dreams about having dreams, and somewhere in the span of the last two hours I managed to land myself with a dog named Sasha. Great. My life can't get any worse."
Tony sat back and stared at his cabinets.
You just had to go and make things all complicated, didn't you, Kate?
