Bear and Roxy

I stood at the gate and pressed the buzzer. The speak­er crack­led, and the deep voice of the secu­ri­ty guard respond­ed. “Can I help you?”

“Mike. It’s me, Ken. Bear broke out again. I’ve got him down here with my dog.”

“Oh, Christ,” Mike said. “Be there in a minute.”

Bear was a Box­er. He was crazy about my Amer­i­can Bull­dog, Zoey. Every time I took Zoey for a walk, he made a jail break to play with her, and I had to herd him back to his house.

Mike appeared at the top of the dri­ve­way in his black uni­form, walked down the steps to the gate, and punched in the code. The gate hummed elec­tron­i­cal­ly and slid open. Built like a weightlifter, Mike grabbed Bear’s col­lar. “Don’t know how he got out this time. We fixed up all the holes he dug.”

“He jumped the fence at that low spot when we walked by,” I said, point­ing down the hill.

“I’ll tell main­te­nance. Sor­ry for the trouble.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Thanks again.” Mike dragged Bear up the hill. Roxy, his sis­ter, wait­ed for him, wag­ging her tail. She was timid and nev­er tried to get out. They dashed through the port au cochere toward the back yard, and Zoey and I con­tin­ued on our walk.

Cindy and I had moved to Hid­den Hills to be clos­er to our grand­chil­dren. Although we didn’t know it when we bought our house, a num­ber of celebri­ties lived in the neigh­bor­hood, includ­ing Jen­nifer Lopez. She lived in a state­ly white brick house two doors down from us, and Bear and Roxy belonged to her.

I’m not into the enter­tain­ment scene. When we moved here, I knew Jen­nifer Lopez was a big deal, but I couldn’t have picked her out of a line-up. One evening at twi­light a year or two before Bear and Roxy showed up in her yard, I was walk­ing Zoey around our block when I came up on a stun­ning­ly attrac­tive woman push­ing a dou­ble-seat­ed stroller car­ry­ing a lit­tle boy and girl. “See the dog­gy,” she said to the tod­dlers. “Hi, Dog­gy,” she said a cou­ple of times, smil­ing at me.

Zoey’s friend­ly, but her rough play with kids can cause prob­lems. “Hi,” I grumped and moved on quickly.

When I told my daugh­ter about the woman, she was flab­ber­gast­ed. “That was J Lo, Dad, you idiot.” The tipoff, along with the stun­ning­ly attrac­tive looks, was that J Lo had twin two-year-olds by some singer I’d nev­er heard of who she’d recent­ly divorced. Being clue­less, I had dissed the mega-star.

I hoped I’d get a sec­ond chance, but no such luck. My encounter with her was an anom­aly. Celebri­ties of her stature don’t nor­mal­ly ven­ture out­side their enclaves with­out an entourage. Sev­er­al times I saw her Rolls Royce motor through her gate, but the back win­dows were tint­ed. All I could see was her chauf­fer in the front wind­shield, glar­ing at me like he hat­ed me. In research­ing this post, I learned he and J Lo lat­er had a falling out and she fired him. He sued her and she coun­ter­sued him for black­mail­ing her, so maybe his dark scowl wasn’t about me.

After Bear and Roxy came along, my many trips to the secu­ri­ty gate didn’t pro­duce any con­tact with J Lo either, but one Sun­day morn­ing I man­aged to snare a con­so­la­tion prize. Mike must have been off duty that day because no one respond­ed to the buzzer at first. Then a young guy wear­ing swim trunks jogged through the port au cochere and shout­ed down to me, “Yeah, man? Whad­daya want?”

“Bear’s out again.”

“Oh, wow!”

High school age, short and mus­cu­lar with a buzz cut, the kid ran down to the gate and pulled Bear inside. Bear wan­dered up the hill and began root­ing around in the bush­es. My gar­den­er had found a huge rat­tlesnake in my front yard the pre­vi­ous day. Most hous­es in Hid­den Hills have rat­tlesnake fences around the back yards, but the front yards are exposed because of the dri­ve­ways. I warned the boy about the risk of a rat­tlesnake bit­ing Bear.

“Oh, man, that sucks! What can we do about it?”

“Put him in the back inside your rat­tlesnake fence.”

“What’s a rat­tlesnake fence?”

It turned out J Lo didn’t have a snake fence, so I gave the boy the name of the con­trac­tor who installed mine.

“Wow, man! I’m gonna call that guy right now. We’ve got lit­tle kids in here. God, I mean, thanks so much, man!”

“That’s okay, man. Stay safe.”

When I asked my daugh­ter if J Lo had a son in high school, she gave me the hairy eye­ball. “What did he look like?”

I told her.

“That’s Casper, Dad, you idiot!”

This idiot thing was begin­ning to get on my nerves, but she had me dead to rights again. My age esti­mate was slight­ly off. Twen­ty-sev­en years old, Casper was the lead dancer in J Lo’s troupe and he was her main squeeze. On You-Tube, I watched her pro­claim to some dit­sy inter­view­er her undy­ing love for Casper. She want­ed to have his child, she said. On anoth­er tape, they did a sexy dance rou­tine togeth­er. I was mys­ti­fied. Casper was short­er than she was, fif­teen years younger, and far from stun­ning­ly attrac­tive. Cer­tain­ly she could do bet­ter, I thought.

A few days lat­er when I walked down to the mail­box, Casper jogged up the road at a good clip with Bear and Roxy in tow. With­out break­ing stride, he waved and flashed a big smile. “Hey, man!”

I waved back. “Hey!”

“Called that snake guy! Weird dude, but we bought the fence, man!”

“That’s great, man!”

“Thanks again, man!”

“No prob­lem! Any­time, man!”

I watched him run over the hill. Well, at least he’s nice enough, I thought. And he seems to be in good phys­i­cal condition.

A few days lat­er the lady who lives next door appeared on our doorstep with a ban­dage on her hand the size of a water­mel­on. She said Bear had mauled her on her morn­ing walk. She’d heard I had trou­ble with him and want­ed to know what happened.

“He jumps the fence to play with my dog,” I said, “but he’s always been friendly.”

The next day I got a call from her lawyer. He’d filed a mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against J Lo and want­ed me to tes­ti­fy that Bear was aggres­sive. “He’s not aggres­sive,” I said. “He just likes my dog.” I argued with him for a while and then hung up.

A few hours lat­er, Cindy answered the phone. A woman said she’d heard we’d com­plained about J Lo’s vicious dog.

“Who is this?” Cindy asked.

She said she was from Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the tabloid tele­vi­sion show.

Cindy dropped the phone like it was a live rattlesnake.

The fol­low­ing week, Bear and Roxy dis­ap­peared from J Lo’s yard. My daugh­ter told me she and Casper had bro­ken up. On the inter­net, I learned Casper got cus­tody of the dogs.

A month lat­er, the lady next door told me J Lo paid her a large dam­age award to set­tle her lawsuit.

Short­ly after that, a fleet of mov­ing vans pulled up to the secu­ri­ty gate; an army of movers loaded up enough fur­ni­ture to dec­o­rate the governor’s man­sion; and the trucks con­voyed out of Hid­den Hills.

An osteo­path­ic sur­geon bought J Lo’s house and moved his fam­i­ly in. Nice peo­ple. Kind of bor­ing, though. Like us.

That all went down a cou­ple of years ago. J Lo has moved on with her life since then, hook­ing up with Alex Rodriguez, so it’s clear she’s gone for good.

I’m still bummed out about it. I miss all the excite­ment. J Lo, the twins, Mike, the Rolls Royce, Bear, Roxy, all gone from my life, and it’s real­ly hard to accept that I’ll nev­er see my good bud­dy, Casper, again.

Worst of all, I didn’t even have a chance to say, “Good­bye, man!”