“Hi, Mike—I know, I know… thing is, my neighbor’s dog got out and is running loose.  Right… see, she’s old and that dog is all she’s got… Yeah… Yeah… But the way people drive in this neighborhood.  Look, I’m on my way in… 20 minutes… Yeah.”

Jeremy Cross hung up the phone and finished buttoning his shirt and checked his watch.  How did an extra five minutes of sleep turn into forty?  And today, of all days.  Damned team meeting.

He grabbed up the pile of folders and printouts he was supposed to summarize into a reasonable report.  Computer glitch didn’t save his changes, he’d have to say.  Some excuse, any excuse.

Struggling to slip on his shoes and search for his keys, he noticed a white and brown blur shoot past his window.  Looking out, he saw Mrs. Henderson standing on her porch in her housecoat and slippers.

“Gypsy!” Her voice was high and thin.  “Gypsy!  Come here!  Come here, girl!”

A shi tzu of remarkable speed darted across the lawn and into the street, just missing the tires of Brendan Buchanon’s work truck.  Brendan, who usually drove carefully, was coming through the neighborhood too fast this morning.

Jeremy looked back at Mrs. Henderson, clapping her frail hands, voice pitching higher in panic.

“Gypsy!”

“Huh,” Jeremy said out loud.  “That’s odd.” 

It took him and Mrs. Sanchez twenty minutes to run down Gypsy and return her to Mrs. Henderson.

“That dog is all she’s got,”  Mrs. Sanchez told him as she walked up her driveway.

Jeremy rushed to the office where the team meeting was already underway.  Mike scowled as he walked in, dumped the files on the table and opened his laptop.

“I just tried to pull up my revisions.” Faux anger.  “Damned computer didn’t save my work!  Can you believe it?”

Mike shook his head and moved on.

He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon summarizing the information he was supposed to have done last night.  Finished!  Five hours.  Mike was sore with him, so before sharing it with him, Jeremy opened it to proof it one last time.

A blank page stared back at him.  He scrolled, he clicked, he searched.  The revision wasn’t there.

“What?!” he yelled.  “The damned thing didn’t save—for real!”

Carla looked at him.  Shook her head.  Mike sighed.

“Get a computer from tech.  Have the revisions tomorrow.”

Gayle asked him to get lettuce for salad on the way home.  When he walked in with no shopping bag, she frowned.

“You forgot.” Pronouncement.

“No, no.  I stopped, but… they were out.”

“Out of lettuce?  All lettuce?”

During their salad free dinner, there was a news report that a Cyclospora outbreak was leading local grocery stores to pull all lettuce and spinach from their shelves.

Gayle glanced at him.  “I guess I owe you an apology.”

Jeremy stared at the television, thinking.  “Yeah.  It’s weird, huh?”

For two weeks, every excuse Jeremy made—every white lie, every dodge—manifested.  Gayle reprimanded him for not getting milk and he said he thought she was going to get it.  She paused, then said she did get it, but she was sure she’d told him to.  He told Mom the birthday card he’d forgotten to get must have gotten lost in the mail, and a four day wildcat postal strike suspended deliveries.  He lamented to Mike he was running late because the police blockaded Broad Street, and a hostage situation at the Pine Cove apartment complex shut down Broad Street for five hours.

When Gayle wanted to go to that restaurant she loved but Jeremy hated, he made up an excuse on the phone while driving home.  He had just passed the restaurant and noticed that it was out of business.  They decided to go to his favorite restaurant, instead.  Passing the restaurant a few moments later, he was stunned to see fire trucks pulling out of the parking lot, and the building a smoking, skeletal ruin.  The news said a freak fire destroyed the building, and there were no plans to rebuild.  Gayle sniffled and dabbed away a tear.  Jeremy stared at the TV.  He hadn’t wanted this. He’d just not wanted to go. This was something that could get out of hand very quickly.

After that, Jeremy dialed back the excuses.   He made a greater effort to be on time, to remember obligations, to be accommodating, and not invent white lies when the truth was less complicated, if slightly uncomfortable. He was a grown man, after all.  And grown men own their mistakes. They don’t make excuses.

It took some practice.  It took some effort.  It was trial and error.  That landslide that closed the highway during that time?  That was Jeremy.  But after a while he caught each excuse and made it an honest explanation.

Eleven months later, Jeremy asked Gayle to marry him.  She was delighted—and skeptical.

“We’ve talked about this for two years!  You always had some excuse.”

“No more excuses,” Jeremy smiled, proud of himself.

The day of the wedding, a magically beautiful day, everyone filled the chapel.  Jeremy and Mike and the groomsmen gathered when Darrell came in, pale and shaking.

“Dude,” his voice was hollow and his eyes were huge.  “Dude, Susan’s outside.”

Jeremy went as white as his cumberbund.

“Dude, she’s pissed.  And drunk.”

Jeremy straightened his lapels.  “I’ll talk to her.”

“Dude!  She swears she’s gonna tell everybody about the way you left it with her—right in the middle of the ceremony.  She’s gonna get all in Gayle’s face and tell her—you know—everything!”

“I’ll fix it.  It’ll be okay.  I’ll just… delay the ceremony.”  Jeremy’s hand hung on the door handle, his forehead resting against the door frame.

“Duuuuude…How?  It’s gonna take an act of God to get you out of this!”

“Well, maybe not something that grand,” Jeremy mused, looking toward the window and watching the storm clouds gather.