Four hundred and ten dollars

Four hundred and ten dollars for a dog who ate a sock. Not a whole sock. Most of a sock. The vet was extremely matter-of-fact about it in a way that suggested she does three of these a week, and Biscuit was delighted by the entire experience including the bit where they took him away, and came back wagging as though he had achieved something. Danny laughed. Actually laughed, in the waiting room, out loud, at the estimate. And I was doing arithmetic. In the same room, at the same moment, looking at the same piece of paper. That is the whole difference between us in one afternoon and neither of us was wrong. He is not careless. He has a sense of proportion that I do not have — four hundred is not the problem, the problem would be four thousand, and this is a dog who will do this again and we will pay it again and that is what having a dog is. All of that is correct. And I had already worked out that four hundred is five percent of the roof gap. In the car afterwards I told him I had done that, which I would not have done a week ago, and he said, yeah, I know you do that. And then after a bit: it is not a bad thing to have one of us who does. Which is the first time either of us has described the difference as a division of labour rather than a flaw in me.