Lucky Dogs : A novel

Contents Cover Other Titles Title Page Copyright Contents Dedication Epigraph Part One [To say I…] Part Two [Do you live…] Part Three [I’ll admit it…] Part Four [Even though the…] Part Five [Who’s spying now?…] Author’s Note Acknowledgments A Note About the Author Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Contents Start Copyright Print Page List b iii iv v vii 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 323 
 
 
 
 
 ALSO BY HELEN SCHULMAN
 Come with Me
 This Beautiful Life
 A Day at the Beach
 P.S.
 The Revisionist
 Out of Time
 Not a Free Show: Stories
 Wanting a Child (coedited by Jill Bialosky)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
 Copyright © 2023 by Helen Schulman
 All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
 www.aaknopf.com
 Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
 Names: Schulman, Helen, author.
 Title: Lucky dogs : a novel / Helen Schulman.
 Description: First Edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2023]
 Identifiers: lccn 2022023615 (print) | lccn 2022023616 (ebook) | isbn 9780593536230 (hardcover) | isbn 9780593536247 (ebook)
 Subjects: lcgft: Novels.
 Classification: lcc ps3569.c5385 l83 2023 (print) | lcc ps3569.C5385 (ebook) | ddc 813/.54—dc23
 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022023615
 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022023616
 Ebook ISBN 9780593536247
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 Cover photograph by Christopher Brand
 Cover design by Janet Hansen
 ep_prh_6.1_143774083_c0_r0
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Also by Helen Schulman
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 
 
 Part One
 
 [To say I…]
 
 
 
 Part Two
 
 [Do you live…]
 
 
 
 Part Three
 
 [I’ll admit it…]
 
 
 
 Part Four
 
 [Even though the…]
 
 
 
 Part Five
 
 [Who’s spying now?…]
 
 
 
 Author’s Note
 Acknowledgments
 A Note About the Author
 
 
 _143774083_
 
 
 
 
 To the memory of both my brave grandmothers,
 Dora Liebling Yevish and
 Zelda “Jennie” Gluchowsky Schulman,
 who taught me to see the world through the lens of story
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Very early in my life it was too late.
 —MARGUERITE DURAS, THE LOVER
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Part
 One
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 To say I was lonely the summer I turned twenty-four was like saying Donald Trump’s hair was the precise color of Cheetos dust; there was nothing original about it. Almost all kids crowding close to quarter life feel old, used up, and fucking stuck. Childhood dreams die painful deaths, jobs are boring as shit, and finally it dawns: there is no such thing as love, and most sex sucks. In France, where I was staying, the chic postmenopausal grandmamas sitting outside at the cafés on Boulevard Saint-Germain sipping their coupes de champagne in their leopard-print jeans and cold-shoulder shirts were exultant with the confidence that comes from being sexy without being prey. They seemed to know more about contentment than anyone I ever hung with (be they derelicts or movie stars), as if the volume of the balloon of happiness one was born with was proportionately inverse to the time left to enjoy it.
 This was true even for lucky dogs like me: a fugitive in Paris, cursed by beauty, no crap nine-to-fiver, no factory or phone bank to head home from; all I’d had to do to get out of California was point a gun to my manager’s head, rob my own bank, and run. But I’m not sure that even the most resolutely miserable twentysomething’s everyday existential angst was as empty and ceaseless as the black hole I swam in. My isolation was a bright neon-orange warning, like the Trumpster’s shellacked awning. It permeated my skeleton.
 Still, I did my