By Chris and KC

Sorry chicas, this one is G-Rated, all the way…..

Life is tough. We had good jobs, then poof! Down the drain. So Chris decided that we should turn our talents for talking, and our love for animals into something bigger…yup, it turned out to be bigger, all right.

I adore dogs, but haven’t owned too many. She loves animals of all kinds, and is very experienced with care and feeding, etc. So, here we are, Pampered Pets Grooming Service. We have a van; we have all the equipment we need to make your poodle look like a topiary, make your Siamese purr with delight. At least one of us has the knowledge to make this happen, and the other one is learning fast. We even have a web site! And, we’ve been lucky so far.

We rely mostly on referrals, although there are an amazing number of hits at the web page – and even a few resulting calls to schedule appointments. We were fortunate enough to get a phone call from a major Hollywood player shortly after we started, and making his spoiled, bratty Afghan look like a million dollars was also helping us grab other clients.

I got back to the “office” (my spare bedroom) after a supply run one day not too long ago, and Chris was literally beside herself with excitement. “You are never going to believe who called while you were gone!” she crowed.

“Who? Antonio Banderas?”

“Close – Mel!! Stuart gave her our number.”

I had to sit down before I fell on the floor…”Really? Oh wow. OH WOW!”

“Yes, and she set up an appointment for next Wednesday to take care of their lab! She needs a bath, toenails trimmed, just some basic stuff, but can you believe it??”

“Oh – wow……” my vocabulary tends to disappear when I am overcome with emotion.

“Do you mean we are going to get to see more of their house than the laundry guy’s driveway shots and what we saw in Hola!? This is GREAT.”

“Calm down, chica,” she said. “We will be there to do our jobs, act professionally and NOT squeal like teenyboppers…this could mean a lot of future contacts for us, and you want to be able to keep adding to that video collection, don’t you?”

I sighed. “Yes, you’re right, as usual. I will behave, and act with decorum. But, can you just imagine if he’s home? Oh, wow.”

“He probably won’t be,” Chris cautioned. “The appointment is for 2:00 PM on a weekday, and he’s probably not around at that time. Now, you promise you will act like a mature, responsible adult?”

“Yes, I will, I promise,” I replied meekly. (Thinking to myself….Oh wow!!)

I scolded KC about behaving as much for myself as for her. I was shaking when I hung up the phone after speaking with Melanie. And it was she; there was no mistaking that voice! She seemed really nice, and told me that we had been highly recommended. I hoped that I didn’t sound like too much of an idiot over the phone. I could just picture Antonio standing behind her while she was talking to me, and I don’t really know what I said.

We were both smiling with anticipation about this particular grooming job. The hard part was that we had to wait over a week before the appointment. But we had plenty of other work to keep us busy, so the days went by rapidly. Then the day arrived. KC had a dazed look on her face, and kept mumbling, “oh, wow.” I kept telling myself; ok now you know that we will not meet him. He will not be at home. Some employee of theirs would tell us where we could work, and we would get to meet the Banderas dog. That would be it. But if we did a good job… Maybe they would make regular appointments and then sooner or later, maybe, just maybe we would actually meet him.

I knew it was just a fantasy, but KC and I were closer than ever to actually meeting Antonio. It was time to go. KC double-checked the supplies in the van, then I drove us to their house (Would be nice for a description of the neighborhood, if you could provide some details here). Usually, we played the music from Evita and sang along at the top of our lungs, but today, we hardly made a sound. We arrived at the address. I had been given the gated entry’s “code,” and drove up to the house. KC and I looked at each other, took deep breaths, got out of the van, and made our way to the door.

My hand was trembling as reached out to press the doorbell, but the door began to open before I even got to it. I shot KC a quick look, then turned toward the door. Just as I thought, it was a woman. She said, “You must be the groomers. Senor Banderas asked that you bathe her outside, behind the house. You can pull your van around there. She loves to play in the water, and likes a bath with the garden hose. Senor Banderas apologizes for not being here, but he had a last minute appointment. I will bring her out the back door.”

I nodded and KC and I got back in the van. She said, “Just our luck. He was actually going to be here.” I sighed. “Well, maybe we will be asked to come back sometime.” As I stopped the van a large, pale tan lab bounded out to meet us. Se couldn’t decide which of us she wanted to greet first, and dashed back and forth between us. I saw where the hose was and moved to pick it up. She immediately ran to me, trembling with anticipation. “What’s up, girl? You like to be squirted with the hose?” I turned the water on and sprayed it gently in her face. She leaped to catch the stream of water in her mouth. KC was laughing hysterically at the sight of her antics.

KC pulled the small wading pool out of the van, and I began to fill it with water. The dog leaped in and out of the pool, still trying to catch the water; we were doubled over with laughter. She stopped to shake off, and soaked KC in the process. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. I pointed at her as she flinched and turned her face away from the spray. She said, “hey, what are you laughing at?” She reached into the pool and sloshed water in my face.

That was it. The scene degenerated into a full-fledged water fight. I turned the hose on KC, while she used a bucket to sling water at me. The dog splashed around with us, but we were completely oblivious to her or anything else. We were screaming with laughter, the dog was barking and running all over the yard. KC suddenly stopped and stood up, a look of panic on her face. I turned around and saw… Antonio Banderas was looking us over with a quizzical expression on his face.

We both froze in place, while the soaking wet dog ran over to Antonio, leaping and jumping, and of course, soaking him in the process. He yelled to the dog to sit, and then straightened up and looked at us silently, unsmiling. We were mortified; we absolutely did not know what to do! Not only had we probably lost this job for good, we’d be one of those “you’ll never work in this town again” teams, doomed to spend our days in some Petco in the Valley as cashiers.

I sank down to the ground, only wanting to disappear. Chris was a little braver – she wiped her face with her t-shirt and tried to bring some order to her hair – and I could see she was trying to think of something to say.

“Mr. Banderas, um, I, I mean we, this is, Oh Hell,” she stammered. I still couldn’t speak, I knew only little squeaks would come out of my mouth if I tried.

She started over again. “Oh, Mr. Banderas, we are so very, very sorry. We don’t usually act like this, really we are much more professional, I swear.” And then her voice trailed off, as he continued to stare at us, not speaking.

I finally tried to talk. “Yes, please forgive us, we were just having so much fun, your dog is so beautiful, and has such a terrific personality that we just couldn’t help ourselves,” I managed to croak. (Oh, yes, KC, that will really make this situation all better.)

He still wasn’t saying anything. I was considering just staying on the grass, it would be easier for the police to drag me away…

The dog suddenly leaped up and began dancing around again, shaking and spraying all of us all over again. I guess that did it, because Antonio cracked up! He laughed and laughed, trying to control the dog and moving closer to us.

“Towels, anyone?” he managed to say.

The tense moment when we thought we would be arrested and hauled off to jail had passed, and we began to laugh, too, me with just a tinge of hysteria in my voice.

“Please don’t be angry, we were just having so much fun, we honestly forgot where we were, we’re truly sorry. Oh, NO, you’re soaked. Oh, Lord…” I sputtered, giggling madly.

“No, no – I am not angry – this is really very funny,” he grinned. “And look at the result! A clean dog…” I guess an impromptu bath was a pretty good way to “break the ice” with Antonio!

The woman who had let us into the yard appeared, and distributed a stack of towels. Chris and I grabbed the ones we had brought to dry the dog, but gratefully accepted the extras to try and make ourselves presentable.

As we retrieved our scattered belongings and finished the interrupted bathing and grooming of the retriever, Antonio pulled up a chair and chatted with us, asking us about our business and answering a few questions about his career and future plans. A short time later, the dog was squeaky clean and we were ready to leave.

“Thank you again for being so understanding,” Chris said.

Antonio extended his hands to pull us both to our feet. “Ladies, you have done a magnificent job. May we set up a regular schedule with you?”

Chris and I looked at each other. Her eyes flashed a warning at me - be cool!

“Of course, please have someone call us and we’d be glad to make arrangements,” she responded.

As I was marveling over the fact that he was still holding our hands, Antonio bent to each of us in turn, and gave us gentle kisses. Kisses!!!!! I was in heaven. And so was Chris.

We managed to get ourselves and our gear out of the yard and into the van. As we were pulling away, Chris slapped the steering wheel and groaned.

“What? Did you forget something?” (Oh goody! We could go back!!)

“Yes, something very important.”

I did a quick mental inventory. “What? I can’t think of anything…”

“What’s the one thing we never did all afternoon?” she asked.

“Uh…I have no idea.”

“We NEVER got the name of the dog! I forgot to ask when Melanie made the appointment, we never even thought to when we were there. I can’t believe we forgot to ask!!!!!”

“No problem, you’ll think of some way to find out the next time…”

Note: We’ll end this with additional apologies for not being able to track down the name of the star of this story, “The Dog”.