Your couch surfer has a Cocker Spaniel?

When the hiccups stopped, or maybe it was before, I went to sleep.
It was winter, around the time I was using my cold hands to compress my aching backside, when Rob just sort of showed up. I had met him, sure, but I cannot say that I know him. Rob, that is. I still don’t know who did/does. One day he was just sort of there. And one night he had hiccups. Coming home from the bar – I was asleep in bed, at home after a week of work -- Rob turned on the lights, the music and his hypnotic hiccups.
Shut the fuck up, I yelled from the bedroom, hoping to scare the air out of him.
Does it bother you? he asked.
Well, I’m just concerned, I lied.
Yeah, I don’t know what it is. I haven’t been drunk since I’ve been here – hiccup.
Fuck! What can I get you? Can I get you anything? I feign sympathy.
I don’t know, nothing.
Well, I want to get you something. What I want is for him to have a job, a place of his own to live. I want my living room back, my couch. I want him gone, and his dog, did I mention the Cocker Spaniel? But prospects aren't good.

Does it bother you? Rob asked, when I asked him the very next morning why his Razor phone was beeping every couple of minutes.
Doesn’t it bother you? I want to know. He seems able to either black beeps out of his mind or else it’s that the beeping, which I can hear from my bedroom with the door closed, isn’t bothersome but hypnotic like the hiccups. It beeps again before Rob, a guy I’m uncertain why is still sleeping on my couch, informs me that it’s just because the battery is low and needs to be re-charged. Oh, that is why his Razor phone is beeping every couple of minutes.
Well, can you make it stop? I request, not a heavy request I don’t think, considering I haven’t asked Rob for anything in exchange for this free place to stay, now for exactly three weeks.

This couple that I’m friends with, Jake and Lilly, have listened to me complain about my unwanted houseguest for the last 30 minutes. They begin to tell me of a California law they've read about that scares the bleep out of me. In California, it is more than difficult to ask someone who’s been staying with you for more than two weeks to leave. It requires courts and thus fees. I hope Oregon doesn’t have such laws. I hope Rob finds a job, a place to live, maybe a muzzle for his Cocker Spaniel. But for now, I would just be fine wishing that Rob would plug his charger into his Razor phone and into the outlet that is on the wall next to my couch that he has made his.