Free Dog Eat Dog by Chris Lynch Page A

I asked, backing toward the door.
    “You know better than that,” she said. She reached her hand into the pocket of her bathrobe, took something out, and popped it into her mouth. In the same motion she untied the sash. She seemed almost unaware of me then.
    “Okay, so then, maybe another time,” I said. I turned the doorknob behind my back.
    Felina snapped her head in my direction. She stood up, a little panicky. The robe hung open, but I tried not to notice. “Wait,” she said, and put her hand on the door. “I can do it. What the hell, right? Sit. You sit for a minute.”
    She practically threw me onto the couch, then disappeared down the hall. I sat with Barney for an uneasy few minutes until she reappeared.
    She had ignored my advice about showering, but she had made an effort. The great mass of her hair was still a chaotic and snarled and oily mess, but she had wrestled it into a giant meatloaf of an uncombed ponytail. She wore stonewashed shorts and a neon peach T-shirt that had a picture of a sailboat and a seagull and HAMPTON BEACH, NEW HAMPSHIRE—SUMMER BETTER THAN OTHERS printed in raised rubbery lettering across the chest. Except for being unclean and sleepy, she looked pretty beautiful. She wore a lot of bitter perfume. I was happy to be with her.
    We didn’t talk at all. Felina smiled a lot as we walked the five blocks. She stared almost exclusively up at the sky, or out the window by our booth. She ordered everything I had mentioned—the hash, the egg, the chocolate milk—exactly the same way I had said it. As if it were a command. I ordered the same. People stared at us and the waitress seemed to wince whenever she came near, but I had a fine time, and the smile never left Felina’s face. Even when she briefly nodded off.
    During the walk home, she would periodically close her eyes and bare her greenish face to the now blistering noon sun. I got a panic attack as we came nearer to her street, but it all washed away when we turned the corner and there was still no motorcycle. I would have gone all the way to the house with her anyway, but I was sure glad it didn’t come to that.
    Felina didn’t even turn to look at me, lost and happy as she seemed to be, as I left her walking up her stairs. But that was okay.

Duran
    “WHAT ARE YOU DOING back there?” Evelyn called out her window, nearly giving me a stroke. I was in her backyard and her dog was eating boneless spareribs out of my hand.
    I’d been at it for two weeks, feeding him, then patting him, finally talking to him. That was probably what gave me away, the talking.
    “He likes you?” she said, standing amazed and barefoot on her back porch. “He doesn’t like anybody .”
    “He likes me,” Ruben said, following his sister out through the screen door.
    “He hates you,” she cracked.
    “That’s a freakin’ lie,” Ruben said, brushing past her to march down the stairs. When he reached the third step, the dog started snarling. Ruben walked backward up onto the porch again.
    “Well, I ain’t got no shoes on, so I can’t go into the yard right now, but I’ll show you all later. Freakin’ dog loves my ass.”
    “He hates you because you neglect him,” Evelyn said matter-of-factly.
    I patted the dog’s wide muscular head as he easily lapped up the last of the food. As he chewed, the muscles flexed on either side of the part that ran down the middle of his skull. I could fit both hands flat across that magnificent dome of his and feel his bite while he ate. And he let me.
    “Atsa boy, boy,” I said, but he paid no attention.
    “His name’s Duran,” Ruben said, “and he ain’t no boy.”
    He was right about that, for sure. But that’s what I had been calling the dog all along, boy. Duran, though, was great. It fit the second I heard it. “Du-ran,” I repeated, and patted him, scratched the sides of his face, and looked into his beady one-black-one-green eyes.
    “You the loneliest sombitch I ever seen,” Ruben laughed