was that you have something on your face.â
âMy nose.â
âYes, your nose. You see, you knew. I didnât have to tell you after all.â
âDonât I know. And excuse me for being so blunt, sir, but youâre mad.â
âNo Iâm not. I thought you were more observant than that. Can you take a little more honesty for one day? Iâm feeling unusually content with myself talking with you here, not at all mad. Thatâs honesty. Thatâs an honest statement about my life, is what Iâm saying, which you might or might not agree.â
âI mean in the head, which you knew perfectly well. A screw loose. Daft. Disturbed. Your desperate need for attention perhaps. Yourâ¦but Iâm not going to analyze you. Excuse me for even having said what I did, as your mental and emotional states are none of my business. And now Iâm going. Stop me again and I will call the police, and after that, who knows? Maybe the courts will decide you belong in an asylum for a while, which I donât think youâd like in the least. Now, have I made my point clear?â
âGood and clear. If that was any indication how you make your points, then you make them very well.â
I watch him go. I sit on the curb. I watch the cars and trucks go by. The vehicles. Buses, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters. People go by too. Baby carriages. Not along the street but across it and then on the sidewalk across the street. Lots go by. Dogs with their walkers, dogs without. A battery-powered wheelchair. Two girls on roller skates in the street. Only roller skaters I saw today on the street or off. Day goes by. Night comes and stops. I stay on the curb. I look at the lights of passing planes overhead. I look at the water running along the curb under my legs. A twig floats by. Half a walnut shell empty side up. Piece of paper. I pick it up and read it. Itâs the label of a pickle jar. Spices, cucumber slices, vinegar, a preservative, and where itâs made and by which company and the kind of pickle it is. I drop it into the water and it floats away. Someone must have opened a fire hydrant nearby.
A dog off its leash stops and sniffs the parking meter pole Iâve been using as a back rest. I shoo it away. It comes back. I say âScat.â It sniffs the pole some more and lifts its leg. I say âGet out of here, beat it, scram,â and raise my hand.
âTouch that dog and youâre in trouble,â a man holding a leash says.
âHe your dog?â
âWhether he is or isnât, just say I donât see anyone beating on dogs.â
âIf heâs your dog, tell me, so I can ask you to call him away.â
âWhy? The poleâs public. On a public sidewalk alongside a public street. So that dog has as much right to the pole as you.â
âAny sensible person knows people have more rights than dogs. Just the word âpublic,â for instance, will tell you that. From publicus, pubes, populus, people, people, not that one should expect anyone else to know that.â
âOkay. Maybe some people have more rights than dogs. But for you, I donât think so.â
âWhatever you say. But I donât want your dog, if he is your dogâjust this dog thenâstepping a step nearer to me and lifting his leg again, or Iâll summon the police and have it taken away. Thereâs the street for what a dog has to do, not the sidewalk or against a building wall or fire hydrant or parking meter pole, and certainly not against me.â
He raises his finger in a curse sign and walks away. The dog follows, does its duty against a parking meter pole a few feet away. Does its other duty on the sidewalk a few feet past that. The man inspects it, hooks the leash on the dogâs collar, and they leave. I continue to sit. Those were the only words I said to anyone or were said to me since I saw that other man on the street and tried to speak