Good Girl, Black Coffee

Harness, leash. First things first for Bagel. An old pug at the twilight of her life. Skin cancer stricken, the beginning stages. Not terminal, not yet. Barry secured her for the walk, knowing that, in all likelihood, she was probably too frail to make a run for it anyway. One sprint and she’d die before losing a single calorie. 

Cloudy outside. Like the water vapor knew, from communication with Barry’s tearstained cheeks over black coffee, that sun simply wasn’t going to be appropriate for the occasion. If he were to squint, he would perish. Wilt like a neglected flower on a winter night. 

Bagel’s breathing was… pug-like, of course. Her tongue hung out of her mouth and her crinkled nose picked up on the scent of the front yard. Barry gave her a scratch on the head and mumbled something to the tune of “c’mon, let’s go.” It was six in the morning, and if she thought she could dilly-dally on the front steps after waking him up, she was dead wrong. 

He’d kissed his wife on her forehead and she’d mumbled, inaudibly, stinky, with her pre-brushed morning breath. 

It was a smell that Barry, in a weird way, had now come to savor. 

Just like he now found some strange, almost rebellious sense of bliss at standing around while Bagel looked for a spot to do her business. She was picky, too–always had been–taking what felt like long, slow minutes to settle down and unload her bladder. 

“Good girl,” Barry finally said, when she did, and scratched her on the head. 

He’d been a man short on praise for most of his life, reserving most of it for the dogs he’d owned through the years. Bagel, Lucky the golden retriever, Goldie the cocker spaniel, Benji the Jack Russell. All had lived long and happy lives under Barry’s love and care. 

Today, it was harder to feel proud about that. 

Today, the words “good girl” felt bitter on his tongue. Not towards Bagel, but towards himself. When he swallowed back his saliva, he tasted it, too. Bitter, with hints of cloying syrup coating the roof of his mouth. Like the words were disingenuous, compensatory for a lifetime of disappointment. 

The pieces of gum that were now a permanent fixture of the sidewalk looked up at him. His head remained towards the ground, his back crooked from refusing to look up. He was forced into eye contact with the watchful gaze of the disapproving sidewalk. 

“You’re complicit,” it said. “You’re complicit in allowing this to happen.”

Stains of gum? 

Somebody should’ve cleaned those up, at some point. Yes.

“You’ve had thirty years to do something about it.”

Barry’s pace was slow. He swore he could feel wind caressing his face, but when he looked up, ever so briefly, it disappeared. 

Bagel’s pace was slower, somehow. Her pudgy little body was barely sustained by her short, stubby legs. They passed one of Barry’s neighbors’ houses. Inside, he could see John’s wife practicing her yoga routine in the living room, a vague silhouette through the window, the translucent curtains, and the second doorway through the kitchen to the lounge. 

Their layout was intimately familiar to him, through dinner parties and birthdays, through baby showers and playdates. 

Playdates.

“You see that brick arrangement in the front garden?” the window said to Barry. “Jackson and his friend used to lift those up. They used to look for insects together.”

Barry hadn’t known that. 

Bagel sniffed around on the grass, licking a sprinkler that hadn’t managed to retreat fully back into the earth. The most vulnerable creature alive. In rare compassionate form, Barry gently nudged it into its underground home.

“Playing in the sprinkler,” the window continued. “He loved that.”

A woman passed by with a stroller. Her face was haggard with sleeplessness, but she looked warm. Her eyes looked Bagel and Barry over in kindness. Her baby was sucking on a pacifier with curiosity and wide-eyed wonder. 

Barry smiled at them both.

When they were behind him, he stifled the heaving sob that had ferociously clawed its way out of his throat. 

The low, waning growl of the stroller on the sidewalk, bumping in rhythm to the cracks, became the soundtrack to the ebbing ache of Barry’s chest. His eyes swam and his neck felt like it was going to burst from the pressure. 

The sob held tight in his throat. His sinuses, besieged, were screaming for Barry to let the sob pass. To give in to its demands. To allow it control.

He knelt to the floor, put his arms to his face, and wailed. 

He wailed like he’d never wailed before. 

Bagel sat next to him. 

Bagel’s tongue on his forehead smelled like black coffee.