"Damn," I said now, "and it's still biting me."
The man--walking his dog up to his car--looked back to damn me one last time. And I, of course, damned him right back. It was then that a line came to me: "He who accumulates bad dog karma in this life, comes back a good dog in his next." No, I didn't quick draw my pad and pen, write it down. But I really needed to shed a whole lot of bad dog karma soon; for my allotted chapters in this life were running out.
Turning to get back to work, I spied Coral and Trent glaring at me from the other side of my azaleas. Damn, they must have witnessed me cursing the dog-owner out.
Circling my shrub bed, I thought of what I should say to Coral, a dog lover herself.
Maybe this would work: "Don't you hate that; how some people just don't respond to anything but anger?"
"What did he do wrong?" Coral asked.
I rubbed the throat I'd strained yelling at the man. "He had his dog tied to my sprinkler head; was going to leave it there while he went in and bought his wife earrings."
"What's wrong with that?"
"For one, that pipe is only metal on the top. Inches underground it turns into PVC. One tug and it breaks. And there goes my afternoon, digging out, mending pipes. Besides," I horsed out, "we have a no-dogs-on-campus policy."
"What do you have against dogs?"
"I have nothing against dogs. It's the school's policy. I didn't make it up."
"Still, your voice; sounds like you don't like dogs."
Staring at the big gray boulder in my bed, I thought on this.
It wasn't dogs, exactly, I disliked. It was simply this: Dogs reminded me of a bad chapter in my life. A chapter where the love I got from a certain woman was best described in terms of leftovers. But I didn't want to get into all that. So I said, "What I dislike is having to police the no-dogs policy. I kindly informed that man about said policy, but he didn't take me seriously; was tying his dog to my sprinkler. So it had nothing to do with his dog. I was angry at the man for being disrespectful of others property, others rules."
Coral got in my face. "Anton, like you read eyes, I read voices--the feelings behind a person's words. You hate dogs. Why can't you be honest with me?"And then there was my philosophy concerning pets. A philosophy that may have gotten a tad radical, seeing how I had concocted it over the course of that bad chapter in my life--that bad chapter that had lasted the better part of a decade. Oh, the hours I'd spent after-dinner on Tiandra's couch. A full belly, sure, but starving never the less. No, Coral, I refuse to paint for you those pathetic scenes of me waiting patiently for my wife to get her fill of heavy-petting her dog, so I could get some leftovers.
"Coral, this is a complex issue. I can't give you any kind of short answer."
Coral didn't say anything.
Unable to take any more of the stern Coral was throwing me, I turned to Trent. Bad idea. The stern Trent was throwing me was the strongest to date. The kind of stern that made a guy extra self-conscious of the fingers he'd laid on Stern's girl.
I took the little finger off my horse throat, hitched it to the other guilty finger behind my back, got my eyes back on Coral. I didn't want to say this in front of Trent, but he was so close, even if I whispered he'd hear it. So I said flat out, "Coral, you and I need to sit down, alone, talk this through."
"Yes, we do." Coral gestured towards Trent. "We're on our way home to eat lunch. But I have a class at three. I'll return early, say, two. Can we talk then?"
"That works for me."
I couldn't help myself--had to check in on Trent. No, if the guy had a higher caliber of stern in him, I wanted to bear witness.
Trent's stern was high caliber, all right, but it was all directed at Coral now.
****
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