At lunch on Sunday he contemplated the death and potential murder of his own yellow lab. That was the only viable option he could see to remove himself from this liver-wrenching, enervating relationship. She loved that dog like a child. He hoped, like the death of a child, the death of his dog would strain their unspoken covenant enough to reveal a consensual split as the most amicable alternative. She would always, every day, blame him for taking their young prelude to a child on the hunt with his high-school friends – his high-school friends who hunt with a shot-gun in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Quite normal and expected really. There had never been a lethal accident before. This time, of course, it would be pre-mediated. But she would never know. Perhaps not even suspect. Damn, though, he sure was a good dog.

2008

He walked into the long narrow restaurant with a green satchel strapped on his left shoulder, wearing round dark-rimmed glasses that certainly made him look intelligent with his suede sports coat on. He attracted the darting eyes of those around him when he pulled a small notebook out of the green satchel and began to write in slow spurts – looking up and around periodically as though drawing the scenery with a journalist’s eye. The waiter brought him a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône and poured a bit into a small table glass. He smiled and thanked the waiter with a nod and took a drink of the wine before continuing writing. He felt that he was getting along well when the door opened and he saw a friend enter the café. He sighed to himself, then smiled and closed the book and stood to greet his friend.

12/16/03

This is apparently what I write while watching TV and drinking bourbon:

The dawn stretched and yawned and coughed up another pouty flower. The pollen drifted along the alleys in wide bands and yellow lines, decorating cars and trees and garbage with its itchy good morning. I tried to cover my mouth and close my eyes and pretend that the morning was just filled with yellow fog that would dissipate with the late morning winds. But the pollen swarmed around me, circling like a hive of mad yellow jackets, black and yellow with their mad hiving, stinging my eyes and swatting my nose. There was nothing besides. There was only the dull itchy yellow pollen, coughed up by a pouty yellow flower left over in the afternoon delight of its plump courtier, sardonic laughter reverberating along the gutters of the alley. I pulled my green t-shirt over my mouth and my nose and put my head down, as though against a strong wind, plowing through the yellow pollen storm in search of her lost squinky, dropped out of the window of the car as it piddled down the road yesterday evening. The winds weren’t strong enough to remonstrate me, nor was the pollen strong enough to admonish me. I could still hear her cry as she went to bed, her soft pouty cry for her lost squinky girl. And the teary lake of her green eyes against the pillow wilted me.