“He’s a pretty dog,” she said, reaching with her free hand to
scratch my boy behind his ears. Her other hand she held away, behind her, a
freshly lit L&M scissored between the fore and middle fingers. “What’s his
name?”
I’d forgotten
how much I disliked the smell of cigarettes.
“Bo,” I
replied, trying not to wrinkle my nose as the wind carried the smoke my way.
“Oh god!” she
said, pulling her scratching hand back, revolted.
Bo looked at
me, then back at her, then me again. I knelt beside him and dug my fingers into
the nap of his neck. He pressed close.
“Not my choice,” I explained, having never
much cared for the name myself. “It was the name he came with. He was abandoned—kind
of a rescued-dog.”
“I’d have to
change it,” she snapped, taking a long drag from the L&M to calm herself.
She exhaled out the side of her mouth. “Sounds too much like Barack Obama.”
Cancer, it
seemed, was the least of her worries.
