Dana and the Dogs by Sal Difalco

Is it possible you will forgive me one day for my ineptitude and weakness? Perhaps.

I have this conversation with myself before I bus out one dawn to the east end of the city. I hope to run into my ex with the dogs on their morning walk in a certain neighbourhood where I believe she lives now. I miss the dogs. I wonder if they remember me. I miss her, too, but in a negative, masochistic way. Perhaps I would like us to reunite so I can be more miserable than I am.

“Hey buddy,” says a palsied man trembling by a window. “You can’t sit there.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not disabled and you’re younger than me, so go sit somewhere else.”

The atmosphere on the bus oppresses me. But also, the steamed windows indicate unhealthy and unsanitary exhalations. I say nothing and move to another seat. I hate confrontation. Not because I’m afraid of confrontation. I’m afraid that if I allow myself to get caught up in a confrontation, with my lack of self-control, I’ll go full bore, whole hog, total dynamite. I scare myself sometimes.

“Where you going?” asks a being shorn of hair and eyebrows who plunks down beside me and smells of baked bread.

“I’m trying to locate my wife and my dogs.”

“You’re married?”

“Technically, yes. But we haven’t been together in years. Haven’t seen the dogs in years.”

“Sounds ridiculous. What kind of dogs?”

“Alaskan Malamutes. Giacomo and Lupa.”

“Aw. Beauty breed. Sorry you don’t get to see them. My name is Dana. I know. I smell like baking. I work in a bakery.”

“You make bread?”

“I do. And pastries. But my forte is bread, especially baguettes. I learned how to make them correctly in Paris a few years back.”

“Interesting. I’m Sam. I think you’re quite intrusive, but for some reason I don’t mind.”

Dana smiles. “I’m a people person is what’s up. I take an interest in everyone. And you have an interesting story behind that interesting face.”

I recently had nose surgery. Indeed, a cancerous half of it had been excised and poorly stitched up. I wonder if that’s what she means. Maybe a story of violence or suffering lends itself to such wounds, not cancer. Most people shun me. I get it. Dana has full pink lips and eyes the blue of the stripes on the sleeves of ter Brugghen’s The Flute Player.

“Do you like music?” Dana asks.

“Who doesn’t like music?”

“Does your estranged wife like music?”

“Yes, of course. She’s actually a musician.”

“Me, too. I play the harmonica. I’d play a few bars for you now, but next stop is me.”

This announcement crushes my mood. I was enjoying our back and forth. It’s so rare these days. The bus wheezes to a stop and Dana slips out the rear exit, glancing back once.

I almost wave but draw back my hand at the last moment. An old crone eyeballing me looks like she wants to say something. I lean forward in my seat and ready myself for it. Her blue hair shakes; her upper lip trembles. I know she wants to say something. I know. But when I turn my face so that she sees my butchered nose, she thinks again about it.

My stop comes next and I exit the bus with the old crone hissing behind me, and the bus hydraulics hissing beneath me. The bus streams away and it’s shrill and bright on the walk through that neighbourhood, everyone trucking and gawking, and I wish that I were with Dana.

“Dana! Dana!” I cry as I comb through the neighbourhood, even though I know that person doesn’t live there. “Dana! Dana!” I cry, more as a plaint than a summons. Of course there is no sign of Dana. There is also no sign of my ex and the dogs. Futility sours my soul. I search for another hour and take the bus home.

Next morning I get on the early bus again and head out east, but there is no sign of Dana. I am deeply disappointed. The other people on the bus do not signify. I ignore the muttering and grumbling and bitter undertones. These people are unhappy in their own right. I jump out at the stop where Dana got off yesterday. I sniff the air. It’s cold, so the odours are indistinct. Unfortunate. I continue, and my persistence pays off for at some point I catch a whiff of baking. Is it possible? I follow the scent like a dog. I don’t have any idea where I am going, but I follow the scent. The street narrows, but I keep following the scent. It leads me to a small clapboard house barely larger than a garage. I knock on the door.

A man answers, thick-necked, needing a shave.

“I’m here for Dana,” I say.

“There is no Dana here.”

“I smell baking.”

“That’s because the wife is baking bread.”

“You have a wife?”

“I have a wife. Now if that’s all, I’m going back to what I was doing.”

Back to it, I thought. People have lives. Much as I imagine they do not exist outside of my frame of reference, they are living their lives. Why do I feel like I am not living my life? I go home and sulk for the rest of the day. I sleep poorly.

Next morning I again set off east. This time Dana is already on the bus.

“Hi, stranger,” I say.

“Do I know you?” Dana says, blue eyes popping.

“People person, right?”

Dana looks around uncomfortably, not seeming to recall our meeting. The eyeballs of other passengers whiten and their brows either furrow or rise up to their scalp lines.

“You work in a bakery, right?”

“Hey, dude, are you like stalking me or something?”

“That’s absurd,” I say. “We met the other day on the bus and chatted.”

“Look,” Dana says, “back off.”

A large man, bearded and angry — with hairy forearms and hair tufting from his eyes and ears — steps forward.

“Is this freak bothering you?” he asks Dana.

“He knows where I work!”

The big man pushes his bulk against me. He is so large I cannot breathe and cannot see around him.

“You’re engulfing me!” I cry.

“Are you bothering this person?” he says, his breath like off liver.

”We had a conversation,” I say. “That’s all there is to it.”

The bus comes to a stop and the driver cranks the emergency brake and stomps down to us. His eyes, devastatingly reddened by lack of sleep or drugs, blaze at me.

“Get off my bus,” he says quietly.

The big man chests me toward the exit. I have an impulse to knee him in the nuts, but I know that will not go well for me and I don’t have the energy or the self-love to take a stand. I can see Dana peering at me from behind a stanchion. I misjudged this person. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Without further ado, I exit the bus and find myself in an unknown neighbourhood. I wander around. It’s cool out. I don’t know how long I want to do this. After an hour or so — feet sore, head numb — I see a woman and a man walking two magnificent Alaskan Malamutes. I freeze. The dogs begin pulling on their leashes and the arms of the man and the woman stretch out as the dogs drive them toward me. But I turn around and start running. I’m wearing hard shoes and my soles clap the cold pavement, the sound echoing down the street. I keep running until my legs and lungs burn so much I have to stop. My heart feels as though it might burst. I hold my knees and catch my breath and listen for howling.  

………………..

Sal Difalco resides in Toronto. His short works have appeared in Cafe Irreal, Gone Lawn and other fine journals.