The Big One
(Saturday afternoon, on the steps of a blue house on Alder Street in Portland.)
Dahlia: Okay. Before you say anything — don’t be angry.
Neighbor: That’s a great start.
Dahlia: So I was walking all three of them down by the river, and everything was fine, and then a squirrel came out of nowhere, and the big one just — went.
Neighbor: Went where?
Dahlia: Into the trees. He was running so fast. I dropped my phone in the grass and I ran after him for about ten minutes.
Neighbor: And you didn’t catch him.
Dahlia: No. He was missing for almost an hour. I searched the whole park. I asked several people, and a woman with a baby said she saw a big brown dog, but that was on the other side of the bridge.
Neighbor: Hm.
Dahlia: I’m really sorry. You don’t have to pay me for today. I mean it.
Neighbor: Come inside a second.
(The neighbor opens the front door. In the kitchen, the big dog is asleep on a towel, wet up to the shoulders.)
Dahlia: … How?
Neighbor: He’s done it since he was two. He runs home, I open the door, he eats, he sleeps. He was here before eleven.
Dahlia: You could’ve told me that.
Neighbor: I could’ve, yeah.
(He counts out the money and puts it in her hand.)
Neighbor: Same time next Saturday? I hope so. Nobody else will walk him.
Dahlia: Only the little ones.