MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS

I was on the porch today, talking with my girl, when the neighbor to the north opened her door and walked out onto the porch. Without preamble, she asked, "Where's your dog?"

"Hold on a sec, Wendy," I said, and I pulled the phone away from my ear. "Excuse me?"

My neighbor stepped all the way onto her porch and closed the screen door. A large woman with a somewhat gray face and closely-cropped hair, she placed a hand over her large bosom and said, "When I was taking the trash out yesterday, your dog barked at me and scared me half to death."

"Oh," I said. "That's Louie. He acts tough but he's not vicious."

"You could have fooled me. The way he charged that fence! And his barking! Where is he? Is he in the yard?"

I smiled. "No. He's inside, right here," I said, pointing at the screen door.

"Okay," she said. "I was just checking." And she went back inside, ostensibly to walk through the house and out her back door to the trash area. Happy journey, Matilda. (I don't know her name yet, but she looks like she could rock the "Matilda" gloss.)

So was met the Neighbor of the North.

And I met the neighbor to the south last night. His name is Mike.

I played some basketball last night, after work, and I got home at around 9:30 or so, feeling like a Mack truck had hit me. Every joint ached and my right ankle felt like it had been twisted in a vise. Nice.

Anyway, I let Lou out and sauntered into the bathroom to drain my one-eyed python and then I changed out of my sweaty clothes into nice freshly-washed lounging wear. I started a pot o' coffee a-brewin' and I latched yet another cigarette onto my bottom lip. (I'm thinking--thinking!--of quitting the nasty habit for my birfday, March 30th. Thinking!) I grabbed a cup of coffee and I walked outside to see what Lou was up to. It had grown awfully quiet outside.

A black and white and spotted bitch ambled to my side and Lou followed soon thereafter, his tongue hanging goofily out of the corner of his mouth. What. The. Fuck? Who the hell is this?

"Who the hell are you?" I asked the dog. She sniffed at my hand and wagged her hindquarters. From the light of ther side door I could see that she was all Pit Bull. She was a cutey. But who the hell was she and whence had she come? I called her over to me and carefully grabbed her collar. No identifying tags, just a dog license. No address, no phone number. Lou swiped at her head and, again, they were off and running and playing and yipping. I wondered what I was going to do with her. Would she have to stay the night?

I figured I would go next-door and see if maybe they had a dog and maybe she'd been loose and maybe someone had assumed that she lived at my house. Enough "maybes"?

I knocked on my southern neighbors' front door. Enter Mike. Mike is an older guy--maybe in his mid-40s--and his hair is long and scraggly and he wore a concert T-shirt and a baseball cap.

"Hi," I said. "I just moved in next door. I'm Adam."

"Mike," he said. We shook hands.

"I was just wondering if you have a dog?"

"Yeah, we do," he said. "Why? Is she in your yard?"

"Kinda like a black and white Pit?"

"Yeah, that's her," said Mike.

"How'd she get in the yard?" I asked.

I learned that BoBo (?) has a penchant for jumping fences and that Mike's daughter lets the dog out and doesn't watch her closely enough. I think I've seen his daughter. She's a little black-haired number and a cell phone grows from the side of her head and she drives an Aztec with a booming bass and I think that she may be a mother. There are an awful lot of baby things over there, including, but not limited to, a baby stroller. And a baby ball.

We walked back to my yard and Mike collected BoBo and I collected Lou into the house.

Neighbors? Met.

Next!