Sold Her Out

After her evening walk, I sit on the stoop with the doge, telling stories to myself. 

I mean literally: I'm telling a story I'm thinking about doing in front of an audience and trying to find the shape of the thing while the dog, in blissful incomprehension, watches my mouth move until, satisfied no food is going to come out of it, she goes back to sniffing the sidewalk.

I come upon a particularly good line, and I'm going over it and over it, trying different ways of saying it, different inflections, until I notice a woman coming up the sidewalk, and she's trying not to stare curiously at me as she walks by.

"And that's why you need to be a better dog," I say to cover, and the dog looks up at me in shocked disbelief.