Chapter 3 #2
My mind drifted to the incident in the park.
I made a mental note to call the vet to discuss what had happened with B, and then found myself picturing the woman I’d encountered.
The pink of her cheeks, her wide golden-brown eyes…
Despite her being tall and lanky, there had been something sprite-like about her - which was why I’d been shocked about the ferocity of the shouting.
It didn’t seem someone so dainty and innocent looking could spew hellfire like she had.
And damn, she’d let me have it. It had been funny…
until it wasn’t. And as I thought about it now, I grew angry again.
I should’ve spoken up. I should’ve taken back my apology. I shouldn’t have let her get away with her display, leaving me to duck my head as I set to work picking up after my elderly dog while onlookers scurried past. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I shouldn’t have reacted like I had.
“Old habits die hard, I guess,” I muttered.
I glared at my laptop. I was sick of these women who kept coming into my life.
Always bulldozing me. Always making me feel like I was the one in the wrong.
It had been happening since I was in high school, when shy, sweet-looking Elizabeth Bristol let it be known through her best friend that she liked me.
My nose constantly in a book, I’d never have asked her out unless she had made the first move.
But I knew who she was and had always thought she was pretty and interesting, at least by the selection of books I’d seen her reading over the course of the school year.
So we’d dated. And slowly, so I didn’t even register it happening, she began to assert herself and her opinions on my life, until a few months later I was wearing a certain brand of jeans, a particular cologne, and had missed two author events I’d been excited to go to at our local bookstore because she’d “needed” me.
Which meant she was in a bad mood and wanted me to sit on the edge of her bed and compliment her - before batting away every compliment, then eventually getting bored, wrapping herself around me and shoving her tongue in my mouth.
Two weeks before the Sadie Hawkins dance, she’d left me for Billy Martinez.
I’d only casually dated after that. Girls I’d take on one or two dates before scurrying off with claims of too much homework to get serious or some other bullshit excuse.
Until I met Palmer Arrington my sophomore year of college.
It took me two years to realize she was a more subtle version of what Elizabeth had been.
After she’d dumped me at the end of our junior year, my younger sister shouted at the closed bedroom door I was suffering behind, “Stop being a doormat!”
But neither Elizabeth or Palmer was any match for Nadia, who had been the legitimate worst. I was pretty sure her list of accomplishments included a trophy for gaslighting.
For some reason in those early days I’d bought into her poor little rich girl cries.
Her “Nobody knows the real me or is even interested” pleas.
I was a little bit older, a little bit wiser (I’d thought), and had some success under my belt.
I wasn’t green anymore. I knew what I wanted and my eyes were wide open.
Blind, it turned out, but wide open, my sight only coming back to watch the train crash that was our demise, splashed out in full color in several newspapers and magazines.
So this woman in the park with her angelic face, expensive headphones, and dramatic overreaction to a little dog shit… well, she could bite me. I knew her type. I was a certified expert. Be cute all you want, poo-shoe lady. You can’t fool me.
I tapped my laptop awake, then opened a new blank document and typed in the title of my weekly column, Around the Neighborhood, that I wrote for the Brooklyn Tribune.
I was a weekly contributor, providing commentary on things I witnessed or overheard in the neighborhood.
A new coffee shop, a love story seemingly playing out in a beloved bookstore, two old men discussing their favorite place to get donuts while playing chess in the park. ..
They were observations. Bits of information. And the community loved it, oftentimes sending emails and letters of things they’d noticed themselves around town.
Peering at the cursor on the screen, I started to type, the story quickly taking shape with a description of my usual morning with B – who oft made appearances in the column as my trusty sidekick.
I described the crisp smell of the air as we stepped out the front door, the warmth of the sun on my face, signaling summer was coming soon, the flowers lining the sidewalk.
Down the street we went, saying hi and stopping for pats (B, not me…
though sometimes me) from neighbors familiar with our faces, around the corner where several businesses were just opening up for the day, and down a few more blocks to Prospect Park.
It read like the beginning of a romcom movie.
But what followed was anything but cute and romantic as I gave a scathing reenactment of my encounter with Little Miss Poo Patrol.
I chuckled as the last line materialized in my mind, imagining my editor shaking his head and laughing… the reactions I’d get from the neighborhood… the sympathy for B and me from our horrid encounter.
“This was no meet-cute, my friends,” I said aloud as I typed, looking over my shoulder to Bronte, who opened a curious eye. “This, tragically, was a meet-poop.”