dogs

11 below whistling wind chill, the mice have come out from their home behind the fridge, up on their hinders shaking clasped front feet, pleading with me to fill in the cracks of my drafty dwelling, forgetting narrow cracks were the portal to to their lovely home behind the giant humming upright white thing with two doors and one light.

I leave, visiting the old book store where it is warm, not really interested in books, wanting instead to scour for babes wearing glasses. Behind me, in the G thru K shelf, a petite girl, flowing Veronica Lake like hair barely revealing her spectacles, stretches for an out of reach book, her top untucks itself from black jeans exposing flesh. Let me get that book, I offer. She smiles at me leveling her black rims with pinched fingers and I am warm, then tell her about the bossy mice back home. She laughs, just a little, Goethe's The Sorrows Of Young Werther held in small fine white hands hugged to her breast, Oh God, I ponder, don't let this beautiful girl be flirting with suicide now.

Who am I though, holding Hemingway's Men Without Women, to counter such a morbid topic? I tell her Hemingway loved cats, and she's clearly confused, looking up at me, a slight wide-eyed tilted head like a Cocker Spaniel. She is silent, but interested, shining brown eyes never looking away. I prefer dogs, I tell her as she pushes her hair aside thoughtfully. But cats would take care of the mice, she counters, moving on thanking me for the book.