He has tied the dog’s lead to the door handle of the Videorado. The dog, shimming up to the soda machine, keeps a colorblind eye on his master through the plexiglass. The room itself is unremarkable to the animal, who looks into the store with the sole purpose of safe guarding the boy. Watching over the boy means watching over his eventual dinner, which today may include a soup bone. In this way, the dog is much like the boy’s myopic girlfriend, who also watches over the boy, and thus her eventual future with him. The dog thinks of bones, and the girl of babies.
The boy takes in the selection once, twice, chewing one of his sweatshirt sleeves. His taste in movies is a statistically regular taste for males: Fight Club, James Bond, Sparta. Occasionally, though significantly less in recent years, he strays towards the statistically irregular for males: Before Sunset, Makoto Shinkai, Paris. Now that he has a girlfriend, he’s more disciplined with himself when it comes to romance. He’s embarrassed to have ever thought of lovers, and of loving, especially considering that as a college student he cannot be possessed by such adolescent flights of fancy. He can only be possessed by a schedule, and by his girlfriend, who gratefully assumes the role of his keeper.
The dog neatly steps aside as his master opens the door and ties the lead around his wrist. His colorblind eyes move towards the next obstacle in the obtaining of his dinner and soup bone: the three blocks home, filled with pitfalls only known to the astute canine. It is dark out, and the streetlights illuminate the sculpted rhododendrons in the garden of a house next door, where a girl will wake in the morning thinking of love letters.