My Last Walk with ANGEL BY DOMENIC MARINELLI
Essentially, he had no one to walk Angel during the day and apparently he whined all day long. In truth I had heard him many times up there, but apparently some of the neighbors in the building had complained. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, taking a swig of orange soda.
John moved into the apartment above ours shortly after my wife and I settled into the apartment on the third floor. I can still remember him hauling one box after another out of his old pickup parked at the curb. The reason this stuck in my mind wasn’t at all because of the man, a fortyish single guy from out of town, but rather the Border Collie that accompanied him up and down with every trip. It was so intriguing to watch the dog, fur, brown and white, at his master’s leg, looking up with wonder. Many times, Ican remember walking from my window as I took a break from writing, a smile set on my face. In the end, John and his dog, Angel, would turn out to have a far greater impact on my life than just a distraction from my day’s work. John settled in quite nicely, and it wasn’t long before I invited him down for a few steaks I fried up and served with sweet potato fries. We sat at my kitchen table and we got to know one another: he divorced but still in contact with his daughter, now in college. She’d visit from time to time, but mostly John concentrated on his own work as a sheet metal worker at a local company nearby. He was gone most of the day. And of course there was Angel. We gave him his own piece of meat, and he ate it hungrily yet daintily. In truth, I had never before seen a more obedient and patient dog. That of course had no bearing on our landlord’s opinion. He knocked on my door looking for John, just as we were enjoying our meal, and boy did he let him have it. John hadn’t even been there two months and he was telling him that if he didn’t do something about that dog’swhining, he’d be out. Our landlord left in a huff, leaving John to explain.
I looked down at Angel, and so would begin our daily walks around the neighborhood. As a writer, I’ve got quite a bit of time at home; especially at that time. I had a few books out and was writing for a few online magazines, making a decent pay, so walking Angel really wasn’t a problem. At first John was shocked, but he appreciated it immensely, accepting my offer. Angel would just look up at me for those first few walks, walking timidly, but eventually, he took to me and it really was as John had said … “probably the only dog you don’t have to keep on a leash.” A few weeks later, the pandemic hit, and no one was around on our daily walks, so mostly we had the pathways in the parks and the riverside to ourselves. Angel liked to watch the ducks swimming in the icy river, ducking down in the water where they could. He’d bark every time one of them did that, seeming to me, almost in worry. I noticed eventually that he walked with a limp and it was only after our first month of walks that John told me that Angel had something wrong with his hips. On a personal note, the height of the pandemic also brought severe pay cuts for the articles I was writing, pay cuts that just wouldn’t do. It got to a point where they were paying a mere seven dollars for news reports of about three-hundred words. I understood their point, as they too were probably suffering, as the entire world was suffering. I ended up spending even more time with Angel, as he distracted me from my issues with my work—or lack thereof—us even playing catch in the back yard of the building. It was on one of these occasions that I noticed his limp getting worse. I didn’t want to mention it to John, but maybe in the end, that was my mistake, and maybe what ended up happening wouldn’t have been quite the blow that it was for John. But of course, these are the questions that will forever persist … for me, for John and maybe now for you, reading this—these, the questions we’ll never get answers to.
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