The Red Hair Girl and Her Dog 1.1

    I had never seen the girl before. I had been living in this piece-of-shit college apartment for four months. It was the week between classes ending and commencement. The circuit breaker in the apartment kept failing and I had to climb down into the basement every few hours and reset the switch. The final step of the basement stairs was just a plank of wood stacked on a pile of bricks.

     I had gotten into the habit of eating peanut butter and toast with a mug full of milk in the kitchen, standing and looking out at the backyard. While on the inside the carpet lint gathered in the creases of the stairs, on the outside the lawn was well manicured. Two or three houses rested behind mine in an upscale slum village in Upstate New York and when the sun set it would catch in the trees.

     It was unusually hot for May and the girl wore only shorts. Her thighs blared white like an overexposed reflection in a camera. She wore short blue shorts and a plain white t shirt. At her feet padded a small white and brown dog, a Jack Russell terrier. The girl approached from the north side of the lawn and I watched her from the kitchen windows. The old tin spice rack didn’t obscure my view but I had to move around the empty coffee cans to get a good look. I couldn’t tell how old she was. The dog wasn’t on a leash. She must live around here; she’d probably be about 14 or 16 then.

     She made her way to the mailbox as the dog walked himself over to the large sailboat my landlord must have been trying to sell. It was about 30 feet long and had a red stripe down the side. The dog peed on the trailer. The girl walked with a floating tendency. Her legs stretched out across the green grass. She had curly bright red hair that bounced when she walked. Hair I’d imagine the heroine of a young adult fiction novel to have. She looked down and flipped through the white envelopes but didn’t open any.

     I stood in the kitchen in yesterday’s athletic shorts and a large grey sweatshirt. I had purchased it at a thrift store and when my mother saw it she decided to send me some of my little brother’s old pullovers. I took a swig of milk. I had a milk mustache. I looked at the kitchen, with the ants crawling across the cutting board. I had just cleaned the sink and my 25-year-old roommate had left parmesan cheese all over the cooking surfaces, a little gift to our ant friends. The wallpaper of the kitchen was peeling to reveal prettier wallpaper underneath. 

     Out the window the girl called for her dog. Before she could leave, I went back to the living room to finish my book.