let's try to start

It didn't work anymore. Fewer things did.

It was really a parking lot, with a wood privacy fence surrounding it, wood picnic tables, umbrellas.

Eleanor was standing on a bench near the door, guarding mainly against any and all who would pass by without petting her, or rubbing her belly. Few passed her without paying the toll fee of affection. Despite a bath the day before, and an abnormal amount of time under a cheap version of the dog hair removal tool as seen on television, wisps of white fur drifted in the slight eddies of air, shifting, hovering, slipping around each other and the hands that scuffed her ears and patted her coat.

Very, very occasionally, a girl would pass, only looking down long enough to make note of the dog's existence, as if it were a curious piece of discarded clothing, or a crack in the sidewalk.

These girls were completely unattractive and unworthy.

The iPad sat before him. He had read an article in the New York Times about some fashion designer, about whom, and about a topic, he could not care less.

He had checked sports scores, and was completely surprised that the Milwaukee Brewers still existed. Clearly, he had not been keeping up with baseball.

What he did not do with the iPad was write a novel. Or a short story. Or a blog post. Or a haiku about anything, even his dwindling supply of comfortably wearable underwear.

He had also not met his other agenda.

He woke up late on the Sunday, which seemed justifiable because it was Sunday, though, in reality, it was no different than any of the other days of the week on which he slept late and awoke, still unemployed, still unmotivated to exercise, laying feet away from the keyboard that was serving as a home for the same pair of shorts and the same t-shirt that he wore every morning to walk Neko down the street to the field where he could, or felt he could, let her poop without having to pick it up.

After that walk in the red shorts and black t-shirt, he returned, made three eggs, sunny-side up, a piece of toast smeared with raspberry preserves, only because he was out of the preferred strawberry preserves.

He watched the end of a Bond movie, one of the newer ones with the guy that had people split, but that he personally felt might be even better than Sean Connery, though he was very careful about whom he shared that with. He played the action hero with gravitas, the suave player without camp, and the loner with something that Gabriel knew well.

And then... Lost in Translation. Again. And the day was over. He wanted a drink. He wanted to not be alone. But being alone, he wanted to acknowledge that, almost embrace it.

So, there they were, at the bar, in the sun that only warmed a little in November, with no words left behind, with the attention of strangers that passed as soon as they came, with beer that only made it hurt a little less and a little more.

None of it worked. Little did, anymore. He hugged Eleanor close, and they left.

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