ca ˙ fé (ka-fey) n. a coffee-house; a restaurant, usually licensed for the sale of light refreshments only.

“Well, there you go,” Allen says and sets the dictionary back on the bookshelf. At 3:12pm, the pressure system had gotten to him and he decides to leave. And then he decides to get a dog. No matter the kind of Allen-logic it was because he was going to be in Atlanta an hour before Jodie got off work, he wanted go to the humane shelter and get a dog. Allen had been meaning to get a dog for a while. But every time he went to Atlanta, it only ever occurred to him to go see Jodie. Whatever she wanted to do, they did—not that Allen minded—Jodie was the native. She knew everything fun in Atlanta to do.

She took them to the botanical garden and he had been skeptical of whether looking at flowers for an afternoon would keep his attention. It had hardly mattered given the weather. Jodie never stopped talking about them though, which was amazing, considering that she worked at a flower shop. How in the world could she look at flowers day in and day out and then on her weekends too? It amazed and intrigued him. If someone asked for a tour of his loan office, he would rather shoot himself. In a way, it made sense to Allen that Jodie loved flowers so much. They were kindred. She belonged among them. He smiles at the thought and that he might have enough romantic courage these days to tell her that later.

As he puts his shoes on he thinks about getting a dog again. I’m totally serious. He is completely serious and he thinks about the kind of dog he’d want. Whenever he thought of dogs, it was always that generic yellow American dog that came to mind. That wasn’t the kind of dog he wanted. He wanted something more dashing. It was strange too, that he didn’t want a puppy. Most people wanted puppies. Allen really just wanted a dog—already trained and grown up. He’d name it Bailey. He’d always liked that name and if Jamie had anything to say about it, they’d never have a son by that name.

Read the whole thread: A Low Cloud Reflex

Characters and Places: Allen Lawson, Animals, James the Dog