“The Dog” by faculty member Dean Bakopoulos

The Dog

In the second week of her vacation, the general boredom Anna was experiencing had transformed itself into a kind of reckless impulsivity, and so the idea of a new face in the hotel bar was enough to compel her to sit there, on the patio that overlooked the pool and the bay, watching the new face eat. He was about her age, thirty-nine, and his dog, a well-trained German shorthair pointer, was sitting next to him, staring at his feet. The man was eating a plate of fish tacos and drinking sparkling water; she was drinking beer and, although she had already settled up her tab, she called the waiter over and started a new one.
“Another Peroni?” the waiter said.
He’d put a faint emphasis on the word another, but she didn’t flinch.
“Yes,” she said.
She still had two weeks left of her “retreat,” and already she was dreading the inevitable comment that she would hear when she returned home: Oh my god, people would say, it was so great of Ben to let you do that!
Nobody would lead with You look so tan! Or, perhaps, How did the writing go? Or, even, the judgmental but well-intentioned, You must have missed the kids so much, nor the slightly worse, The kids must have missed you so much. No, everyone, and she meant everyone, would lead with praise for her husband, Ben. Oh my god, she could already hear her friend Flora saying, Ben is a saint!

[…continue reading “The Dog” at The South Carolina Review.]