Lucky

I want to tell a story, before I get lost in the telling.

She does not see herself at the age of 43, wounded, in crash position on a black leather couch in the front room of a Victorian townhouse.  She does not see the gauze curtains that protect her from the curiosity of passersby, or the Klimt prints on the wall, or the gas fireplace that is never on.   She does not hear the howls of pain and rage, does not feel her own hand slap her face, over and over again, while a voice asks her to stop.  She does not yet know how lucky she is, because she cannot remember how unlucky she has been.

No one other than her much liked the dog.  He had a bit of a temper and he liked to pee on the basement carpet—damning traits in the eyes of the others.  But although he’d nipped her once on the face, she never told.  He was her best friend.

“You want to do this,” the witch whispered into her ear.  “His love is only for the worthy.”

But she did not want his love.  She wanted only for the old woman in the crinkly clothes  and who smelled so badly of lavender powder to let her go.  Let me go.

He always knew in which hand she held his ripped, tattered yellow ball with the nobbles, even when she held the ball behind her back.  It made her laugh.  She thought he was a genius.

“His name was Lucky,” she told him.  “Lucky the unlucky dog.”  Her boyfriend laughed, so she did too.  Because she was still only 19.  She would not be 43 for a long, long time.