Fat Man, Skinny Dog

The fat man walked slowly and deliberately down the street. He chose each step carefully to avoid injury due to his prodigious size. His clothes were loose and poorly fitted. His pants were cuffed at the bottom and contained enough crummy crumbs to sustain a starving family for quite some time. The excess cloth piled on top of his shoes folded into folds like a theater curtain at the end of a performance, and the pants appeared to have been altered by a blind tailor. Below the pants were scuffed, beat up steel toe boots. The leather had been worn away to reveal the shiny metal below. His Fedora looked as if it had been in a fight before exiting the millinery and was not the finest work of the hatter. Against all odds a little feathery feather still survived in the side of his hat. In the left corner of his mouth resided the stub of a cigar which appeared to have spent many years in that exact location neither growing longer nor shorter during its tenure. An occasional wisp of a foul belching furnace, not unlike a nineteenth century coal plant, emitted its stench, polluting the air for a wide radius.

On his hand a narrow bright pink rhinestone leash that strained and stretched, disappeared occasionally under folds of fat. Rosey, a two-pound Teacup Yorkie (the only physical remnant of his girlfriend who had left him) pranced along cheery and cheerfully in good spirits. In the same appendage a large Pepperoni Sausage, wrapped in a paper towel, was clutched there. This sample was the remainder of a much larger sausage which had been intact at the beginning of their walk. Lion chunks were unceremoniously torn from the meat at intervals and consumed.

During times just like this, the cigar stub somehow managed to retain its location, unaffected by these perturbations. Rosey however would be reeled in as the leash handle rose to his mouth. This snack, a five-day supply of calories to the average man, would carry him until a proper breakfast could be secured.

Rosey carried the stub of a carrot in the side of her mouth, an apparent attempt to mimic her new master. Rosey mused that an exchange of treats, might in fact prove beneficial to all concerned but dismissed the possibility of such an occurrence as unlikely.

Although the dog was a constant, painful reminder of his lost love, the man, in spite of his gruff exterior, treated the dog well.

The man spoke briefly to the merchant in the candy store and purchased Yachtsman, a magazine that advertised sales on sailboats, a package of cigars and two candy bars, a large one for himself and a miniature one for Rosey.

The fat man and the skinny dog now reversed course to return to their quiet, lonely, untidy apartment.

“Let’s go Rosey,” the fat man said, rearranging the cigar in the corner of his mouth. Rosey nodded her approval while rearranging the carrot in the corner of her mouth and pranced along gleefully happy with the new day.

 

Jim

September 2020