No Such Thing as a Lost Cause by Shelly Fredman

see some I.D.”
    “No problem.” She reached into her back pocket and laid a driver’s license on the
     counter.
    The clerk took a look and laughed, and handed it back to her. Then, he scooped up
     the beer and placed it on the counter behind him.
    “Sorry, I don’t sell to minors.”
    The girl leaned over the counter and jabbed the card with her index finger. “But it
     says right here I’m over twenty-one.”
    “Yeah. It also says you’re a man.”
    “So, what’s the problem? It says I’m twenty-one.”
    “A twenty-one year old
man
.”
    She let out an exasperated sigh and turned around to me. “Hey, will you buy me some
     beer?”
    The clerk leaned across the counter and tapped her on the shoulder. “Uh, you know
     I can hear you, right?”
    I figured anyone with that kind of chutzpah didn’t deserve to go away empty handed.
     I bought her some string cheese and a Red Bull and headed back to the car.
    As I climbed into the driver’s seat, I spied a thirty-ish looking guy with a crew
     cut rounding the corner. He was wearing shorts and flip flops and a tee shirt that
     said, “I’m great in bed.” A spotted boxer- terrier mix puppy with big dark eyes, and
     ears that stuck out like a bent antennae trailed along beside him.
    I whipped out my cell phone and called Janine. “There’s a guy wearing a tee shirt
     that says
I’m great in bed
,” I reported.
    “Is he cute?”
    “If he was cute, would he have to wear the tee shirt?”
    “Good point. Well, at least he’s confident in his abilities. Do you think I’d like
     him?” she asked.
    Janine’s great, but her taste in men is borderline icky. The last guy she went out
     with asked her if she’d be cool with a ménage a trois with a stripper he’d met at
     a bachelor party (she wasn’t). Fran and I are trying to wean her off the weirdos.
    The puppy stopped about two yards from the car and began sniffing the ground, then
     squatted to do her business. The guy looked away, like he had no idea in the world
     there was a dog attached to the other end of the leash and that he would be responsible
     for what came out of it.
    The puppy finished up, and the guy yanked on her leash and kept walking, ignoring
     what the dog had left behind.
    “Hang on, Neenie.” I rolled down the window and leaned over curbside. “Yo! Pick that
     up, ya yutz.”
    Mr. “Good in Bed” flipped me the bird and kept walking. How rude was that!
    The guy reached the liquor store and tied the leash to a lamp post. The puppy lay
     down and began to whimper.
    “Shut the hell up,” her owner muttered, and punctuated his words with a vicious kick
     to the dog’s hind quarters. The puppy yelped in pain.
    My heart stopped. “Are you insane?” I screamed.
    Ignoring me he turned and went into the store.
    “Bran, what’s going on?” Janine yelled through the phone.
    “I’ll call you back.”
    Without thinking, I scrambled out of the car and ran over to the puppy. “Hi, Baby.”
     I soothed.
    She licked at her injured leg, but stopped to lick my hand, instead. I could see her
     owner standing at the counter, talking to the clerk. In a flash, I untied the leash
     and coaxed the dog to her feet. She began moving forward with a slow, painful limp.
     I bent down and scooped thirty-five pounds of puppy in my arms, waddled back to the
     car, and shoved her into the back seat of the LeSabre. Then I climbed into the driver’s
     side and locked the doors, shaking with rage.
    At that moment, the jerk came barreling out of the store and ran full steam toward
     my car, only he stumbled and tripped on his flip flops. He yanked them off and threw
     them at my windshield. They bounced off into the street. I scrambled to start the
     engine, but sometimes it stalls in the heat and this was one of those days.
    The guy reached the car and pounded on my window, his face turning the color of cooked
     lobster. Any minute I expected his fist to come flying through the glass. I prayed
     for a