The Tides by Melanie Tem

unsteady hand on the concrete, and that struck him as funny, too, but it wouldn't much longer. He needed a drink. The puppy woke up and tried to scramble down, but Gordon wouldn't let it.
     
    For no reason apparent to anybody else, Bob growled, 'Fuckin' shit !' and hit the brick building with his fist. His knuckles split. The blood caught Petra's attention, and she muttered softly, the content unintelligible but with clear lascivious intent.
     
    'Easy,' Gordon said. 'Easy. You're scarin' my dog.'
     
    But the fat black-and-white puppy slept contentedly on his lap again, and he thought maybe he could wait a while longer to make the trip to the liquor store, or maybe he could take it with him. Its pink tongue came out of its mouth now and then to lick his hand, and when that happened Gordon held his breath. The puppy's tongue was almost exactly the same color as his palm. That struck him as practically a miracle. He couldn't remember ever loving anything as much as he loved this dog. He must have loved his wife, his boys. He knew rather than remembered that he had lived with them off and on for years, since he was sixteen and met Ava and got her pregnant till he'd left to work construction in Alaska nine, ten years later. He'd been a cabinetmaker, he'd paid the bills, he must have loved them, though they baffled him. He remembered fondly that they had always baffled him. He didn't think he'd ever understood one single thing any of them said or did. As long as they'd lived together, he had never allowed his wife to work. Wasn't right for a man to let his wife work.
     
    Ada, her name was, not Ava. His sons' names were murked by the wine. He hadn't thought of their names in a long time, which was fine, like the sun in his eyes. If it hurt, it didn't matter. He had the uneasy feeling that he might remember one or both of his boys' names any minute now.
     
    'Faye,' came into his mind. Gordon frowned. He was almost sure that wasn't anybody's name he knew.
     
    This dog of his didn't have a name. Gordon had tried Spot because of the circle on top of its head and Blackie because it was mostly black and Rex because that was a good dog's name but nothing had stuck. 'My Dog' was proper name enough the way he said it in his mind, and it never went far enough away to have to call.
     
    The puppy yawned without opening its eyes and stretched to its full tiny length, soft curved belly arching, front and back paws lolling on either side of Gordon's wide knee. Looking down at it, stroking a black ear with one brown forefinger, Gordon thought comfortably that there would never be any reason for him to move from this place, this creaking chair in the sunshine with his dog asleep in his lap.
     
    Bob Morley paced. He scowled and balled his fists and muttered under his breath. He'd spent the last sixteen years of his life in this hellhole. He thought it and said it like a badge. His first thirty years had been in places no different.
     
    All his life they'd said he was slow, and he knew it was true. Things came to him slowly — ideas, impressions, the sure knowledge that somebody was making fun of him — and then they left him slowly.
     
    He slammed his fist into the wrought-iron porch railing, making it hum, making his whole arm ache. Behind him Petra said something and he wanted to slam her, too, wanted to shut her up once and for all, wanted to take her in his arms.
     
    The woman was nuts, and a whore besides. He knew these things about her slowly, and they didn't matter any more than the sun in his face. He saw envy in the faces of the other men. No one had ever envied him before. She came when he called. She did things to him that nobody had ever done before, things he liked. It had taken him a while, but he was used to her now. Nobody else came when he called, nobody touched him but this crazy woman.
     
    Somebody touched him. Bob winced and looked down. His dick was bulging through the front of his pants, and he could see that nobody