13.
My bags are shoved up against the wood door to my second-floor apartment. Maybe it’s a relief they’ve showed up, but what’s not a relief is knowing I have just enough time to wash and dry their contents before I have to repack it all, then get some much needed rest.
“Oh well,” I say to my three-year-old black pit bull, Lulu, as I fill her food bowl with dry food, “out of the jungle and into the frying pan.”
“Jeez, Chase,” she says, with a full mouth. “You just freakin’ got home. Now I gotta depend on that seedy old Italian pizza maker to feed me twice a day and let me out to poop.”
“I thought you liked Vincenzo.”
“I do. He plays with me and sometimes brings me pizza crusts … Oops, you weren’t supposed to know that … But nothing beats a dog and his master.”
“You rock, Lu,” I say.
