Dylan Allen smiled when he walked in to The Smoking Dog and saw that his favourite seat was unoccupied. He hurried over to the table beside the open window and claimed it by placing the morning paper and a copy of
Love is A Dog From Hell
on it. Then he went to the counter to order a coffee.
It was almost eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. Dylan thought that most of the regular patrons of The Smoking Dog were probably just waking up, which accounted for there still being several empty tables.
Dylan was twenty-seven and had been coming to the cafe since he was sixteen. It was the sort of place that pretentious art college students with multiple body piercings and aging hippies frequented. Dylan was neither, and sometimes felt as welcome there as a fart in church, but he liked the coffee shop nonetheless. He enjoyed the atmosphere, the music they played and it was an ideal spot for people-watching. Besides, it was one of the few establishments in Weyburn that still not only allowed smoking, but almost encouraged it.
Dylan returned to the table beside the window and took a seat. He smiled as his blue eyes shifted to his right and he gazed out the window. He sipped his coffee watching couples stroll by, and the occasional person walking a dog. A breeze entered through the window and he pushed his black hair back out of his eyes and picked up his book of Bukowski poems. He opened it to where he'd inserted a bookmark the night before and began reading.
Dylan had almost finished his first cup of coffee and was having his fourth cigarette as he read the poetry when he heard someone speak his name. He looked up from his book and saw Andrea Taylor standing beside the table and smiling at him.
"Hey," he said, returning her warm smile. He slipped his bookmark back between the pages and put his book down.
Andrea pulled a chair out and sat down across from Dylan. She crossed her legs, resting her hands on her lap as her brown eyes focused on him. "I called your place a while ago, but got answer," she said. "So I figured you were here."
"It's my second home," he joked, then grew silent as he looked Andrea over. "What did you do to your hair?" he asked.
"What's wrong with it?" Andrea blurted out, suddenly sounding very insecure.
"Nothing," he chuckled. "It looks really nice."
"I bought one of those home perm kits the other day. I thought I'd try it like this for a while," she explained.
Dylan's eyes lingered on his friend's curly auburn hair as he smiled. "I like it a lot," he said.
"Thanks," she said, blushing. "I was wondering what you'd think." Andrea's eyes darted about, then she turned her head back towards the front counter. "I'm going to get a coffee. I'll be right back," she said.
As Andrea walked to the counter Dylan followed her with his eyes. She was wearing a camel-coloured blouse with a tight black skirt and sandals. She wore no make-up, except for some lip gloss and a hint of eye liner that framed her dark eyes. Dylan's eyes lingered on her tanned, muscled calves before moving up her body. She was lithe, with slightly rounded hips and firm breasts that reminded Dylan of martini glasses. Her copper hair cascaded over her shoulders in corkscrews. For a moment he could see himself running his fingers through it as they kissed, or giving it a tug from behind as he nipped at her neck with his teeth.
Dylan forced his eyes from Andrea as he mentally chastised himself for what he had been thinking. He and Andrea had been friends for the better part of ten years, and their friendship had always been perfectly platonic. Their conversations were sometimes brutally frank and often very bawdy, but the only physical intimacy they had shared was an occasional hug.
Andrea returned to their table and sat down. She took a sip of coffee as her eyes wandered out the window. "She's cute," Andrea said, nodding towards a blonde woman across the street.
Dylan looked out of the window, then back to his friend. "Then go introduce yourself to her," he teased.
"Nah, I'm not into other girls," she said. "I was thinking you might be interested in her."
"I've never really liked blondes much," he replied.
Andrea surveyed the woman again. "You really should start dating again," she told him. How long has it been since you and Sara split up... three years?"
"Four," he corrected.
"Where is she now?" she asked.
Dylan let out a heavy sigh. "She got married and moved to Ohio. I found her profile on Facebook a few months ago," he said.
"Well, leave her where God flung her," his friend said, then gave him a worried look. "I hope you're not going to try to get in touch with her again."
Dylan shook his head as he put his mug of coffee down. "No. That ship has sailed. She was finished with me long ago -- there's no point. What cuts though is that she thought that I was good enough to marry, but not good enough to be friends with afterwards."
"I know, it's a kick in the teeth, but it's for the best, Dylan," Andrea told him. She began reaching for his hand to give it a comforting squeeze, then drew hers back.
Dylan pulled another cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. "You never did like Sara, did you?" he said as a cloud of smoke left his mouth. "She could have walked on water and you'd have criticized her for not being able to swim."
Andrea hesitated, looking out of the window at a teenage boy going by on a skateboard. "It's not that I didn't like her," she said, turning back to him. "It's just that I didn't think she was right for you
"Why?" he retorted. "Was it that she was too pretty? Too funny?"
"No -- too shallow and vain," she said. "I think the only things I ever heard her talk about were the brand names of her clothes or this month's quiz in Cosmo. You need to meet a woman who can actually read a book, rather than try to chew the cover off one. And no offense, but you weren't exactly her type either. Sara's the type of woman who'd rather have a dead lion than a live dog."
Dylan laughed. "Yeah, well... I'm not exactly a barrel of monkeys to have as a boyfriend either," he droned. "I've got a lot of baggage. Sara said that I was high maintenance when we broke up."
Andrea's mouth tightened and she looked down to her coffee mug for a few moments, then locked her eyes on his again. "I'm not going to lie to you, Dylan," she began. "But, I think she's right. You've got to stop sabotaging your relationships. I see you keep repeating the same patterns. Your problem is that you have a madonna-whore complex. You expect women to conform to your unreasonable expectations. When they don't, you're threatened by it and run away and wall yourself off. Stop looking for quiet, clean girls in gingham dresses, like Bukowski wrote about." She gestured to the book of poems on the table beside the half-full ashtray.
Dylan frowned, but didn't reply for a few moments. Andrea knew him better than many of his other friends did and he had to admit to himself that she was painfully accurate in her appraisal of him. "Should I look for a Scarlet Woman then, like Crowley had as his muse?" he asked.
"No," she said with a shake of her head. "Both are extremes -- archetypes that only exist in the minds of insecure men like you. You've got to stop feeling threatened by women's sexuality, Dylan, or it's going to be a lonely life for you."
"And you've got to stop psychoanalyzing me," Dylan said, trying to hide his irritation and growing melancholia.
Undaunted by his increasingly harsh tone, Andrea said "Instead of dating women, you're courting loneliness, Dylan."
"Okay, Andrea, I think you've played ten-cent psychologist enough for today," he snapped and took another haul on his cigarette.
"It was my minor in college, remember? I needed it to get my degree in social work," Andrea said. "Besides, tell me I'm wrong," she retorted.
"It's not that you're wrong," Dylan said. "It's just that you're cutting a little close to the bone here, Andrea."
