“Sunday Morning” by Barry Yourgrau

It’s Sunday morning. A dog wakes me up. I hear it barking under the window, I open the window and yell at it. The lady who owns the dog is gardening. She shouts at me to quit yelling at her dog. I shout at her, so knock off the noise!, and slam down the window.

I go downstairs later, it’s quiet, she is sitting in her kitchen. She’s crying. Her breasts are exposed. I feel guilty (because I actually like the dog) and lustful too, at the way she sits there, bent so intimately over a cup of tea. Inspired, I get down on all fours and bounce into her kitchen, barking “Bow wow! Bow wow!” The lady keeps on crying, she doesn’t want to smile but I can see the corners of her mouth begin to turn up. I crawl under her chair and turn over on my back and wag my tail. That does it, she’s really grinning now, and I get up behind her and slide my hands down over her breasts, they have the dark, spongy feel of soil.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffles, about her tears, “it’s all because — ”

“Don’t worry,” I tell her, understanding everything. “I’ll help you repot them this afternoon.”

–Barry Yourgrau’s books of stories include Wearing Dad’s Head and The Sadness of Sex (in whose movie version he starred). “Sunday Morning” is from “I-mode” Cellphone Stories, minitales written as keitai shosetsu, first published over Japanese cellphone Internet. Website: www.yourgrau.com