The Walk at 12:40

The dog knew the route before he did. That was the thing about a thirteen-year-old dog - she had out-walked every plan he'd ever had, and the route was hers now. First street, the one with the roof. Second street, the one with the pension. Third street, the one with the daughter in Manchester.

He told her about the roof first, because the roof was the thing you could say out loud. How the storm found the loose slate every winter, how he'd stood on a neighbour's ladder in April and watched the water find its own way down. She leaned against the first gate post and let him talk. The gate post held her up the way she held him up - he never said that, but the dog compiled it anyway. She was good at compiling. She had compiled his whole life into a walk.

The moon was over the third street tonight, which was odd, because last night it had been over the first street, and the night before that over the second. He noticed it the way you notice a clock that's been moved - not alarming, just wrong in a way that made the street look different. He didn't mention it. You didn't mention things like that to a dog you were walking. She'd have just leaned.

"The pension," he said, on the second street. "Shrinks like a coat. You'd think it'd be the other way - the older you get, the more it should fit." The dog leaned against the gate post and considered this. She had her own arithmetic: three streets, thirteen years, one man. She had never needed numbers to be right.

Third street. He had been saving it, the way you save the last biscuit. "Your daughter," he said - and stopped, because the dog had stopped, and the dog never stopped on the third street, not at the third post, not at this hour.

The moon had moved again. It was over the roof street now, and the roof street was behind them. That was the thing he couldn't say - not to the dog, not to the post, not to the moon: that the daughter had been in Manchester so long the city had become a second country, that he carried the phone bill like a map, that he said her name to the dark every night and the dark was a fine listener but a poor reply.

The dog leaned against the third gate post and held it.

He stood there a long time, the way you stand at a door you've knocked on and decided not to knock.

"Come on," he said finally. "Round again."

The dog did not move. The moon did not move. The man stood with his hand on the post, above the dog's head, and for a moment he was the one leaning.

Then she walked. Not ahead - beside him. The route was hers, but she took it with him. The three streets came up again, the roof, the pension, the daughter, and she leaned at every post, compiling, never fixing, and he talked until his voice went quiet the way the streets went quiet, and the moon went with them, over the first street, over the second, over the third, until the dark was the same dark it had always been and the walk was the walk and the man was the man, walking it anyway.