An Awkward Reunion

Here's Bingo at the completion of his mission in Arizona, giving me the eye with who-knows-what intent in that brain of his, after who-knows-what mission he may have just completed. They say that a soldier's eyes are never the same after combat. Well, a puppy can stare right into your soul and rip out your tender parts, metaphorically speaking.

In the meantime, Willow has been vacationing at an estate in the South, visiting with the king and queen of Cuba and mixing with society and eating from porcelain bowls and planning an expansion of her empire, which now, back in our simple routine, must seem very plain.

What had become clear a few weeks ago, before the Arizona trip, was that Willow, a mature lady at this point (to put it kindly), had fallen in love with a much younger Bingo, especially when you consider that in dog years she is nearly 70 and he only about 4 (still legal in Florida), though we all turn our heads and pretend not to see when she kisses him in plain sight and when he responds with awkward and determined and somewhat obscene advances of his own.

But something has happened to them both. Here they are, unable to even look at each other, possibly afraid to rekindle a flame that would, if re-ignited, be impossible to put out.