I know my actions, they may get confusing Who: Dahlia and Miguel When: Monday, August 11. Ungodly hours of the night Where: Sketchy café with weird hours. Summary: A meeting of minds. Warnings/Rating:
Insomnia had become a habit of Miguel’s lately, after coming home to find his apartment covered in a layer of dust, the air sour and unused. He had spent a good week cleaning everything, and then covering it all in layers of lemony soap in order to get rid of the scent. That itching feel of wrongness. It had taken Miguel a long time to feel comfortable in his own space again, to be sure that nothing had been disturbed and everything was where it ought to be.
Then, just when he’d gotten comfortable, the dog had come around.
He hadn’t intended to get a dog. The closest thing Miguel had had to a roommate in years was the dying cactus plant on his desk. But then the little red dog had crawled out in front of his truck, whining, and there had been some odd look in her eyes that Miguel had gotten curious about.
Dogs were supposed to be calming, after all. They’d had therapy animals in the ward.
So he’d gathered up the red dog in his arms, and let her sleep on his bed while he cleaned, and eventually joined her. The dog would rest her head on his knee, and Miguel found himself sleeping without nightmares for the first time in years. The dog, skinny and small, had decided to stay. Miguel had bought things for her, toys and food and probably too many pillows, and named her Teresa.
Teresa was fairly quiet, for a dog. He looked up a veterinary office online, and took Teresa in for her shots and things. The vet said that she was something called a red-nose pitbull, about two years old, and very underweight.
Then, just when he’d gotten used to having a good night’s sleep, Teresa decided to have a litter of puppies on his bed.
Miguel had been banished to the couch more than once, but never before by a dog.
The babies cried all night long. There were eight of them. Earplugs proved insufficient, and Miguel discovered that he had too much stuff in his closet to keep sleeping in there.
So he went out, as he had the past three nights, to drink coffee and draw instead of sleep. A person could stay up a long time, with something interesting to do. So Miguel found one of the few cafes that stayed open past eleven, where it was quiet – only a little music playing out of beaten speakers, and tables that didn’t shake when he drew. The night before, a teenager had come in to have his fortune told, but that had been the only one. Miguel didn’t have the cards with him. There were other ways. For the moment, though, he sat in a corner, switching between drawing a blueprint of the café and sketching out the fellow insomniacs who were huddled under the yellowing lights. Miguel kept to himself, quiet in his chosen corner, and dressed in clothes that weren’t meant to attract attention. When he couldn’t draw, he fussed with the woven bracelet around his wrist, running his thumb over the leather string. The texture kept him focused.