Codeword Mastiff

The girl hesitated by the bench, looking at him through narrowed eyes, and tucked a wayward strand of pink hair behind her ear.
     "Are you all right?" she asked.  He glanced up at her, startled.
     "What a question!"
     She shrugged, but stood her ground.
     "Sorry," he said, "That came out a little loud.  I don't do much talking.  Except to myself.  And then I really holler.  But I'm a bit out of practice with this...one to one stuff."
     That made her laugh.
     "Are you a monk?"
     "Wow.  You've really got the questioning line mastered, haven't you?  For an encore I'm hoping you'll ask me what the meaning of life is.  Why do you think I might be a monk?  This," he tapped his brown corduroy denim-style jacket, "Is positively my best non-monk disguise, too."
     Apparently deciding that it was safe to sit down beside him, she did so.
     "I knew a monk once," she said.  "He looked a lot like you - shaved head, goatee beard.  He went to Nepal a couple of years ago."
     "Smart fella.  Did he ever come back?"
     "I don't know.  We lost touch."
     "I'm sorry to hear that.  No."
     "No...what?"
     "No, I'm not a monk.  Right now, I'm not entirely sure what I am.  The standard definitions seem a bit redundant, and liable to provoke undeserved sympathy.  Let's swing the telescope around.  How do you spend your time?"
     She leaned back on the bench, stretching out her legs.
     "Well, obviously I talk to strange men in parks.  When I'm not grooming dogs."
     "Good grief, is that an internet thing?"
     She convulsed in giggles.
     "We have got a website.  And a van!"
     "I pity the poor pooches.  Little do they know that the trail of treats leads to capture, eventual enslavement, and supremely glossy coats."
     "You know, Diane's writing our new ad for the local paper, but I think you should do it."
     "And when the business is a failure, you could write it off as a tax loss.  I like your sense of planning.  It smacks of Machiavelli."
     "So," she said, "Are you all right?"
     He gazed into the middle distance as a cloud passed before the sun, muting the greens and yellows of the surrounding parklands.
     "Not really," he sighed, "But I hope to be.  Perhaps once I graduate from being...a strange man in the park."
     She blushed.
     "I didn't really mean it like that."
     "I know.  It's okay."
     "You looked worried.  And sort of familiar.  I think I've seen you around somewhere."
     "Probably at a bus stop.  I'm usually going from somewhere to somewhere else.  Perhaps I should look out for you in your van.  Hitch a lift with all the captive canines."
     They were silent for a moment as the clouds began to part and the sunlight returned.
     "I get the feeling," she said, "That you've got a million things to do."
     "And that's just this afternoon," he nodded.
     She took her mobile 'phone in its glittery silver case out of her pocket, and stared at him.
     "Right, I need you to know something," she said.
     He raised an eyebrow.
     "All the ransom notes for the dogs are made from letters cut out of the Evening Echo?"
     She frowned.
     "I'm being serious."
     "Sorry.  Go on."
     "I have literally never done this before.  For all I know, you're some fugitive on the run from an open prison."
     He grimaced.
     "There's a lot of that about lately, isn't there?  Never let it be said that our criminal justice system lacks some fairly fundamental flaws."
     "Christ, please tell me you're not a Sun reader."
     He solemnly held up his right hand.
     "I am not now, nor have ever been, a reader of the Sun newspaper."
     She shook her head.
     "My God, you're all jokes, aren't you?"
     "It's a temporary aberration, I assure you.  I'm sixty per cent serious, and forty per cent terrified out of my wits most of the time."
     She smiled at him.
     "That sounds healthy."
     He shook his head.
     "Not at three o'clock in the morning, it isn't.  Somewhere in the world, right now, it's three o'clock in the morning.  We should probably remember that."
     "I'm going to give you my number.  Has your 'phone got an NFC chip?"
     He stared at her, shocked.
     "What witchcraft is this?  Not only did you use 'an' correctly, but you know about Near Field Communication.  Keep this up, and it'll be the ducking stool for you, my dear."
     She rolled her eyes.
     "Again with the jokes."
     "I can't help it," he said, "I'm rapidly veering into that forty per cent quotient.  No, sorry, my 'phone's old.  It's got whiskers, a pension, and a free bus pass.  In fact, for all I know, every time I put it back into my pocket, it slips into a comfy pair of mini incontinence pants."
     She leaned against him, laughing out loud.
     "How do you come up with this stuff?"
     "Believe me, you don't want to know."
     "Actually, I sort of do.  That's the point."
     Again, they lapsed into temporary silence.  A chestnut-coloured mastiff suddenly bounded up to the bench, hotly pursued by a man in shorts wearing a Reebok t-shirt.
     "Sorry," said the man, "I was just sorting out the lead, and he bolted.  Come on, Hercules."
     They watched them sort themselves out and move away into the park proper. 
     "That's a great name for a dog, but the divinity-based antecedental pressure must be immense.  Psychologically, he's probably a complete mess."
     The girl with pink hair shook her head again, and turned on the bench to face him.
     "Who are you?"
     He stared down at the ground.
     "Your toughest question yet.  Does it matter?  Really?"
     She bit her lip.
     "I don't know, but probably, yes.  I'm just sensing this weird...connection with you."
     He nodded, his gaze drifting off to the woods beyond the park.
     "It's something I fundamentally understand, but could never explain.  A combination of randomness, biology, and pure circumstance guiding events.  I was at a house party in the eighties, and was hopelessly in love with this girl who was crazy about at least two other guys at the time.  I don't know what I was, or represented to her, probably a kind of surrogate brother, but it was a hopeless scenario, and persisted for nearly a decade.  Imagine that."
     "The eighties?  How old are you?"
     He sighed, and stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
     "I'm going to guess at...twice your age.  And you have my permission to leave immediately."
     She laughed.
     "I'm older than I look."
     "That's interesting, because I used to look older than I am.  Somewhere along the line, things somehow evened out."
     The girl slipped a card out of her mobile 'phone case.  It had a cartoon of a poodle and a shampoo bottle on it.
     "Second number on the card," she said, handing it over.  "I need to go.  But I need you to know that I really don't want to.  Call me."
     "Codeword Mastiff?"
     Again, she laughed, raising herself from the bench.
     "You're very...different."
     "That's not always a good thing."
     "Yes," she said, "Yes it is.  But you probably wouldn't appreciate that, and I think I know why.  Codeword Mastiff."
     She was some yards away when he said, under his breath, "She's got pink hair.  This world is officially extraordinary."


FIN