Rescue #4:

July 24

1. A green apple falls hard onto the garden sand, like a tennis ball thrown for no dog.

   
   

2. The tiniest dog is tick-tacking, click-clacking across the wooden table at the Gestault Taphouse—in the back, where dogs are allowed (if they’re small. If they’re cute).

   
   

   When Collin puts down my glass, the tiny dog licks the foam off my Pilsner, poured tall in a glass that weighs more than she does, I bet. Her name is Eva.

   
   

   Eva's dad is long limbed; he could probably carry ten Evas in one arm. But it's just her. When I first met them, Eva's round face was sticking out of his flannel like a second, fore-headed heart.

   
   

   When he sits down, he puts a 2-by-3 plastic Tupperware on the table between the pints, four pieces of kibble inside—Eva’s dinner.

   
   

3. It's Eva again, at the Mexican restaurant across the street. Same street. Different table.

   
   

   This time she's in my lap, her little white belly hairs covering the navy blue of my hoodie. Her eyes, I notice when she turns and shows me her profile, are as big as her nose— two little noses shining bright and brown.

   
   

   All of the people are full, leaning back into their wicker chairs. But Eva is prancing, trying to secure with her paws the highest place on my crossed thighs. She is reaching, stretching, craning from my lap towards a corn-chip on the table that's fallen from the guac plate.

   
   

   "Don't let her reach that," someone says. I try to pet her, try to make my scratches as good as a chip. But even as one back leg starts going, her black back is elongating, her ears pressed back for flight.

   
   

   She might turn into flying squirrel, I think, and surprise us all.