Three blocks away, someone asks how much for the Czech wolfdog.

Strangers have inquired before, but this is the first she stops to think it over. Four years pet-minding, and his owner refused to write her a reference.

“Ten bucks,” she says.

The chocolate brownie gelato is cool and sweet.

Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Nature, Blink-Ink, and Pulp Literature. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.