Dog Heaven
an excerpt

CHAPTER ONE: BIKE CRASHES

Every night,I think about death, about how lame my parents are and how much fun they and my little brother must be having in Heaven.

At bedtime I pull the edges of my futon pad over my feet and think about picking up some dorky guy in a bar, or if I'm desperate enough, some girl.

In the morning I drag myself across my palatial estate, past engraved woodwork and filigree that is older than my grandparents--I never should have squatted such a huge house, what was I thinking? I guess I just wanted to play richy rich for a while. The place really creeps me out at night.

I skulk to the bathroom--more ornate tile and real metal pipes--to make myself beautiful. The weird thing about the bathroom is the sink has a window over it instead of a mirror. Instead of looking at myself brushing my teeth I get to look at a view of beautiful, sprawling Incorporated Portland Fiefdom. On a good day I can see Mt. Hood and off into the arid land of Washington.

It's all so surreal. Beautiful house, never meant for the likes of me, beautiful green green valley that goes on forever. My loser ex-boyfriend, Otter, says to not be fooled by all the green lushness. He says that ninety percent of original wildlife and plants have been wiped out. What is left, he says, is dangerous monoculture and adaptive invasives. Don't be fooled he says.

I still think it's pretty.

There's still a ton of abandoned buildings east of me, but if it weren't for the well water and solar panels I repaired, this place would be as useless as the ones out there. Sometimes I wish I had neighbors.

After dressing and picking some breakfast from the pear orchard out back, I hop onto my bike, a brand new North West flyer, reflective red, one hundred percent recycled aluminum with soy-oil tires. I let myself drift down the crunching of the long ass gravel driveway and onto Mt. Pitick road. It's long, windy, which would be deadly if any car ever rode up here, I don't know how people did it when there still were lots of of cars. It's still pretty dicey with the potholes everywhere and the huge drop off on the left.

I kick in and set my gears to the highest setting. I don't actually need to pedal for the entire ten minute drift down the mountain, but I need to be in a high gear in case I have to react to something, you know, like a pothole the size of my house.

The hardest part is to ignore the view, breathtaking.

I don't hear the guy because he hasn't turned on the growler on his car. The electrics are totally silent without the growler on, so he just flips around the corner, his car a similar red to my bike, straight at me before either of us know the other is there.

I'll give him some credit, very little, the dumbass, he swerves toward the crumbling edge. Me, I peddle hard and instinctively go for the rocky wall on the right.

But I clip the back fender on his lame lectric-mobile and go flying ass over head toward the solid rock wall.