On Broadway

I've had Bella for a year now. She's been enthusiastically nose-forward in the neighborhood ever since.

About a year ago, a co-worker lent me a box set of the TV series "The Wire". She likes it even better than "Breaking Bad". My DVD player was crotchety, and it wasn't until last month I bought a new one, so I'm only just now starting to binge-watch it, and become familiar with gritty urban Baltimore.

Lately, Bella made a fateful, logical connection. It dawned on her that the Broadway corridor = cafes = spilled takeout and scattered food fragments = Paradise. So, she yanks me down Broadway every night, west towards the Tower Theater, hoovering up the exotic scents. As a result, since Broadway is a main street, we are seeing more people when we walk, even very late.

For weeks, I knew some homeless person or other had been scattering boxes and other debris behind the bushes and a brick facade next to one office building, but I hadn't actually seen anybody, until Bella and I suddenly found ourselves three feet away from a surprised, hollow-faced young man. 'Wow,' I thought, 'he looks exactly like a junkie on "The Wire"'! "Howdy", I said. "Hi", he awkwardly replied. Bella dragged me past, intent instead on scattered Thai takeout.

During a recent rainy night, Bella and I encountered a raggedy homeless couple huddled under a canopy. The tiny, wizened, leather-faced woman smiled when we approached. I said, "Say hello Bella". The dog complied in her forceful, nosy way. The woman said, "Bella means beautiful in Italian!" As we headed off, she called out after us, "Watch she doesn't trip crossing the railroad tracks!"