In the park, on Tuesdays, there are always nine dogs, most of which are purebred and so walk with one foot in front of the other. There are only a couple of delinquents, real mishaps of evolution. Their faces are not worth mentioning. Their gaits are wobbly and tender, they change according to the wind. There is one golden retriever who is always smiling and whose smile commands a great presence. The one good thing about the mishaps is that you can tell when they are excited because their resting expressions are so lopsided that they usually appear to be upset. This shifts tremendously with the arrival of the green ball. Is that banal? I see it all the time. There goes a generally respectable fellow with his delinquent dog who, due to its insufficient mind, would be unable to guess that there is, indeed, a ball in the master’s pocket. When it comes out, it is Christmas day. The dog loves to be tantalized. It is overjoyed by waiting. The master throws, happy because he can see that his dog is now happy, and waits for the ball to come back. He throws again, and again. His enthusiasm wanes, but he throws anyway, because look at his dog, it is very happy. Then, just once, because he’s getting bored, the man pretends to throw it and then does not, and the dog, because it has not realized its own disdain for itself, takes off in any direction, running very earnestly, sprinting very earnestly toward nothing at all.