where: summer social potluck status: open to all !
calder had managed to avoid most people and their cheerful hello's, mainly by arriving late and parking himself beneath the excuse of an overgrown maple. he had a paper plate balanced on his knee, half-heartedly filled with something someone insisted was “award-winning” pasta salad, as well as a sandwich. bowie — stretched out in the grass beside him, ears flicking at the sound of every passing voice — seemed about as enthusiastic as he was. he wasn’t here to mingle. he’d brought a covered tray of something passable (store-bought brownies, it'd be easy to tell if anyone looked close enough), dropped it on a communal table, and retreated to the edges. if he kept still long enough, maybe the folding chairs and fairy lights would swallow him whole. “next year we fake a limp,” calder told his dog quietly, tearing a bit of crust from his sandwich and dropping it into the grass. “you, not me. mine’s too believable.”
sometimes, dunc sees something of himself in calder. a what could have been, perhaps, if his life had gone in a different direction. if he hadn't grown fond of the small town vibes of both his hometown and wicklow, the gossipy older people in their wicker chairs watching the world pass them by. at that age, he was also the type to hide in the corner — though in his case, it was generally evading the nosy women from church who wanted to ask after his mother, or coo over how much you've grown, what a nice young man as if he wasn't well into his middle age with a wife and four kids. but the desire to be alone — he's been there.
“ y'should bring him round to my place, then, ” dunc says, “ evie's a pro at the ole fake limp. ” she's got a real one, these days, one of her back legs afflicted with arthritis, but she's always happy to affect a fake one with another leg if the other dogs are playing too rough ( or she wants to scare them ). “ if you need an excuse to bail, there's some suspicious-lookin' cheese n' crackers over that way. ” not that he thinks anything anyone brought would give someone food poisoning, but — well, a bad reaction to blue cheese isn't unheard of. “ anyway, you seen a white ball of mischief 'round here anywhere ? been trying to teach russell to stay with me, but he gets distracted. ” and dunc's not as young as he once was, can't be chasing after energetic puppies all the time.
