His face was streaked with tears. His chest heaved as he tried to stifle a sob. I groaned inwardly. Self-conscious, he swiped his sweaty palm at his face and pulled himself together. He even managed a tiny smile. As I rested my head on a soft cushin, he stumbled across the room and settled down next to me. He put his arms around me, intending to share his sorrow, but I had to pity for him. It was kind of hard to sympathise with him. After all, I know him all too well. You could even say that I could see right through him; every thought, emotion, and intention glared like a bunch of neon lights on a dark, starless night. It was not exactly ESP either. I would not be so fortunate as to be bestowed such a lovely, oh-so-wonderful gift. It was not hard to get to know him; he trusted me with all his secrets, but I felt used, I felt like an object to him, inanimate - something to fall back on when no one else would spend the night with him, or sit with him at the dinner table or even watch a couple of old sci-fi flicks with him on boring Saturday nights.

His latest girlfriend had left him. She was wise enough to break the news to him via the telephone. Five simple words, usualy spoken incessantly in soap dramas on the idiot box had left him a blabbering, stuttering fool.

“I’m breaking up with you,” Clarissa had spoken apathetically over the telephone. My sharp ears caught every single word she said in her strangely unfeeling, indifferent tone, which did not change even when Terrence burst into tears, crying out, begging her not to leave him. The only other time I had seen him reduced to tears was when his wife refused to sign the divorce papers.

As I lay there on the couch, dog-weary of the continuous stream of complaints flowing out of his mouth, my mind drfted back to the day when I had first met and fell in love with my beloved (and now, slightly resented) Terrence.

It was a day just like any other. I was strolling around in a pet shop when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a distinguished-looking man walking towards me. He had a brilliant smile, one like a thousand sunbursts. It was that smile that drew my attention. As he approached me, I saw that confident, determined look on his face which, I would later discover, was the quintessence of his personality that got him right up to the top rung of the corporate ladder. With that look on his face, he got pretty much what he wanted most of the time. On that day, he wanted me. I could tell from his expression.

His wife was with him, She was bent over, admiring a striking (and rather gaudy) parrot. When she turned around to pass a remark to her husband, she noticed he was gone and I felt a pang of guilt when she caught her husband stroking and running his fingers through my lustrous crown of strawberry-blond hair, whispering words of affection into my ear. I scurried away hurriedly.

On the next day, Terrence and I met again at the pet shop. That secret rendezvous resulted in him taking me to his house. As I lay my head contentedly on his lap in his bedroom, he glanced down at me and gave me that smile which sent shivers down my back. Suddenly, we heard a key turning in the lock at the front door. His wife was back. I quickly sneaked out of the room and hid in the attic.

It wasn’t long before Terrence’s wife discovered I was actually living under the same roof as she was. It just took a day of spring cleaning to find the unwelcome visitor in the attic. That night, the neighbours could hear raised, angry voices coming from Terrence’s kitchen.

Terrence made an appointment with his lawyer the very next day to draft up the divorce papers. When he came back to our house (it was our house now given that his wife had moved out after the heated argument the night before), he spoke excitedly and launched into the whole, lengthy explanation of the divorce procedure. He was obviously happy about the break-up. Well, I had to admit I was not anything less that ecstatic about it either.

After that messy business was over, I thought I had him all to myself. To my horror, I discovered that he found himself a new girlfriend, Clarissa. What a huge let down. Needless to say, I was disappointed and terribly upset over the whole affair. But it is all over between them now, I can see it in his eyes. For now, I had him all to myself.

All my friends said it was just puppy love. Well, maybe it was. I would not deny the fact that I was just too young to comprehend the complexity of the four-letter word love.

“Come closer, my baby,” he spoke tenderly, lovingly, gesturing with his hand. I strolled to him. Although my name is Angel, he seemed to prefer calling me ‘baby’ and if I said I hated it, I would be lying. Ambivalent as I was, I leaned against his chest and looked at him doggedly hen he resumed his incessant complaining. So, I licked my pays gracefully and drifted off to a dreamless slumbler. Oh well, it’s a dog’s life.