The Ninth Ring

The next morning, after the father left, the girl stepped out of the house, with her large grayish blue mastiff on a leash behind her. She walked her dog down the street into a small park across the street. She let him off his leash to let him explore and play with some of the other dogs there. I watched her from across the park, watching closely as she sat on a bench and pulled a book out of her bag. I walked across the field to where she was, and sat on the bench next to her. I watched a chubby bull dog play with a poodle for a while, kinda smiling when the poodle began to beat it up. I looked over to her slightly, and noticed the title of her book. "Dante's Inferno"
well son of a bitch I thought to myself who would have though?
"Hows your book?" I asked her, quite nonchalantly. She looked up in slight surprise, and told me,
"Its marvelous. This is my fifth time reading it." I couldn't help but smile, I always liked a girl who could read. We talked for a little while, discussing books, and dogs. "Whats your name?" I asked her. She smiled and said,
"My name is Grace Elide. What is yours?"
In a time like this, I normally give a fake name, something swedish sometimes, like Mikael or something, but this time, I told her my real name without really thinking about it.
"I'm Benjamin DeMilo." She held out her hand and proclaimed, "Its a pleasure meeting you Benjamin DeMilo." We shook hands. She seemed to enjoy talking, and didn't really show any signs of being uncomfortable. In the end, she wrote her phone number on my hand and told me, "You should call me sometime, maybe we can talk again." I smiled and told her,
" I would enjoy that greatly."
After we said our good byes and parted ways, I went off to see if I could find a cell phone.