Buffalo

After work, I found a perfect miniature buffalo grunting in the alley behind my building. He had deep brown eyes, tiny slate gray horns, and his coat was frizzy like the carpeting in my car. With the apple from my bag I coaxed him inside, his hooves clopping as he followed me upstairs. I’d never had a pet before—not even a stupid fish—but he seemed valuable and small enough that he wouldn’t be a hassle.

At the threshold to my one-bedroom, he wouldn’t enter until I gave him the rest of the apple. When he’d finished, he galloped down the short hall, leapt onto my couch, circled an empty space, and finally tucked his squat legs under his small, meaty body.

“You’d think people would be more interested in you,” I told him.

He shot twin blasts of air from his miniscule nostrils and rested his head on a spot of the couch warmed by the afternoon sun. He smelled earthy and vegetative—like a pumpkin—as if I’d unearthed him from a garden.

I lowered the timbre of my voice, mimicking how I think he’d sound if he could speak. “It’s just a dream,” I said for him. “Don’t make a fuss.”

Later, we went to a restaurant, but the waitress wouldn’t seat him. “I called ahead,” I told her. “You said it would be fine.”

She shook her head. “He belongs outside.”

I needed him, I told myself. He needed me, probably.