The dog’s name was Frank and he was 14 in human years, which translated to something like 98 in dog years, and he liked to listen to Sinatra whenever Nate was gone from the apartment.  The funny thing is, his name was Frank long before he acquired a taste for Sinatra.  Nate would put the CD player on repeat so that the music would play again and again, and Frank would hop up onto the sofa, lie down on top of the pillows that Kami had bought a long time ago, and if it was winter Nate would cover Frank with a blanket.  Frank always knew when Nate was about the leave and would be gone for a long time because he watched him pack his laptop into the shoulder bag and check his pockets two or three times for God knows what, then go out the door, and then come back in for his cell or his cigarettes or whatever else he had might have forgotten. 

     When Kami had lived in the apartment they had listened to other things besides Sinatra and sometimes they had watched movies on the DVD player and Nate did not leave so often or for so long a time.  Frank remembered that Kami was a good cook and there had been more food in the house when she was around than ever before.  He rememebered that she used to curl up with him on the sofa and fall asleep with her head on top of his rump, and Frank would put up with that because he liked her. 

     And there was another thing—they used to go for long walks—not just down the street by the transit center, or down the other way by the next apartment building with its little poverty stricken patches of dying, excessively peed on bushes—but they would go to the big grassy places with the honest-to-God trees and there would be other dogs and other people and even children, and Frank would feel like staying there all the livelong day, and it seemed like Nate and Kami felt the same way.

     Ever since then Nate had been working on something he called The Great American Novel, and that was why he would get up so early in the morning and pack up his laptop and walk over to the internet café and stay there so long while Frank listened to Sinatra.  Nate was a creature of habit, as was Frank.  He had his times and his seasons, his appointed comings and goings, and Frank liked that about Nate.  He was as predictable as rain in April.  Frank loved Nate, but he worried sometimes.  Dogs can sense things when things are not right.