Kamran and I had failed to reserve a bigfancydinner for Saturday night, so we were doing a very romantic load of laundry at 10 p.m. in the basement of his apartment building. We stepped onto an elevator that already had two women and a little dog on it, and I smiled at both of the humans, and neither of them smiled back, but it’s sometimes hard to make your mouth muscles work in the two seconds you have between the time you notice someone smiling at you and that person looking away, so I didn’t hold it against them. They made some mundane talk behind us while Kamran and I chuckled over the fact that his laundry bag was splitting down the side seam so badly it was a wonder the thing could hold any clothes at all. (I tell you this little detail because it shows that I’m able to talk and laugh with at least one person in the world while I’m not busy abusing animals.)

I could see out of the corner of my eye that the dog was rarin’ to get out of the elevator, but Kamran and I were nearest to the door, so I let him step out first and then followed him, a little bit pleased at myself for making the dog wait. I feel the same way whenever I get into the bus in front of an overeager child who’s trying to go out of turn. I just need the excitement taken down a notch, you know?

But as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, the dog let out this horrendous howl/yelp/yip noise that hurt my ears, and I thought it was upset at me for cutting it off, so I turned around and just stared that thing down. I’m a little bit proud of how cold I can be sometimes, and I put every bit of cruelty I have into that glare. I wanted to show that little mangy rat who the alpha dog was. And it barked at me! It was kind of thrilling. I really felt like I’d threatened the thing and that it had felt it.

The elevators in Kamran’s building are rigged so that you take one set down to the lobby and another set down to the lower floors, so I stepped across to the other bank, where Kamran was already waiting. The owner of the dog told the other lady, “She stepped on his foot.”

I said from the other elevator, “No, I didn’t.”

She said, almost apologizing for me, “It was accidental.”

I leaned out the elevator door and said, “NO. I didn’t.”

And our elevator doors closed, and we rode to the laundry room in silence. While we unloaded the bag into the washers, my blood was still boiling, but I had this sudden, overwhelming feeling of guilt. I was only wearing flip-flops, so I’d think I’d feel a dog paw under my foot, but what if I hadn’t? What if I really had accidentally stepped on that dog, scrawny and yippy as it was? On one hand, Kamran’s building is overrun with dogs who get treated better than people and are allowed to sniff and lick whomever they want on the elevators at will, and it was the owner’s job to keep her dog back until the path was cleared, but on the other hand, I handled the situation so badly.

It would’ve been so easy just to say, “I really don’t think I stepped on the dog, but please accept my apologies just in case.” And the woman might have thought I was clumsy or reckless, but at least she wouldn’t have thought me a total DOG-HATING BITCH.