I Mean It. No Bread Tomorrow.

His name was Eli, and the dog was Bruno - though if you asked Eli, Bruno was the one who owned him.

They lived on the rooftop level of a building that wasn't really a building anymore. Three floors of concrete and laundry lines and pigeons, overlooking a city that had grown too tall and too fast for them both.

Eli hadn't worked in a long time. He used to be a typesetter, back when that was a thing you could be. Ink under the nails, lead letters in little wooden drawers. Now his hands were empty, his eyes were always that bruised-blue color from not sleeping right, and his shoes had holes that matched exactly where his socks had holes.

Bruno didn't care.

Bruno was a street dog, half bull terrier, half question mark. White with two black patches like someone had flicked paint at him. He had shown up three winters ago during the pink moon - that big, impossible pink moon you see in the painting - and had simply sat down next to Eli on the steps and decided: you are my person.

Every evening they had the same routine.

Eli would climb the last set of stairs and sit on the edge, legs dangling, looking at nothing. Bruno would sit exactly one paw-length away, upright, ears up, watching the city. Not guarding. Just being there. Making sure Eli was still tethered to the ground.

And behind them, on the higher steps, Tomas would play.

Tomas was 19 and thought he was going to be a concert violinist. He practiced up there because his mother said his playing gave her a headache. He wasn't very good yet - his bow shook, his notes went sour in the cold - but he played with his whole body, like it hurt.

On that particular night, the night in the painting, Tomas was playing something sad and old. Eli couldn't name it. The pink moon was up, fat and low, and there was a second, smaller moon next to it - or maybe it was just a smudge on the sky.

Eli said out loud, for no reason, "We're broke, Bruno."

Bruno sneezed.

"I mean it. No bread tomorrow."

Bruno looked up at him with those huge, dark, unreasonable eyes. Then he stood, walked in a tight circle, and laid his head directly on Eli's bare ankle. Warm.

Tomas hit a wrong note and winced, but kept playing.

Eli laughed then - a real one, rusty from disuse. He reached down and scratched behind Bruno's ears, the spot where the black fur met the white.

"You know what your problem is?" Eli whispered to him. "You think everything is still going to be okay."

Bruno thumped his tail once against the concrete. 'Obviously.'

And for a second, with the bad violin music sawing through the blue air, and the city humming in the distance like a tired refrigerator, and that ridiculous pink moon watching them - it was.

It was still going to be okay. Because one of them believed it completely.