“We’re going to have to leave, Rocky. Like the Hendersons before us. Perch — his mansion has been empty for a while, maybe 3 months. We’ll have to take Dogg of course. The Mann loves that animal.”
“I see,” the anthropomorphic raccoon says from his laying stump.
“I don’t know what we’ll do about a dog park in the new place, the new town. I’m sure we won’t have anything like this.”
“No.” Then Rocky Racco, who’d been living in Storybrook 3 months himself and had no desire to leave atall, asked this question which had been on his mind for awhile. “Do you believe in sea monsters, Mrs. Mann?”
“Please. Call me Parasol. We’ve been talking together on this bench and stump for a while now, *Mr.* Racco. I call you Rocky, see. You call me Parasol.”
“Mrs. Parasol–”
“*Parasol,” interjected Parasol Mann. “Just: Parasol. The light skinned one,” she added. “Not the dark one. Things are different here in Storybrook. You have to adapt to the time, to the place. A story in a brook. Current.”
“Right…” But he couldn’t say her name aloud yet. He was overly formal like that.
An odor was in the air. The Dogg must have dumped a big one over there with The Mann, Parasol thinks, watching the end of it. Great Danes are like that. Then she remembered she hadn’t answered Rocky’s question from a while back. “Oh. To the sea monster thing: no.”
“Why not?” Rocky returned hurriedly, almost urgently. “Say, green ones. Wearing pink tutus with seaweed for hair. How about something like that?”
Not wanting to answer Rocky twice about the same subject she was firm about, The Mann approached her with The Dogg. “We’re all done.”
“I would hope,” Parasol answered, looking at the happy animal in front of her and still sniffing a bit.
“Did you have a good chat with your old pal Rocky while I was walking Dogg?” It was here that Parasol realized she hadn’t talked to Rocky about the most important thing. Her infidelity to The Mann. Her affair with Charlie Banana on those islands out in Southside Bay (Southside?). The breaking of her heart by same. Charlie Banana definitely had a way with yellow but red and blue were beyond his scope to comprehend, she’d learned. It was wrong.
But it would happen again. She got up to leave. “Goodbye Rocky. I’ll see you around.”
“Goodbye.” He still couldn’t do it, despite the circumstances.
“Ro rong,” Dogg said in parting, knowing this might be the last time he’d see his park buddy.
