Aisha and I look at each other. Everyone in the park is watching the altercation. Meanwhile, a pack of German shepherds has cordoned off the gray dog from the rest. After a little bit of roughhousing, they let the gray dog go. He trots off in search of other playmates.

“That’s how the dogs take care of each other,” Aisha says to me. “They set him straight.”

The guy in the trucker hat stands rigid, his arms crossed tight across his chest. Turk said this was heaven, and for a while I could totally see that. Then trucker hat guy yelled at Gomer, and then at the other guy. Suddenly we’re not in heaven anymore.

Trucker hat guy is motioning with his arms in front of Hazel, who is just sitting there, not playing with the other dogs. I feel bad for her. All these dogs are out having a good time, and poor Hazel is like a prisoner to that jerk.

“The problem with this place is the entrance,” I tell Aisha. “Replace that double gate with a velvet rope, get the Porcupine out there to choose who gets in, and then this place really would be Des Moines.”

Aisha laughs. “Get rid of these gates and add a velvet rope, and what you really have is chaos.”

I get that she’s kidding, that she means that a velvet rope would not be an ideal way to fence in dogs. But I’m being serious. The thing that keeps this place from truly being heaven, in my opinion, is who is let in.

The dogs run and fetch and play, and the people do their thing too. On the other side of the park, the brown jeans guy is standing by himself with his head down. It’s like I can feel his shame.

I tug on Aisha’s shirt and walk toward the guy. She follows, keeping an eye on Gomer, who is being petted by a muscular black dude with a blond buzz cut.

“Hey,” I say as we approach. “What’s your name?”

The brown jeans guy looks surprised that someone is talking to him. “Larry.”

“Hey, Larry. I’m Carson and this is Aisha.”

“Hi,” he says.

“Which dog is yours?” I ask, pretending not to have seen the altercation.

He points tentatively at his gray dog, which is currently sniffing a woman’s feet.

“So cute. What kind is he?” Aisha asks.

“He’s an Australian shepherd.”

I scan the park for Gomer. “Ours is the Labradoodle currently on his back with his legs in the air. Can’t take him anywhere.”

Larry laughs. “Yep. He looks like a nice dog.”

“He is.”

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. His Australian shepherd is now peeing on a tennis ball a guy had been using to play fetch with his dog. The guy goes off in search of another ball. “Matty!” Larry yells, but the dog ignores him and begins to growl at a skinny, hairless dog about a quarter of his size. He shakes his head. “My dog is a fucking asshole.”

I laugh, but Aisha doesn’t. “You have him since he was a pup?” she asks.

The guy nods. “Got him at a pet store. He lives in our garage ’cause he kept peeing all over the place and chewing up the furniture.”

I don’t know a lot about dogs, but I can tell there’s something not great about this story. I mean, don’t dogs need training? Maybe not as much as poor Hazel, but.

I’m about to say something else when a woman who is walking past us with her German shepherd points across the way. “Oh! I think Brent’s about to have Hazel do Russian Bear,” she says. “Have you seen this?”

I turn and watch. She’s pointing at trucker hat guy. He is kneeling in front of Hazel like they’re having an intense conversation. Then he pats her on the head, stands, and puts his arms out wide. “Russian bear,” he says.

Hazel stands on her hind legs and slowly lifts her paws high above her head. She does look kind of like a bear, I realize, and begrudgingly I grin.

Aisha gasps. “I’ve never seen a dog do that!”

“Isn’t that great?” the woman says. She and her German shepherd have stopped walking.

When Hazel gets down from her pose, the trucker guy holds up a treat, which Hazel gobbles down while he affectionately rubs her head.

The woman who told us to watch smiles. “Brent is so good with her. Ever since his wife left him last year, training Hazel has become his one passion.”

“That was pretty amazing,” Aisha says.

Larry isn’t listening. “Fuck. Matty!” he yells, running over to him. Matty has taken down another dog, this one small and apricot with floppy ears. He is growling over it.

Larry grabs Matty by the collar and drags him a good fifteen feet. He then smacks Matty in the snout and says, “Stupid, fucking, useless mutt.”

“And some people, less amazing,” the woman says, matter-of-fact, and she continues her perimeter walk.

Larry puts Matty on his leash and heads toward the exit.

“You ever have an initial reaction to something and it turns out totally wrong?” I ask Aisha.

She tosses a ball high in the air, and Gomer leaps for it and catches it in his mouth. Then he drops it at Aisha’s feet and looks up at her. “All the time,” she says.

I’m about to tell her all the thoughts I had about Brent after he yelled at Gomer, and then I realize maybe there’s a better way to deal with this.

“Follow me,” I say to Aisha, and she slaps her leg and somehow Gomer knows to walk with us. I slowly approach Brent and Hazel, and as Aisha figures out where we’re going, she puts Gomer on a leash.

I stop a few feet away from Brent, keeping my distance in case he’s gonna get nasty again. “That was so cool,” I say.

“Yeah?” he asks, barely glancing up at me.

“We put our dog on a leash this time,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” he says, and this time he does look at me and gives me a smile.

“How’d you teach her to do that?”

Brent studies us like he’s not sure what our angle is. Like we’re messing with him. But we aren’t.

“One day Hazel was trying to steal herself a treat that was on the kitchen counter. There was a stool in the way, so when I walked into the kitchen, there she was, looking like a big old white Russian bear.” He laughs. “I figured maybe I could figure out how to turn her bad habit into a good one.”

“That’s awesome. She’s an amazing dog,” Aisha says.

“Thanks,” Brent says, and that stern, nasty demeanor is gone. “Hey, listen. Sorry ’bout that before. I sometimes bark before I think. I know you didn’t mean any trouble.”

“I appreciate it,” I say, genuinely surprised that he even knew I was the owner of the dog he yelled at. “I get that you’re protective of Hazel.”

He nods.

“What about that other guy?”

He shakes his head. “That guy needs to stop bringing his dog here. Seen him a hundred times, and he never gets the message.”

“Fair enough,” I say, and I stick out my hand for him to shake. He does. “Catch you another time.”

When Gomer starts to pant and his tongue begins to hang from his mouth, we decide it’s time to leave. Aisha wrangles him back onto his leash, and we head for the exit.

“So is this heaven?” I ask as we get to the exit.

We turn and look back at the park one last time.

“For me it is,” Aisha says.

I take in the whole scene. Turk’s heaven on earth is filled with laughter and play and barking and roughhousing and dog pee, and as many different breeds of people as there are of dogs. And there are humans who get along, and others who don’t, and some who do the wrong thing, or at least the wrong thing according to me.

I smile. If you had told me two weeks ago in New York that I’d find heaven on earth in a grassy field soaked with dog urine, watching a fat guy smack his misbehaving dog on the snout, I would have laughed at you.

But it’s not two weeks ago. I’m not in New York, and everything’s different now. At least I am, because now I can stop judging everything for long enough to realize where I am.

A perfectly imperfect place.

“For me too,” I say, resting my head on Aisha’s shoulder. “Totally heaven.”