The Wrong Dog Read online

  “I guess not.”

  “You always enter directly from the street.”

  He nodded.

  “Anyway, there’s something more urgent I need to do.”

  He opened his mouth and lifted his arms, but that was all that happened.

  “How long can we take care of these two, Mel? I need to find out if any arrangements were made for them and, if not, find them someplace permanent. And soon.”

  Bianca was licking Blanche’s mouth, her tail wagging frantically.

  “It must be very hard for them to be apart.”

  He looked at the dogs and smiled. “That’s why I took Bianca out. Like I said, she was restless.”

  “Which way are you headed?” I asked him, realizing I didn’t know where he lived.

  He lifted a loose arm and pointed north. I stood there for a couple of minutes after he left, and then thought of someplace that would be open, even at this hour. So I followed in the same direction Mel had walked with Bianca, heading for Florent on the slim chance that someone who worked there would know if there was a veterinary practice a short block away.

  When I got to the corner, I looked around for Mel, but he seemed to have disappeared.

  CHAPTER 8

  He Waved His Hand Back and Forth

  “How you been?” Dr. Chen asked as he began to insert the slender needles in my arm.

  “Pretty good,” I told him. “Considering.”

  “Considering what? Broken arm? Arm almost one hun-derd percent now. You come twice more, that’s it. Arm good as new.”

  I shook my head.

  “Ah. You start work again?” He shook his head. “No good. Arm still needs rest. Body needs rest to repair arm. Only two more weeks. You no can wait?”

  “I need to work so that I can pay for acupuncture,” I lied, not wanting to hear the rest of his lecture.

  “Insurance pays for acupuncture. What you think, I was born yesterday?”

  I shook my head. “No, but—”

  “You no plan unpaid vacation. Unpaid vacation happens. You have no choice.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I go with the flow. But I have to pay the insurance premiums, Dr. Chen, not to mention rent.”

  “You wait two more weeks.”

  “I can’t. I’ve already taken a job. This woman called me and told me a fantastic story, Dr. Chen. She said she was approached two years ago by someone with an offer to clone her dog—”

  “Crone dog no good,” he said; this was the only time I’d ever seen a hard look in his eyes.

  “But the dog is a service dog, a seizure-alert dog—”

  “No matter. You crone cells from great man, still end up with fool.”

  “What about all the positive, scientific—”

  “No reason strong enough. Not God’s will. Not healthy. No make strong offspring, only one parent.” He waved his hand back and forth, as if he could erase the whole idea of cloning.

  “I have better job for you.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “Find homes for Chinese babies, no have families to take care of them. Girl babies,” he said, “beautiful, rittle frowers, need roving American homes. This important work. Croning,” he shook his head again, “take you no prace good.”

  He turned down the lights, slipped out the door, and closed it behind him. I closed my eyes, careful not to move anything. I had once tried to scratch my nose, after the long thin needles had been inserted in my hand, and the pain was excruciating. But lying still, I felt only pleasure, the gentle movement of energy flowing in my arms and legs, streaming down my torso, and sending chills into my scalp.

  I lay still in the dark room for twenty minutes before the door opened and Dr. Chen reappeared.

  “Arm feels good?” he asked, removing the needles and putting them in the red Sharps container.

  “Everything feels good.”

  He nodded; wisps of hair covered the top of his round head, the skin of his face was as smooth as a baby’s even though he was well into his eighties.

  “You come ten in the morning next week, same as today. Okay?”

  “No problem.”

  “Use arm, rest arm. Twice a day.” He lifted his arm.

  “Elevate arm. I remember.”

  “Good. One more week, no cook, no crean.”

  I nodded.

  I lay there for several minutes after he left the room, my eyes closed, thinking about work.

  The night before I had walked as far as Fourteenth Street, hoping to catch up to Mel, not sure why I wanted to do that. Was it merely curiosity? Did I just want to know where he lived for no particular reason? Walking past the giant-size pig mural, flat-looking pink porkers announcing in no uncertain terms that this was the meat market in case the rank odor and the hunks of animal fat and bones strewn around didn’t get the message across, I had begun to wonder what I was thinking. I’d see him anyway in a day or two. Was there something I wanted to say, or to ask?

  I’d stopped on the corner of Fourteenth Street and had stood there looking around, aware that Blanche was breathing hard, that I’d been walking too fast for her. Across the street and west of where I stood was Moishe’s Mini Storage, New Yorkers’ answer to not having an attic or a basement—rent someplace to keep your junk. Near that was a new place under construction, Jeffrey, a drawing of a shoe on the outer wall of the construction site. First galleries, then restaurants and now a shoe store in the middle of the wholesale meat district, suddenly the hottest area of the city. Did Mel live here?

  I’d crossed the street, and passed The Little Pie Shop, walking as far as Greenwich Street. Markt was open, hip-looking people sitting around drinking beer and eating moules frites. I’d looked for a bull terrier tied up outside, but there was no Bianca and no Mel. What was I doing, anyway? There was work to be done.

  Walking slowly now, at Blanche’s pace, I’d stopped at Florent, the little French bistro on Gansevoort Street that stayed open around the clock. I’d been seated at a small round table and after settling Blanche at my side and ordering a glass of wine, I’d asked the waiter if he remembered a veterinary office around the corner. He wore a necklace of painted wooden beads, the kind I used to string on long colored shoelaces when I was little. He shook his head, telling me no, he didn’t know of any such place. And when I’d asked if he’d been here long, he bent closer so that he could whisper, “Oh, honey, you don’t want to ask a question like that.” His hand was flat on the table, his nails painted dark red.

  On the way home, instead of lagging behind or wandering off to the side, Blanche had stayed close to my side. Every time I’d looked down at her, she’d looked back up at my face, her brow furrowed with concern, as if waiting for me to say something or do something that would allow her life to make sense again.

  I’d stopped and knelt down. When she leaned against me, I’d put my arms around her and laid my face against her thick neck. I could hear the brakes of a bus somewhere in the direction we were heading, and people laughing. I’d told Blanche she was a good girl. I’d wanted to tell her more, that I’d take care of things, that everything would be okay, but I couldn’t. I could lie to a human being when it was absolutely necessary, and be believed, but even if I was willing, there was no credible way to lie to a dog.

  CHAPTER 9

  I Took a Bite of My Sandwich

  On my way uptown I called The School for the Deaf.

  “It’s Rachel Alexander,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Ruth, but I have some bad news.”

  “We heard,” she whispered.

  I waited a moment. “I was wondering if we could talk, perhaps at lunchtime today.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Meet me at noon, at Zeke’s. It’s not much, but it’s close, right on the corner. You can’t miss it.”

  “How will I know you?” It seemed a minute ago that I’d asked Sophie the same question. “Wait a minute,” I said, “it’s not a problem. I’ll have a dog with me.”

  “Blanche?”

&n
bsp; “No. My own dog. He’s also white.” I didn’t tell her he was a pit bull. I didn’t want to put her off.

  I knew the school was on Twenty-Third Street and I knew I could get there with time to spare, too much time to spare, so I headed back to the meatpacking district, to the building I’d looked at last night. This time, I rang one of the first-floor bells, said my name when asked, and got buzzed in. The sign on the door told me this was a design firm, but it didn’t say what sort of design. It turned out to be print design—stationery, business cards, advertising layouts. There was a young man at the desk, his eyebrows already raised when I opened the door.

  “Ms. Alexander? What can we do for you?” he asked, his chair a half turn away from his computer now.

  “I was actually looking for a veterinary practice I was told was in this building, on this floor. But I can’t tell by the names on the bells.”

  “A veterinary practice, here? I don’t think so.” Now he turned his attention to Dashiell, perhaps wondering if he had a zoonotic illness, something he could catch merely by inhaling.

  “Have you been here long?” I asked.

  “Since the building was renovated. We were the third business to move in. We would have been the first, except for the tile man. It’s still not right.”

  I nodded as if I cared.

  “And you were with the firm then?”

  “Well, no. I’m only here three months.” His mouth looked as if he’d just tasted something surprisingly sour and he sat up straight in his chair, making himself appear at least a half inch taller.

  “Is there someone I could talk to for just a minute, about the veterinary office? Perhaps someone who was here in the beginning might remember it. It might have been here for only a short while.”

  “I’ll see if one of the partners will talk to you.”

  A moment later, he came back shaking his head.

  “No.”

  “No they won’t talk to me, or no they don’t recall a vet’s office here?”

  “The latter,” he said. He sat, swiveling his chair away so that he faced the computer. “Well, the former and the latter.” Hands on the keyboard, he looked back at me once more, as if to ask why I was still standing there.

  “Thanks,” I told him on my way out.

  “Anytime,” he chirped back at me.

  There were four offices on the first floor. Sophie had said the veterinary office was in the back. I tried the office on the right first. It was some sort of medical office, a lab, I thought, one of those places that tests bodily fluids and looks for conditions you don’t want them to find, but I wasn’t sure. It only said the doctor’s name, P. Mellon, M.D. With two l’s, not like the fruit.

  I didn’t get to speak to P. Mellon. I spoke to a young woman who sat behind one of those off-putting Plexiglas partitions. She said she’d been with Dr. Mellon “forever” and didn’t have any recollection of “a veterinary facility” in the building, neither in the office they occupied or in any other.

  The back office next door was now occupied by a CPA, a J. Fleming, but no one answered the bell. It wasn’t tax season. Maybe J. Fleming was in the south of France.

  There was one more office on the ground floor, Ink, Inc. From the look of the waiting room, the walls covered with framed fabric samples, I thought the occupant might be a wholesale fabric dealer. But the business cards on the empty desk said Ink, Inc. was in book packaging. The pretty blond I expected back at the desk at any moment turned out to be a squatty senior citizen, short and wide, a cigarette dangling from her wound of a mouth, her bright red lipstick bleeding into the deep wrinkles on her upper lip.

  “Help you?” She sounded like a bullfrog.

  “I hope so. I’m looking for a veterinary office that used to be in this building. On this floor.”

  I smiled and waited.

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth with two stained fingers and snubbed it out in her ashtray.

  “A vet’s office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not in my memory. Not in this building.”

  “And you’ve been here long?”

  “Too long,” she croaked. “One day I’m going to do something about that. But not today. Today I’m too busy to think about it. So, can I get back to work now or is there something else you want?”

  Dash and I headed over to the east side.

  Ruth was in a booth at the back and waved me over.

  “I saw you through the window,” she said, a woman of about forty whose pear-shaped body reflected her sedentary work. Her brown hair was short, in a boyish cut, and the round face was lost behind huge glasses with red frames.

  “Ruth Stewart,” she said. Her hand was cool.

  “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” I said, sending Dash under the table and taking the seat across from her.

  She waved her hand at me. “I just got here a moment ago myself, Rachel.”

  The booth was dark brown leatherette, with a couple of slits in the seat and one in the back. The menu had seen better days, too. She ordered tuna. I said, “Me, too.” Ruth had only a half hour for lunch and I didn’t want to waste my time mulling over the cuisine. I thanked her again for meeting me.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” she said. She wiped her eyes with her napkin.

  I nodded.

  “Her class is in an uproar. She was a very gifted teacher and had such a way with the kids. They knew about her disability, of course, and that helped some of the shyer kids relate to her and feel accepted.”

  “Had she ever had anything like this before, that you know of?”

  “You mean, a seizure this serious?”

  “Well, almost this serious.”

  “She had a few close calls, but most of them were before she got Blanche.”

  “That’s one of the things I need to talk to you about.”

  “The dogs?”

  I nodded. “One of the things I’m trying to find out is if Sophie has any family, someone who ought to be notified, someone, I’m hoping, who might be willing to provide a home for her pets.”

  “She never mentioned anyone.”

  “She never said she was going home for the holidays, nothing like that?”

  “No. We always had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner together. She never really traveled anywhere. She was always afraid she’d be away from her doctor when she got into trouble. She didn’t want that to happen.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed carefully.

  “What about a boyfriend? Was she involved with anyone?”

  “You mean Herbie?” She didn’t mean to, but she made a face.

  “Right, Herbie.” I took a bite of my sandwich. This time I made a face. You wouldn’t think anyone could ruin canned tuna, it’s not that terrific to begin with. “What was his last name?” I asked, as if it was on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t remember it.

  “She never said. And I never thought to ask.”

  “Did you ever meet him, this Herbie? Did he ever come to the school to pick her up after work?”

  “No, he never did. And anyway, that was a while ago. They hadn’t been seeing each other recently.”

  “How long ago were they dating, Ruth?”

  I wondered if Ruth had a sweetheart. I wondered if she and Sophie saw less of each other when Herbie was in the picture. I wondered if Ruth had been envious of Sophie, who had a beau when she didn’t.

  “She stopped talking about him a few months ago, maybe six months, I’m not sure. For a while, it was Herbie this and Herbie that. That’s all she talked about. Then, nothing.”

  “No more Herbie?”

  “Not a word.”

  “No explanation?”

  “None.”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  She looked at her plate for a while, the second half of her tuna on whole wheat toast sitting there untouched. Maybe she was thinking the chicken salad would have been a better choice. She reached for the sandwich,
then changed her mind, picking up one of the pale, greasy French fries, dipping it into the pool of ketchup she’d poured onto her plate and putting it into her mouth.

  “It was difficult for her to meet men,” she said, reaching for another fry. “She hardly tried. She said the epilepsy always scared them off anyway, if not at first, then after they got to witness a seizure.”

  “It doesn’t take much to scare people off.”

  “You can say that again.” This time she picked up her Coke and drank about half of what was in her glass. “Even friends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ruth shrugged.

  “How come you weren’t scared off?”

  “We had a lot in common.”

  Her nose got red. Her eyes filled with tears again.

  “Like what?”

  I handed her a clean napkin and waited while she took off her glasses and dabbed her eyes.

  “Well, work, for one thing. Our devotion to the kids.”

  Yeah, yeah, I thought, devotion to the kids.

  “And we were both single.”

  “Go on.”

  I was still waiting for pay dirt.

  “She got me this job.” She was fighting off another onslaught of tears. “I’d been out of work for a while. I’d told her that when we met, and two weeks later, I was working at the school. It was serendipity, she said, that I needed a job just when the school needed a receptionist.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “The foundation.”

  “For epilepsy?”

  Ruth nodded. “So I can tell you she was right. A lot of guys…”

  I reached across the table and patted her hand.

  “We were very close. We talked on the phone all the time.”

  “Ruth, did you talk to Sophie on Sunday, by any chance?”

  She shook her head.

  “I called her twice, but there was no answer and I didn’t leave a message.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and began to cry. I pulled another napkin from the dispenser and held it out for her.

  “I thought…”