“Me too,” the man said. He was a few years older, with graying stubble and jowls. His eyes were dark brown approaching black, and he seemed almost dog-like himself. “My mother had a dog before she had me. There’s pictures of me when I couldn’t walk yet, dragging on old Hannibal’s ears.”
Alexander felt his gut tighten a little at the idea. A baby, soft-skinned and awkward, and standing over it a dog, yellow teeth and black eyes.
“Must have been a sweet animal,” Alexander said.
“Hannibal? Hell yes. He was great. The whole time he was alive, no one broke into our house, and it wasn’t a great neighborhood. But no one messed with our place.”
“I meant with you. When you were a kid.”
In the cell nearest them, a small terrier lifted his brown-and-tan head, looking at them with curiosity. The man chuckled.
“Oh, he kept me in line, all right,” the man said. “I pushed things too hard, he’d let me know. Didn’t take any crap, that dog.”
Alexander walked slowly along the wall, looking in at the dogs as he passed. An Australian shepherd with one pale blue eye barked and wagged and barked again. A bloodhound cross eyed him with an expression of permanent sorrow built into its breed like a poker face. Alexander couldn’t guess what it might be thinking. Or what it would do if it were free. The room was feeling oddly warm. Sweat dampened his neck.
“Nothing in this world will love you like a dog,” the man said with the air of repeating something everyone knew, everyone agreed on. “Loyal. Best protection there is. Better than a burglar alarm, you know that? And anyone messes with you, dog’ll be right there beside you.”
“Yup,” Alexander said. Unless, he thought.
But most dogs were good. Most never bit anyone. He counted the cells. Two, four, six—up to fifteen. If Erin was right, about three of them would be predators. A dozen good dogs and three predators.
“You feeling all right?” the man asked.
A bulldog sat by the plexiglass, looking out. Its flat face with the loose black lips and lolling red tongue looked insectile and obscene. In the corner of his eye, Alexander caught a sudden flash of motion, but when he turned, the animal was behind its transparent wall. Thick-shouldered, wide-faced, its tail cutting through the air behind it in pleasure. For a moment, it was the hound with its permanent smile, and Alexander’s throat was tight.
“Seriously,” the man said again. “You all right? You’re looking kind of pale.”
“I’ve always had dogs,” Alexander said. “You know? Always.”
“Yeah,” the man said, but his voice was polite now, distant. He’d seen something in Alexander that he knew wasn’t right, even if he didn’t know what. Alexander pushed his hands deep into his pockets and nodded. In their cages, the dogs licked themselves and slept and barked. Twelve of them were probably fine. Good dogs.
“Thanks,” Alexander said. “I’ve got to think about it. Talk to the landlord. Like that.”
“Sure,” the man said. “No trouble. We’ll always be here.”
We’ll always be here, Alexander thought as he stepped back into the reassuring press of humans of the sidewalk. The man hadn’t meant it as a threat.
The downtown streets were thick with bodies, each one moving through its own peculiar path, its own life. Alexander hunched down into his clothes, hands in his pockets, and head bowed trying to seem like one of them. Trying to seem normal. And maybe he was. Maybe the thick-bellied man with the navy blue suit and gold tie was just as worried about seeming strange. Maybe the woman driving past in her minivan had the same sense of almost dream-like dislocation. The kid bent over the bicycle weaving through stopped cars at the intersection might be riding hard and fast so that no one would see the tears in his eyes or ask him to explain them.
A bus huffed by, throwing out a stinking wind of exhaust. The cars started moving again, following the autonomic signals of the stoplight. Alexander paused at the corner, waiting his turn. Across the street, the glowing red hand meant he had to wait. A little crowd gathered around him—an older man with skin the color of mahogany and close-cut hair the color and texture of snow clinging to stone, a woman in a tan business suit with the empty stare of boredom, a man Alexander’s age tapping at his smartphone and glancing up occasionally to make sure the world was still there.