‘I’ll try the main lobby first.’
I ran downstairs, on the basis that Dean Martin was unlikely to be able to call the lift, and scanned the corridor for a small, angry canine. Empty. I checked my watch, noting with mild dismay that this was because it was not yet six a.m. I peered behind and under Ashok’s desk, then ran to his office, which was locked. I called Dean Martin’s name softly the whole time, feeling faintly stupid as I did so. No sign. I ran back up the stairs and did the same thing on our floors, checking the kitchen and back corridors. Nothing. I did the same on the fourth floor, before rationalizing that if I was now out of breath, the chances of a small fat pug being able to run up that many flights of stairs at speed was pretty unlikely. And then outside I heard the familiar whine of the refuse truck. And I thought about our old dog, who had a spectacular ability to tolerate – and even enjoy – the most disgusting smells known to humanity.
I headed to the service entrance. There, entranced, stood Dean Martin, drooling, as the men wheeled the huge, stinking bins backwards and forwards from our building to their truck. I approached him slowly, but the noise was so great and his attention so locked on the rubbish that he didn’t hear me until the exact moment I reached down and grabbed him.
Have you ever held a raging pug? I haven’t felt anything squirm that hard since I had to pin a two-year-old Thom down on a sofa while my sister extricated a rogue marble from his left nostril. As I wrestled Dean Martin under my arm, the dog threw himself left and right, his eyes bulging with fury, his outraged yapping filling the silent building. I had to wrap my arms around him, my head at an angle to stop his snapping jaw reaching me. From upstairs I heard Mrs De Witt calling down: ‘Dean Martin? Is that him?’
It took everything I had to hold him. I ran up the last flight of stairs, desperate to hand him over.
‘Got him!’ I gasped. Mrs De Witt stepped forward, her arms outstretched. She had a lead ready and she reached out and snapped it onto his collar, just as I lowered him to the ground. At which point, with a speed wholly incommensurate with his size and shape, he whipped round and sank his teeth into my left hand.
If there had been anyone left in the building who hadn’t already been woken by the barking, my scream would probably have done it. It was at least loud enough to shock Dean Martin into letting go. I bent double over my hand and swore, the blood already blistering on the wound. ‘Your dog bit me! He bloody bit me!’
Mrs De Witt took a breath and stood a little straighter. ‘Well, of course he did, with you holding him that tightly. He was probably desperately uncomfortable!’ She shooed the little dog inside, where he continued to growl at me, teeth bared. ‘There, see?’ she said, gesturing towards him. ‘Your shouting and screaming frightened him. He’s terribly agitated now. You have to learn about dogs if you’re going to handle them correctly.’
I couldn’t speak. My jaw had dropped, cartoon-style. It was at this moment that Mr Gopnik, in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, threw open his front door.
‘What on earth is this racket?’ he said, striding out into the corridor. I was startled by the ferocity of his voice. He took in the scene before him, me in my T-shirt and knickers, clutching my bleeding hand, and the old woman in her dressing-gown, the dog snapping at her feet. Behind Mr Gopnik I could just make out Nathan in his uniform, a towel raised to his face. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Oh, ask the wretched girl. She started it.’ Mrs De Witt scooped Dean Martin up in her thin arms again, then wagged a finger at Mr Gopnik. ‘And don’t you dare lecture me on noise in this building, young man! Your apartment is a veritable Vegas casino with the amount of to-ings and fro-ings. I’m amazed nobody has complained to Mr Ovitz.’ With her head high, she turned and shut the door.
Mr Gopnik blinked twice, looked at me, then back at the closed door. There was a short silence. And then, unexpectedly, he began to laugh. ‘ “Young man”! Well,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘it’s a long time since anyone called me that.’ He turned to Nathan behind him. ‘You must be doing something right.’
From somewhere inside the apartment a muffled voice lifted in response:
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Gopnik!’
Mr Gopnik sent me in the car with Garry to get a tetanus shot from his personal physician. I sat in a waiting room that resembled the lounge of a luxury hotel, and was seen by a middle-aged Iranian doctor, who was possibly the most solicitous person I had ever met. When I glanced at the bill, to be paid by Mr Gopnik’s secretary, I forgot the bite and thought I might pass out instead.
Agnes had already heard the story by the time I got back. I was apparently the talk of the building. ‘You must sue!’ she said cheerfully. ‘She is awful, troublemaking old woman. And that dog is plainly dangerous. I am not sure is safe for us to live in same building. Do you need time off? If you need time off maybe I can sue her for lost services.’
I said nothing, nursing my dark feelings towards Mrs De Witt and Dean Martin. ‘No good deed goes unpunished, eh?’ Nathan said, when I bumped into him in the kitchen. He held up my hand, checking out the bandage. ‘Jeez. That little dog is ropeable.’
But even as I felt quietly furious with her, I kept remembering what Mrs De Witt had said when she had first come to my door. He’s all I have.
Although Tabitha moved back into her apartment that week, the mood in the building remained fractious, muted, and marked with occasional explosions. Mr Gopnik continued to spend long hours at work while Agnes filled much of our time together on the phone to her mother in Polish. I got the feeling there was some kind of family crisis going on. Ilaria burnt one of Agnes’s favourite shirts – a genuine accident, I believed, as she had been complaining about the temperature controls on the new iron for weeks – and when Agnes screamed at her that she was disloyal, a traitor, a suka in her house, and hurled the damaged shirt at her, Ilaria finally erupted and told Mr Gopnik that she could not work here any more, it was impossible, nobody could have worked harder and for less reward over these years. She could no longer stand it and was handing in her notice. Mr Gopnik, with soft words and an empathetic head-tilt, persuaded her to change her mind (he might also have offered hard cash) and this apparent act of betrayal caused Agnes to slam her door hard enough to topple the second little Chinese vase from the hall table with a musical crash, and for her to spend an entire evening weeping in her dressing room.
When I appeared the next morning Agnes was seated beside her husband at the breakfast table, her head resting on his shoulder as he murmured into her ear, their fingers entwined. She apologized formally to Ilaria as he watched, smiling, and when he left for work she swore furiously, in Polish, for the whole time it took us to jog around Central Park.
That evening she announced she was going to Poland for a long weekend, to see her family, and I felt a faint relief when I gathered she did not want me to come too. Sometimes being in that apartment, enormous as it was, with Agnes’s ever-changing moods and the swinging tensions between her and Mr Gopnik, Ilaria and his family felt impossibly claustrophobic. The thought of being alone for a few days felt like a little oasis.
‘What would you like me to do while you’re gone?’ I said.
‘Have some days off!’ she said, smiling. ‘You are my friend, Louisa! I think you must have a nice time while I am away. Oh, I am so excited to see my family. So excited.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Just to Poland! No stupid charity things to go to! I am so happy.’
I remembered how reluctant she had been to leave her husband even for a night when I had arrived. And pushed the thought away.
When I walked back into the kitchen, still pondering this change, Ilaria was crossing herself.