All the Information
Two days after my vow to fix my life, I was sitting on Charlene Miller’s overstuffed white couch with black-and-white photographs of flowers (suggestive flowers) above my head. Charlene Miller, the neighbor of Nona’s friend Julia was selling her dog-walking route. She was the type of woman you might see on the subway wearing a white suit—the kind of woman who made you question how she managed to stay so clean in such a dirty place. “This is a really nice area,” I said. Charlene smiled at me with big, clean, straight teeth.
“It’s Manhattan’s little secret.” Charlene sounded as if she had expressed this opinion before.
“I can see that,” I volleyed back.
“I remember the first time I walked around here; I wondered how it could be so quiet, especially with the highway right there.” Charlene said, referring to the East River Drive that runs right next to, and slightly below, East End Avenue.
“I wondered the same thing,” I said with enthusiasm. We smiled at each other and our shared ignorance about how a street next to a highway was so darn quiet.
“I’m trying to sell the route because I’ve got so many other things going on right now. Also, I might be getting out of town. I’m not sure yet,” I nodded. “"It’s really easy. You just feed and walk the dogs. I only have three clients but the money’s good. It’s amazing how much people will pay for you to walk their dog.” She smiled at me and pushed her auburn hair behind her adorably petite ears.
“Like how much?” I smiled trying to sound casual, not hungry.
She smiled. “I get $40 an hour.”
“Really?” She nodded. “So that’s…” I started to do the math when she finished it for me.
“$1,200 a week.” She laughed at the look on my face. “I know it’s insane, but hey, this is Yorkville.”
“What kind of compensation are you looking for?” I asked.
“Well, you could either buy the route off me up front or give me a percentage of the profits for the first year.”
“I don’t have the capital to buy it up front but I think we could work out a payment plan that would make us both happy.” I hoped I sounded responsible rather than broke.
“Alright, that’s fine. Everything here looks good,” she gestured to my résumé and references that sat on her coffee table. “I have a few other people I need to see, so would it be OK if I got back to you by the end of the week?”
“Oh, of course. I understand.” She stood up and I followed. Charlene put her hand out toward me and I shook it. “Thank you for your time.”
Outside, the street was indeed quiet. East End Avenue runs between 79th and 93rd streets right next to and slightly above East River Drive, a four-lane highway that lets New Yorkers speed all the way from Battery Park City to the Triborough Bridge. I wandered up the avenue towards Carl Schurz Park which, in parts, is cantilevered over the highway. The FDR, in turn, is suspended above the East River. Makes you wonder what we are standing on.
Crossing East End Avenue, I walked into Carl Schurz Park. Big paving stones, neatly lined- up trees, and perfectly trimmed grass gave the place an air of formality appropriate for the only resident of the park—the mayor of New York. Kurt Jessup lived in Gracie Mansion, a homestead built with a view of the river before there even was a city called New York, let alone a mayor to run it. The historic house is hidden in a corner of the park surrounded by its own gardens and very high fences.
I wasn’t sure how I had performed during the interview. The fact that we both admired the relative silence of the neighborhood was good. But why would she give me the route instead of someone who could buy it off her? Did I even want it, I thought, as I looked over the dog run in the park.
A large shepherd was barking insistently at a cocker spaniel who’d stolen his ball and ran under a bench, behind the protective calves of his owner. The shepherd’s owner, a guy in sweatpants and a windbreaker, was clearly annoyed at the cocker spaniel’s master, a man who was hidden behind the New York Times. The shepherd kept barking, and the cocker spaniel gnawed on the ball, pretending the shepherd wasn’t barking.
“You see that dog over there?” a woman who’d materialized next to me asked. She was pointing at a small dog. He looked like a child’s favorite stuffed animal near the end of its life.
“Yes.”
A grin spread across her face. “He belongs to that dog.” She pointed to a weimaraner whose coat shone a silver blue in the warm sun as he streaked across the run.
“What?”
“He got him in Israel.” She grinned again, overwhelmed with joy that not only could one dog own another but that the second dog could come from Israel. “Isn’t that a lovely story?”
I nodded, smiling. “Excuse me,” I said, and walked away from the crazy lady. I wandered past the small dog run to the esplanade that runs along the river. People sat on benches facing the rushing water, the sun glinting off its silver surface. Warehouses hugged the opposite bank. Downriver, the three Con Edison smokestacks painted red, white, and gray stood tall and alone, shaping the Queens skyline.
I walked upriver, toward Hell’s Gate, where the Harlem River meets the water from the Long Island Sound in a swirling, dangerous mess of tides and currents. A stone with a plaque atop memorializes 80 Revolutionary War soldiers who drowned there in 1780. Prisoners aboard the H.M.S. Hussar, they were shackled in her hold when she struck Pot Rock and slipped beneath the freezing, unforgiving waters of Hell’s Gate. “They died for a nation they never saw born,” reads the inscription.
I watched a train glide across Hell’s Gate Bridge; a beautiful arch with bowstring trusses stretched over the treacherous water. In front of Hell’s Gate Bridge, traffic moved slowly, in stops and starts, across the Triborough Bridge, a workman-like structure that connects Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.
My phone rang as I admired the urban landscape. “Hi, it’s Charlene. Listen, I just thought about it and you can have the route.”
“Oh, OK.”
“Why don’t you come back up, and we’ll work out the details?”
Charlene was waiting at the door, looking paler than before. “I’ve got to get out of town for business, so the only type of payment I need right now from you is to take care of my cat, Oscar, until I get back.” She walked through the living room into her kitchen. Oscar sat on the granite countertop, cleaning his face. He was a big tabby with white paws and a weight problem.
“Sure,” I said.
Charlene walked over to her computer and grabbed pages out of her printer tray. “Here’s a list of the clients and their dogs’ info.” I reached out to take them, but Charlene turned away and pushed the papers into a manila envelope. “The keys…” Her eyes wandered around the kitchen. “Where are the keys?” Charlene pushed past me and ran her hand over the empty granite counter. “I thought I…Oscar?” Oscar meowed, and she gently moved him over to reveal a ring of keys. Charlene dropped them into the envelope with the papers and passed the whole thing off to me.
“We can deal with all the details when I get back, or I’ll call you. Oh, and I’ll leave a set of my keys at the front desk for you. You should come and see Oscar about every three days.” The doorbell rang. She froze. It rang again. Charlene moved back into the living room slowly. I saw her hesitate, then, taking a deep breath, she checked the peephole. The tension ran from her body and she opened the door.
“Hello, Carlos,” Charlene said to a man in a custodial uniform standing in the hall. “Tell Bob not to worry about it for now. I’m going on vacation and will call when I get back. Thanks for coming, though.” Charlene closed the door and turned back to me, a mist of sweat at her hairline.
“Alright, so you have everything you need,” she started moving me toward the door, “and I’ll be in touch in a couple of days. Thanks. Bye.” The door closed behind me.
That Night
That night I brought Blue over to James’s place for dinner. Hugh answered the door. He is a big guy with a wide face, gapped teeth and an easy smile. His hair looks like his mother cut it by putting a bowl on his head. It works for him
We hugged our hellos in the doorway. Blue put his snout between us and emitted a deep warble. Hugh pulled back, laughing. “Oh, my God, he’s amazing.” Blue stepped in front of me. Hugh laughed again and motioned for us to come in.
James’s one-bedroom garden-level was filled with boxes, some half-full, some overflowing. Aurora, James’s cat, was curled in a box on a pile of sweaters. She poked her head up when we came in. Her yellow eyes bobbed at the edge of the cardboard, her multicolored ears at attention. Blue walked toward the box. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned him as he approached Aurora snout first.
Aurora sat up and hissed, drool spitting, hurling, splattering out of her. Blinded by the saliva, Blue stumbled back, but not before she had a chance to swipe out and lash him across the nose. He whimpered and scampered back to my side, the scratch beaded with drops of blood. Kneading at the sweaters below her, Aurora moaned and settled back into the box.
“What a lovely creature,” Hugh said as he headed for the kitchen to work on whatever was making the wonderful smell that floated through the apartment. I walked back to the yard, where James waited with a pitcher of passion fruit margaritas. “Holy shit,” he said when he saw Blue. “You weren’t kidding when you said you got a dog. That thing is huge.” Blue sat on James’s foot and James laughed. “I like him.” He filled a glass for me. The margarita was an opaque orange-red that glimmered in the soft candlelight.
“So, I acquired a business today.” I sipped the margarita, a perfect mix of fresh juice and jaw-clenching tequila.
“Acquired a business, eh?” James poured Hugh a drink, then passed it through the kitchen window.
“A dog-walking business.” James turned back to me, surprised.
“What?”
I laughed. “I am telling you that this morning I went to the Upper East Side—Yorkville to be exact—and acquired myself a dog-walking business. But I think there’s something weird about it.” Hugh appeared in the window.
“What are you talking about? You got a what-walking business?”
“Dog-walking.”
“What do you know about walking dogs?” James asked, “Or for that matter about business?”
“Well, I walk Blue.” James stared at me. “And it’s not really a business.”
“Wait, wait. You have to start this story at the beginning because you are talking nonsense,” James said. Hugh nodded.
“Wait a minute. Let’s discuss it over the ‘who’s for’.” Hugh disappeared into the kitchen. “Who’s for” is what my family has always called hors d’oeuvres, as in “who’s for some hors d’oeuvres?” According to my grandmother, it is an established expression, but I don’t know anyone else who uses it.
Munching on Gruyère cheese puffs and mushrooms stuffed with duck sausage, I explained about Charlene’s drastic change, her quick decision, and the sweat on her hairline.
“Do you see what I mean by weird?” I asked them.
“The whole thing is weird,” James said, then finished off the last of his drink. “I don’t think you should do it. You know that means cleaning up dog shit all day.”
“But,” I argued, “it’s good money and I don’t have to deal with people, which we all know I’m not so good at.”
“You’re fine with people,” James waved off my suggestion with a half-eaten mushroom cap. Hugh gave him a look.
“I’ve got an envelope that tells me what to do.”
“An envelope?” James raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, an envelope that has all the information and keys I need.” I pulled it out of my bag. “So I start tomorrow.”
“You can’t argue with that.” Hugh admitted, refilling James’s glass.
My First Day
If Joanne Sanders passed me on the street, she would not recognize me as the person who had eaten seven of her cheddar-flavored Goldfish. She wouldn’t know that Snowball, her Pomeranian, had welcomed me into their home by showing me exactly where she liked to pee under the kitchen table. Joanne Sanders would not know that I worked for her because Joanne Sanders has never met me.
Snowball, a ten-pound white puff ball with dark, almond-shaped eyes, was crated in a black cage with a leopard-print cover when I walked into apartment G5 on my first day as a dog-walker. Snowball looked like the recently imprisoned queen of a very small, safe jungle. Her subjects, in the shape of stuffed lions, tigers, and elephants littered the living room carpet.
Joanne Sanders, a broad woman in her forties, posed with friends, family, and Snowball in photographs displayed on the mantel of the fake fireplace. She had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs teased high above her brow. I could picture her behind ten inches of bulletproof glass sneering at me with gloss-encased lips for filling out my deposit slip incorrectly.
I fed Snowball half a cup of kibble and a spoonful of wet food as my envelope of information directed. She ate it quickly while making funny little squeaking noises. Once she had licked her bowl to a bright sheen, we headed out for my first walk as a dog-walker.
I steered us off of East End Avenue and onto the esplanade that runs along the river. The water reflected the sun in bright silver glints. I smelled oil and brine. We reached Carl Schurz Park and turned into the dog run for small dogs. The gate leading into the run reached only to my knees, as did the rest of the fence designed to keep small dogs in and big ones out. A sign on the gate read, “Dogs over 25 pounds not permitted.” Ten dogs under 25 pounds, and one who was probably a little over, played together in the pen. Their owners, in groups of three or four, sat on worn wooden benches and talked about dogs. Snowball ran to join a poodle growling at a puppy. They intimidated it behind its owner’s calves. Then the poodle, a miniature gray curly thing with long ears, mounted Snowball. I turned to the river and watched a giant barge inch by.
“Hi.” A woman wearing a fanny pack, pleated khaki shorts that started at her belly button and ended at her knees, black socks (pulled up), and clogs stood above me.
“Hi.” I said back, raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.
“You’re new.” She wasn’t asking a question.
“That’s right.”
“Taking over Charlene’s route.”
“Right again.” She sat next to me.
“How long have you been walking dogs?”
“Not long.”
“I didn’t think so.” I spotted two women on a bench on the other side of the run watching us. “You see, usually, when a dog you’re responsible for is being a bully…” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I realized I was being lectured. “…You should intervene.” I sat in silence, looking at her as she looked at me.
“OK,” I finally said. I looked over to where Snowball and the poodle were playing happily. “Not now?” I asked.
“No not now, now is too late. I’m talking about what they did to that puppy.”
“So this is for my future reference.”
She smiled, pleased with my grasp of the situation. “Exactly.”
“Okay.”
“I’m Marcia.” She held her hand out. I put mine in it. We shook. Her hand was rough and her grip strong.
“Joy.”
“Nice to meet you, Joy.”
“You’re a dog-walker.” I wanted to see if her trick of stating facts worked both ways.
“Sure am.” She didn’t seem to notice. “And that’s Elaine and Fiona.” She motioned toward the bench down the yard. They waved. I waved back.
“You're all dog-walkers.”
“That's right.”
“You like it?” I asked.
She smiled. “Love it. I’ve been doing this for most my life.”
“You know I didn’t even realize it was a profession until recently.” Marcia looked dumbfounded. “You know, I’d just never thought about it,” I said, trying to make up for my obvious blunder. That made two in about as many minutes. Snowball jumped up onto the bench next to me, panting. I used it as an excuse to leave. “It was nice meeting you,” I told Marcia as I stood.
“See you around,” she said.
My next charge, Snaffles, a Jack Russell terrier owned by Mr. and Mrs. Saperstein, ran up and down the length of the kitchen, which was blocked off from the rest of the apartment by a child safety gate. He inhaled the three-fourths-of-a-cup of kibble I measured into his bowl and then continued his bounding and running while I tried to get the leash on him. Once the leash was attached, he stopped running and concentrated on killing it. Snaffles shook the leash with the gusto a wolf might use when taking out a bunny.
On the street he pissed on the trees, the parking meters, the trash bags, and when he ran out of pee, he kept raising his leg nonetheless. It took us the full 45 minutes just to get around the block. I returned him to his kitchen at two exactly, and, as I left, I heard the clicking of his claws while he raced back and forth and back and forth.
I left the Sapersteins’ building and walked two doors down to walk the Maxims’ golden retriever who, according to my notes, was named Toby. I nodded at the doorman. He was wearing a hunter-green jacket with puffed riding jodhpurs and knee-high boots. At the front desk, I was directed to a bank of elevators. A key from my envelope allowed me to push the button for the penthouse. When the golden doors of the elevator opened, I was standing in an ornate foyer. An elaborate flower arrangement stood on a pier table next to a large, imposing, dark, wooden door.
His whole body wagging, Toby welcomed me into the house. A wall of windows, with a view of the glittering river below and Queens in the distance, flooded the two-story room with light. It reflected off the polished wood floor and bathed three teal couches—one of which had the imprint of Toby’s body in it—in bright, white sunlight. To the left, a spiral staircase curled up through the ceiling. Toby waited patiently, apparently used to the awe that the room inspired.
I found the kitchen when I walked through a door on the right side of the living room. The kitchen had floor-to-ceiling windows with the same view as the living room. Inside the enormous Subzero refrigerator, I found a Tupperware container labeled “Toby’s lunch.”
After he’d finished his mix of specialty frozen meats topped with several different powdered supplements, Toby pulled me through the lobby and out onto the street. He turned downtown, and I followed, hurrying to keep up. Toby pulled against the leash, tightening his collar and choking himself in the process. He coughed and made awful gagging noises until we reached a smell interesting enough to pause for. Toby sniffed intently for several seconds and then shot out to the end of the leash, hit it, and started the whole process all over again. My cell phone rang. I followed Toby to a fire hydrant, then answered it. It was James. “Hey,” I said, then lost my balance as Toby lunged down the street. I landed on my right hip with a thud. The leash flew out of my hand and my cell phone bounced against a parked car and smashed onto the sidewalk. Toby tore down an alley ten yards away.
I jumped up ignoring my throbbing hip, grabbed my phone and its disconnected battery, then gave chase. Toby’s golden butt stuck out from behind a pair of dirty green Dumpsters. “Toby!” He ignored me, intent on whatever was hiding in the deep shade of the narrow alley. I picked my way through the littered dead end. After the relentless heat and bright sunshine of the street, the alley felt almost cold.
Toby poked his head out from behind the Dumpster. There was something hairy and black in his mouth. Oh Jesus, I thought, please don’t let it be a rat. I stood in my tracks and called to him again. “Toby!” I yelled in a high-pitched, happy tone. He stood his ground and began shaking the hairy thing. A breeze blew through the alley and I smelled the putrid sweetness of garbage in June mixed with the rotten stench of decay. Toby looked at me, his eyes reflecting a shiny green in the darkness. I shivered in my thin T-shirt and wondered, for just a moment, if I could leave him here, go back to Brooklyn, take a nap, and pretend like none of this had ever happened.
Instead, I pulled my collar over my mouth and nose and took a tentative step toward him. He backed away. “Toby come.” I took another step. He took another step away from me, holding the hairy, black mess tightly in his jaws. His leash—long, red, and nylon—curled off his choke collar onto the ground. With a swift move, I stomped it. Toby couldn’t get away.
He whined through his stuffed mouth as I reached down to pick up the lead. It was in a puddle that I quickly realized I was standing in. The liquid was all over the leash, and when I looked at Toby, I saw that it covered his paws and dripped off the prize in his mouth.
“What the—” “F*ck” caught in my throat as I looked at the dark, thick, red fluid. I turned my head ever so slowly and looked at where Toby had found that black mass of wet hair. A hand—gray, limp, and lifeless—lay inches from my left foot.
Blood rushed in my ears. The hand was attached to a wrist that disappeared into a blue tracksuit jacket. Turning my head just the slightest bit more, I saw what had once been a face but was now a gaping red hole.
The top of the man’s head had survived with its few pathetic strands of black hair. But his eyes, nose, mouth, chin—they were all gone. In their place was a mass of bloody pulp. The head lay in a pool of dark, clotted blood; I stood in that puddle and screamed.
The Dispatched Units
The only other blood and gore I’d seen in real life was on the road. Animals, disemboweled, splayed on the road, their blood ground into the pavement by a thousand tons of cars driving through it. Flies hovering above the carrion, buzzing away when a car came too close, but always resettling and continuing their work, turning the corpse into a nursery for their young.
When I first got my license, I would drive around because it was the only thing to do. I would smoke cigarettes and blast loud, angry music. Those carcasses on the side of the road in all states of decomposition, some fresh and red, others brown and sunken, would make my insides quiver.
As I sat there, with Toby at my feet, waiting for the police, all I could think about was this one decapitated cat whose insides were spread across the whole road, and there was nothing I could do but run over his f*cking intestines. The doorman from the nearest building who’d responded to my screaming was chattering at me. There was blood on my hand, drying in the creases of my palm. And I just kept thinking about that poor cat.
The sound of clopping hooves preceded two mounted police officers rounding the corner. Toby shifted nervously and the doorman waved them over, desperately pointing to the alley. They stopped in front of us. Squinting against the sun, I looked up at the one closer to me. The light bounced off his helmet and badge.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” he said back and removed his sunglasses. His eyes looked like the ocean in those ads on the subway for tropical vacations. His partner was talking to the doorman, who was shaking his head in a grotesque imitation of Toby’s show with the mess of black hair. It turned out to be a toupee. I felt bile rise up in my throat. “I'm Officer O’Conner and that’s my partner, Officer Doyle. Can you tell me what the problem is?” he asked.
“There’s a dead body in the alley,” I said, nodding toward the body. As Officer O’Conner climbed off his horse, the smell of leather wafted toward me. He entered the alley.
Officer Doyle dismounted and came over to where I stood. He asked me if I was alright. Doyle looked to be about 30. He had dark brown eyes and a nose that angled left. I nodded.
Officer O’Conner motioned from the mouth of the alley, and Doyle headed over to him. I examined the cracked brown tracks on my thigh. I thought about the dripping hair in Toby’s mouth. The memory of that thing touching my leg as I pulled Toby out of the alley and back to the sanity of the street lurched up at me.
Sirens wailed and two patrol cars pulled up next to the horses. Officer Doyle explained that he would need a statement and to collect some evidence from me. I nodded. He went away and came back with a woman who was holding a camera and yelling at a young guy with glasses and adolescent acne to hurry up. She started snapping pictures of me and pulled my hands toward her. “Stay still,” she commanded. Her assistant, his hands in tight latex gloves, scraped some of the dried blood from my legs into a plastic bag. Then the woman took Toby’s leash from me.
“Hey,” I said, but she ignored me. Her assistant smiled apologetically. His bone-white hands started on Toby’s fur, trying to get the congealed blood into a bag while his boss’s camera clicked away. He took off Toby’s leash and collar. Doyle brought him a piece of rope, and they tied it around Toby’s neck.
“OK, we’re done here.” The woman strode away, and her assistant hurried after her.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Doyle said as I watched the photographer turn into the ally. Doyle pointed toward the end of the block. The light from a camera flash shot out of the alley as Doyle lead me away. I gripped the rope attached to Toby. The officer showed me around the corner and into the lobby of an apartment building.
Doyle spoke to a woman behind a large marble block that served as the front desk of the building. She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were a deep, warm brown and she’d painted her lashes thick with mascara. She clucked a couple of times and then took my arm. I handed Doyle Toby’s rope and followed the woman into a small bathroom.
She turned on the tap. “Come on dear,” she said, and gently pulled my hands toward the sink. The water spiraling down the drain turned from pink to clear. The woman wet a paper towel with warm water and handed it to me. I turned to my reflection.
I hardly recognized myself. Who was that thin, haggard woman in the mirror? When did I become this person? Did I ever brush my hair? Tears started down my cheeks, and I watched them as if the mirror was a TV screen—a big reflection of someone else’s fantasy.
“Sweetheart?” it was Eyelashes looking at me with dilated pupils. This was the story she was going to tell for the rest of her life. I was her traumatic tale. The sweet blond who found a dead body and went comatose in the bathroom while under my care.
I cleaned my face, rubbing my cheeks and then digging into my eye sockets. I cleaned the blood off my legs. My reflection now showed a face scrubbed clean, hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and gray eyes rimmed with red.
Officer Doyle waited for me on a paisley-patterned couch, Toby sitting next to him, his face and paws washed. I sat down with them.
“Are you feeling OK?” Officer Doyle asked.
“I think so.” I leaned back for a moment and closed my eyes, but the gaping hole that had been a face was waiting for me behind my eyelids. I snapped my head back up.
“I spoke with the doorman briefly, and he said that your dog found the body?”
“No,” I said. “He is not my dog.”
“So how did you end up in the alley?”
I stared at him for a moment. “Oh, yes, Toby ran down there, but no, he is not my dog. He is a client’s.”
“You’re a dog-walker?” Doyle asked, a small smile crossing his lips.
“Yes.”
“If you give me his owner’s contact information, I’ll be happy to explain about the leash.”
“OK.” I found the Maxims’ phone number in my purse and gave it to Doyle.
He looked down at the information for a moment. He pressed his lips together into a tight line. Then he looked up at me, smiled, and said: “I just need to ask you a couple of questions— nothing big, just some basic stuff. It shouldn’t take long. Do you feel up to it?”
“OK.”
“What’s your name?”
“Joy Humbolt.”
“Occupation: dog-walker.” He wrote it down as he said it. He got my address and all my contact information. “Now, please tell me in your own words what happened—how you came upon the victim?”
I told him about my falling down and Toby running into the alley. I told him how I thought he was killing a rat down there and how I had called to him but he hadn’t come. I told him about how I had ventured down the alley, and then I started to get choked up.
“Take your time.”
I started sobbing. Officer Doyle put a hand on my shoulder, and I grabbed on to him as if he were a floatation device, and I was in the middle of a big motherf*cking storm. He sat there, letting me hold onto him without saying a word or moving a muscle.
“I’m sorry,” I said, when I realized, quite suddenly, what an ass I was being. I backed away from him and lowered my eyes. He coughed something out about it being okay and reaching into one of his uniform’s many pockets pulled out a tissue. I used it to wipe my eyes and face.
“Thanks,” I said weakly.
“I know this is hard, but if you could just finish telling me what happened, I can let you go home.”
I took a deep breath. “When I realized that there was a dead body, I started screaming.” Doyle nodded. I sniffled. “Um, the doorman came, and when he saw the body, he threw up. I realized I had to get out of there. Toby fought me, but I managed to pull him out of the alley. He dropped the thing I thought was a rat, and it brushed against my legs.” I looked down at my legs. They were clean.
“Go on.”
“When he dropped it, that’s when I saw it was a toupee.” I looked up at Doyle. He nodded for me to keep going. “So I dragged Toby to the lobby where the doorman worked and used his phone to call the police. And then I went outside and waited for you guys to show up.”
“OK,” Doyle said. “I just want to double-check a couple of things.” I nodded. “So you didn’t touch anything in the alley besides the toupee touching your leg?”
“I might have put my hand on the Dumpster; I’m not sure. But the doorman—I know he touched the wall when he was throwing up. That’s all I can think of."
“OK, and do you know if Toby touched anything besides the toupee?”
“I didn't see him.”
“The detective in charge of the investigation may want to contact you again. Also, I’m going to give you my card in case you think of anything else.” I put his business card in my pocket.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as he stood to leave.
“Sure.”
“You ever see anything like that before?”
He nodded sadly and then gave me a crooked smile.
“But what kind of person would do that?”
“I don't know.”
“But doesn’t it seem awfully hateful to blow someone’s—" I stopped to push a lump back down my throat, “—to just wipe away someone’s face like that?”
“I would just try not to think about this anymore. Go home, take a nice hot bath, and forget about it.” I nodded absently. “Work’s another good way to forget.”
“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting anything about this day anytime soon.”
“It will probably stay with you for a while, but you’ll figure out a way to cope. Everyone does.”
He smiled at me. “You want me to walk you back to his place?” He pointed at Toby.
“I’ll be fine. Thanks, though. I appreciate you being so nice.” I picked myself up off the couch and was surprised to see how strong I actually felt. We started to leave the lobby together when O’Conner came in.
“Doyle, Detective Mulberry is here.” O’Conner said the name Mulberry as if it were a dirty word.
Doyle turned back to me. “Ms. Humbolt, thank you for your help. I hope you feel better real soon."
“I already do, thank you.”
Home Sweet Home
Blue greeted me at my door and danced around as I put down my bag and flipped off my shoes. I bent down and gave him a good petting, ruffling him behind the ears and scratching his chest. Then I noticed the feathers. There were a couple at my feet, but as my eyes moved down the hall, the number increased. I walked tentatively toward my living room, feathers swirling around my ankles. Blue’s claws clicked on the floor as he followed.
Light from the street illuminated the front room. My red mohair down-cushion couch was leaking. One of the seat cushions was ripped open, and feathers spread onto my coffee table, across the floor to the tangled nest of wires below my TV, and over to where I stood. “Destroyed the couch, huh, boy?” I asked. Blue gave no response. “Well, it was a shitty couch, anyway.”
I fed Blue his dinner, bypassing my blinking message machine, and took him out for a walk. We wandered down side streets, avoiding people and bright lights. My exhaustion turned into nervous energy, and soon I was craving a drink.
When we got back to my apartment, the door was open. Blue growled and raised his hackles. I felt the same. Marcus poked his head out. Blue let loose a barrage of barks and growls. I just stared.
“Jesus, Joy, can’t you do something about that thing?” Marcus yelled over Blue.
“F*ck you,” I responded, brushing past him into my apartment and dragging Blue with me.
“Did you get robbed, or did that darling creature destroy my couch?” Marcus asked.
“It was my couch, remember? You gave it to me. Quiet now, Blue. Would you just leave?” Blue’s barking lowered to a deep growl.
“Have a drink with me. I want to talk.”
“About your couch?” It sounded dumb the minute it came out of my mouth.
“Come on, one drink.” He smiled, and I had a flash of him naked and on top of me. “Please.” Marcus was tall, hard-bodied, and bad for me. He smiled with a twinkle in his eyes— the same twinkle that mothers tell their children was in their dad’s eyes. Marcus took a step toward me, and I wanted to wrap myself in his arms. I took a step back. We’d broken up for good reasons. Marcus didn’t trust me. He thought I was cheating on him, which made me think he was cheating on me. A year and we couldn’t trust each other. A year of his accusing me of being someone I wasn’t. He took another step and I could smell him. Marcus smelled good. He might be a jealous, paranoid jerk, but he smelled damn good.
“Fine, one drink.”