“A cheater,” Maravelle said when he’d left. “You should stay away from him.”
Shelby trusts Maravelle’s intuition, but hasn’t followed her advice. She’s under a spell and she can’t snap out of it. Shelby and Harper have sex in the locked lounge of the veterinary office on a fake leather couch. Shelby is sometimes catapulted backward in time to the hospital and all that sex she didn’t want. But this is different. This is love. All the same, she can’t imagine what Maravelle would say if she ever found out. Do you think you’re worthless? Is that all a man has to do to get into your pants? Give you one night? Maravelle would never sneak around like a woman who’s been hexed by some sort of dark magic. What will Shelby do next to win Harper? Perch outside his window? Beg for his love? Haunt him as if she were his personal ghost?
Harper lives on Eighty-Ninth Street, so Shelby asks the cabbie to drop her at Fifth and Seventy-Ninth, so she can walk behind the Metropolitan Museum. If they ever were to get married, she would like to have the ceremony in Central Park, so the dogs could be there. Fall would be nice, or spring. Actually, a winter wedding would be beautiful, a bower of snow, a perfect and cold blue sky. The dogs are excited to be in the park. This is not their usual walk. Shelby unhooks the General, who likes to walk ahead of the pack. Shelby respects him for that. She had been looking for a man who has some of the qualities the General has. She thought she’d found them in Harper Levy. But what does it mean when a man won’t leave his wife? Is he loyal or disloyal? Trustworthy or a lying manipulator? The General looks over his shoulder to make sure they’re behind him. Blinkie is so slow Shelby scoops him up to carry him. Everything smells like leaves and smoke. Light spins down through the leaves.
She has to get the timing right so she can bump into Harper when he walks his dogs. She hates women who do things like this. She hates the other woman, even in movies, but that’s what she’s become. Shelby heads to the park entrance at Ninetieth Street. She can see the white circle of the Guggenheim Museum. Her pulse is pounding. Here she is with her dogs, walking through the leaves, irresistible, perfect for him. What more can Harper want? However, despite the fact that he’s told her he takes this walk with his dogs faithfully every Sunday, he doesn’t appear at eight, or at eight fifteen, or even eight thirty. Shelby’s dogs mill around, and the General gazes watchfully at the steps to Fifth Avenue. If only he were a person and not a bulldog, Shelby could marry him and forget about Harper.
There are more people out now. It’s a beautiful day. Shelby knows she doesn’t belong on the Upper East Side. People here are well dressed and she’s not. Her hair is now long enough to clip up, and she looks younger than her age, like a dog walker or a personal assistant for one of these elegant East Side ladies passing by. The brownstones seem like castles; it’s as if she’s entered a fairyland, but she doesn’t know any of the secret passwords. Sick of waiting, Shelby crosses Fifth Avenue and heads down Eighty-Ninth Street. She knows Harper’s address. He hasn’t hidden much from her. Except for his wife. He says it’s too depressing. He’s only told Shelby that they met in college and fell into marriage the way people fall over their own feet.
Shelby stops in front of his building. Her dogs are confused, and thinking they may have arrived somewhere, they start up the steps, but Shelby pulls them back. Her heart is beating so fast she thinks she might be having a heart attack. She has it all: pain down her left arm, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea. Harper lives on the sixth floor. Maybe his is the window with the beige curtains, or the one with slatted shades. Shelby realizes she shouldn’t be standing outside the door, but before she can walk on, a pretty young woman with two large dogs comes through the door. The woman is Sarah Levy, Harper’s wife.