by Meg Rosoff
No one was entirely certain what transpired next, but everyone agreed that Ed made a threatening kind of noise in his throat and stepped forward with his full weight on to Sissy’s front paw. Sissy screamed with outrage and lunged at the offending leg, jaws open, eyes bright. When her teeth came together, Ed howled, Wes stepped in to prevent a disaster that may or may not have already happened, Jonathan shouted, ‘No!’, Max grabbed his friend by the collar and his friend’s dog by hers, Dante ran interference with the management team, and all four retreated as quickly as possible from the scene of the possibly unrealized crime.
‘YOU ARE SO FUCKING FIRED!’ Eduardo shrieked as Jonathan shoved open the huge door to freedom, rounded the landing and began descending the stairs at speed.
‘TAKE THAT VICIOUS ANIMAL AND GET OUT!’
‘Just keep moving,’ Max hissed as they flew downwards, propelled by shock and an overwhelming desire to put space between themselves and Ed.
‘She didn’t even bite him,’ Jonathan panted. ‘I was watching. She should have but she didn’t. She barely nicked his jeans.’
Max got man and dogs out of the building and away from the front entrance, certain that Ed was right now forming a makeshift tourniquet out of someone’s designer briefs and any second would be hobbling after them, foaming at the mouth and waving a subpoena while trying to inflict dog-shaped bite wounds on his own lower leg.
They made it to the corner and stopped, breathing hard. Max released Sissy’s collar and gazed at the sweet-faced, soft-eyed dog with frank admiration.
‘Well done, Sissy, you dark horse. That was one of the finest unrealized dog attacks I have ever had the privilege to witness.’ He scruffled her fur and grinned. ‘You, my pretty, peace-loving little spaniel, are an exceedingly brave and intrepid animal.’
She swiped at his face with her tongue.
I’m still fired, Jonathan thought. Even if I don’t end up in jail for possession of a dangerous dog, even if Ed’s testimony doesn’t cause Sissy to be taken off to a police cell and summarily executed, even if the very worst that happened today is that my dog almost but not quite assaulted my boss and I’ve been fired without so much as a consultation with the company lawyer or a penny of compensation – even if all that, well, what can I do now? How will I live?
‘Go home,’ Max was saying. ‘Take the dogs and lie low. I’ll have a word with Wes. He loves Sissy. Everyone does. They can’t possibly prosecute; she’s a cocker spaniel, for fuck’s sake. You couldn’t pay to run this story in the Post. “Advertising Boss Nearly Savaged by Adorable Spaniel”? And if she had bit him and he had contracted rabies or bled to death, the city would throw a goddamned ticker-tape parade. So go on, get out of here. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later.’ He stuck out his arm and a cab pulled in beside them. Max opened the door and addressed the driver. ‘East Fifth Street, please, and for God’s sake drive carefully: this unassuming little creature here just saved my best friend’s life.’
The cabbie waved them in. ‘Long as neither of ’em throws up.’
Max closed the door firmly behind them and Jonathan and the dogs set off for home.
33
‘You’re still fired but they’re not pressing charges, mainly because there are no charges to press. Stepping on a dog who then almost but doesn’t quite bite you is not covered under any New York City by-law.’ Max sounded positively cheerful. ‘Anyway, Ed’s pretending the whole thing didn’t happen and if anyone asks, he calls your disappearance a creative department reshuffle. Scary thing is he believes it. The guy’s capacity for self-delusion is awe-inspiring.’
And then later he called again. ‘It’s hell here without you, Jay,’ he said. ‘But you should see the freelancer they’ve hired to replace you. She is very much your superior, hot-wise. No offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘So what now, buddy? You can’t just rest on your laurels.’
‘What laurels?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I guess I’ll get another job.’
‘You got any thoughts?’
‘Not really. I like comics.’
‘Who doesn’t? Missing you already,’ said Max, and hung up.
Jonathan surveyed his résumé. It contained one job, one nervous breakdown, one abandonment at the altar. He took his beautiful hand-built road bike down to the cycle shop in the East Village and they resold it three hours later for only slightly less than he’d paid for it. If it hadn’t felt like a relic from a past life, he’d have felt sadder parting with it. A bit of extra money was good, but wouldn’t stop the general haemorrhaging of funds that constituted life in NY. In addition, something was nagging at him. He checked the date. It was the seventeenth of the month and he hadn’t yet received his rent bill. Jonathan looked at Dante.
‘Any snacking on bills I should know about?’
Dante didn’t even deign to turn away from the window, where a pigeon was tightrope walking along a telephone wire.
‘No? Nothing?’ Hmm, he thought. In past months, Frank the landlord had been admirably prompt with his rent demands. Jonathan dug through the paperwork associated with the apartment, and realized that there was, in fact, no paperwork.
Flipping through the folder marked ‘Rent’, he found ten lined pages of rent demands, one for each month he’d lived here, each in red pen, each with a date and the sum of money required along with the bank details for payment and a swirly handwritten Thank you! at the bottom. Not one of the demands listed a phone number, last name, street or email address.
He’d just have to wait and hope the bill hadn’t gone astray. Jonathan didn’t like the thought of a final demand, particularly if it involved Frank showing up at his door in a bad mood, with brass knuckles and a heavily armed goon, wondering where his money was. Or worse yet, the original owner turning up all cranky while Jonathan was still in residence.
He began to sweat, very much less pleased with himself for scoring the amazing deal on an apartment. Was this his 24-hour notice? Would he be out on the street any minute now? Jobless, girlfriendless, homeless?
Injured, maimed, dead?
He remembered playing dominoes as a kid, spending hours setting black rectangles up in neat curving rows and then tapping the first with a kind of ecstasy of expectation. Funny how different it felt when it was every aspect of your life click-clacking over into ruin.
I’ll put it out of my mind for now, Jonathan thought, and concentrate on feeling free. Free of Comrade, free of selling crap to make Eduardo rich. Only twenty-four hours out of the business and he could hardly remember why he’d been the person doing what he did, or what it felt like. Except, of course, that it had paid the bills. No small consideration now that nothing else did.
He scanned the web for possible careers but soon gave up in a haze of indifference.
‘You guys want to go for a walk?’ The response was wonderfully predictable. Dogs always wanted to go for a walk. He clipped on their leashes, grabbed a jacket and locked the door behind him. At the entrance to his building, he pulled up his collar and scanned left and right for signs that Frank might be lurking around the corner with a baseball bat, but the coast looked clear. Head down, walking briskly, he and the dogs set off north for no particular reason except that they normally didn’t, turned west on Twenty-eighth Street and headed south again on Broadway, ending up at the Strand bookstore, where Dante and Sissy flopped down and dozed and Jonathan browsed, seduced by the odour of faraway sawmills and ink.
The next day followed a similar programme, and the next and the next. They walked and walked and looked in windows, buying nothing. This in itself felt radical, as if he’d opted out of the whole consumer mechanism that propelled New York City forward – an overpriced sandwich, a bar of artisan soap fashioned by someone who used to be a stockbroker, twelve new things from CVS. Each new day dawned with the possibility that this might be the day everything changed, the day an eddy would pull him in a direction so compelling that everything – wo
rk, life, love – would miraculously resolve.
Jonathan waited, entirely poised for such an eddy. He scanned the streets, hoping moment by moment for a sign.
None came. No job, no love and, back at home, no demand for rent.
‘You gotta give it more than a couple of weeks,’ Max told him. ‘You don’t just put in your order. A bucket of love, please, with a side of meaningful employment? What’s your rush, anyway? You’re young. The journey is the destination. Why not try some meaningless sex?’
Jonathan didn’t feel like meaningless sex. His life was meaningless enough already.
‘Hey, Max, what do you think about this whole rent thing?’
Max shook his head. ‘You can’t pay if you don’t know who to pay. I’d sit tight on that one, pal, and pray it sticks.’
Financially it was a windfall, but Jonathan couldn’t relax. Any minute his landlord might turn up with a .45 handgun and tell him he had two seconds to live. He began sleeping badly, dreaming of Frank standing over him, shaking his shoulder and shouting, ‘Dogs?! You got animals living in my place?’
A ringing phone woke him. He dragged himself out of a deep sleep to answer it. Frank?
‘Jonathan?’ It was Julie. ‘I need to pick up the rest of my things. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I do mind.’
‘I can come when you’re not home if that’s better.’
He wanted to shout, ‘Get new stuff,’ and slam down the phone. He wanted to shout, ‘I’ve burned everything you owned anyway.’ And slam down the phone. He wanted just to slam down the phone without saying a word, or maybe buy a 120-decibel whistle he could blow down the receiver and shatter her eardrums if she tried to call back. He was tempted to call her up at all hours of the day and night, slamming down the phone without saying a word, just to annoy and unnerve her. Or have her kidnapped and dumped in a tank full of hungry starfish, Bond-style.
But he didn’t. Because he figured if he could manage twenty minutes of just-about politeness, he might never have to see her again. ‘Yeah, come over. I can’t wait to see you.’ He hoped his sarcasm was broad enough to sting. Julie had a way of not noticing sarcasm.
When she arrived at his apartment later that afternoon he was unprepared for the effect her presence had on him. She looked radiant, and her general air of niceness – as if to an old relative or work colleague – enraged him.
‘It was all pretty funny in the end,’ she said. ‘The wedding pulled in six hundred thousand live viewers and we’ve had more than twelve million online hits since. They’ve made me head of sales with a big raise and we’re developing a reality-TV series – Wacky Weddings. There’s a lot of interest out there.’
Jonathan was finding it more difficult than he expected to follow his plan, which began by ignoring everything she said. ‘So it all turned out great in the end. That is so good to hear.’
‘You can talk again,’ she said.
‘I think my illness might have been an allergy,’ he said. ‘To you.’
He asked about the Jonathan file, curious (now that it no longer mattered) as to what it held. She told him she’d erased it.
‘Of course,’ he said bitterly. ‘You have a Mark file now.’
Julie looked at him pityingly and crouched down beside Dante. ‘Your girlfriend misses you,’ she whispered in his ear. And then, to Jonathan, ‘They were very close.’
Jonathan goggled at her. ‘How tragic. Maybe I should arrange play dates with Mark’s dog?’
‘You couldn’t, even if you wanted to. His ex won’t let him see her any more.’ She patted Dante’s head. ‘Not even on weekends. It’s not fair on poor Mark. Or Wilma.’
So, poor Mark, the girlfriend stealer, was now the world’s . . . Wilma?
Dante swung away from Julie and fixed Jonathan with the sort of gaze that Jeeves might have used to alert Bertie Wooster to an urgent turn of events.
The world juddered to a halt. Jonathan froze, mid-thought.
In the stillness, his heart flapped like a tarpaulin in a gale. Could there be two dogs in the neighbourhood – in the world – named Wilma?
His gaze slid from Dante to Julie and back again. Time crept forward, agonizingly. Dante continued to stare directly into his master’s eyes.
Jonathan turned to Julie, slow as glass melting. ‘M a r k’s d o g i s c a l l e d W i l m a ?’ It took him the better part of a century to speak the words.
‘She’s not exactly his dog now that the horrible ex has sole custody. People can be so cruel. He’s thinking of taking her to court.’
Think think think! Jonathan’s brain stuttered to life. ‘Is his ex-girlfriend by any chance a vet?’
Julie faced him, aghast. ‘You’re stalking them? That is so insane.’
Jonathan’s heart leaped out of his body and ran fourteen laps around the apartment. His eyes flew out of their sockets on springs. His hair stood up on end. His ears sprang off his head on bungees and bounced back on again.
Julie backed away. ‘I’ll get my things’
Jonathan turned to Dante, who had not averted his gaze. Now he cocked his head ever so slightly. Oh my God, Jonathan thought. The whole romance between Julie and Mark – it was all planned so that . . .
Dante, Dante, Dante, he whispered. You wonderful wonderful creature.
Julie called from the bedroom, half under the bed. ‘Do you know where my sheepskin slippers are?’
‘Try the incinerator,’ he said.
She emerged with a bag full of stuff. ‘Well, I’ll be going now. Poor Mark is on his own. The break-up has been very hard on him.’
Not nearly as hard as it could be, Jonathan thought. Not remotely as hard as it would be if I arranged to hire an entire gang of pirate thugs who’d gouge out Poor Mark’s eyes, beat him with chains, bugger him senseless, break all his bones and then shave his belly with a rusty razor. Earl-eye in the morning.
They stood in silence for a moment as she glanced around the apartment one last time. ‘I’m sorry about our wedding, Jonathan,’ she said at last.
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I never wanted a funeral anyway.’
Her features shifted instantly to triumph. ‘There, look, you’ve said it again. Funeral!’
‘I know,’ he said, and shut the door in her face. ‘It’s what I meant all along.’
34
He had to see her. He called but Iris announced that Dr Clare was not available; could she take a message? Jonathan said no, waited five minutes, called back with his best creaky-old-Englishman voice and asked for Dr Clare’s cell number.
‘It’s her old paterfamilias, telephoning uh, from, Crumpet-upon-Avon to wish her a jolly happy birthday,’ he rasped.
There was a silence on the end of the line. ‘Her birthday was months ago,’ said Iris.
‘Of course it was,’ croaked Jonathan, the elderly Englishman. ‘Exactly why I need to speak to her now. I feel dreadful having missed it.’
Another pause. ‘I’m sorry but our policy doesn’t allow us to reveal the personal details of staff. I’ll tell her you called and have her call you back.’
‘What about her home address? I’ve baked a . . .’
Iris hung up.
He called back in his normal voice to make an appointment.
‘Hello, Jonathan,’ Iris said. ‘Is it Dante? Life-threatening as usual?’
‘Yes,’ he said, without elaborating.
Iris sounded unmoved. ‘How’s five-thirty tonight? It’s our only appointment.’
He took it.
The day contained five hundred hours. Jonathan arrived at the vet’s early, having showered twice, drunk six cups of coffee and taken the dogs for four long walks. At 5:29 he demanded to know why they were running late. At 5:45 he was told it would be another twenty minutes. At six, a young Australian named Dr Mick Barnes stuck his head out and asked Jonathan to bring the dogs through.
Jonathan stared ahead, stonily. ‘I’m waiting for Dr Clare.’
‘Never mind
, mate.’ Mick Barnes grinned, entirely undaunted. ‘Dr Clare’s off this week. Not back till Monday. But I’ve loads of experience with dogs . . . so why don’t you just come on in.’
‘You don’t understand.’ He felt desperate now. ‘I need to see Dr Clare. She’s the only vet we’ve ever seen. Dante is highly phobic of vets. He becomes extremely agitated.’
The Australian vet, Iris the receptionist and Jonathan all stared at Dante, who lay at Jonathan’s feet. In the silence that followed, the sheepdog rolled over on to one side and began to snore softly. Sissy sighed, half-closed her eyes and wafted her tail gently from side to side.
‘Come on, dogs,’ Jonathan said, making for the exit. ‘It’s nothing personal but there are huge issues at stake here.’
They left.
He had to see her. But what would he say? Guess what? I dream about you with disturbing regularity, our dogs are actually friends, the woman who stole your boyfriend is my ex-girlfriend, which makes you single, so will you please please please go out with me?
It sounded creepy. Beyond creepy. Stalkerish and creepy. Desperate, stalkerish and creepy. Desperate, stalkerish, creepy and grandiose.
The same applied to waiting for her outside her place of work for when she arrived on Monday morning. Or setting up an ambush at lunchtime. All creepy.
And what if she wasn’t single at all? What if she’d ditched poor Mark for another man and he’d gone for Julie on the rebound?
‘Oh, please be single,’ he said out loud at the deli. ‘Please fall in love with me.’
The young man making his coffee turned around, expressionless. ‘Dollar for extras.’
What if she didn’t like him? What if she refused to go out for a drink with him? What if, after all Dante’s subtle machinations (he got it now, he got it!), she was the wrong woman? What if he didn’t have the courage to tell her how he felt? What if he blurted it out all at once and she recoiled in horror?
This was one of the reasons he’d wanted to marry Julie, to get this horrible phase of life over with. Maybe (looking back) some people felt nostalgia for the good old days of trying to figure out if someone might actually be in love with you. Maybe if you were Johnny Depp or Frank Sinatra or Mick Jagger you didn’t get paralytically nervous every time you considered asking a girl to sleep with you. Maybe some people considered the crippling anxiety part of the fun.