Dog Sitters

by Rozsa Gaston

  "What is it?" he asked.

  Hint was curious, too.

  "It's a secret." She quickly stuffed the black object into the goody bag her mother held out to her. "I got it at the Halloween Party at school last year. Don't look until you get home." She giggled. "It's something to make you look handsome with your black eye."

  "You don't think I look handsome enough like this, Maggie May?" Jack feigned indignation, pointing to his bruised eye.

  "You look like you got beat up. What happened, anyway? Tell me." She bounced up and down on the bottom step of the staircase.

  "I'll tell you all about it next time we see each other. Right now, I've got to get Hint home."

  Hint reached to take the two goody bags Bibi held out to them. One for Jack, one for herself. She was curious about the black object too, but she would respect the wishes of the adorable girl in front of her.

  "How's it going with the dog hunt?" Bibi whispered to Hint as she ushered them to the front door.

  "Not so great. We're running out of ideas."

  "When are the owners back?"

  "Tomorrow." Hint noticed Marguerite listening intently.

  "What have you done already?" the little girl asked, suddenly all grown up.

  "We've looked all over their neighborhood," Jack cut in. "In Fox Meadow Park and downtown Scarsdale. We grilled a steak in Hint's backyard and wore our sweaty tee shirts, hoping to attract him to our smell."

  "That was a good idea," Marguerite said.

  "But it didn't work," Jack pointed out.

  "Because you didn't do it in the right place," the little girl replied.

  "What do you mean?" Hint asked.

  "I mean you should have grilled the steaks and worn the smelly shirts in the dog's backyard, not yours."

  "But we lost him in my neighborhood in Bronxville," Hint said.

  "He'll try to go home," Marguerite explained. "You should hang out in the backyard of his home making yummy smells, not at your place. If he likes you a lot, he won't be scared to come out of the bushes when he smells the steak."

  "Sweetie, you're a genius." Jack gave his niece a look of admiration. "That's just what we'll do."

  "Do it tomorrow, before they get back."

  "Thank you, Maggie May. You're no Peanut Brain, you know."

  "I know, Uncle Jack. Now go home and try on the secret surprise I put in your goody bag."

  "Bye, Sweetie Pie."

  "Bye, Blackie Eye. Bye, Hint."

  ****

  In the car, Hint turned to Jack. "Do you think she's got a point? I mean, about grilling steaks in Percy's own backyard?"

  "I do. She's the smartest seven-year-old I know."

  "What did she give you?" She reached for the bag in his lap.

  "Uh-uh. Hands off. She said not to look until I get home."

  Hint laughed. "You're superstitious?"

  "Not really. But now that we're in our final twenty-four hours of looking for Percy, I'm not taking any chances. If Marguerite's throwing us some luck, I'm following every bit of advice she gives us, word for word."

  "Your niece is magical."

  "She's not the only one."

  Hint warmed at Jack's compliment. Refreshed by the atmosphere Marguerite had created around them, with her ingenuous remarks, her secret surprise for Jack, and most of all, her adorable, unguarded self, Hint thought of her as a genuine pixie fairy.

  They rode the rest of the way back to Bronxville in silence. Hint sensed an unspoken question emanating from Jack in her direction. But there was nothing she could do about it. Gathering her focus around her upcoming meeting, she moved into a world far away from him, as well as Percy. Only Marguerite stayed in her thoughts. The little girl had touched her heart.

  The car pulled up outside her apartment building. She moved to jump out, but Jack's hand suddenly shot around behind her and grabbed her shoulder, turning her toward him.

  "Hey," he whispered.

  "Hey," she whispered back.

  "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, okay?"

  "Don't worry. I won't. I'll call you from the train on my way back to let you know what time I get in to Bronxville."

  "Okay." His voice was husky. He looked as if he wanted to kiss her.

  But she pulled away. A new idea was beginning to percolate, for which she needed a few minutes to prepare. She jumped out of the car.

  "See you at the station," Jack yelled out his rolled down window.

  Hint quickly went inside. An inspiration for a new drawing had begun to take hold of her. She wouldn't have time to do it before leaving. But the train ride into the city took thirty minutes. She'd sketched some of her best illustrations in less than twenty. She hurried into her home office, adding a blank sketchpad and some charcoal pencils to her bag.

  All the decisions she needed to make about what to wear went onto automatic pilot as the idea in her head began to take root and grow. Without a second thought, she put on a black-and-white print wrap dress and a pair of black and gold, open-toed shoes.

  She made it to the train station with ten minutes to spare. On the platform, she pulled out her sketchpad and began work on a new fairy character. Soon she added a second new character — a canine one.

  The train pulled into the station, and she got on almost as if in a trance. Her fairy began to take on features recently familiar to her. With a few strokes of her pencil, a young girl's face took shape. Her blonde pigtails and sweet, engaged smile made her look lit from within. The dog at her side was small and bearded, with huge, soulful brown eyes.

  Would sketching her characters into reality help her and Jack find Percy? Perhaps she'd picked up on some of the fairy dust Marguerite had tossed their way a few hours earlier. In their final twenty-four hours to find the dog, they needed every resource they could muster, including a dose of magic power. Little girls had it. Big people, not so much.

  Thirty minutes later, the train pulled into Grand Central Station and its occupants spilled out. There were laughing, well-dressed couples; one nervous-looking man who looked as if he were about to meet someone on a first date; and a group of young women in their twenties ready to hit the town.

  Hint's adrenaline raced with the excitement of the crowd. She sprang up the staircase of the lower level of Grand Central Station into the Great Hall. There the energy level increased, with tourists and out-of-towners all strolling toward their Saturday night destinations. Anticipation hung in the air.

  Exiting the station, she breathed in the fine, summer evening and walked west on 44th Street toward the West Side.

  Within ten minutes she was outside the Algonquin, the hotel that had hosted Dorothy Parker's renowned literary salons of the 1920s. She smiled, thinking what a great dress rehearsal her afternoon at the Stanhope had provided for the evening's meeting.

  Straightening her posture, she tossed back her hair and breezed through the revolving door. When she came out the other side into the hotel lobby, a vision of Audrey Hepburn danced in her mind's eye, directing her movements. She wove through the lobby, her head held high. Her neck felt at least two inches longer, willed to extension by sheer mental concentration. She would knock the socks off Derek Simpson. And that would be before he'd seen any of her illustrations.

  ****

  After dropping off Hint, Jack drove home dejectedly. Leftover wounds from his days with Annabel Sanford were itching, threatening to re-open. She'd bounced him around like a yo-yo. There had been all sorts of business meetings with businessmen, some of whom had turned into boyfriends the moment she'd sniffed out sizeable bank accounts. He'd been left behind in the dust more than once, only to be picked up and brushed off after Annabel's latest monkey business had ended badly, and she'd come sniveling back to him. He wasn't playing that game again. He wanted to be a hero, not a chump. But his thoughts were less than heroic at the moment, imagining Hint with some English twit in a hotel. At least she wasn't meeting him in his hotel room.

  Then he thought about it. What if
she got to the hotel lounge and the jerk wasn't there? She would call up to his room, and he might say he was expecting an important call. Could she come up while he waited for it? She would say no, and he would say what a shame, because he couldn't get away at the moment, perhaps they could meet another time. It would be Hint's last chance to win business from him before he left town. Who knew what she would do? Jack knew the ploys of his own sex all too well. If there was anything he could do to protect her from being taken advantage of, he would.

  At a red light, he glanced down to investigate the contents of Marguerite's goody bag. He pulled out the black cloth object she'd mentioned. An elastic string was attached. Holding it up, he laughed out loud. Marguerite had given him an eye patch, probably left over from a Halloween pirate's outfit.

  The light changed, and he accelerated. There was something about his niece that invariably lifted his spirits. Was that what children did to adults? Or was it just Marguerite? He loved her in a trouble-free, lighthearted way. Was it possible to love an adult woman the same way?

  Thoughts of Derek Simpson crossed his mind and blackened his mood again. He was being unreasonable and unfair. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, he imagined the Englishman's head between his hands. He twisted it viciously.

  By the time he got home, his mind was made up. He ripped off his shirt, dropping it on the hallway floor on his way to the bedroom. Rummaging in the depths of his closet, he pulled out a black jacket and a black-combed cotton shirt, both Italian. He rarely wore either of them, but the occasion warranted it. He was going into Manhattan.

  Showered, shaved, and dressed in under twenty minutes, he tried on the eye patch. The effect was startling, but dashing. If he wore it with confidence, it would be perfect for what he had in mind.

  With five minutes to spare, he sat down at his computer, fed a sheet of card stock paper into his printer, typed a few lines, then hit the print button. When the sheet came out, he used a paper cutter to create eight homemade business cards, which he stuffed in his jacket pocket.

  The drive back to Bronxville passed quickly. He couldn't take the train from Pleasantville because he had told Hint he would pick her up at the Bronxville train station. Checking the schedule, he saw the next Manhattan-bound train would come at half past six. He guessed Hint had taken an earlier train, to make her seven o'clock appointment. But he wasn't taking any chances. When the train pulled into the station he slipped into the end car and held an unfolded newspaper up to his face, checking out the other occupants of the car. No Hint, only a large crowd of Manhattan-bound Saturday evening revelers. Sighing with relief, his body relaxed for the first time in hours. He was a man with a plan, not a chump who'd been dumped. Patting the eye patch in his right jacket pocket, he wondered how the rest of the evening would unfold if Hint was true to her word and spent it with him, as planned.

  Briefly, he thought of Percy. He mentally apologized to the schnoodle, explaining that he was a very close number two priority. Male to male, he knew the dog would understand. Tonight was a big night, and he would make his best efforts to ensure nothing stood in his way, not even lost dogs and Englishmen.

  Just a business contact, right? He gritted his teeth. He'd heard that line before.

  Chapter Twelve

  At Grand Central station, Jack leapt off the train and quickly wove through the crowds toward the Vanderbilt Avenue exit on the west side of the station. Coming into Manhattan on a weekend evening felt far different than on a weekday. People seemed happy and excited, on their way to social events instead of dreary offices. He would invite Hint into the city some Saturday evening, that was, if they were still seeing each other after the events of the weekend transpired.

  Surging with adrenaline, he arrived at the Algonquin in fewer than ten minutes. Slipping into an alleyway to the side of the hotel, he took out the eye patch and carefully pulled the strap over his head so the patch covered his left eye with its shiner. The effect would either be brilliant or ridiculous. It all depended on how he wore it.

  He'd been turned away from plenty of Manhattan dance clubs, despite trying to talk bouncers into letting him and his friends in. But there had been others he'd gained entrance to. It hadn't been all about slipping the right gatekeeper a bill, either. When he'd been by himself, he'd imagined he had an attractive woman on his arm. Annabel Sanford or the thought of her had worked like a charm on those occasions.

  His brow furrowed. No more queen of diamonds for him. He wanted a queen of hearts. Not everyone's heart, just his. And definitely not Derek Simpson's heart. The trick was to make the Englishman fall in love with her work, not her.

  He strode confidently through the hotel's revolving door entrance. A woman in the lobby glanced at him, taking in the eye patch then quickly looked away. Interest had sparked in her gaze. He guessed she was wondering if he was a celebrity. Straightening his back, he arched his neck and jutted his jaw out. If he was going to wear an eye patch, he might as well wear it well.

  Another woman gave him a discreet once-over while the man accompanying her chatted with the reservation clerk. Jack warmed under the beam of her attention. Gaining confidence, he turned to scope out the lobby lounge.

  "A table, sir?" a young, blonde hostess approached him. Her eyes passed lightly over the eye patch, a hint of a blush springing to her cheeks. Was there something about an eye patch that exuded sex appeal? Whatever it was, it was working.

  "No. Thank you. I'm just looking for someone."

  "I see. A lady alone, perhaps?"

  "No. A woman and a man. They were supposed to be here at seven."

  "Oh. Perhaps the table in the corner?" The hostess discreetly motioned to a couple sitting side by side, deep in conversation and clearly in love or something close.

  "No. Not a couple. Just a man and a woman."

  He scanned the room. Hint was nowhere to be found. His blood began to boil. Had they already retired to the Englishman's hotel room? Why was he being so ridiculously unreasonable?

  "Perhaps your party is at that table near the window?" the hostess asked. She was pretty, in a carefully made up sort of way. Hint's fresh, natural face popped into his mind. Where was she?

  Glancing toward the window, he spied an ancient couple sitting across from each other. They looked as bored as they did rich. The woman applied lipstick from a container she held up in front of her face, peering into a mirror attached to it.

  "No, that's not them," he told the hostess. "Anywhere else I could look?"

  "Well, there's the Round Table in back. But that's reserved." The hostess referred to the actual table where Dorothy Parker had given her weekly literary salons in the 1920s. Many a bon mot had been quipped around the famous oak table of the Algonquin Hotel.

  "Maybe they're there. Could you check?" He gave her a cocky smile.

  Her blush was unmistakable this time.

  "Yes. Of course. I'll be right back." She turned and hurried to the back of the lounge. Instead of waiting, he followed her. He wanted to see the spot where Dorothy Parker had bantered with Alexander Wolcott, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harpo Marx, and others. Maybe he could catch some inspiration from a glance at the illustrious Round Table.

  He caught more. As the hostess turned around and almost bumped into him, he stopped short. The broad back of a man in a navy blue pinstriped suit leaned over the table toward Hint. Animated and radiant, she gestured toward something on the table — her portfolio, perhaps.

  Jack's heart lurched to see the cherubic, curved contours of her mouth smile dazzlingly, not at him.

  "Is this who you were looking for?" the hostess asked.

  "Yes. Thank you."

  She turned as if to announce him, but he gently touched her shoulder to stop her.

  "I've got to make a call first," he said pressing a ten-dollar bill into her hand. "Do me a favor and don't mention to them that I'm here," he added in a low voice.

  "Oh. Certainly." She moved away, after a final admiring glance at the eye patch.
/>
  Jack melted to one side of the entryway to the Round Table Room. Hint hadn't noticed him. She appeared engrossed in her conversation with Derek Pinstripes. Jack admired her slim, shapely arm as she raised it to point out something on the sketch the man was holding. He was certain Derek Pinstripes was admiring it too, as well as her work.

  It was almost time to step in. He fingered the business cards in his pocket he had printed out an hour earlier. The moment Hint spotted him, he would make his move.

  "Your drawings are delightful. You have a sort of hidden magic in your characters." The Englishman studied a large drawing of a green and purple-robed fairy queen, nodding his head approvingly. "Do you have any drawings of children in your collection?"

  "I… Uh…" Hint hesitated. "I've begun work on a new character — a pixie fairy."

  "Let me see." Derek brushed Hint's arm as he turned to the rest of her collection.

  Jack wanted to rush in and beat the living daylights out of the man, but to do so would be out of line. His feelings were running away from him.

  "This is rough. I've only just begun work on it," Hint said.

  Jack held his breath as she tentatively held out a sketch to the Englishman. If she so much as touched any part of the guy, even his suit, Jack would explode.

  She didn't.

  He exhaled.

  "Your pixie fairy is almost as beautiful as you. What's her name?" the Englishman asked.

  "Marguerite. She's based on my boyfriend's niece. Sort of magical and adorable, combined."

  Her boyfriend? Jack swallowed hard. Nice. Very nice. Hint had just let Derek Simpson know she had a boyfriend. Even Jack hadn't known she had a boyfriend. Him. He wanted to crush her in his arms. Then crush the Englishman's arms.

  Suddenly Hint looked up. Her face froze at the sight of him.

  Jack put a finger to his lips and wildly shook his head.

  Her colleague turned around to see what had caught her attention.

  "Hint Daniels," Jack called as he sailed toward the Round Table. "What a surprise. I didn't know you frequented the Algonquin."