Dancing Dogs (2 page)

An hour later, it was done. Carolyn closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths. Gracie’s legs were stiff, her body cold and heavy, the plastic slippery as it made whispering, crinkling sounds. Gracie had always been so soft and warm, and Carolyn found it almost unbearable to touch her now, even through the bags. Gracie didn’t smell bad—at least not yet—but her smell was already different.

Carolyn laid the suitcase on the floor, opened it, and tried to wrestle the bundled dog inside. Gracie’s head slipped out of the wrapping, and her legs didn’t quite fit in the case. Carolyn closed her eyes and pushed the forelegs in toward the body.

She kept thinking she was hurting Gracie. She tried to be gentle.

God, she thought, I can’t do this. But she had no one to ask for help.

She grabbed Gracie’s legs again and bent them forward. The legs were unyielding, but finally they bent, and at last the dog was fully in the case. Carolyn zipped it, and then sat back, feeling paralyzed.

After a few moments, she stood up and struggled to stand the suitcase filled with Gracie’s dead weight upright. Then she pulled on her coat and rolled the bag out of the apartment, through the hallway, into the elevator, and out into the street.

It was raining steadily as Carolyn walked down the sidewalk, the wheels of the black bag clunking heavily along the concrete. She wondered if people could sense from the way the bag moved that there was something other than clothes in it, but nobody paid much attention.

When she got to the subway stairs, she paused. She hated the thought of banging Gracie down all those concrete steps, but there was no choice. The suitcase bumped down one stair after another, and then Carolyn rolled it through the handicapped door and down to the platform. Her arm hurt, but she held the suitcase close to her and rolled it onto the train when it clamored into the station.

Once on board, Carolyn stood by the door, clinging to a pole. She was, she noticed, the only person on the crowded car with a suitcase. As the train left the station, she clutched the bag’s handle protectively.

It was a few minutes later that she had noticed the big dog coming, the two officers behind it.

Carolyn had had only a few encounters with police officers in her life. She came from a family of law-abiding schoolteachers from Queens. One of the young officers seemed to sense her fear. She saw that his name was Sanchez.

Commuters backed away as she and the two officers, along with the whining German shepherd, moved out onto the platform. The officers were looking at her, curiously but not unsympathetically, and then their gazes shifted down at the bag.

“Look,” Carolyn said quietly, “I’ve got a dead dog in there. I’m on my way to the vet.”

“You’re going to see a veterinarian, with a suitcase with a dead dog in it?”

Officer Sanchez bent down and felt the side of the suitcase, then quickly recoiled.

“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to walk,” the other officer said. “Or call a car service. You can’t take an animal on the subway, dead or alive. Okay?”

She looked out and saw that she was only at the Bergen Street station. There were still three stops until Borough Hall, where Dr. Meyer’s office was. She blinked away tears. “It’s a really long way.”

Officer Sanchez shook his head. The other policeman rolled his eyes up at the ceiling, a now-I’ve-seen-everything look.

With a sigh, Carolyn began pulling the suitcase toward the stairs and up two flights to the exit. Officer Sanchez hurried to give her a hand, heaving the suitcase up the last dozen or so steps.

“Sorry about your dog,” he said, as she began the long walk down Court Street.

Carolyn pulled out her cell phone to call Carmen. “Dr. Meyer is leaving, but I’ll wait for you,” she said.

It was raining, a cold November drizzle made all the gloomier by the early darkness. The suitcase rolled easily, although Gracie kept shifting inside, and the bag kept tilting, especially when Carolyn had to negotiate the curbs at intersections. Gracie’s last walk, she thought.

Every now and then, to the confused looks of passersby, Carolyn found herself speaking to the suitcase. On their walks, Carolyn had always liked to speculate with Gracie about the wealth, character, fame, and employment of the people they passed. “Doctor,” she would say. Or “Wall Street.” Or “psycho.”

But now, Carolyn was tired and hungry. The cart vendor on the corner was closing up. She asked if she could still get a pretzel, and he nodded, but it was cold and stale. The rain was steady, nearly freezing. She usually shared her pretzels with Gracie, who loved to walk with a piece in her mouth, sometimes for blocks. Sometimes, she even waited to get home to eat it. Now, Carolyn tore the pretzel in two and threw one half in the trash, and began gnawing on the other.

“Hey,” she whispered to the suitcase. “Academic.”

A tall man with a tweed hat and goatee rushed past, a backpack bobbing from his shoulders, an oversized umbrella in his hand. “Maybe a therapist,” she added.

A young dark-skinned, athletic man in sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt jogged past them. “Derek Jeter. Not.” She was always seeing hot athletes and movie stars and pointing them out to Gracie. “Not,” she would always add. Except once, when Mike Judd had been walking by and stopped to
fuss over Gracie, who licked his hand. Carolyn was tongue-tied, barely able to mumble Gracie’s name in answer to his question.

As she waited at a crosswalk, she nearly stepped on a Pekingese on a long leash, yipping and barking at her and the suitcase.

“Rat,” she said to Gracie in a voice that was unintentionally loud. The woman holding the leash glared at her, but kept on going.

Tonight, there weren’t many people walking on Court Street. After “Derek Jeter,” she spotted two Wall Street types, Mayor Bloomberg (not), and a serial killer, alerting Gracie to each one as she went.

After about half an hour, Carolyn felt a blister forming on her right hand from the suitcase handle. Her sneakers were sopping wet, her socks drenched. Twice, the suitcase had banged into her ankle. The first time had left a small bruise. The second time, the hard plastic corner gouged her near the Achilles tendon, sending a small trickle of blood into the back of her shoe.

When she finally got to the clinic, she opened the door and was hit by a wave of grief. Gracie’s last walk. She began to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing as Carmen came out from behind her desk and put an arm around her.

“Take off your coat, sit down. I’ll take Gracie from you.”

The tiny waiting room was empty, most of the lights turned off. Carmen took the suitcase and began rolling it to an office in the rear.

“Wait,” Carolyn called out, and Carmen stopped so that she could kneel beside the suitcase and put her arm around
the top. After a moment, she got up, watching as Carmen pulled the suitcase into the back. She wished she had thought of something appropriate to say.

“Bye, Gracie,” she said, her eyes filling up.

In a few minutes, Carmen returned with the empty suitcase.

Carolyn looked up at the fliers for lost dogs and cats and the posters about rabies, ticks, and Lyme disease. She saw a leaflet titled “When You Lose Your Pet” and took it, putting it into her pocket to read later.

Carmen made some entries into the computer, and told Carolyn the cremation costs ranged from $300 to $700, and she had her choice of styles of urns.

Carolyn chose a small jar. Gracie would rest on the window ledge overlooking Eighth Street, where she had always liked to look out. It would take about three weeks for the ashes to come back, Carmen told her.

As Carolyn stood to leave, Carmen said, “Say, could you do us a favor?”

Carolyn couldn’t imagine what sort of favor the clinic would want of her.

“We have a few puppies that came in Sunday and we don’t have any room. You have a crate in your apartment, right?”

Gracie’s old crate was in storage down in the basement, but Carolyn hesitated.

Carmen clucked reassuringly. “It would just be for a few days. There was an apartment fire on Nostrand Avenue, and a whole bunch of dogs came in here, including these puppies. Some nearly died of asphyxiation. We can’t keep them all here, and so we’re asking some of our clients if they can take one for a couple of days.”

It seemed disloyal to bring home another dog, even for a day or so. What would Gracie think, to see another dog in the apartment, just hours after she had died?

Carmen seemed to read her mind. “No pressure, hon. But this would just be until we find a place for them. They’re nine weeks old, don’t even have names yet. We gave them all their shots, though.”

Carmen was forging ahead, guiding Carolyn’s arm, the two of them walking to the rear, past the examining rooms, the surgical suite, the crates for sick and boarding dogs. When they got to the end of the hallway, Carmen turned the knob on an aluminum door, and they entered a small, dimly lit space, not much bigger than a broom closet. There were six crates in the room, two of them holding puppies.

“We call this the Last Resort room, where the hard cases and lost causes go,” she said. “Some of the techs can’t even bear to come in here, since this is where the dogs and cats go when people don’t pick them up or when people bring them in off the street. The fire department brought these in Sunday.”

Carmen switched on the overhead light and went over to one of the crates full of squirming puppies, and opened the top, reaching in and pulling out one of the dogs.

“This one’s a female, very sweet, very social. There was some coughing and vomiting from smoke, but now she’s okay.”

Carmen put the puppy down on the table. She was a fat little thing, with piercing eyes. She yawned, then her tail began wagging when she looked up at Carolyn, meeting her eyes. The pup scrambled toward her, and Carolyn picked her up. She was brown and black, some sort of shepherd-collie mix. She was soft and so warm. Carolyn felt her heart rising in her chest.

“I’m calling her Faith,” said Carmen. “Because we have to have faith that she’ll get a home.”

“Or Hope,” Carolyn said.

“Or Hope,” Carmen agreed.

Carolyn leaned forward, almost touching noses with the puppy, who licked her face. She drank in the puppy smell, closing her eyes.

Carmen was busy tending to the other puppies. With her back to Carolyn, she said, “A lot of people come in here and tell me they can’t go through it again, aren’t sure they can handle losing a dog again. But lots of dogs need homes, lots of people need dogs. Life goes on, right, honey?”

Carolyn pressed the puppy’s head beneath her chin. Hope licked her face, sighed, then went to sleep.

There was no way she could put the puppy into that smelly old suitcase, which she realized she would probably throw away as soon as she got home. She tucked the puppy under her coat, right below her neck, leaving room for her to breathe.

As they walked out together, Carmen wished her good luck, gave her a hug, and then locked the door behind her.

Carolyn headed for the subway with the puppy under her coat, pulling the empty suitcase behind her. At the top of the entrance, she paused. She didn’t think she could endure that again. She saw a yellow cab cruising by with its lights on, so she lifted her right hand, even though cabs were for Wall Street types and tourists, in her mind. The cabbie—a young, chubby, dark-skinned man—asked if she wanted the suitcase to go in the trunk.

No, she said, but the driver got out anyway to help her get it into the backseat. “Wow, it’s pretty light,” he said with a smile. “Short stay, huh?”

She didn’t answer, her thoughts were on the cab fare, the cremation bill, on the food she had to buy for Hope. As the cab pulled away from the curb, there was a sharp yelp from inside her coat. Carolyn looked into the mirror and saw the quizzical eyes of the young driver.

“I don’t mind,” he said. “Just don’t let it out.”

She smiled, relieved.

“New dog?” he asked. “I’ve got a yellow Lab. Trixie.”

Carolyn had never been good with strangers, and hadn’t really talked to a man her age for a while. But she started talking now. She could hardly believe the words pouring out of her mouth. She told the driver—his named was Jared—about hauling the dead dog around in a suitcase, about the cops kicking her off the subway, about meeting Hope.

Jared listened, nodding sympathetically. He turned off the meter at $4. “This trip won’t be expensive,” he said. “On the house.”

They sat for nearly a half an hour in front of her building, discussing their dogs. Hope crawled out of Carolyn’s coat, and into the front seat, right into Jared’s lap while they talked.

Jared asked if he could bring Trixie to meet Hope in Prospect Park on Saturday. It would be good for her to play with a puppy. Trixie was old and sick. He would have to face losing her soon.

“Had to be rough,” he said, his face full of kindness and sympathy.

“It is,” Carolyn said. And she thought of Gracie, suddenly, as a kind of love that just kept giving.

“But life goes on, doesn’t it?”

L
ISABETH PULLED INTO THE
D
UNKIN
’ D
ONUTS PARKING LOT
promptly at 3:50
A.M
. As assistant manager of the franchise’s first shift, it was her responsibility to fire the place up, turn on the heat, make sure the restrooms were clean, check the microphone in the drive-thru, start the coffee machines, and get the donuts in the oven.

While scurrying from chore to chore, she liked to talk. This, she found, not only woke her up, but got everybody else going too. And the thing she always liked to talk about most was dogs.

Lisabeth defined the periods of her life by the dogs she had had. When she first started working at DD, she had a Rottweiler named Tigger, a sweet-hearted nightmare of a dog that terrorized the neighborhood and finally lost a confrontation with a garbage truck. That was a tough time for her. Her mother was sick, her husband, Frank, was out of work, and they were dead broke.

And then there was Rutabaga, a small mutt of indeterminable origins, who came to work with her during the seven years she spent on the late shift, sitting outside in her car, barking at everything and nothing until closing time at midnight. This was when her two kids were little and she was struggling to be a good mom while holding down two jobs. Rutabaga always seemed to think she was doing just fine.