During those first awful weeks in March, when rumors swirled that the city was about to go into lockdown and the wealthy clogged bridges and tunnels, headed for second homes in Vermont and the Hamptons, Myles and Nora decided to adopt a dog.
“What do you think about this one?” Nora asked, tracing a polished fingernail across her phone. Two wine-stained glasses rested on the coffee table.
Myles glanced up from his own screen. He’d only been half-listening, scrolling through the Times in a futile search for answers about the virus.
A photo of a dog with anime-big eyes flashed in front of his nose.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you want.” Myles’ hand lay on Nora’s knee, caressing it absently. Since the calendar flipped to March, he’d spent his days in a state of permanent distraction, his mind on other things. Flattening the curve. Super-spreader event. Zoom fatigue. They didn’t even know how the virus spread, by what mysterious means it had managed to circumnavigate the globe and bring the entire world to a grinding halt.
Myles and Nora had decided to shelter-in-place at his apartment in Park Slope because he didn’t have a roommate and his place was a palace compared to the one-bedroom Nora shared in the Village. The stay-at-home order would only last a week, two at most, they had reasoned. Now they were entering their fourth week of endless breaking news alerts, of shuttered offices and restaurants, of having nowhere to be and no one to see—all demands and constraints on their time utterly, magically erased. Nora wanted a project, something to distract them from the world falling down around them.
“I looked into it,” she said. “There’s this shelter in Williamsburg that does this foster-to-adopt trial. The whole thing’s only three weeks. And then, at the end, you can keep the dog or return them if it isn’t working out. The application’s on their website.”
“You think we’re gonna be locked down that long?” Myles asked, though the answer seemed clear.
A pervading sense that things might not so readily return to normal had crept into their lives, taking up residence on their crumb-littered couch like an unwanted guest. At first, lockdown felt like an unexpected, welcomed vacation. They slept in, remaining in bed until two or three in the afternoon, camping out as if it were a snow day and they were eight years old. In the evenings, they screwed, drank wine, and ordered Chinese, because it was the only place willing to deliver. They binged Tiger King, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec.
“As long as it’s nothing too girly,” he declared. “Like a chihuahua. One of those dogs that fits in your purse.”
Nora moved her knee, dislodging his hand. She lifted one finely plucked eyebrow, bringing the full power of her narrow, dark eyes to bear. God, she could have melted glass with that look. Her freckled complexion and red hair, the flush that got into her cheeks whenever she got worked up. The effect was terrifying and sexy at the same time.
Myles wasn’t sure what caused him to make that crack about chihuahuas. Maybe it was the wine or the fact that he had grown up in the Midwest, where dogs only came in two sizes: big and bigger.
“Well, what do you want then?” she asked.
That was a larger question, one Myles wasn’t prepared to answer. He barely knew what he wanted when they ordered from #1 Asian Kitchen, which they’d had three times that week. Maybe that was why he’d said yes without even checking to see if his building allowed pets. It was easier to go along with what Nora wanted than try and decide things for himself.
“I signed us up,” she said. “We should be getting a call from the shelter in a day or two.”
Myles suffered a flicker of hesitation. Normally, he wouldn’t have said anything. Would have let Nora have her way. Maybe it was the wine. “It’s just…” He tried again. “Do you really think it’s…wise? Letting someone into our apartment with everything that’s going on?”
“There’s a whole section on their website dedicated to safety and all the precautions they’re taking,” Nora said, not missing a beat. “I can show it to you if you’re worried. Okay?” It sounded like a challenge.
“Okay.”
Outside, the high keen of a siren screamed past, its lights momentarily turning the tree outside red.
“Fire truck? Or ambulance?”
“Ambulance, I think,” Myles said, straining toward the window. It was the fourth or fifth they’d heard in the past hour. It was getting hard to keep track.
Nora poked her phone again, reached for her glass. “If nothing else, a dog’ll give us a legit reason to get out of the house, right?”
*
The shelter worker who appeared at their apartment a week later wore beige socks with his Birkenstocks. Despite the latex gloves and mask that covered the lower half of his face, he bore a remarkable resemblance to Frank Zappa. Nora had wrapped a scarf around her face and Myles wore a bandana like an outlaw in a bad Western. A carton of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes waited on the counter.
“Hello, hello, hello,” he said, leading a black, floppy-eared dog by a short leash into their apartment. “This is Roxie.”
Myles and Nora shared a look. The dog was muzzled.
“Don’t worry—she’s not dangerous,” Zappa explained, a smile lifting his mask. “It’s just, when presenting them with a new environment, we find it’s better to go slow and easy. Let ’em get acquainted. Do you mind if I show her around? Let her get a feel for the place?”
“Sure, sure,” Nora said, making a small, fretful motion with her hands.
“Wow. Nice place,” said the worker admiringly. He walked to the window. Across the street, the heads of trees were still bare, the sidewalks empty. “Your own little slice of heaven, am I right?”
“Th—thank you,” Nora said, shooting Myles a who-is-this-guy? look behind the man’s back.
Myles shrugged. While his building had a doorman, it wasn’t much compared to the lavish apartments his co-workers rented in Chelsea. Not that he would be seeing them, or their apartments, any time soon. Overnight, New York had become a centrifuge, spitting friends far and wide, back to their parents’ basements in the suburbs.
He followed the worker and Roxie into the hall, feeling oddly like a guest in his own home.
“So, do you know what kind of dog she is?” he asked, hoping to distract the worker.
“Oh, not one hundred percent, but she’s got some Rottie in her, that’s for sure.” They headed into the kitchen. “Maybe some pit bull.”
“And has she been fostered before?” Myles said, brushing past the worker, whisking an opened cereal box from the counter.
“Roxie here is one of our long-term residents. She’s been adopted a few times. Looked like the last one might stick, but then the owners wound up bringing her back.” The worker opened and closed one of the gleaming white cabinets, nodding appreciatively.
Roxie’s long, whip-like tail was folded between her legs. She cowered behind Zappa, only agreeing to enter a room after he did.
“Did the previous owners say why?” Nora asked.
“Nope. They don’t have to, though it can be helpful if they give a reason.”
“Have you been getting a lot of requests to adopt?” Nora worked as a food blogger and had been fortunate, like Myles, to continue her working life largely uninterrupted.
Zappa shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe it. Busier than ever. Everyone wants to adopt now. You’re my second of six stops this afternoon.”
They left the kitchen and entered the bedroom, Roxie’s nails clattering nervously on the parquet floors.
“Being a no-kill shelter like we are, sure, it sounds great,” Zappa said, taking in Myles’ king-sized bed, built-in bookshelves, and guitar suspended on the wall. “But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Sounds humane, but some of these dogs, they won’t ever get adopted. They have too many issues—from abuse and whatnot—and, of course, we can’t put ’em down. So, we have to pay to feed ’em and look after ’em the rest of their lives. All that, knowing they’re never going to have a home outside the shelter. It’s kinda sad, real—
“Oops. Little accident there,” Zappa said, nodding to the growing puddle of urine on the floor. “Don’t worry. Totally normal. Just nervous is all.”
“I’ll get some paper towels,” said Nora, disappearing into the kitchen.
“She does pretty well off-leash—not that I’d recommend it,” said the worker, leading Roxie and Myles back to the living room.
“We gave her breakfast,” he continued, dropping the leash into Myles’ hand. “She’s up to date on her shots, of course. Might be timid, real lethargic the first few days, ’til she gets used to her new environment.”
“Sure, sure,” said Myles, nodding.
“Is this your first pet?” Zappa asked, lowering himself to one knee and clicking the buckle that held the muzzle in place.
“It’s mi—” Myles began.
“But not mine!” Nora exclaimed, dropping a wet piece of paper towel she’d been holding pinched by a corner into the trash. “I had a dog growing up. In Jersey.”
“Maybe just set out some water in a bowl for her,” said Zappa, gaining his feet again. Roxie’s tail remained firmly planted behind her haunches. “And don’t be surprised if she doesn’t show much interest in dinner. You have our number if you have any questions.”
Zappa put his fists on his hips and fixed Roxie with a look. “You be a good girl now, ya hear?”
“Thank you so much,” said Nora, herding him toward the door. “We really appreciate it.”
The worker gave them an it’s-no-problem wave before his frizzy mop of hair vanished behind the door.
“That name,” Nora said the moment she replaced the bolt, “has to go.”
*
Myles and Nora ran out of toilet paper several days into April. When she shouted from the bedroom that someone would have to go to the bodega, Myles bucked from his stool with such excitement, he nearly upset his tea. “I—I will! I mean, yeah…sure. I’ll see what they’ve got.”
After six weeks, the apartment had begun to feel like being trapped in a car on a day with 100-degree heat. He had to get out, just for a few minutes—even if it meant possibly contracting the virus.
By the time he gathered his keys, wallet, and mask, “Luna”—for Luna Park, one of Nora’s favorite places in the city—was already standing by the door. She waited while he snapped her harness around her impressively broad chest.
Nora joined them, chewing a pen. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Why the previous owners brought her back?”
Nora had a point. Luna was so quiet, Myles sometimes forgot she was there until he got up to use the bathroom or make tea and she would rouse herself from the floor and come follow him, curious. She showed no interest in tug or fetch, even when Nora got down on the floor in her leggings and sweatshirt or bowled a tennis ball down the hall. When Nora performed her daily Yoga with Adrienne, Luna sat like a sphinx at the edge of her mat, watching, calmly waiting until she was done.
“We adopted the most boring dog in the world,” she announced.
“I don’t think it’s that strange,” Myles said, shrugging on his coat. “There are a bunch of people out of work right now. And a lot of people have left the city. Maybe they couldn’t afford the extra expense.”
“Yeah,” said Nora doubtfully. She pushed her wide-frame glasses up. “What do you want for dinner tonight? Text me.”
“All right,” said Myles, ushering Luna through the door. And then it happened, the words just rushing out. “Love y—I mean, uh, yeah, I’ll let you know.”
He stopped as suddenly as if he’d stepped on a nail.
“Okay. Bye.” The door swung shut behind him with a disheartening clank.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Myles descended the loud, echoing stairwell, Luna bouncing down the stairs at his side. All right. I love you? What had he been thinking? And was that even what he felt for Nora? Love?
Up until five months ago, he loved everything about Nora: her eyes (big, brown), her laugh (infectious), her passion, and many causes (racial justice, reproductive and LGBTQIA rights, the environment, canvassing for third parties). She had joined the Women’s March and Occupy before it was broken up by officers with shields and billy clubs. Once, when he asked if she really believed in all those things, she leveled him with a look. “Why? Don’t you?” He supposed he did, and didn’t. Not enough to take to the streets. Not enough to march, to risk life and limb. Not enough to forsake his $4.50 morning latte, 401(k), and health insurance to join the makeshift camp of students and anarchists he passed each day on his way to Wall Street.
Outside, the parked cars and sidewalks were glossy with rain. Unoccupied Ubers drifted past the park, one or two slowing until they saw he had Luna with him. It was only eight; still, you would have thought it was three or four in the morning. There was no one out, and those who were crossed the street to avoid him. During the mornings and afternoons, the world outside his apartment’s south-facing windows played like a silent film. But now that he was out, that he was part of it, everything moved and thundered around him. A hard reset to his senses. It was a joy to be present in his body again, to feel his tendons and joints moving congruously, blood sloshing through the tunnels of his veins.
Was the intensity he felt because, for the past month and a half, he’d spent every waking minute with Nora? His only other human contact being work and his weekly calls to his parents back in St. Paul, assuring them he wasn’t dead? Was it because everything in his life felt tenuous and uncertain, the future turned slippery, and Nora was the only solid thing in his life? Or was it something else? Was there any way to tell? Maybe asking someone to move in after six months was too soon—but then the pandemic had happened, and everything was moving so fast. What choice did they have?
Myles considered himself a bit of a catch: He was thirty-four, a nice enough guy with good credit. He had a reliable job at a major bank whose ethics he repeatedly questioned, but nonetheless provided him with an ample salary and the promise of a comfortable retirement. If that weren’t enough, it wasn’t like he was unattractive: There was his height, his lithe, lean swimmer’s body and well-defined jaw. But he wasn’t striking in the way Nora was. They’d matched on Tinder a year after he moved to the city. They both promised the other they weren’t looking for anything serious. After a few casual hookups, she began inviting him to accompany her on random errands around the city. A trip to Home Depot or the Upper East Side to retrieve a dresser. Myles wasn’t sure when they crossed that porous line between convenience and dependence.
Nora didn’t discuss her dating history other than to once remark that, during college, she’d been “kind of a slut.”
“Really?” Myles fell back in his chair. He was decently drunk, just short of sloppy. “I mean—hey, no judgment. You do you.”
“You didn’t sleep with every girl in your dorm?” Nora asked, loud enough that she could have been heard in Times Square. Her roommates were out. She’d thrown one of their T-shirts over the lamp, so the whole room was enveloped in a red glow.
Myles scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “I mean, no, I didn’t. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
“It’s—fine. I mean, I get it. You’ve got this whole”—she waxed a hand in his face—“pretentious-sad-boy thing going on. Of course—of course, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, explain it to me then,” said Myles, leaning forward again, trying to hide his hurt. Nora, he was discovering, was full of unprompted, incisive remarks.
She swirled the wine in her glass. For a moment, Myles was sure the night was over. That they’d spoiled it by bringing up something neither of them wanted to talk about.
“I was pretty wild for a few years. Prone to ‘risk-taking’ and ‘dangerous, reckless behavior,’ according to my therapist. She was convinced I had a latent death wish. But I wouldn’t say there was anything latent about it.”
Brown plants lined the fire escape.
“Now, I realize, I was acting out because I didn’t care. If I got picked up at a party or someone pulled up to the curb while I was walking home. Did I want a ride? Sure, why not? Oh, you don’t have a condom? Fuck it. Who cares? Someone I never met until tonight offered me blow, or I went shoplifting, or took my girls on a drunken joyride? What did it matter? What if I took one too many sleeping pills just to see if I could do it? It was almost like a dare, you know? To see how far I could go, to see how much I could get away with.”
All at once, Myles’ pleasant, buzzy-headed drunkenness became too much. He set his wine down on the crowded coffee table and didn’t touch it again. The apartment was too warm, the corners too dark. His mouth was suddenly cotton-ball dry.
“Why?”
Nora shrugged. “Fear drives us to do things we might’ve never considered doing, you know? Or to become someone we didn’t plan on being. And I didn’t like my life or who I was, anymore.” She drained the last of her wine. Her teeth were dyed red. “And, anyway, my dad, I told you he worked for the Transit Authority, right? He was downtown on 9/11. He was evacuating the South Tower when it collapsed. I was a junior in high school. That fucked me up pretty good, I’d say.”
***
Toward the end of April, as Myles and Luna were leaving the park, a window across the street flew open, then another. By the time the light changed, the neighborhood was swollen with raucous applause and boisterous shouts. Someone somewhere down the block blasted an air horn. Children on stoops screamed at the top of their tiny lungs. The echo of pots rung with spoons, clanging bells, and cars laying on their horns completed the ensemble.
Luna’s ears went flat. Myles instinctively led her to the curb and placed a calming hand on her back. During their daily excursions through Prospect Park, crisscrossing its sloping lawns and rolling woodlands, she often plowed ahead, straining at her harness, or trotted gamely at his side. Only when a sudden noise startled her—the slam of a delivery truck’s rolling door or the honk of an impatient driver—did she draw close, plastering herself against his leg as if she were trying to crawl inside his pocket.
Myles may not have had Nora’s childhood know-how, but he had learned to read Luna’s moods like a twinge in the knee. “It’s okay, girl. It’s just seven o’clock. That’s all.”
Within minutes, the last of the die-hards closed their windows and doors and went back inside. The cacophony faded.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it now, Loon?” Myles cooed.
Luna’s head bobbed with each stride, but her ears were still pressed against the side of her massive head.
“Almost home, Luney-Tuney. Almost there.”
If Luna sensed she was nearing home, that she recognized the trees stuck in the sidewalk like candles in a cake, the stoops and garden apartments that lined their approach, she showed no indication. She pulled at her leash, drawing Myles’ arm taut, like a bloodhound with its nose to the ground. He had to jog to keep her from dragging him along. A thought flared in a dim corner of his brain: As much as she kept him sane and he kept her safe—from raccoons big as boulders, cars barreling through red lights, four-year-old daredevils on scooters—she was still an animal, with animal instincts. The tension in the leash was a stark reminder of Luna’s awesome strength. It came to him, perhaps for the very first time, that if he truly needed to control her, he wasn’t sure he could. She was over a hundred pounds of pure muscle and confused breeding.
They were less than a block away, the crosswalk beckoning them with its solid WALK signal. Coming toward them was a woman in a billowing skirt, tote slung from her shoulder. Myles barely registered her, concentrating as he was on getting Luna home. After they passed, the woman spun, giving them a startled, uncertain look. When Myles returned to this moment later, just as he was slipping down into the dark waters of sleep, he couldn’t decide what it was he saw. There were too many variables: it was dusk; he was distracted; they were both walking quickly. Still, he couldn’t dispel the uneasy sense that Luna did exactly what he feared she had. Snapped at the woman’s skirt, catching the flapping parachute of fabric between her bared teeth for an instant before letting go.
***
The George Floyd protests began in May. Police helicopters boomed over Flatbush, Fort Greene, Barclays, the unmistakable thwup-thwup-thwup of their blades stretching from afternoon into evening. They hovered over the park for hours at a time and Myles began to feel, in a small way, what people in a war zone must feel like. Nora paced the apartment like a caged cat, her outrage compounding with every shaky cell phone video of the NYPD pepper-spraying bystanders, attacking people with their hands up, pulling women down by their hair—undeterred by the presence of journalists and hundreds of smartphones recording their every move.
The next morning, she joined Myles at the kitchen island in a Mets baseball cap and running shoes. “I need you to watch Loon today,” she said. “I won’t have my phone with me.”
He glanced up from his own phone, from images of last night’s demonstrations. Police with shields. Young men in beaters galloping down an empty avenue, bandanas knotted over their faces. An overturned, fire-scorched police cruiser on Flatbush.
“There’s another protest today,” she said.
Myles hadn’t had his morning tea. The world was still coming to him in slow-moving waves.
“Do you really think going to a protest is”—he fumbled for the right word—“a good idea? There was looting in Midtown last night. And now there’s a curfew.” He splashed his spoon into his cereal. “Besides, aren’t you working today?”
Nora smirked and, in that instant, he glimpsed something—a look of such revulsion—you would have thought he was the one battering protestors with his bike or chasing people down with a billy club. “I’ll have my mom write me a note, so I can play hooky. God. Are you for real right now? Do you not see what’s going on? The world is going up in flames and you want to sit on the sideline!”
Luna’s ears, hearing the anger in Nora’s voice, rolled back, but she didn’t move her chin from her paws.
“What I see is that we’re in the middle of a global health crisis,” said Myles, surprised by how defensive he sounded. “There’s civil unrest. The idiot just tweeted he’s ready to deploy the military—”
Nora and Myles had begun referring to the president exclusively as “the idiot,” as in “You’ll never believe what the idiot said now.” “But the economy!” they would cry whenever the idiot did something indefensible, an almost daily occurrence. It had become a shorthand between them, an inside joke they began to use for everything.
“I just mean, do you think it’s—safe? With COVID and everything else?”
What he really meant was, did Nora think she would be safe among a writhing, roiling press of angry strangers who might find themselves subjected to tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound cannons? Whose exercise of their constitutional rights could descend into a melee in a matter of seconds? There would be other women there, certainly, but men, too, to say nothing of the officers looking for any opportunity to mete out their brand of justice, regardless of sex or size.
“What choice do we have?” she asked. “It’ll be fine. I’ve been reading message boards. As long as you keep your mask on, the risk of transmission is relatively low.”
He guffawed. “What about the police?”
“I’ve been reading up on that, too. The ACLU says not to bring your phone—or keep it on airplane mode. And if you’re arrested, not to unlock it.”
Myles shrank in his stool. He was awed by Nora’s courage, and his own cowardice.
“No, you’re right,” he sputtered, glancing down into his bowl, unable to meet Nora’s eyes. “Besides, someone should be here, to keep an eye on Loon. And I’ve got work, a big presentation actually—
“Besides,” he said, unleashing a grin, “someone’ll have to be here to post bail.”
Nora lifted her arm, shot back her sleeve. A string of digits were Sharpied to her wrist. The number for the local legal aid office. “Don’t worry. If I only get one phone call, it won’t be you.”
***
When Myles exited his building’s marble lobby with Luna in tow, he discovered a day laden with sunshine. The prospect of an hour or two away from the apartment—away from his laptop, away from the ceaseless dinging of new Slack messages and emails about things he really didn’t care much about—filled him with a vague sense of promise. True to her word, Nora had left her phone and so he hadn’t heard whether she’d made it to the protest safely, if she still was safe. Nora could take care of herself, he knew. She’d be fine, or she wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do about it now.
After a brutal winter that lingered on through April and into May, the day was shaping up to be one of the nicer ones they’d enjoyed all year. Luna appeared in agreement: she cantered at his side and they traveled down 7th at a robust clip. It was pleasantly, shockingly warm and, after only a block, he unzipped his sweatshirt. A block later, he took it off altogether, hurling it over his shoulder. He wondered if Nora had thought to bring water, if she’d remembered to bring sunblock.
Myles was sweating beneath his T-shirt and it helped distract him from his guilt, as well as the ugly, unmistakable truth: namely, that Nora was far braver and more principled than he would ever be. He couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he’d been so hesitant to join her at the rally. He was afraid, sure. Of the virus. Of the simmering unease and potential for violence. But there was more to it, he felt. Did his hesitancy stem from the fact that he was secretly a bit…racist? Not only racist, but the worst kind of racist: the progressive kind? Nora, for her part, believed everyone was racist—Judge Judy, Beyoncé, even her father. In our society, it was impossible not to be. It was what you did about it that mattered. He supposed, in the final analysis, that he hadn’t taken to the streets because he didn’t need to. That alone spoke to his immense privilege, didn’t it? Demonstrating in support of another’s civil rights was optional, a luxury—not a matter of life and death, as it was for so many others.
Without having meant to, Myles had arrived at the scene of the protest. He heard the rally long before he saw it. There were hundreds of people, perhaps thousands—more people than he had seen in any one place in months. The promenade was filled, spilling into the avenue and intersection. Endless bodies, a great roaring of voices. Some people held up signs. Others were chanting. On street corners and in bike lanes, people were drawn in the direction of the crowd, the din rising in the afternoon heat. “Does anyone need snacks?” someone shouted. “Water? Hand sanitizer?” Myles could feel Luna shrink beside him. He tightened his grip on her leash, keeping to the edge of the crowd. He felt like a lurker, an intruder. All these people who’d shown up for a cause larger than themselves. It simultaneously flooded him with hope and despair. There were some white people in attendance—more than he expected—but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Myles felt Luna stretch to the very end of her leash, ready to cross the avenue when the light changed, but it didn’t matter. There were far too many people in the street for any vehicles or bikes. Instead, Myles turned toward the endless succession of faces and tried to glimpse Nora—a flip of red hair beneath a ball cap—tucked into the crowd. He waited, scanning the roiling, seething froth of humanity for her before giving up and heading home.
***
Myles was slumped against the headboard, the shoebox where he kept his stash of weed cracked open beside him, when Nora appeared in the doorway, laptop riding on her hip.
“You mind taking Loon out? I forgot I’m supposed to FaceTime with Nathalie at nine.”
“What time is it now?” he asked.
“Like, eight-fifty. I won’t have time before—wait. What are you doing? Were you smoking?”
Myles made an exaggerated effort to nod toward the box, but wasn’t sure his head moved.
Nora’s eyes narrowed to killer slits. “What have I told you about doing that in bed? I hate when you smoke in bed! Our sheets and the duvet smell for, like, a week.”
“…Do you have my phone?” Myles asked.
“You know what? Never mind. I’ll just take her.”
“No, no,” he said, uncrossing his ankles with forced concentration, then swung his feet to the floor. “I’ll do it.”
“She pooped at lunch,” Nora said, her voice already floating down the hall. To Myles, it sounded as if it were coming to him from a distant mountain peak.
It took him five minutes to fit Luna’s harness over her head and another five to figure out how to clip the leash to her harness. Luna stood by the door, waiting and watching him with infinite patience. By the time they got outside, there was a soft blush over the city. That fuzzy time between daylight and nightfall, just light enough that the streetlights haven’t come on yet. It felt like a hundred years and no time at all had passed since the night he took Luna to find toilet paper. This was what weed was for, he reminded himself with a giggle. Normal life was like being on speed—he needed something to come down. These days, a bowl before bed was just about the only way he could get to sleep.
But maybe, tonight, he’d overdone it. His head felt impossibly heavy on his shoulders, and every sound—the single blast of a delivery bike horn, the thunk of a car door—was over-heightened, impossibly distinct. He spent such an inordinate amount of time watching a couple stroll, hands held, to their car, then back out, that he couldn’t be sure whether Luna had peed or not. So they continued on. Walking was like moving through a waking dream and, in the time it took them to reach the end of 11th, Myles went from high—what he would consider a pleasant, three- or four-beer buzz—to out-of-his-mind blitzed. Maybe he’d gotten some bad bud. This was the last of his stash, the weed he had before the city shut down. His dealer was in TriBeCa. First thing he had to do when he got back to the apartment was find a new dealer. A local one.
His thoughts were so loud, he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been speaking them aloud. Where was his phone? He might need it if something happened. If he needed to call 9-1-1. Fuck. Did he tell Nora where he was going? When he’d be back?
Up ahead, a door painted the most mesmerizing blue swung open and a man emerged, descending the steps.
All at once, Myles’ skull felt like a sack of marbles or the ball in one of those snow-globe compasses you stuck to your windshield, spinning dizzily. The man was coming toward them. As he approached, he gave Myles and Luna extra berth. Myles cocked his wrist in a wave, or thought he did. He felt like he was made of bubbles, every square inch of him.
“Hey, you,” said a voice that both was and wasn’t inside Myles’ head.
He turned, slowly. The man—short, combative-looking—was standing ten feet away, his face shining like a spotlight.
“Where’s your mask?”
“Oh.” Myles reached for his mouth and, in a nightmarish moment of terror, discovered his nose and chin completely exposed.
“I said, ‘Where’s your mask?’” the man repeated, his voice rising toward a yell.
“Sorry, I—” Talking was an effort. The words turned to gum in Myles’ mouth. “I forgot it.”
Luna had gone rigid—Myles could feel the tension in the leash. He gave her a little tug and started walking.
“Where’s your mask, asshole?” The man was screaming now, his voice carrying down the block. “WHERE IS IT?”
The man’s feet clattered behind Myles.
“HEY, ASSHOLE! I’M TALKING TO YOU!” The man’s face appeared at his shoulder like a jack-o-lantern. “DON’T—HEY, DON’T YOU DARE WALK AWAY FROM ME!”
The man yanked down his cloth mask, so he could shout directly into Myles’ face.
“THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING IN THIS CITY! WHERE’S YOUR MASK, HUH? HUH, YOU FUCK?”
Luckily, about halfway down the block, right before the streetlights ignited above them, the man unexpectedly gave up. He was there—and then gone—so quickly that, for a moment, Myles wondered if he’d simply hallucinated the entire event.
Nora glanced up from her laptop when he opened the door. “Just a second, Nath,” she said, removing an earbud. “Myles? Your phone’s on the counter.”
***
Sunday. Myles was up early. After killing an hour thumbing through the news, waiting to see if Nora would wake, he saddled Luna with her harness and pocketed his keys.
The park’s off-leash hours were from five to nine, and to stumble upon the Long Meadow with dogs standing in packs, running this way and that while their owners gathered in small huddles, leashes tucked under their arms, was like stumbling onto a New Yorker cover. Myles discovered off-leash hours purely by accident; the first two or three times he and Loon participated, he decided against releasing her to run free with the other dogs. What if she bolted like an inmate outside a prison fence, tried to tree a squirrel half a mile away, or, worse, escaped the park entirely, running head-on into a city bus? LOST DOG posters plastered fence posts and light poles ringing the park. The last time he came, however, Myles stood off from the fracas of the dog party and cautiously unclamped her leash. She didn’t bolt. She didn’t do anything.
“Go on,” he encouraged. “Go on. Run, play!”
After several minutes, Luna eventually wandered a few paces from Myles and sniffed something in the grass, allowing an energetic border collie who galloped over to them to inspect her sex.
There was a fair-sized crowd in the meadow today, though none of the owners were standing together. Nearest them, a labradoodle and an impressively groomed golden retriever were rolling around on the ground. A German shepherd with a stick between its teeth circled the congress of dogs, trying to entice others into chasing him. It was a regular cornucopia of city-dwelling canines: a Dachshund, beagle, several terriers and huskies, a corgi or two, a very rotund bulldog, mutts of all kinds. Their raucous chatter—excited barks, happy yips and yowls—echoed across the park.
“All right, all right, Loon,” said Myles, trying to release her leash from the harness. “Just a sec. Okay, go.”
Luna made a tentative beeline for the pack and was greeted by two or three dignitaries—a Frenchie and Pekinese—before being quickly sniffed and forgotten. After checking to see if he had any messages from Nora, Myles casually inspected the other dog owners. Fifteen feet away stood an aging hipster sporting a Catskills-rustic-meets-Goodwill outfit, his hair knotted in a greasy bun.
He intended to keep a close eye on Luna, but was almost immediately distracted by the arrival of another dog owner. A bottle-blonde in a neon-pink sports bra and biking shorts, apparel that left very little to Myles’ considerable imagination. He let out the mental equivalent of a whistle. She was a bombshell, a real knockout, and he could feel the other men’s gazes stray from their charges or phone screens. A California transplant. Venice Beach or Palm Springs, if Myles were to guess. You didn’t get that kind of healthy glow in Omaha or Ames, or an apartment on the park, for that matter. Unless you were up on the roof with a towel every day, and it had been too cold for that.
Myles was carefully observing the woman in the neon sports bra, the exquisite curve of her calves, when it happened. One moment, Luna was standing nose-to-nose with a boxer who had circled the crowd of thundering paws and twitching tails to approach her. The next, she launched herself at the newcomer and bit down on the other dog’s neck as if it were a jam-filled doughnut, locking her considerable jaws around the boxer’s throat like the chew toys she normally disdained. The boxer’s owner—a spindly man in hiking boots and a pine-green Patagonia vest—gave a panicked cry and bounded toward the animals. Myles was only half-aware of what was happening. He felt as if his brain had left his body somewhere below. When he came to—heart frozen in his chest, legs loaded with cement—he’d reached Luna, the boxer, and its owner and threw himself at Luna in a flying tackle, trying to dislodge her jaws from the dog’s neck.
“Loon—Luna, stop!” he gasped. “STOP!”
The other dogs and onlookers shrank away, aghast. Myles attempted, with little success, to grab a hold of Luna’s harness, to get control of her and drag her away from the boxer, but she was so much stronger than he had ever dared imagine. Her teeth—the same teeth she consented to let Nora brush with an oversized toothbrush and cinnamon-scented toothpaste—were so deep in the boxer’s neck that both animals were flecked with blood and Myles was terrified of what might happen once they removed her jaws. All he could see was the eggshell-white of her eyes. There was nothing in them he recognized. She was all feral animal, locked in a life-or-death struggle. At first, Myles believed the other owner might be bleeding, too, until he saw that his face was shining with snot and tears, not blood. The man wept as he struggled to separate the two animals. Myles managed to swing one leg over Luna, so he was standing astride her like a tiger wrangler, while the boxer’s owner kicked Luna in the chest with his hiking boot, hoping to wedge himself between the dogs’ muzzles.
Luna’s grip on the boxer’s neck tightened with each blow and it occurred to Myles, the thought flashing across the sky of his panic-addled brain, that Luna might very well succeed in killing the other dog. Unless Myles or the other owner did something drastic, and quickly. It was like being caught in a storm, a furious hurricane of snarling teeth, claws, blood, fur. Impossible to get a good grip.
“Grab his—collar,” the man panted.
This was what did it. Myles reached for Luna’s collar and it was like unzipping a coat. Her jaws came unglued; he felt a bizarre pressure on his hand, his arm transformed into a white-hot bar of agony. The other owner wrapped the boxer in a bear hug, springing the dog free, and staggered a few short steps before collapsing to his knees, shoulders quaking with sobs. The first owners began to approach him. The bottle-blonde was gone.
The remaining strength ran out of Myles’ legs. His sweatshirt and shorts were gloved in blood. He glanced down at his hand, inspecting it for damage, and felt a terrible, wet warmth. Luna, still without her leash, had gone off to stand by herself, like a pariah, head low, blood and saliva hanging in ribbons from her muzzle. Although he was in shock, Myles was able to wobble to his feet. He stumbled-shuffled toward Luna, who didn’t move, and snapped her leash onto her harness, unsure what he would have done if she chose to attack him or run.
To his amazement, no one said anything to him as he trudged away, blood running in a torrent from his wounded hand, Luna’s leash lassoed around his good arm. Everyone was too shocked, too cowed, by the sudden, casual violence they had all just been witness to. He didn’t think about what he’d have to do. He wasn’t thinking at all. Only when he arrived outside his building and stupidly patted his pockets did he realize he’d lost his keys in the scrum.
“Oh, my god—oh, my god! You’re bleeding!” Nora cried once she buzzed him in. Her face went white as bone. “You’ve got blood everywhere!”
She darted down the hall and returned with a dish towel. “Jesus fuck. What happened?”
“There was a—a fight. With another dog.”
His back and arms were one solid ache. Now that it was over, that all the adrenaline had drained from his body, he was utterly spent.
“Here, here.” She took his wrist. “Hold it up. Elevate it. We’ve gotta—fuck—go to the hospital. Another dog bit you?”
“No—not exactly.”
Nora stopped, took a step back from him as if he were infectious. Did his mask come off? Had he put it on? He couldn’t remember. “She bit you?”
“I was—no—she attacked another dog, and I was trying to separate them. I don’t think she realized what she was doing—”
Nora placed a hand to her forehead, her color starting to return. “Luna bit you,” she said slowly.
“No”—Myles felt as if he never expressed anything the right way—“it was an accident.”
“An accident? Dogs don’t accidentally bite someone! What about the other dog? The other owner?”
“I—I don’t know.” Myles hand had soaked the dish towel and was dripping on the floor.
“You left and didn’t—? Oh, god.” Nora turned in a small circle, her hand still pressed to her forehead. “Oh, god. They could sue us. Oh, oh, that’s it! She’s going back to the shelter. Today.”
Myles said the word so gently, he wasn’t even sure it came from him.
“No? No, what?”
“No, we’re not—we can’t bring her back.”
Nora’s eyes bulged. “Look what she did to you! To your hand! You’re probably going to need stitches.” Nora walked one direction, then immediately back the other. “No. No, Myles. Absolutely not. I am not living with that—that thing—that dangerous animal in my house. No. You hear me?”
Luna was standing in the living room, ears back, alert, as if she knew they were discussing her. Her leash hung from her harness. Nora moved slowly toward her and picked up the leash as if it were poisonous.
“It’s me or the dog.”
“No, no. You’re right,” Myles mumbled, the whole awful mess—their entire predicament—crashing down on him like a load of cement. She was right. Of course, she was right. In fact, he felt stupid for not having seen it before.
“Come on,” she said, herding Luna toward the bathroom. She complied, her nails clicking on the floor, tail tucked between her muscular haunches.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she cooed. “Everything’s gonna be all right.” Once Luna was inside, Nora closed the door. Luna’s glistening black nose floated in the doorjamb, then vanished.
While they waited for the Uber, Myles realized he wasn’t sure whether Nora had been talking to him or the dog.
***
Later that summer—after everyone who fled the city has returned—Myles is walking along Van Brunt when he glimpses a halo of red hair beneath a Mets cap. No, he thinks, that can’t be Nora. Can it?
She’s sitting outside a restaurant. She spots Luna first, then Myles, attached to her leash.
“My god, Myles!” she cries, her face opening with surprise. “How are you?”
She sets her margarita down and Myles suffers a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he is living a scene from his old life. Nora here, in his neighborhood.
She asks how he’s been, her friend’s eyes—Nathalie, he remembers suddenly—flashing between the top of her Ray-Bans and the rim of her straw sunhat.
“Have you been back? To the park, I mean?” Nora is wearing a navy jumper with pink flowers he hasn’t seen before. It looks good on her, he thinks. She looks good. “How’s your hand?”
“Oh—better,” he says, twisting it around for his own inspection. Although it’s been a month, the bruises on his arms and chest—continents of purple, ringed by yellow—haven’t fully faded. Luna pants in the heat. Once it becomes clear they won’t be continuing their walk, she drops her head onto her paws.
“Does she have to wear that thing all the time?” she asks with a jut of her chin.
“Only ’round other dogs.” He wedges a finger beneath the nylon muzzle and gives Luna a scratch. “How about you? How’ve you been? Seeing anyone?”
Nora’s cheeks pinken. She’s been on a few dates—outdoors, of course, or on Zoom—but nothing serious.
“Good for you,” he says, and means it. He has never felt all one way about their breakup. His feelings are a miasma, a confusing swirl of remorse, guilt, relief.
“How’s work?” she asks cheerfully. The horn from the ferry carries over the row houses, the rusted, rambling warehouses several blocks distant. “Have you been back to the city?”
“No. Quit, actually. I’m teaching now.”
“Teaching? Really?” she says, unable to hide her surprise. “I never knew you wanted to teach. What subject?”
“ESL,” he says with a long, embarrassed look at the ground. “Pays practically nothing, but…”
“Long as it makes you happy,” Nora says.
A dial of sunlight glints off a passing bus. For a single instant, everything—the sidewalk, Nora and Nathalie, Luna and Myles, the city, and everyone in it—seems new and sweet, etched in stark relief.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think it does.”
Comments