I drifted into New York City and signed a lease on a damp basement apartment in an inconvenient section of Brooklyn. It was a Polish neighborhood made up of three-story brick houses and a waste transfer station which spilled refuse out onto the streets when the wind blew hard. There was a creek too, somewhere, and it was said to be full of oil. That basement apartment had one redeeming feature, a small private backyard, and in the springtime I planted tomatoes there. My landlord, a hirsute woman named Rosie, warned me not to eat them though, because the oil from the creek had permeated the soil. But I ate them anyway, and they tasted fine.
Across the East River loomed the hustle and commerce of Manhattan and I found a job there sorting books and making copies in the library of a large law firm. It was simple, tedious work, but it paid fairly well and I quickly learned how to slip away for long stretches of time undetected by my supervisors. Three nights a week I worked a late shift and remained there until 4:00 a.m. The big firm was nicely quiet then and often I would escape to my favorite back hallway and sit contentedly with a book or magazine.
It was there in that hallway that I first met Jim Tewilliger, the rotund, fidgety lawyer who would come to alter my life. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. and I was sitting on the floor reading when he walked by and glanced in my direction. A minute later he returned and gave me a more careful look. It was unusual to see anyone up there at that hour, especially a lawyer, so I jumped to my feet. Jim was perhaps fifty years old and had lost most of the hair on top of his head. The hair that was left he combed straight back, in thin wisps. He wasn’t bad-looking, though his nervous demeanor caused him to sweat a lot, and I suppose this made him unattractive to some. I had seen him around, marching through the hallways in his gray suit, acting harried and important. He was a partner in the firm, with his name printed on the impressive letterhead. This, as I understood it, meant he had a lot of money.
“I’m sorry,” Jim said to me. He peered down the hallway as if something there were of interest to him.
I held up my magazine. “I’m taking a break,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course you are.”
He knitted his plump fingers together and shifted about in his leather shoes. Then he turned around and left. I stood there wondering if I had just lost my job, or at least lost my ability to slack off while at it. I was about to go back to the library and pretend to be busy when Jim returned once again.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m Jim Tewilliger.” And with that he stepped forward and held out his soft, moist hand.
“I’m Georgie,” I said, trying to look him in the eye as we shook, a practice I was told businesspeople admired.
“Nice to meet you, George,” said Jim. He appeared to relax a little now that we had formally met.
We had a short, pleasant exchange during which he explained that he was a partner and had worked there for eighteen years. I told him I lived in Brooklyn, was new to the firm, and worked in the library.
“Very good,” said Jim. “Excellent.”
And then he looked around cautiously and said, in a hushed, uneasy voice, “I don’t suppose you would know where I might purchase some … a small amount of … um, marijuana? Just a little bit, of course. For personal use.”
I did in fact know where some marijuana might be purchased, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him that.
“I’m sorry,” said Jim quickly, sensing my unease. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Forgive me.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I haven’t used the stuff in years,” said Jim. “I just think, well, it might help me to relax, to unwind a little. I used to enjoy it when I was in college.”
I looked at Jim standing there in his fine-cut wool pants and sweat-stained shirt. He seemed very tired, desperate somehow.
“I’m not a dealer,” I told him.
“I know. Of course. I know that. I just…”
“I could bring you some in a few days,” I said.
“Really?” said Jim. “Fantastic.”
“A small amount.”
“Right, of course.”
It seemed a strange business to be conducting within the confines of that stately law firm, but I decided then that it would be done. I suppose I could easily have said no to Jim that night and he would have said, “Of course,” and we would have gone our separate ways. It wasn’t that I was looking for favors from him, financially or otherwise. To be honest, I felt sorry for him. Something in his weary eyes and drawn-out face made him hard to refuse. Standing before me in that fluorescent-lit corridor of the twenty-third floor, Jim Tewilliger seemed like a human I could help.
* * *
Three days later I brought three joints to work with me. I placed them in a sturdy, sealed manila envelope and delivered the package to Jim’s office myself. His secretary, a wily older woman named Roberta, looked me over and said, “What is this regarding?”
I said, “It’s the materials he requested from the library.”
Jim came racing out of his office and snatched the envelope. “Thank you,” he said to us both, and then he darted back inside.
Roberta said, “Jim’s very busy these days.”
“Of course.”
Later that week I was back up in my hallway when Jim approached. He had a long red scratch running down his cheek, just below his eye.
“My dog,” he explained. “She’s playful.”
“I see.”
“How much do I owe you? For the delivery…”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “If you want any more than that though, I’ll give you the number of this guy. He delivers within an hour—”
“Oh no. I can’t make those calls. I live in Connecticut. I’m all set anyway. I simply want to be sure you get compensated for your time.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said.
“Well, thank you,” said Jim. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. and most of the other lawyers had left a long time ago. A few young go-getters, first-year associates, were stuck in their offices poring over documents, and the cleaning crew were moving about quietly with their carts. Certainly all of the other partners were at home in bed, but Jim seemed in no hurry to leave.
“I was wondering if you wanted to take a few tokes with me,” he said. “Unwind a little.” He gave a quick smile and looked around apprehensively.
“Now?” I said. “Here?”
“What do you say?” asked Jim. “I’d appreciate the company…”
We found an empty conference room and opened up all the windows. Jim was giddy with excitement.
“Now, this is crazy!” he said. “Ha!”
We each took a few puffs and then Jim got scared when he heard a cleaning service cart roll down the hall. He flicked the joint out the window and waved his hands frantically, trying to clear the air.
“Let’s get out of here!” he said.
We trotted down the staircase to Jim’s office, where he shut the door behind us and locked it.
“Ah…” he said. He pulled out a bottle of scotch and offered me a glass. I had never tasted scotch and even though Jim informed me that this was an expensive and aged batch, I could barely get it down. I wasn’t feeling stoned either. The atmosphere was all wrong. Jim’s desk was piled high with stacks of paper, memorandums about stockholder proposals and merger risk analysis.
“I am so wasted,” Jim said to me. He plopped down onto one of his chairs and lifted his feet in the air. “Whoowee!”
He sipped his scotch and told me about the various people whose faces smiled out at us from the framed photos propped on the bookshelves.
“That’s my wife, Sara,” he said, pointing to a picture of a woman holding a hunting rifle. “She loves the outdoors. Very active.”
There was another picture of the two of them on skis, standing at the top of a mountain. Jim’s outfit was a little too tight. It outlined his protruding belly and showed off his wide, strangely flat ass. But Sara looked snappy in her red snowsuit. They had a son too, a boy named Wendell, who was even more fat, proportionately, than Jim. He was at a boarding school now, his first year. For each picture of Wendell or Sara though, there were about three of a large dog named Boots. Boots was a mixture of Newfoundland and Irish wolfhound, two big breeds to begin with, and the result was an enormous, goofy combination of the two.
“She weighs two hundred and seventeen pounds,” said Jim.
“She looks like a horse,” I said. “Or a pony.” I stared at a picture of Boots standing openmouthed next to plump young Wendell, their two heads sitting at approximately the same height.
“She’s no horse,” said Jim, chuckling. He rubbed affectionately at the red scratch mark on his cheek. “She’s one hundred percent dog.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Sara can’t stand her,” said Jim. He emptied the last of his scotch into his mouth and swallowed it down.
“She can’t stand me either,” he said. “We haven’t had sex in eight years. Or maybe nine. It’s been a while.”
“Oh.”
“Yup,” said Jim. He looked at me forlornly, as if maybe I might have some advice for that sort of thing. I didn’t.
“I think I need to get back up to the library, Jim,” I said. “Thanks for the scotch.”
“Sure. Sure, of course.” Jim wiped back the wispy hairs on top of his head. “Listen, this guy of yours, the one who makes the deliveries. Does he, um, deliver anything else?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.
“I’d like to try some cocaine,” said Jim. “I feel like I missed out on it when I was younger. Sara doesn’t like to experiment.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” I told him.
“But still,” said Jim. “I’d like to give it a try.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Will you ask him?”
“Okay, Jim,” I said. And then I walked out and rode the elevator back up to the library, leaving Jim alone with all those photos of his family and the giant dog.
* * *
Over the next week Jim stopped by a few times to check in about the cocaine. I’d thought he might just let it drop, but that wasn’t the case. He’d come find me in the hallway after business hours and say something like, “Any word from your man?”
For a while I avoided the subject by saying I hadn’t gotten around to it, but then finally I just said, “He doesn’t handle that kind of thing.”
This was the truth, actually, but I sensed that Jim knew I could do better than that.
“Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. The red scratch on his cheek wasn’t improving. In fact, it was getting worse. The eye above it looked a little bloodshot, as if it might be getting infected.
“You should take care of that scratch,” I told him.
“Oh sure, I know,” said Jim. “Boots keeps licking at it. I made a doctor appointment already.”
“Good.”
“So listen,” said Jim, “if you hear of anything, you know, about the other stuff, will you let me know?”
“Sure, Jim,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
Although I didn’t want to become Jim’s “connection,” I have to admit I enjoyed finding myself in his confidence. Each afternoon in the firm’s cafeteria the employees would eat lunch in tightly segregated groups, the library staff at one table, the paralegals at another, and in the center, at a great round table, sat the partners, unapproachable by the likes of us. Sometimes Jim would be there, sweaty and serious, talking some matter over with another tight-faced colleague. I would stay far away from him then, but I liked knowing that I had access, however shady and tenuous, to that rarefied circle.
One of my neighbors in Brooklyn, a gruff Polish fellow named Wiktor, had borrowed money from me earlier in the summer. It was only $40 and he paid me back shortly afterward. When he paid me though, he also gave me a slip of paper with his phone number on it.
He said, “If you ever want to go skiing, you give me a call, okay?”
I said, “Sure,” and thought it was odd that he’d ask me to join him on a ski trip. He didn’t seem like the type of guy to be hanging out with Jim and Sara back at the lodge, but later I realized what he meant. Skiing requires snow, and that was a term for cocaine. I kept Wiktor in mind in case Jim ever pressed me about the drug again, which, in time, he did.
Jim came up and found me in the hallway one night just after 3:00 a.m. We hadn’t talked in a while and he wasn’t looking so good. The scratch under his eye still hadn’t gone away. He’d been picking at it or something and it had morphed into a wide red splotch, like a burn mark.
“I thought you were going to see a doctor,” I said to him.
“I did,” he said. “She gave me some cream. I think I’m allergic to it. Boots won’t stop licking at it either. It’s a mess, I know.”
“What about your wife? Is she concerned about it?”
“She’s fed up with me. Everybody is. Listen, how would you like to come down to my office and help me finish off the last of that marijuana?”
I followed him back down to his office. The room was a complete mess. His desk was buried under disorganized stacks of paper and the leather chairs were piled with notebooks and empty sandwich boxes. He had heaps of clothes in there too, some of them covered with long wiry hairs which I assumed came from Boots.
“Isn’t someone supposed to clean this place up for you?” I asked.
“Roberta,” said Jim, “but I won’t let her in.”
Jim pulled out the envelope which I’d delivered to him nearly a month ago and he emptied the final joint into his hand. He told me he had smoked the other one back at home and Sara had caught him. She was not pleased.
“I can’t seem to do anything right around there,” said Jim. “I’ve moved into a hotel. The Carlyle. It was the only one that would take both me and Boots. It’s costing me a fortune.”
“When are you going back home?”
“Back home? Never, I hope.”
“What about Wendell?”
“He’ll be fine. He’s at school, remember?”
“Oh yeah, right…”
We smoked the joint while sitting on the floor. Jim took off his shoes and appeared to relax a little.
“George,” he said, “I want your opinion about something.”
He pulled a newspaper out from the mess on his desk. It was a weekly paper, The Village Voice. Jim turned to the back pages and laid them out in front of me. There were rows of pictures of scantily clad women, escorts, advertising their services.
“What do you think of these advertisements?” asked Jim. “Are they legitimate?
“Well, sure,” I said. “Those businesses exist, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean, are these pictures real? Look at this woman…”
Jim pointed to a picture of a tan, well-toned blond woman in a bikini. Below the picture was the name Lena. “24 hrs—Adult Bodywork,” it said.
“I think the pictures might be fake,” I told him.
“How much do you think she charges?”
“I don’t know. A hundred dollars. Are you going to call one of these people?”
“I’ve considered it, George. I’ll be honest with you. I have considered it.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Do you have any experience with this sort of thing?”
“Very little,” I told him.
“But you’ve had some?”
“Hardly any,” I replied.
“Come with me,” said Jim.
We walked over to a conference room and Jim picked up the phone. He dialed a number and handed the receiver to me.
A sleepy, scratchy woman’s voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hello?” I said, looking at Jim.
“Ask her how much she charges,” he whispered.
“How much do you charge? For your service,” I asked.
“Three hundred for the hour,” she said, “plus tips.”
I told this information to Jim.
“Ask her if the picture is real.”
I handed the phone to Jim. “You ask her,” I said.
Jim dropped the receiver and jumped back.
“I can’t talk to her,” he whispered. “Please, just ask her.”
I picked up the phone. “Hello, are you there?”
“Yes,” said the woman, sounding a little put out.
“Is this Lena, from the ad?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said again.
“The one in the picture?”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“Tell her I’m an executive,” whispered Jim. “Very clean-cut.”
“He’s an executive,” I said.
“Call me back when you’re through dicking around,” said Lena. And then she hung up.
I explained the conversation to Jim and he stood there wide-eyed and amazed. He shuffled back into his office, scooped up the newspaper, and held the picture up to me.
“Is that who you just talked to?” he asked.
“She said it was her.”
“Wow,” said Jim.
There was a noise out in the hallway as someone walked by and bumped into something.
“Jesus Christ,” said Jim. “We need to get out of here.” He began flapping his arms up and down to clear the air.
“We’re going to get busted!” he said.
He threw on his coat and stepped quickly into his leather shoes.
“Let’s go!” he said, stumbling out the door.
My shift at the library was done, but I had to go back up there to get my stuff. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” I said.
“Don’t ditch me,” said Jim, rubbing frantically at the red spot on his cheek. “Don’t leave me alone like this.”
“I won’t,” I told him.
I retrieved my belongings and then met Jim down in the cavernous lobby of the firm. It was a giant room full of shiny marble and polished brass fixtures. Jim was in the corner talking loudly to the security guard, saying something about the cleaning staff smoking while on the job. When he saw me he stopped talking and motioned for me to join him outside. A black town car with a driver stood waiting at the curb.
“Hop in,” said Jim. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“I live in Brooklyn,” I told him.
“Just hop in,” said Jim.
He told the driver to take us uptown, to the Carlyle Hotel.
“It’s late, Jim,” I said. “I’d like to go home.”
“I called Lena back,” he said. He seemed proud that he had mustered the courage. “She’s coming to the Carlyle in forty-five minutes. She said the picture was real.”
“Then I should go home.”
“No! No. I need you to take Boots out when she arrives. Boots won’t know what to do if things get frisky between me and this woman.”
“She’s not going to look like that picture,” I told him.
“She assured me she would,” said Jim.
We arrived at the Carlyle shortly after 4:00 a.m. The doorman was asleep in a chair. Jim told him we’d be expecting company and to send her right up when she arrived.
“Certainly, Mr. Tewilliger,” said the doorman.
Upon entering the room, Jim was immediately pounced upon by the colossal panting beast known as Boots. She was the biggest, most absurd example of a dog I’d ever seen. She threw her massive paws on Jim’s chest and pinned him to the wall, all the while licking his face with her pancake-sized tongue.
“Oh, Bootsy!” said Jim, “How is my little girl?”
This went on for a while until Boots noticed I was there too and turned her attention to me. She let out a deep woof! and then lunged at my face with that giant slobbering tongue. Jim grabbed her collar and pulled her back.
“Easy, Boots. He’s okay.”
Jim’s room was actually a suite, and I believed he meant it when he said it was costing him a fortune. The place was appointed with long elegant windows and ornate, impressive furniture. Jim had taken to sleeping on the couch though. Boots had the entire king-sized bed to herself and she’d ripped the plush bedspread to bits.
“Yes, I know, I’m going to have to pay for that,” remarked Jim.
He poured us each a glass of scotch and we sat down to await the arrival of Lena. I managed to stomach this glass of scotch better than the one I’d had before and Jim quickly poured me another.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. “I’ve never done this before. Do you think she’ll actually show up?”
“She said she would, right?”
“Right, she said that.”
“And you told her you were an executive.”
“Well, you told her that.”
“How much is she charging you?”
“Five hundred dollars. Is that too much?”
“No, that sounds about right.”
“Do you want me to get one for you too?” asked Jim. “I should have thought of that. I could call and see if she has a friend…”
“No. No, that’s okay, really.”
Nearly an hour passed. Daylight began creeping up around the tall buildings, and outside the delivery trucks started their daily rumble down the avenue. Jim was distressed.
“Where is she? Maybe I should go to sleep. Jesus, I’m tired. I waited all night for this and she didn’t even come.”
He seemed genuinely hurt by this apparent snub. He put his head in his hands and I thought he was going to cry.
“She’s probably just running late,” I said.
“Of course,” said Jim. “But still. Jesus, I’m tired. George, are you sure you don’t know where we might locate some cocaine? That would help, right?”
Like I said, I’d kept Wiktor’s information on hand for just this sort of situation. I too was exhausted, and operating in a bit of a haze. I picked up the phone, dialed the number, and was surprised to find Wiktor wide awake and alert.
“It’s Georgie,” I said, “your neighbor. You said to call if I wanted to go skiing…”
“Yes, yes!” said Wiktor. “Where are you?”
I told him we were at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan and he agreed to come right over.
“I will drive my truck,” he told me.
When I hung up Jim was looking at me, vexed. “Now, look here,” he said, “what the hell time is this to organize a ski trip?”
I explained to him the hidden meaning and we both had a little chuckle over that. Jim’s spirits seemed lifted and he poured himself another glass of scotch. Then the phone rang and it was the doorman saying a “Miss Mendez” was on her way up.
“Oh my God,” said Jim. His face turned pale and he began to rub at his cheek.
“Don’t do that,” I told him.
“I’m not ready,” said Jim.
“You’ve been waiting since four in the morning,” I said.
“Oh my God,” said Jim again.
There was a knock on the door and Boots, who had been sleeping, jumped up and let out a series of thunderous barks.
“Quiet, Boots!” said Jim.
Boots would not be quiet and a sharp voice from outside the door said, “Put the fucking dog away or I’m calling the police.”
Jim held on to Boots while I opened the door. In walked a pear-shaped Hispanic woman who looked nothing like the woman in the advertisement.
“Hello,” said Jim meekly, still holding on to Boots.
“There’s two of you?” she said. “I’m not working with two people.”
“I’m leaving,” I said, “with the dog.”
“Good,” she said. And then she took off her coat.
“Wait,” said Jim. “You’re not Lena.”
“Yes, I am,” she said.
“But the picture…”
“That’s me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. What kind of question is that? Am I going to have to get Tyrone up here to sort this out?”
“Tyrone?”
“You want to have a good time or not?”
Lena was practically yelling now and Jim said, “Please, Lena. Would you care for some scotch?”
“Sure. Thank you,” she replied.
I picked up Boots’s leash and as soon as the big dog saw that, she bounded toward me and jumped up and down with excitement.
“I’ll see you later,” I said.
And with that I left Jim sitting ashen-faced on the couch, staring helplessly at Lena as she guzzled down the scotch he had just handed her.
* * *
It was light outside now, though just barely. Boots was overjoyed to be free from the confines of that fancy hotel room and she pulled me along the sidewalk at a rapid pace. The sight of her giant galloping figure frightened an old lady and caused a group of school-bound children to scatter to the other side of the street. At a Fifth Avenue street corner Boots squatted down and released the most enormous heap of poop I’d ever seen. I would have needed a snow shovel and a garbage bag to scoop it up. I didn’t have anything like that with me though, so I sheepishly left it there for the morning commuters to marvel at, and together Boots and I ran across the street to Central Park.
Once there I removed Boots’s leash and she dashed about the open fields with glee. It was nice to see her so happy and joyful, even if she was a goofy, slow-witted dog. The other dog owners in the park admired her size and zeal, though I believe they felt sorry for me as well. A dog of that size must be a lot of work, they remarked.
“She’s not my dog,” I told them. “She belongs to a friend.”
When I said that I wondered if I really could count Jim Tewilliger as my friend. We’d spent enough time together to qualify as something like that, and he had certainly confided in me. He’d even asked a few questions about my life during our conversations. But I imagined that Jim saw me as more of an acquaintance, someone who gave him access to a world different from his own. Perhaps he sought me out and confided in me precisely because I was not his friend, because I was so far outside his social realm that it didn’t matter what I knew or thought about him.
I pictured him now, naked and groping at the flabby body of a stranger in that hotel room. I hoped that it was going okay, that something about his five-hundred-dollar hour with Lena was providing him what he needed.
I should have been keeping a better eye on Boots though, because at some point she ran off into the nearby woods and disappeared. I called out for her and followed directions from a group of startled bird-watchers who saw her galloping down a nearby hill. When I found her she was splashing about the shoreline of a scum-covered pond, surrounded by a flock of angry ducks, and covered with mud. I did my best to clean her off, but the staff back in the lobby of the Carlyle Hotel weren’t too glad to see us upon our return.
“A Mr. Wiktor is upstairs,” said the doorman, giving me a curious look.
I had forgotten about Wiktor. Boots and I had been gone for quite a while. We hurried upstairs, tracking mud liberally along the carpet in the hall. Back in the room I found Wiktor and Lena pacing about angrily. The drawers of the bureau had been pulled out and Jim’s clothing was scattered on the floor.
“Where’s Jim?” I asked them.
“Your friend left,” said Wiktor, throwing his hands in the air. “He snort, snort…” Wiktor made loud sniffing noises through his nose, indicating the use of cocaine. “And then he say he needs to go to bank machine. For money. He’s gone now for half an hour.”
Lena said, “I didn’t get paid yet. He left and didn’t even pay me!”
“I’m sure he’ll be back,” I said.
“Do you have money?” said Wiktor.
I pulled out my wallet. It had $40 in it. Wiktor and Lena agreed to split that if Jim didn’t return. It was nice, at least, to see them cooperate like that. In addition, they’d found several dollars in a pair of Jim’s pants which was also to be divided evenly.
We waited for close to an hour and Jim never showed up. A hotel maid stuck her head in the room and stared in disbelief at the three of us watching television in that disheveled room. Boots barked at her and she disappeared.
“We will leave now,” said Wiktor.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll find Jim and get the money to both of you.”
Lena shook her head and we gathered up our belongings. Wiktor ripped up a pair of Jim’s pants and poured the rest of the expensive scotch on the television set. It fizzled and then something inside popped with a plume of smoke. I filled two bowls with food and water for Boots and she whined as we shut the door behind us.
* * *
I found Jim back at work that evening. He’d left several messages for me at the library desk and as soon as I could I went down to his office to see what was going on.
When I showed up Roberta said to me, “Are you the one he’s waiting for? He hasn’t let me in his office all week. Is he all right?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
I walked in the office and it smelled like a locker room. The shades were pulled down and Jim was napping on the couch.
“George!” said Jim, jumping up to greet me. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Boots ran off in the park,” I said. “By the time I found her and got back, you were gone.”
“I had to get out of there,” he said. “I had no other recourse. Lena and I had no chemistry. None whatsoever. She tried to give me a back rub, but I was too tense. Then your Polish friend showed up and things got very uncomfortable.”
“They said you left without paying.”
“I fully intend to compensate them both. They’ll be fully compensated, I assure you.”
“You’d better. Wiktor lives on my block…”
“I wanted to ask you about that,” said Jim. “I need to ask you a favor.” He paused and looked at me with a now-familiar look of desperation.
“A favor?”
“I’ve been … I’ve been asked to vacate my room at the Carlyle. Someone complained about Boots. They said the room is in bad shape too. I’m taking care of the damages, of course. But I need a place for Boots. She’s not cut out for hotel living. That place of yours in Brooklyn, you mentioned it had a backyard?”
“It’s small,” I said. “She wouldn’t be happy there. Don’t you have some friends back in Connecticut? Or a kennel? What about taking her home?”
“Not an option,” said Jim. “None of it. Look, I just need a temporary shelter until this blows over. I’m making some changes, George, and I’d prefer not to have to explain things to my colleagues right now.”
“What kind of changes?” I asked him.
“You know, loosening up. I need to break out of this grind. Look at this place!”
“It seems like a pretty good place to me,” I said.
“You don’t understand,” said Jim. “You really don’t. Look, will you please take Boots? Just until I get things back in order. I’ll pay the expenses, of course.”
And so I agreed to take Boots, just for a few days. Jim showed up in a taxicab that night, with the dog and, to my surprise, two large suitcases of his own.
“I’d like to stay here as well, if that’s okay,” he announced. “I’m not sure I can be away from Boots right now.”
I led them down to my little basement apartment and Jim looked around quizzically while Boots bumped into things and knocked books off the shelves with her wagging tail.
“So this is it?” said Jim.
“Right,” I said. “This is where I live.”
I showed him the backyard and Jim said, “Hmm…”
“You might be happier somewhere else,” I suggested.
“Oh no,” said Jim. “Of course not. Why wouldn’t we be happy here?”
We ate a pizza for dinner and later on Wiktor came by to collect his money. Jim apologized and handed Wiktor $200.
“You’re lucky I don’t break your legs, asshole,” said Wiktor.
“I know, I know,” said Jim.
“You leave me with your hooker friend. What am I supposed to do?”
“Well, you didn’t have to tear up my clothing…”
“Yes, I did have to do that.”
“It was very rude.”
“Rude?” Wiktor stepped forward and slapped Jim on top of his head. It wasn’t an especially hard slap. He just smacked him across the top so that his hair flipped forward and left him disoriented. Boots jumped up and barked and Jim said, “Hey!”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Wiktor, pointing a finger at Jim. “Georgie, your friend is stupid. He is the one who is rude.”
“I know,” I said. “You’re right.”
I held on to Boots as Wiktor turned and left.
On his way out Wiktor said, “That dog looks like a horse.”
* * *
We barely fit into my place, Jim, Boots, and me. Even sitting down we were all on top of one another.
“Do you think I’m rude, George?” asked Jim.
I thought about this for a moment and then said, “Yes, Jim, I’d say you sometimes are.”
Jim was glum after I said this. He fell asleep on the couch and was gone before I got up in the morning. His clothes and dog were still there, but he was gone.
That day in the cafeteria, Jim’s secretary, Roberta, committed an unusual breach of lunchroom etiquette. She walked up to me at the corner table, where I was eating with the other library staff, and she said, “Can I speak with you for a moment?”
I said sure and got up and we went out to the hallway, inviting stares from the various factions at the firm.
“Jim has not shown up for work today,” she said. “His office is a disaster. It smells in there. Would you mind telling me what you know about this?”
“Jim’s making some changes,” I said.
“I see,” said Roberta.
“I’m not sure if I should go into it,” I said.
“I’ve known Mr. Tewilliger for almost twenty years,” said Roberta. “He’s a very steady worker. His wife called today. She hasn’t seen him in a week. The other partners are beginning to wonder.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“I’m not so sure you’re a good influence on him, young man,” said Roberta. “This all began with you.”
“Me?”
“That’s correct.”
“I have nothing to do with this,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew that in some way, in fact I did.
“If you happen to see Mr. Tewilliger,” said Roberta, “please tell him that folks here are concerned.”
“I’ll tell him,” I said. “If I see him.”
“Thank you.”
Back upstairs, in the clean, quiet din of the firm library, I pondered this conversation and Roberta’s damning accusation. I phoned my home number and called out for Jim when the answering machine picked up. Boots was probably listening to me, lying confused amid a heap of my overturned furniture. Feeling uneasy, I looked up Jim’s number in Connecticut and called it later that afternoon. A woman answered.
“Is Jim there?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He’s not.”
“Is this Sara?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Georgie. I’m a friend of Jim’s from work.”
“Georgie?”
“Well, we’re not really friends…”
“Jim hasn’t been home for a while,” said Sara.
“I know, that’s why I called…”
I explained to Sara that Jim had been forced to leave his room at the Carlyle because of Boots and now he and Boots were staying with me in Brooklyn. Or Boots was, at least. I wasn’t sure about Jim.
“I’m afraid I’m not a very good influence on your husband,” I said.
“Really?”
“That’s what Roberta said.”
“Roberta said that?”
“Yes, and I was wondering if you might be able to help.”
“How could I do that?”
I gave her my address and asked if she would come take Boots off my hands, at least.
“I hate that dog,” she said.
“Well, Jim seems attached to her.”
“I’m aware of that.”
We talked a while longer and Sara said, “I’ll see what I can do,” and hung up the phone. I felt a little better.
That night, when I arrived back at my place, I found things surprisingly in order. The apartment had been cleaned up and Jim was sitting in the kitchen with Lena and a small boy. There was food cooking on the stove and Lena was rubbing ointment on the red patch under Jim’s eye. He had taken a shower and was wearing blue jeans.
“George!” said Jim. “You remember Lena? And this is Emanuel, her son.”
Emanuel nodded at me. He was feeding bits of bread to Boots, who was happily munching them underneath the table.
“I called Lena to pay her back for the other night,” said Jim. “And she came over and helped me clean up. Do you know that you have tomatoes in your backyard?”
“I knew that.”
“Boots dug them up.”
“Oh.”
The food smelled good and we all ate a big meal sitting crowded in my tiny kitchen. Emanuel fell asleep on the floor with his head resting on Boots’s furry side and Lena remarked how funny that looked.
“Boots is like a lion,” she said.
“That’s right, Lena,” said Jim. “She is like a lion.”
Lena turned to me and said, “My name is not Lena. It’s Maribell.”
“But I still call her Lena,” said Jim. “It’s a small joke between us.”
There was a knock on the door and Boots jumped up, spilling little Emanuel to the floor in the process. I went out to answer the door and was greeted by a taller, stretched-out version of young Wendell from the photographs in Jim’s office. He looked at me nervously and said, “Is, um, Jim Tewilliger here?”
Before I could answer, Boots bounded by me and began licking Wendell on the face. She was very excited to see him.
“Good girl, Boots,” said Wendell. They stood there getting reacquainted for a while.
Finally Wendell said, “Is my dad here?”
“Come on inside,” I told him, and I led him down the stairs, through my little living room/bedroom, and into the kitchen. There was no one there. The dirty dishes from dinner were stacked neatly in the sink. I opened up the back door to the yard and peered out into the darkness. Jim, Maribell, and Emanuel were gone.
“They’re not here,” I told Wendell.
“Who’s ‘they’?” he asked me.
“Well, he’s not here.”
“But he was.”
“Right,” I said, “he was just here.”
Wendell looked down at the floor and scratched Boots’s enormous head. He had grown taller than her now, at least.
“How did you get here?” I asked him.
“I drove,” he said. “I came down from school and my mother let me take the car. I only have a learner’s permit.”
I stuck my head back outside and gazed around the yard some more to see if maybe Jim was out there hiding. But he wasn’t. They must have hopped the fence, all three of them.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.
“That’s okay,” said Wendell. “I’ll take Boots home anyway.”
We walked out to the street and I helped him load Boots into the back of his mother’s fancy little car. It was one of those low-riding sportsters where the backseat is just an afterthought and Boots looked like a big rug stuffed back there. I told Wendell I’d ask Jim to give him a call right away.
“Sure, thanks,” said Wendell, and then he left.
I watched Boots’s huge dumb face press against the curved glass of the rear windshield as they drove away.
* * *
Jim never did return to my home. He left his two suitcases full of thousand-dollar suits and shiny shoes behind, and months later a man in a van came by to haul the stuff away. He said he was shipping it all down to Mexico. Back at the firm the word was Jim Tewilliger had gone nuts. He’d checked out and left the country. Apparently this sort of thing happened at law firms from time to time. Roberta stayed on and shot me accusatory looks when we crossed paths in the cafeteria.
Several months after Jim’s departure I received a worn-out letter, addressed to me at the law firm library. It was from Jim. It said:
Hola Georgie!
Greetings from San Miguel! Lena was crazy after all. But Emanuel is a nice boy and I took him home to see his father. I have holed up here for now. I miss my dog terribly and am hoping you can help me in this regard. Would you be so kind as to bring Boots down here to stay with me? I will cover all expenses, naturally, and more than compensate you for your time.
Your Friend,
Jim T.
I did not take him up on this offer.