“Lady,” I whisper. “Lady, come out of there.”
She only looks at me. She’s getting on in years and not so steady on her pins as she used to be, but—as the saying goes—she ain’t stupid. She’s under Ellen’s side, where I can’t reach her. If I raise my voice she’ll have to come, but she knows (I’m pretty sure she knows) that I won’t do that, because if I raise my voice, that will wake Ellen.
As if to prove this, Lady turns away from me and the chewing recommences.
Well, I can handle that. I’ve been living with Lady for eleven years, nearly half my married life. There are three things that get her on her feet. One is the rattle of her leash and a call of “Elevator!” One is the thump of her food dish on the floor. The third—
I get up and walk down the short hall to the kitchen. From the cupboard I take the bag of Snackin’ Slices, making sure to rattle it. I don’t have to wait long for the muted clitter of cockerclaws. Five seconds and she’s right there. She doesn’t even bother to bring her toy.
I show her one of the little carrot shapes, then toss it into the living room. A little mean, maybe, and I know she didn’t mean to scare the life out of me, but she did. Besides, the fat old thing can use the exercise. She chases her treat. I linger long enough to start the coffeemaker, then go back into the bedroom. I’m careful to pull the door all the way shut.
Ellen’s still sleeping, and getting up early has one benefit: no need for the alarm. I turn it off. Let her sleep a little later. It’s a bronchial infection. I was scared for a while there, but now she’s on the mend.
I go into the bathroom and officially christen the day by brushing my teeth (I’ve read that in the morning a person’s mouth is as germicidally dead as it ever gets, but the habits we learn as children are hard to break). I turn on the shower, get it good and hot, and step in.
The shower’s where I do my best thinking, and this morning I think about the dream. Five nights in a row I’ve had it. (But who’s counting.) Nothing really awful happens, but in a way that’s the worst part. Because in the dream I know—absolutely know—that something awful will happen. If I let it.
I’m in an airplane, in business class. I’m in an aisle seat, which is where I prefer to be, so I don’t have to squeeze past anybody if I have to go to the toilet. My tray table is down. On it is a bag of peanuts and an orange drink that looks like a vodka sunrise, a drink I’ve never ordered in real life. The ride is smooth. If there are clouds, we’re above them. The cabin is filled with sunlight. Someone is sitting in the window seat, and I know if I look at him (or her, or possibly it), I’ll see something that will turn my bad dream into a nightmare. If I look into the face of my seatmate, I may lose my mind. It could crack open like an egg and all the darkness there is might pour out.
I give my soapy hair a quick rinse, step out, dry off. My clothes are folded on a chair in the bedroom. I take them and my shoes into the kitchen, which is now filling with the smell of coffee. Nice. Lady’s curled up by the stove, looking at me reproachfully.
“Don’t go giving me the stinkeye,” I tell her, and nod toward the closed bedroom door. “You know the rules.”
She puts her snout down on the floor between her paws.
I choose cranberry juice while I wait for the coffee. There’s OJ, which is my usual morning drink, but I don’t want it. Too much like the drink in the dream, I suppose. I have my coffee in the living room with CNN on mute, just reading the crawl at the bottom, which is all a person really needs. Then I turn it off and have a bowl of All-Bran. Quarter to eight. I decide that if the weather’s nice when I walk Lady, I’ll skip the cab and walk to work.
The weather’s nice all right, spring edging into summer and a shine on everything. Carlo, the doorman, is under the awning, talking on his cell phone. “Yuh,” he says. “Yuh, I finally got hold of her. She says go ahead, no problem as long as I’m there. She don’t trust nobody, and I don’t blame her. She got a lot of nice things up there. You come when? Three? You can’t make it earlier?” He tips me a wave with one white-gloved hand as I walk Lady down to the corner.
We’ve got this down to a science, Lady and I. She does it at pretty much the same place every day, and I’m fast with the poop bag. When I come back, Carlo stoops to give her a pat. Lady waves her tail back and forth most fetchingly, but no treat is forthcoming from Carlo. He knows she’s on a diet. Or supposed to be.
“I finally got hold of Mrs. Warshawski,” Carlo tells me. Mrs. Warshawski is in 5-C, but only technically. She’s been gone for a couple of months now. “She was in Vienna.”
“Vienna, is that so,” I say.
“She told me to go ahead with the exterminators. She was horrified when I told her. You’re the only one on four, five, or six who hasn’t complained. The rest of them…” He shakes his head and makes a whoo sound.
“I grew up in a Connecticut mill town. It pretty well wrecked my sinuses. I can smell coffee, and Ellie’s perfume if she puts it on thick, but that’s about all.”
“In this case, that’s probably a blessing. How is Mrs. Nathan? Still under the weather?”
“It’ll be a few more days before she’s ready to go back to work, but she’s a hell of a lot better. She gave me a scare for a while.”
“Me, too. She was going out one day—in the rain, naturally—”
“That’s El,” I say. “Nothing stops her. If she feels like she has to go somewhere, she goes.”
“—and I thought to myself, ‘That’s a real graveyard cough.’” He raises one of his gloved hands in a stop gesture. “Not that I really thought—”
“It was on the way to being a hospital cough, anyway. But I finally got her to see the doctor, and now… road to recovery.”
“Good. Good.” Then, returning to what’s really on his mind: “Mrs. Warshawski was pretty grossed out when I told her. I said we’d probably just find some spoiled food in the fridge, but I know it’s worse than that. So does anybody else on those floors with an intact smeller.” He gives a grim little nod. “They’re going to find a dead rat in there, you mark my words. Food stinks, but not like that. Only dead things stink like that. It’s a rat, all right, maybe a couple of them. She probably put down poison and doesn’t want to admit it.” He bends down to give Lady another pat. “You smell it, don’t you, girl? You bet you do.”
There’s a litter of purple notes around the coffee-maker. I take the purple pad they came from to the kitchen table and write another.
Ellen: Lady all walked. Coffee ready. If you feel well enough to go out to the park, go! Just not too far. Don’t want you to overdo now that you’re finally on the mend. Carlo told me again that he “smells a rat.” I guess so does everyone else in the neighborhood of 5-C. Lucky for us that you’re plugged up and I’m “olfac’trlly challenged.” Haha! If you hear people in Mrs. W’s, it’s the exterminators. Carlo will be with them, so don’t worry. I’m going to walk to work. Need to think summore about the latest male wonder drug. Wish they’d consulted us before they hung that name on it. Remember, DON’T OVERDO. Love you–love you.
I jot half a dozen X’s just to underline the point, and sign it with a B in a heart. Then I add it to the other notes around the coffeemaker. I refill Lady’s water dish before I leave.