A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

“How come they called you ?”

“I’m here with Alfredo, dropping off the patty-cakes. We were able to transport four. Alfredo just got them settled in their comfy, new quarters. We already have homes for three of them.”

My admiration for Billie in that moment was genuine. But I still had to rally to acknowledge the good work she had done.

I thought, if I can’t protect myself, I can still protect my dog.

• • •

I snapped on Olive’s leash and took her out for a walk. Soon, Cloud would be able to go outdoors, too. We headed toward Petopia. Olive picked up her pace as she recognized the route to her toy store. By the time we turned the final corner, Olive was flying along. Inside the store, I saw a medium-size beagle-mix, unaccompanied, walk up to a dog-height barrel of rawhide treats, nose around, and select one, then trot out the door with it. I laughed and asked the clerk if he had seen that. “Rudy runs a tab,” he said. Rudy worked in the travel bureau next door. We left the store with a tub of freeze-dried liver bits for Cloud.

The simple joy of pleasing a dog strengthened me enough to return to the job ahead. Back at the computer, something was obscene about having to slog through Bennett and Libertine’s flippant sniping for a chance to find out who she was.

Libertine: Are you in her will?

Whose will?

Bennett: The apartment is rented, and she doesn’t have a car. She didn’t come from money, and she gives away most of what she makes.

My donations to animal-welfare agencies?

Libertine: Nothing like keeping busy without making money!

Bennett: Isn’t that what you do?

Libertine: I can afford to, as you well know.

Bennett: I keep thinking of that documentary we liked, Grizzly Man, the way Timothy Treadwell’s passion for grizzly bears led to his ironic death. I mean, a homeless man? In the shelter where she worked to help them?

The relief that I felt was twofold: relief that it wasn’t me they were talking about, and more powerfully, relief that Bennett was dead. I thought I knew what a sociopath was; I could profile one for you. But not until that moment did I understand viscerally what one did.

He had talked this way about a woman he had planned to marry, a woman who had been killed in compassionate service to others. I even had the time-worn thought Is nothing sacred? And what of Grizzly Man ? They both liked the documentary, according to the e-mail exchange, but I had seen it, too, and remembered that Treadwell’s girlfriend accompanied him and she was also killed by the grizzly that mauled him.

I read to the point where the homeless man under suspicion for the murder of Susan Rorke had been cleared and released. After that, the tone of Bennett’s e-mails changed. He became concerned that the police might look at him. Rather than offering reassurance, Libertine failed to take his concerns seriously. She even changed the subject, moving on to thoughts of where they might go next on vacation. But Bennett brought her back to the subject at hand. I read on, seeing the ways in which his expression of fear affected her. At one point she wrote, Who are you! And then I landed on a sentence I reread over and again, looking for a trace of sarcasm, not finding it. It was Bennett defending me to her: Morgan is deeply kind. She would never treat me the way you do.

I was disappointed in myself for feeling flattered.

Libertine didn’t take the bait. Or maybe she did. She issued a challenge to Bennett: I want you to fuck me in her bed. Tomorrow morning. Bennett wrote back, She’ll be gone by 9.

There were no more messages from Libertine. That last one had been sent the night before Bennett’s death.

• • •

I needed to be in motion. I could not bear another moment in the apartment. Grabbed a coat and scarf, hat and gloves, and left to walk — anywhere. I needed to pass people whose mistakes I knew nothing about. I felt safer out among others. I passed the Metropolitan pool, a rack of Citi Bikes, the Colombian food truck, and a juice bar. Who doesn’t need juice? I stopped in and got a small carrot juice, a nod to nutrition.

The closer I got to the water, the more the cold wind picked up. I walked out onto the pier where men fish, but no one was fishing. My eyes watered and my face stung. I surrendered to numbness. That surrender allowed me to surrender also to what I had just learned, that Libertine had been in my apartment the morning Bennett had been killed.

Is that what had ignited the dogs? Being locked in the bathroom and hearing the sounds of Bennett and this woman in my bed? It would certainly ignite me. I found myself suffused with heat. I didn’t feel the cold anymore; the blood was rushing to every cold part of me. Confusion fell away, and I felt a clear, piercing understanding move through me. Another word for this feeling was anger. Normally, anger blinded me, but this time it allowed me to see. It was bracing, and welcome. It was stronger than fear. I valued this clarity; I did not want to blur it. Libertine had been in my bedroom with Bennett.

Boss died during the night. The call came in the morning from Alfredo at For Pitties’ Sake. Now there was room for Cloud. Alfredo said he’d be ready to do an intake for Cloud that afternoon.

Finally, something clean. I had been able, just barely, to protect a creature I loved until I could lead her to safety. I was filled with joy that my dog was going to a place where she would be cared for with love.

Before I reserved a Zipcar, I called Billie. We’d been working toward this moment for nearly six months. I asked her if she wanted to go with me, and she told me she would pick me up. When she arrived, she had coffee and scones for the drive. Plus a rawhide chewie for Cloud. For my part, I had packed sliced ham in my tote bag.

“We did it!” Billie said.

She was right to use the plural, we . I could not have gotten this far without her help, and I told her so. She raised her hand to give me a high five, and I met it with my own. I noticed then that her arm, her face, was as pale as mine. She had no tan at all though she had just come back from the Caribbean. Billie didn’t strike me as one to wear a big hat and gloves in the sun, but what did I know. Even people who stay out of the direct sun get tan in the Caribbean.

“I thought you’d have some color.”

“I was only there for forty-eight hours. I didn’t go there to tan on the beach.”

“Did they finish the new shelter? Did you meet Lesley?”

“Lesley was off island. I picked the dogs up at the old one.”

But every time I had gone down to pick up these dogs, Lesley, the director of the Humane Society, had brought them, paperwork completed, to the airport.

I realized I was testing Billie and I suspected she knew it. I still wanted to know if she’d gone away with McKenzie.

I asked if she had any sugar packets in the car for the coffee.

“Look in the glove.”

I found several lipsticks — though I’d never seen her wear any — but no sugar. I picked up a tube of lipstick in a shade called Tiramisu. “Why don’t I just eat this?” I asked in a lame attempt to joke away the tension I felt between us.

“That’s hard to come by. Been discontinued.”

We had been making good time on the FDR Drive north. Joggers ran along the riverside, wearing extra gear against the cold. Few boats were out on the river in the afternoon, just a single barge being pulled along by a tug. The booze cruises were a spring and summer phenomenon. These were working boats doing their best in the icy water, navigating the famously difficult currents in the inlet known as the East River.