The lecture series on first contact scenarios was a bit of an outlier in John’s accounting degree, but he was taking it because he was applying for a job with the Sarovar Company, to leave the Sol system and work as an accountant and become one of the fabulously rich Sarovar Traders. Billy was a few years younger than John and was getting his undergraduate degree in biomechanical engineering.
“The tea?” Billy asked.
“She couldn’t get it down.”
Billy cocked his head to one side. “You hear that?”
John heard the soft battery of the rain. He heard the hissing wheels of a passing rickshaw and the hum of a hovercar taxi. Halfway down the block, shouting from a third-story window, and from the corner sang the beckoning whistles of the evening’s first streetwalkers, prowling around the green canvas eaves of a Brazilian bodega.
“Sounds like New York to me,” John said. “Sounds like I want to get inside and see my daughters.”
“You don’t hear a dog?” Billy asked.
John listened again, and then he did hear an animal sound. “How can you tell it’s a dog? I just hear whimpering.”
“Yeah, but it’s a dog’s whimpering.” Billy followed his ear to a pile of junk leaning against a cracked brownstone. A chair missing one leg leaned against a table that only had one; cardboard boxes and plastic sacks lay heaped about. Billy squatted and looked beneath. “Here, girl.”
John crouched, balancing by resting his knuckles on the wet concrete slab of the sidewalk. He could see a dog, sitting on its haunches. In the darkness, he couldn’t make out much. The dog looked like a Labrador puppy but squashed. Some kind of mutt, probably. “Is he bleeding?”
“She,” Billy said. “Yeah, I think she has a cut across her belly and her hind leg.”
“People can be really rotten,” John muttered.
“Might have been another animal,” Billy said. “Or an accident. Plenty of sharp things to impale yourself on in Manhattan without someone doing it to you on purpose.”
“If she cut herself on barbed wire, it still means some idiot left barbed wire where a dog could get to it.”
“Here, girl,” Billy said.
The dog whimpered.
“Doesn’t your name mean ‘Dog’?” John asked. “I mean, not Billy. The other one. She should come right to you.”
“My other name is Waagosh. It means ‘Fox.’ But you make a good point.”
Billy pulled a pouch from under his shirt, where it hung on a leather thong. Holding it close to his chest to shelter it from the rain, he shook a little of the contents into one hand, and then replaced the bag.
“That smells like tobacco,” John said.
“It is tobacco,” Billy told him. “It’s very good tobacco, cured in a traditional fashion, with no added chemicals.” Then Billy sang words John didn’t recognize. Presumably they were in his native tongue, Ojibwe, and they sounded long and hypnotic. Then Billy reached forward and placed the tobacco on the ground in front of the dog.
“I’m trying really hard not to crack a joke here,” John said, “because I feel like something’s going on that I want to respect.”
“Maybe you were going to say the dog doesn’t smoke.” Billy turned his head and grinned. “Jokes are okay. The spirits aren’t offended by jokes.”
“So…tobacco?”
“I’m giving a gift.”
“To the dog?”
“To the dog’s spirit. Animoosh. To honor the dog and show her we have good intentions. Come to us, Animoosh. Good girl.”
Abruptly, the puppy bolted forward. She ran right past Billy’s tobacco, and past Billy himself, and threw herself on John. Caught off-guard, John managed to grab the dog in both arms and then collapsed backward, sitting in a cold pulled on the sidewalk. A rickshaw sloshed a wave at him as it passed, missing, but spattering a ricochet of fine droplets against his cheek.
“Here,” Billy said. “You have to get home. I’ll take the dog and get her to a shelter.”
He reached out, but the dog squirmed away, pushing itself deeper into John’s arms and whimpering.
“I think we can definitely say the dog’s not a smoker,” John cracked.
“You don’t have time for this.” Billy stood and then helped John up.
John tried once more to hand the puppy to Billy, but she shrank and clung to him and whimpered. “We don’t either one of us have time,” John said, “but it looks like she’s chosen me. It’s okay, I’ll get her cleaned up and get her to the shelter in the morning.”
John wrapped his raincoat around the dog. She stank, smelling of the street and fear and wet dog and garbage. She was bleeding, and the blood immediately stained John’s light blue Oxford shirt.
At the corner, Billy insisted on stopping at the bodega. He smiled and bantered with the working girls but made his way to the printer at the front of the shop. John, feeling deeply awkward, stood and smiled at a tall, olive-skinned girl with gold teeth while Billy operated the printer. When he finished, he handed John a printed blanket and a printed raincoat along with a plastic pouch of printed-beef dog food.
“For the dog,” Billy said.
“I know it rains a lot in the Great Lakes area,” John said, “but do you really put your dogs in raincoats?”
“You’re going to put the raincoat on your floor tonight,” Billy said. “The blanket goes on top of the raincoat, and then the dog sleeps on top of the blanket. The blanket keeps the dog comfortable, and if this untrained rescue pup urinates in the night, the coat protects the floor.”
“You are wise in the ways of dogs, Billy Redbird.” John nodded. “Listen, let me pay for these. Or we can at least split the cost.”
“We are splitting it,” Billy said. “My half is that I pay for these things. Your half is that you wash the dog, treat the wound, and take her to a shelter in the morning.”
They parted ways at the corner, and John walked the two blocks to his apartment. On the way, the rain picked up, and he huddled deeper into his jacket. The dog smelled ripe, but she was warm.
As he climbed the synth-stone steps to the front of his building, two young men in long coats emerged from the front door.
“You’re John,” one said. He was big, with a strong Polynesian face and a wide grin. His companion was narrow and blond and looked as if he were sucking on a lemon.
“Did my big ears give me away again?” John asked.
“We were visiting Ruth.” Lemon Sucker held the door open.
John stooped to look at the name tags. “Thanks, Elder Roney. Elder Tuipelotu. You guys are UC, I take it?”
“We church with the Unified Congregations,” Elder Tuipelotu said.
“Ruth does too, obviously,” John said. “I’m just surprised to see you guys. She’s from the Catholic side. Uncle’s a cardinal, even.”
“Father Ritchey asked us to come by,” Tuipelotu said. “He’s tied up with really urgent matters, and someone needed to visit Sunitha.”
“You mean Ruth,” John said.
“Ruth asked us to give Sunitha a blessing,” Roney said.
“Laying on of hands. Of course, she did.” John fidgeted. So did the dog. “Right. You guys have a nice night. Thanks.”
“Hey, all we’re doing is asking God to take care of your daughter,” Roney said. “No harm, right?”
John squeezed past Roney into the doorway. “Sure. Have a nice night, guys.”
“We’d like to see the Abbotts at church.” Tuipelotu grinned. “I mean, no pressure, but it would make us happy.”
John shut the door and turned his back. “Come on, dog. What was it? Ani something? Let’s go upstairs.”
The elevator was out of order again; Hector was still on vacation, seeing his family in one of the Caribbean Republics, John forgot which one. So, John took a deep breath and walked up the five flights of stairs.