“Thank you. I wish I had been better at other things.”

“You’re not,” Shelby says.

“I’m sorry about what happened.” It sounds like he really is.

“Did she have a girl?”

“Elizabeth Jasmine Levy. We call her Jazz.”

Shelby smiles in spite of herself. “That makes me hate you less.”

Harper laughs. He hugs her, then lets go. She can pick up Blinkie’s ashes at the end of the week. Shelby leaves without paying. Harper can cover it.

She goes to a deli around the corner and texts James the address. When he arrives he sits down across from her, out of breath, wearing his black coat. Due to a traffic jam, he got out of the cab he was in and ran the last ten blocks.

“I should have been with you,” he says.

“It happened too fast.” She shakes her head. Her nose is completely red. She’s been sobbing with long, shuddering sighs, and the deli guys have been muttering to each other and eyeing her nervously, waiting for her to snap. Now they’re keeping an eye on James. When he notices them staring he snarls, “Is there a problem?”

One of the guys calls back, “It’s fine. There’s no problem.”

James orders two café con leches with covers. They’re not staying. “Blinkie wasn’t okay, Shelby.” The counter guy brings over their coffees, averting his eyes as James pays him. “He could barely stand,” James tells her. “I had to hold him on the stoop when I took him out last night to make sure he wouldn’t tilt over.”

“I didn’t even notice. How can I be a vet?”

“Baby,” James says. “He was old. You just didn’t want to see it.”

They hold hands. “Blinkie’s dead,” Shelby says.

“You saved him.”

“It was the reverse. Like us.”

“I assume I’m Blinkie in this equation.”

Shelby doesn’t care if the deli guys are watching. She goes to sit on James’s lap. Nobody says anything. Nobody disapproves or thinks they’re crazy or asks them to leave. They know love when they see it.

Chapter 14

Shelby’s most frequent visitors have been deliverymen from Hunan Kitchen, but that’s over now. The Hunan Kitchen has closed down. The owner sold out to a tapas restaurant, which doesn’t deliver, and is so packed on Friday nights the crowd spills out onto the street. The neighborhood is changing; it’s much more upscale, filled with art galleries and women in fashionable clothes and high heels. Shelby’s upstairs neighbor, the waiter she used to depend upon to walk her dogs in times of emergency, has moved to a cheaper apartment in Brooklyn and three NYU students have taken his place. There’s a lot more noise with the young women tenants, with music playing late into the night and their rowdy friends traipsing up and down the stairs. Shelby occasionally has pizza with them (Kyla, Jackie, and Erin, all from Scarsdale) out on their fire escape, which is more spacious than Shelby’s. Individually they tell her their secrets. Kyla wants to drop out and move to a sustainable farm, Jackie is in love with her cousin’s husband, and Erin thinks she’s fat and hasn’t looked in a mirror for over a year. She peers into a frying pan whenever she’s putting on makeup and needs to get a glimpse of her reflection. Needless to say, Erin is Shelby’s favorite of the three.

Because Shelby doesn’t expect visitors, especially at ten on a Saturday morning, when her buzzer sounds, she ignores it and goes back to sleep. James has a key, and whenever Shelby doesn’t answer he comes up and gets into bed with her. He’s currently at work, so Shelby figures whoever it is will go away. Yesterday she worked a double shift at the shelter, and she could easily sleep all day today. But the buzzer keeps on vibrating, and eventually she gets out of bed and pushes on the intercom, recently fixed by the landlord, who has made a suspicious series of improvements to the building, as if getting ready to sell. “Hello?” Shelby says.

“Shelby, is that you?” the voice asks.

It’s her father. She hasn’t seen him since the funeral. Whenever he’s called she’s made excuses and gotten off the line as quickly as possible, but there’s not much she can do now that he’s right downstairs. Shelby pushes on the buzzer that allows him into the building while quickly pulling on a pair of black pants and a T-shirt, then tosses the dirty dishes into the sink. The dogs start barking as soon as there’s a knock.

“Four flights up?” Dan Richmond says when Shelby opens the door. He’s winded, leaning on the banister. He’s carrying a box that looks fairly heavy. “I heard you were living like this. Your mother told me about it.”

“Yeah, it’s small,” Shelby says. As in tiny. As in she’s poor. Or hadn’t he noticed?

Shelby’s dad steps inside and places the box on Ida Mink’s dining room table, then plops himself on the couch next to Pablo. “I see you still have the dogs.”

He hasn’t noticed that Blinkie is gone. The only dog he knows is Buddy, Sue’s poodle, who is staring at him.

“Hey,” Shelby’s father says to Buddy. “I know you. Come over here.”

Buddy doesn’t move.

“He always hated me,” Shelby’s father says. “The feeling is mutual, buster,” he tells the poodle. “Do you have some water?” he asks Shelby.

Though she’s in shock to have him in her apartment, Shelby goes to get him a drink. She lets the water run for a minute, otherwise it’s a hazy brown color, then fills a tumbler. Shelby’s father drinks it in one gulp. Shelby perches on a dining room chair.

“Nice table,” her dad says.

“It was Ben’s great-aunt Ida’s.”

“Patti and I got married,” her dad tells her.

Shelby doesn’t move. She feels a little like Buddy. Wary as hell.

“Last weekend,” her dad adds.

“Well, I guess congratulations are in order.” Shelby gets up and fetches herself a glass of water, mostly so her father won’t see that the tremor in her hand has returned due to his visit. It only happens when she’s especially anxious. She thinks back to last weekend. She and James watched all four Alien movies in bed, stopping only to order takeout from the salad place on the corner since Hunan is no longer an option. They were probably in bed together watching Sigourney Weaver fight for her life while Shelby’s father was getting married.