The Hand That Feeds You

28

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.

We took the Ninety-Sixth Street exit and passed the many discount stores with merchandise displayed on the sidewalk even in the cold, and the cut-rate grocery, the White Castle, the projects, and gas stations packed with cabs. A frosted-over community garden interrupted a row of tenements just before we turned onto 119th Street.

“Have you got her leash?” Billie asked.

We had just pulled into a parking space (no meter) just short of the iron gates in front of the nearly windowless, concrete structure. My dog had been imprisoned since September, and we were about to break her out.

“Leash and collar,” I said. The nylon web collar had peace signs in a rainbow of colors printed on it. Her name tag, her license, her rabies tag. Billie must have sensed my going soft because she said, “Act as if you come here all the time.”

She steered me past the intake desk after waving to a kennel worker she knew. The woman at intake had recognized Billie and buzzed us in. The noise assaulted us immediately, combined with an overpowering smell of urine and feces. I followed Billie on slippery linoleum — she moved with the purpose of a soldier. It should have inspired strength in me, but I felt disequilibrium.

The occasional wall-mounted sanitary dispensers would have held antibacterial gel had they ever been filled. We passed door after door leading into the wards. Each ward contained about two dozen dogs, the large ones housed in a row of cages, the smaller dogs inhabiting smaller cages stacked three high. Overflow made it necessary to place a wall of these stacked cages in the main hallway. I saw that frightened cats in carriers were mixed in with the dogs. Fluorescent lights in the hallway pulsed and crackled, an instant headache. The ward doors were on one side of the hallway; on the other was a door marked MEDICAL.

“Don’t go in there,” Billie said.

I glanced in when a vet tech opened it as we passed. I saw blood on the linoleum floor.

“Told you,” Billie said.

Food storage was on the same side of the hallway down a ways from Medical. There, a deep sink was filled with aluminum water bowls and opened cans of dog food under a leaking faucet.

“Eyes right,” Billie said, noting my wandering gaze. But I looked anyway. Each ward door had a narrow panel of glass at about eye level, and I looked in at the dogs. Some were clearly depressed — they sat in the back of their cage facing the wall. Others, as soon as they made even passing eye contact with a potential rescuer, began to perform tricks that someone had once taught them — a lifted paw to shake, though no one was there to shake it. I felt as though I would disintegrate. I must have gasped because Billie turned to me and said, “This is why I come here.”

Adoption hours were still in effect, and we had passed clusters of people looking at dogs behind bars. Dogs cleared for adoption were in the first two wards, with small dogs in a separate room. The small dogs always had more visitors looking for a pet. I saw children holding trembling Chihuahuas and miniature poodles, as well as big-eared mutts. I saw families walk from cage to cage in the big-dog adoption wards, debating the merits of one over the other, which dog was cuter, which would require less exercise. I paused while Billie walked ahead for a moment. I’d overheard a grungy-looking guy around twenty or so gauging the likelihood of a young male pit bull’s chances in the ring. I caught up to Billie to tell her about him, and she said, “We know all about that guy. Intake knows not to release a dog to him.”

But the public was not allowed in the ward we were headed for.

I would not last an hour in this place. I had known this all along, but I could only now acknowledge it fully, since I was getting my own dog out. The only thing that went in the face of this horror was the generosity shown the animals by the kennel staff and volunteers, other women like Billie, for she had told me the volunteers were nearly all women. She had also told me that most of the kennel workers, there to do a difficult and distressing job, were kind to them, called the dogs by their names, even though those names were usually assigned to them at intake.

“At the end of the hall, that door goes into a backyard,” Billie said. “It’s the one place where dogs can be off leash. Though yard isn’t really accurate — it’s not as if there’s any grass.”

We were nearly to the ward where Cloud was confined when Billie said, “If the elevator were working, you’d see all of this replicated on the second floor.”

When that fact washed over me, I was stricken with guilt at not being able to take more than just Cloud out of here. But where did that lead, and where would it stop?

“I can see what you’re thinking,” Billie said. “You can’t save them all. For me, it’s a matter of translation, always translating what I spend money on into what it would pay for in this place. That pair of shoes would inoculate twenty-five dogs against bordetella. Those sunglasses would spay ten dogs.”

Billie took out a key ring and unlocked the door to Ward 4A, where the Dangerous Dogs were kept. In this ward, on each kennel card affixed to the top of a cage were the red-inked words CAUTION — SEVERE. This was their temperament rating. On the concrete wall facing the row of cages were thick steel rings hanging from exposed screws — tie-outs that these strong dogs had pulled clean out of the wall. Propped against the wall in one corner was a catchpole, next to the industrial, coiled black hose.

Cloud was not where I had last seen her, the first cage near the door. Instead of Cloud, that cage held a large white dog with cropped ears and pink eyes; it sat coolly facing the front bars.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“She’s been moved to the end of the row.”

I felt a moment’s guilt at not tending to the dogs in the cages I raced past to find my own. When I saw my girl, her white coat defiled, I cried out her name and then just cried. She moved to the front bars as Billie opened the door just enough to attach her collar and leash. Billie told me to let her walk Cloud out of the ward, Cloud to the left of her, Billie’s body between Cloud and the caged dogs. When we reached the entrance to the ward, I saw the white dog with cropped ears, but it was not in the first cage by the door. It was in the second cage from the door, where George had once been next to Cloud but unable to see her. I realized that there were two white dogs with cropped ears and pink eyes, mirroring each other’s stance in their respective cages. The dogs had short hair and broad, muscular chests. They were not pitties, but seemed to be Molossers, the predecessors of the bully breeds. The dogs looked to be about 130 pounds, larger even than Cloud.

“Are they Presas?” I asked Billie. Years before, when Steven had lived in San Francisco, a pair of untrained Presa Canarios had gotten out of their owner’s apartment into the hallway of a tony apartment building in Pacific Heights and mauled a young woman who could not get the key to her apartment out fast enough. The woman had died from her injuries, which included nearly eighty wounds, with only her scalp and feet unharmed. The resulting trial sent the dogs’ reckless owners — one of them a lawyer — to jail for fifteen years for second-degree murder.

“They’re Dogos Argentinos,” Billie said. “But really they’re scapegoats, brought in last night.”

“What’s their story?”

“Same old story.”

Either she was giving me credit for knowing or she was blowing me off.

As we passed their cages, the Dogos rose and circled their quarters; their movements were identical, like synchronized swimmers. Yet they could not see each other to know what the other was doing. Each dog looked at me, growling and curling its lip.

Once out of the ward, I dropped to my knees and hugged my dog. Her ears were still flattened in fear, but her tail began wagging, and she leaned into me, shoving her massive head into my chest.

“You’re safe now,” I said.

As happy as she was to see me, she caught a whiff of the ham awaiting and dug her nose into the tote bag.

Billie waited just long enough for Cloud to get a big mouthful, then slipped a muzzle on her and fastened it. “Let’s sign her out.”

In the crowded lobby, a young Hispanic boy came over and asked why my dog was wearing a cage on her nose and what I was going to name her.

“Her name is Cloud.”

“Cool. Can I pet her?”

I went to the desk while Billie stood with Cloud, but I heard her tell the little boy not to pet the dog, because it was dangerous. Coming from Billie, that comment spun me around. She believed that? Or she was following the rules.

A young man with a frightened-looking chow mix stood beside me, furious at the woman behind the desk, who told him that the fee to surrender a dog was $35. “Fuck that. I’ll tie the dog up outside.”

Billie told him to leave the dog, that she would pay the fee.

“Not again,” said the woman behind the desk. Because Billie knew her, she expedited the process, and in just minutes we were walking out the door with a freed Cloud. After the din inside, noisy East Harlem seemed welcoming. I waited for Cloud to relieve herself at the curb. Distracted by the world of normal smells, she seemed overcome with the information she received from the sidewalk, the fire hydrant, the occasional city tree. We say someone has “come to her senses” to mean that person has come around to acknowledge reality, but here a creature was literally coming to her senses, and it was deeply moving. I was in no hurry to pull her along; I took my cue from Cloud. I could see that she was torn between her interest in what was around her, and her desire to be in my arms. I crouched and Cloud simply leaned against me. Billie bent down and scratched Cloud’s ears and took off the muzzle, which earned her a lick and a lean.

I realized that I was laughing. Then Billie was, too, trying to stay upright while my enormous dog toppled us.

Billie started toward the car, but I said we should give Cloud a walk first. We turned east to walk to the river. The wind had died down, and there was a feeling of the coming spring, or so I imagined in my happiness. It wasn’t as if early crocuses had appeared, just that the air had a softness that had been absent before. A slight breeze off the river reached Cloud and her head lifted. I realized that my dog had not set foot on grass since the temperament test five months ago. A scabby park around the corner would do for now. It also had a long sand pit for broad-jumping. Billie found a stick and threw it, but Cloud was no retriever. She stayed in the pit and rolled on her back in the sand.

I opened my tote bag and took out her celebration dinner, the pound of Polish sliced ham. After she swallowed it in a couple of gulps, Billie offered her one of our scones. I brought out a bottle of water with a squirt top, and Cloud drank from the arc of water I squeezed for her.

A police boat was patrolling the river alongside us. Across the river was Wards Island, which housed the Manhattan Psychiatric Center and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center. The light brown brick buildings were forbidding, with long rows of barred windows and the look of inherent desolation. They seemed a monument to suffering and despair, but they could not take the shine off this day.

We walked to the car and put Cloud in the backseat, which Billie had covered with a clean quilt. But Cloud insinuated herself into the front by pushing between the bucket seats until I could not see Billie at the wheel. Before she started the car, she took out her phone. “I know someone else who would like to be in on this.” She pointed the phone at Cloud, virtually in the front seat, and took a couple of photos. “McKenzie will appreciate these.”

And she would know.

We buckled in and headed up the FDR to the Willis Avenue Bridge — the way to beat the toll — to get out of the city.

Billie turned on the radio — Lolawolf.

“You know,” Billie said, “you ask yourself what you want. And you try your first choice first. If you can’t get away with that, then you go to the next thing you want, and try that. But you must try the first choice first.”

“I’ve taken risks. Just a different kind. I used to write poetry.”

Billie howled with laughter. “You make me think of what that guy said, that if it weren’t for poetry, eighth-grade girls in corduroy jumpers and black tights would have to make some friends.”

“I wasn’t that bad. I just liked to read, and I tried to write now and then. I tried it, is my point. When I saw that I wasn’t getting anywhere, that’s when I started the work I do now.”

“You’ve never told me what your research is about.”

“Pathological altruism.” Just saying it aloud centered me. It reminded me that I was working on something worth the attention, that I had a life that included work worth doing.

“Sounds like an oxymoron. How can altruism be pathological?”

“It doesn’t just do damage to others, it also damages oneself. Think: the tireless worker for others who doesn’t care for herself and gets sick. I think I have found a statistical link between excessive volunteerism and victimology, the pairing of accomplished, intelligent, motivated women who are preyed upon because of the depth of their compassion. It blinds them to a type of predator who is keenly aware of that trait; it predisposes the woman to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think predators seek out women with an overabundance of exactly what they lack. Predators feed off compassion.”

I looked to see how Billie had registered all that I had said. She did not say something flippant; rather, she looked as though she was thinking it over. Then she asked if I thought that she was a pathological altruist. Did I feel that she set herself up for being victimized in this way?

“It’s hard for me to see you as anyone’s victim.”

“Is this what Bennett saw in you?”

Could I give her an honest answer? But what would that be? I’d been turning the question over since Bennett’s death. “Maybe I’m not the best judge of that.”

She veered off onto the exit ramp for Cross River and Katonah.

“Where are we going?”

“We’ve got time. There’s a really nice spot about three miles up where we can give Cloud another walk. Off leash.”

Ward Pound Ridge Reservation. We passed the reservoir right off the exit, and when we made the turn to take the walk, we saw no other cars parked at the entrance. Cloud was delirious in her discoveries of country scents; we let her drink from the stream. I thanked Billie for letting Cloud have this intermission between shelter and sanctuary.

“There’s a part of me that wants to take her and keep driving,” I said. “Take her to some other state and start life over, away from everything that’s happened in New York.” I let my guard down just that much.

“But you would never do that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I would.”

I returned my attention to my dog, who was loving her freedom.

A deer stood on the path several yards ahead of us. It didn’t bolt. Cloud froze, did not give chase. “Good girl,” I said. We stayed silent and didn’t move, until people talking on the path behind us startled the whole lot of us, and the deer took off into the woods.

“We should get going,” Billie said. “Better to arrive while there’s still light.”

We drove the rest of the way without music or talk to New Milford. Down the dirt road to For Pitties’ Sake, bouncing in ruts from melting ice, we pulled up to the raised ranch house and parked alongside other cars in front of the garage. Alfredo had heard the car and came to the door to greet us. He handed Cloud a biscuit, then another.

Alfredo asked if we could stay long enough for him to give Cloud a bath. That way, he explained, he could blow-dry Cloud with the dog’s head between my legs and me holding a towel around her head to shield her from the noise of the dryer. I told him that of course we would stay.

He led us into a downstairs bathroom that had been converted into a kind of dog spa. I urged Cloud into the tub and stood back while Alfredo shampooed her. Once her fur was wet and clinging to her body, I could see how much weight she had lost. I rubbed her ears through the towel and thought again about Billie’s having said that I would not run away and start over with my dog. That she would, but I would not. But I no longer believed that anyone could start over. You can continue and grow, but you can’t begin anew. People who believe you can don’t understand the continuum of life.

I didn’t want to see Cloud put into her kennel, as spacious and clean as it was, so we left while Alfredo was brushing her out. I was grateful for this vision of my girl — clean, soft, being cared for by someone who cared. Billie walked ahead of me, out into the muddy yard. The wetlands that bounded the property on one side were the reason they’d got the place at such a good price. That’s what Alfredo had told us. Dogs didn’t care if one side of the seven-acre property was marshy. I was glad we were leaving while it was still light. The view from the heated garage’s window, Cloud’s new view, was wetlands, and she loved the water.

“I got a text from McKenzie,” Billie told me as we got into the car.

“Just now?”

“When he got the photos of Cloud.”

“What did he say?”

“That he can finally put your case to bed.”

Finally? I reached into my tote bag for a Kleenex, just to have something to do to break the thought.

“I should tell him I can’t make it tonight. Could you get my phone out of my bag?”

I reflexively reached for her phone when she asked if I would text him since she was driving. Now I was the go-between.

She dictated, Rain check. Unless you’ll be up late?

“You hungry?” Billie asked.

“I could use a drink.”

“There’s a bar in Danbury, a few miles ahead. We can shoot some pool while we drink.”

Billie drove to an Irish pub, Molly Darcy’s. A drum set and a couple of coffin-size amplifiers were onstage, but it wasn’t yet seven, too early for live music. There was even a dance floor, empty now, but the scuff marks promised it wouldn’t be empty for long. Maybe a dozen customers sat on garnet-red stools facing a soundless soccer match on a flatscreen on the wall. The pool table was free. I ordered two beers while Billie racked up.

She chalked the tip of a cue stick, collected the balls from the trough under the table, and filled the rack. She walked to the far side of the table.

I wondered why Billie was taking the time to shoot pool with me when she could have been meeting up with McKenzie. A choice I would not have made.

I watched her sink two more balls. “You didn’t tell me you were a hustler.” It was less a game than an exhibition as she leaned over to make her shots in such a way that her black tank top gapped and showed her black lace bra.

Billie missed the next shot and handed me the cue.

“I only ever played solids and stripes,” I said, paving the way to a second-rate show of skill. There would be no show of skin with me; I was more than demure in a vintage T-shirt and skinny jeans. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail to reduce interference, but the bangs I had recently cut on a whim fell in my eyes anyway.

“No excuses.”

I sank two balls in corner pockets, then scratched.

Billie dispatched the next four, then reached for the bridge to make a seriously difficult shot — she had to bank off three sides before sinking it. She didn’t waste a motion.

I finished my beer and watched as she cleared the table. “Next round is on me,” I said, conceding defeat, “unless you want to get going.”

“I earned another beer. I’ll rack ’em up again.”

She retrieved the rack and started to fill it. A couple of guys who had been drinking at the bar walked over to the pool table. I didn’t know how long they had been watching.

These guys were just off a construction job, looked like. They wore flannel shirts tucked into loose jeans, scuffed boots, and looked like men — none of that androgynous look you found in Williamsburg. When they saw Billie looking them over, they raised their beers and suggested a bet. Billie took them up on it. When she could have been with McKenzie.

“Come meet our new boyfriends.” Billie waved me over.

I did not appreciate being implicated, but I gave the men a noncommittal “Hey.” I told Billie it had been a long day.

“Why are you being a wet blanket?” Billie reminded me that we were allowed to celebrate the successful transfer of Cloud to her new home.

I wasn’t buying it; this had nothing to do with Cloud.

The tall one asked where she’d learned to shoot pool like that.

“My grandmother. She met my grandfather that way. Hustled him.”

The tall one raised his bottle in salute.

“You want to break?” Billie asked.

“You think I need the advantage?” The tall one looked over at his pal, and I knew the look that passed between them: Was the short one okay to partner up with me, since the tall one had already chosen Billie?

“You okay with me taking this one?” Billie asked me. I didn’t know if she meant the game or the guy. She must have seen me try to parse what she’d asked because she turned to rack up the balls.

Billie took the break, landed a ball, and didn’t miss a single shot after that.

The game, if you could call it that, went so fast that I was spared the job of making conversation with the short one. The tall one took his loss well.

The cover band had started up just before Billie’s win. The tall one put his drink down and took Billie’s hand. The song the band played for their dance was Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?!” Not the easiest to dance to, but rousing. I made my excuses to the short one, citing a sudden pulled muscle, and he looked relieved. We slid into a booth and watched his pal and Billie on the dance floor instead.

A couple of couples were attempting a sort of line dance. It was just them and Billie and the tall one on the floor, so we had no trouble holding them in our sights. Everyone knows that a man who can dance walks onto a dance floor unlike a man who cannot. The way the tall one led Billie onto the floor conveyed ownership. That was something to see — Billie allowing herself to be led by a man. She had the confidence to be submissive; it cost her nothing.

To my surprise, Billie could not keep up with the tall one. He led her around the floor in a two-step, but she stepped wrong and laughed. Drawing him to her, she set the pace for the next part of the dance. Slow and suggestive, even when the band finished, and then started in on Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar.” Nicely timed — I sang along in my head, The truth comes out a little at a time.

I let the short one buy me another beer.

Billie and the tall one joined us in the booth when the song ended. The tall one kept his arm around her, until Billie shook it off. His arm went back up to her shoulder, and Billie turned on him: “What do you think you’re doing?” I could see that he thought she was kidding. They had just been dry-humping on the dance floor.

The short one said, “I’m out of here.” He nodded a good-bye to me, then looked expectantly at his friend. It struck me that even he sensed something was off.

The tall one, however, was another matter. He was into her and said, “Play you for another dance.”

“We’ve got to leave. Morgan?”

I grabbed my purse and stood up to go. Billie was already heading to the door. She asked me to drive and tossed me the keys.

As I was starting the car, the tall one knocked on my window and said to Billie, “Get your ass back in there.”

“My boyfriend is waiting for me,” Billie called out.

“Oh, your boyfriend is waiting.” The tall one’s face colored. “What, you come up from the city to fuck with the locals? That your idea of a good time?”

“Remember that girl at the bar? Blonde. Drinking alone. Ask her what song makes her cry but she’s ashamed to admit it.” Billie looked at me when she said the words. I thought it was a look of scorn, but then I felt certain it was impatience — she had had to hand it to me.

Billie said to the tall one, “You come tell me her answer and I’ll go back inside with you.” He strode off. “God love him, men are so predictable.”

She had thought this through. She had picked her moment. She had gotten rid of the men and gotten me into her car in an empty parking lot.

I grabbed the door handle but Billie stopped me. She was holding a gun. “Just drive.”

“Where are we going?”

“Head south for now.”

I considered crashing the car, but feared the gun would go off, so I did what she told me to do. Feelings of stupidity nearly trumped fear. My hands were steady on the wheel; physically, I was surprisingly calm.

“What’s today, Friday?” Billie asked. “By tomorrow night, guests at the Omni King Edward in Toronto will start complaining to the front desk about the taste of the water.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked down at the gun. The safety was off.

“A body in water, as in a water tower, decomposes about twice as fast as a dry one. It takes about forty-eight hours for a body in water to release enough gases to be detected.”

“Who’s in the water tower?” I knew who was in the water tower. I knew Samantha had paid for the room at the Omni. I changed lanes so that I might sideswipe the barrier on the passenger side. But at sixty miles an hour, could I control the car when it hit?

“You tell me.”

I was strategizing desperately. What was in my best interest — playing dumb, or tipping my hand? “How would I know?”

“Process of elimination.”

“I can guess who, but I can’t guess why.”

“That would interest you. What interests me is why you think you’re not in the water tower.”

I held the car at a steady sixty. Billie’s question was not rhetorical. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

“Causality is overrated,” Billie said, seeming to reverse her stance. “I mean, shit happens.”

Coming up was a split on the parkway — south to New York City or west to New Jersey. “Which lane?”

“Head into the city.”

I did, and I did something else as well. I leaned on the horn. She wasn’t going to shoot me at this speed. But she did — shoot, that is. She aimed at the roof and fired.

I screamed.

“If this doesn’t bring help, honking sure won’t. Oh, come on, let’s talk. I’ve had no one to talk to since Bennett died.”

“Was he the intended victim that morning?”

“There is no right or wrong answer to that.”

But I knew that there was. I knew they had an assignation in my bed that morning.

Billie opened the glove compartment and removed a pack of gum. “Want a piece? It’s sugarless.”

I took one hand off the wheel and held it open. Billie used her free hand to remove the wrapper before placing the gum in my palm.

“Samantha wasn’t a challenge. You told her yourself he was dead. And I came along and said, ‘I’m alive.’ You know who she believed. All I had to do was get her to Toronto.”

“Samantha killed herself?” So Billie had gone to Toronto, not the Caribbean.

“Samantha couldn’t swim. Ask me about Susan.”

“Did Bennett know what you were planning?”

“Susan became tiresome. So earnest: the homeless, the homeless. I told Bennett to stop seeing her. He wouldn’t, so I took over and it felt right. So you see, it was really Bennett’s fault. Though isn’t blame boring? Where does it get us?”

The gas gauge was nearing empty. I pointed this out to Billie and she said we were almost there.

“Interested in Pat?” she asked.

“That was you in the bushes.”

“Who doesn’t have a bathroom in their studio? I didn’t care for her or her work, did you?” Billie didn’t wait for an answer. “Though Bennett did. He kept up with it. He thought the nude self-portraits with pig hearts showed a bravery he hadn’t seen before he left her. He wanted me to buy one, said it was a good investment. But when I saw the work in the studio that night, it only confirmed my opinion. It wasn’t brave, I mean it wasn’t a human heart. I think of what I did as collaboration.”

I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road.

“Oh, don’t look like that.”

Billie told me to take the 116th Street exit off the FDR, and soon we found a parking space in front of the shelter annex. Billie got out first, came around to my side, and took me by the arm. I felt the gun in my ribs.

It was just before 11:00 p.m., and Billie knew that the garage entrance would still be unlocked for about another fifteen minutes before the last of the kennel staff left for the night. Sure enough, Jose was unloading one of the industrial dryers in the garage. He said, “Buenas noches,” and didn’t ask why we were there so late.

This was probably my last chance to enlist anyone’s help, but Jose had already turned his back on us and resumed his work. There would be no imploring glance on my part; on the other hand, I had not endangered an innocent man.

We slipped past him into the wing that housed the overflow of small-dog cages. The only light came from the occasional red EXIT signs. No one was swabbing a hallway or hosing down a last kennel. Billie had timed our arrival perfectly. We walked down the hallway past ward after ward.

“I never did anything to you,” I reminded Billie.

As we approached Medical, I started to shake. I thought surely she was going to euthanize me. I mean, what more fitting way to mock what mattered so much to me. But we didn’t stop.

I knew that the moment we opened a ward door, the preternatural silence would explode with barking and wailing. Billie had slipped behind me. She didn’t exactly tiptoe, but moved soundlessly, at the ready. As much of a performance as she’d given at the pool table, these movements were authentic. She was in her element, it seemed to me, and failure was not an option. It occurred to me that this rush was what she lived for. The moment she opened the ward door would be like the moment a skydiver jumps from the open door of a plane.

You could draw out that moment just before you jumped — or were pushed — but once you were in the air, it was out of your hands.

Billie opened the door of the ward that once held Cloud and George and motioned me inside with the gun.

I experienced the moment first as a visual. The single bulb was sparking like a strobe, so that each time Billie was illuminated, she was in a different pose. The dogs in their kennels were likewise lit like wild creatures in a lightning storm. I observed this before the wall of sound hit me. As expected, the noise was a visceral sensation; I felt my body vibrate with it. I could hear the different voices, different pitches. Some sounded baleful, others sounded frightened, still others frightening.

The next time Billie was visible, she held out a key ring. “Open these two.” She waited for me to unlock the kennels. When the light next sparked, I looked to see which dogs I was freeing. For a blink, I saw two large, white dogs, ghosts in the dark that followed. Eerily, they made no sound. I recognized them as the Dogos Argentinos in the kennels that formerly housed Cloud and George. The mirrorlike stances of these dogs had spooked me the first time I saw them. I felt no more comfortable with them now that I was releasing them.

Billie knelt in front of the dogs and began singing a kind of lullaby to them, but in German. The dogs sat at attention, their eyes on Billie. Still singing to the dogs, Billie produced two slipknot leads and told me to loop them around the dogs’ thick necks.

“Heidi and Gunther won’t do anything without my permission.”

“So these are your dogs.”

“I belong to them as much as they belong to me.”

“Sitz,” Billie commanded.

The dogs sat.

“Pass auf.”

The dogs growled low in their throats.

She put her gun in her purse.

The dogs were attack-trained. I knew enough German from school to know that the second command meant “guard.” I hoped they were not waiting for the command Reeh veer, “hunt.” If Bennett’s body were exhumed, I knew now that the bite marks would match the teeth of Billie’s dogs.

I raced through the methods I had learned to disarm an attacker. I was outnumbered, so I had only two options: try to humanize myself in Billie’s eyes, or run for safety if I could reach a safer place within five seconds. I had already failed at the first option. Before I could try the second, Billie ordered me to unlock a third kennel. I glanced at the kennel card above it and saw in the fractured light the red-inked word CAUTION — SEVERE.

“Morgan, meet Gotti,” Billie said conversationally. “He is three years old and on hold for biting. Gotti, Morgan is a thirty-year-old female who is here for not seeing what was right in front of her.”

A low growl came from Gotti. I was about to credit him for picking up on Billie’s vibe, but then the two Dogos moved into view. Billie had not issued a verbal command for them to approach, and she yelled, “Sitz.” One dog sat immediately, one walked behind Billie to assume the position on her other side. Gotti barked at the trio just outside his kennel door.

Billie told me to get inside. With a last rush of adrenaline, and everything to lose, I moved to the door of the cage, and just before slamming it behind me, I yanked Billie’s purse off her shoulder, breaking the leather strap.

I had the gun. I also had the key ring. I locked myself inside.

There was an odd lull — the other dogs in the ward stopped barking as though they sensed a shift in command.

The dog beside me was standing, taller than I was in my crouch. I had enough room to stand up and move a couple of feet back from the door. I said, “Good dog,” over and over, a mantra. Gotti was a large brindle pit bull. His ears had been cropped too close to his head and had a yeasty smell, evidence of infection.

I slipped my hand into Billie’s purse and closed it around the handle of the gun. But the dog did not attack. I reached for my cell phone and pressed 911.

“What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice asked.

“I need help. I’m at the animal shelter annex on 119th near the river.”

The phone went dead, but I didn’t know when — before or after I had given my location. But Billie didn’t know that.

“I’m in Ward Four,” I said to the dead phone. “A woman with attack dogs is holding me hostage.”

I had kept my eyes on Billie while I spoke. At this last, she rolled her eyes and said, “You locked yourself in.”

“Please hurry,” I said to the dead phone.

“I’m disappointed in you, Gotti. You didn’t keep up your end.” Billie acted as if I did not have a gun pointed at her.

“The police will be here any minute,” I bluffed.

“There’s no signal here. Nobody’s plan works in here.”

She sat down cross-legged in front of the cage, just as she had done when visiting my dogs. “We never had a chance to compare notes about Bennett,” she said brightly. “You’d been studying men who manipulate women, but the real fun starts when a woman manipulates a man to manipulate women.”

“What did you get out of it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“What didn’t I get out of it? He entertained me. With all of you. You can’t imagine how thrilling that kind of intimacy is. It is allegiance of the first order, a singular exchange. We held nothing back. We did not judge each other. Well, until he went soft.”

The Dogos were spooking the pit bull. His hackles stood. He started snarling, though nobody had moved.

“I bet sleeping next to the wall isn’t looking so scary right now. Don’t blame Bennett for making you do that; it was my idea. That was getting to be his problem: no ideas. He was wasting his energy on you. When he stopped making fun of you and began to defend you, the fun went out of it. Sure, you take in foster dogs. But you get them killed.”

She had gotten my fosters killed. Not the time to point that out.

“Still, he was drawn to virtue. He may not have felt compassion, but he began to seek it out. And the boy went overboard — he called it ‘love’ and proposed to all of you.”

I still held the gun on Billie but my hand was tired. Billie noticed. I leaned against my side of the cage, and Gotti remained standing inches away.

“You want to know what happened that morning. Fair enough. He wasn’t so far gone on you that he didn’t welcome my visit to your bed. He was less welcoming to Heidi and Gunther. But as I told him, they had a vet appointment later that morning. I told him to put your dogs in the bathroom, and it wouldn’t be a problem. But there was a problem: he couldn’t get it up. That was a first. And he blamed it on me. I did this, I did that, and I brought the fucking dogs. The fucking dogs.

“I had left them outside the bedroom door in a down-stay. I got out of bed, pulled on my clothes, and Bennett failed to apologize.”

The dog whose kennel I shared sniffed the gun and lost interest in it.

Billie had answered my questions, except for one — was I going to have to kill her?

“You going to write me up for your thesis? I’m more interesting than Bennett.”

She was interrupted by the dogs in the ward, all of them, barking. Then I heard what had set them off. I thought I did — I thought I heard a man’s voice call out from somewhere inside the shelter. I strained to hear, and I heard it again. Billie did, too. A man’s voice, a little closer this time, called out so that we could hear the words: “Police! Is anyone there?”

Billie put a finger to her lips and looked out the wired-glass window in the ward door. Her dogs turned their heads in unison, keeping her in sight.

Billie ducked as the beam of a flashlight shone through the window.

I screamed, “I’m in here!”

“This next is on you.” Billie opened the ward door and said to her dogs, “Reeh veer!”

They tore out into the hall, synchronized specters, their full attention on their prey.

Billie followed her dogs.

It sounded as though every dog in the place was barking. The noise disoriented me so that I couldn’t pick out Billie’s dogs from the rest, if Billie’s dogs were even making a sound during their attack. But I could hear one of the cops yelling. Then he screamed. Why hadn’t he used his gun? But I hadn’t used my gun.

“Good boy,” I said to my cellmate as I unlocked the kennel door.

The cop was on the ground, but he was no longer screaming. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive, but the white dogs on top of him — I saw them in the dimly lit hall — were covered in blood.

I crept up behind Billie, intending to clock her with the gun I could not make myself fire. I would have to hit hard enough to keep her down. But if I whacked her, what would her dogs do? I had never hurt anyone, nor did I have the skill to hit a moving target. The thought made me sick to my stomach. Then I saw, to the left of me, the door into the fenced exercise yard. When I got out into the yard without Billie’s seeming to see me, I had a thought I almost couldn’t bear in case it didn’t work: maybe I could get a signal on my phone.

In the dark yard, cluttered with balls and a coiled hose that tripped me, I held up the phone, waving it to try to catch a signal. But what I heard first was a gunshot from inside the shelter. One shot. Whom had the second cop fired on? One dog? That wouldn’t stop the other. I waited for a second shot.

Instead I got a signal.

“What is your emergency?”

“A cop is being killed. We’re on East 119th Street, the animal shelter. Please hurry.”

The door into the backyard pushed open. Billie. And one of the Dogos at her side.

Billie made a show of looking around. “Can you imagine this is the only exercise yard they have?”

“Your dogs killed that cop.”

“That cop killed one of my dogs.”

I saw movement behind Billie. And so did the dog. The door opened, and I saw the second cop with his gun drawn. Before the cop was all the way through, the Dogo lunged. The cop got off a shot, but the dog’s attack on his firing arm caused the bullet to hit Billie. She went down, but was not unconscious. She swore and clutched her leg. The Dogo had knocked the cop’s gun out of his hand with such force that it had skittered across the pavement, stopping closer to Billie than to me.

I kicked it past Billie’s reach and turned my attention to the Dogo and the cop. The cop was on his back, twisting and fending off the dog with his arms. I took aim but didn’t trust myself to hit the dog and not the cop.

“Make him stop!” I yelled at Billie.

“It’s the female. That’s Heidi.”

I turned the gun on Billie. “Make her stop,” I said evenly.

“Like you’re going to shoot me.”

As much as I wanted to, she was right.

I shot at the dog and dropped her.

I heard sirens over the chaotic barking, meaning a full-on response — a cop was down. I turned the gun on Billie and waited for the police to find us.

“You can’t say it hasn’t been an education,” Billie said.

“Out here,” I yelled, not knowing if the cops could hear me yet.

“Always looking to a man to save you.”

Then the door to the exercise yard opened. A stream of cops, guns drawn, pushed through.

“Drop your weapon,” one of them yelled. For an odd moment I didn’t realize he was addressing me. “Put down the gun.”

I set the gun down.

One of the cops kicked it away from me and said, “Down on the ground.” He kicked my legs apart, frisked me, grabbed my arms, and twisted them behind my back to handcuff me.

“She shot me,” Billie called out. “My leg. I can’t walk.”

“Get the EMTs out here,” one of the cops yelled to another.

“Is the other officer okay?” Billie asked.

“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” I said to the cop holding me down. He said nothing, just yanked me to my feet.

“You hurt anywhere else?” one of the cops asked Billie.

“She came out of nowhere. I’m just a volunteer.”

The EMTs arrived and began working on the mauled cop. Seconds later, another pair moved quickly into the yard and knelt beside Billie.

“Were you shot anywhere besides your leg?” an EMT asked.

“I can’t feel my leg.”

I finally found my voice. “Those white dogs are hers. They’re attack dogs. She commanded them to attack the officers.”

“I don’t think I’m hit anywhere else,” Billie said.

A cop came into the yard and said to his partner, the one who was holding me, “We lost Scott. Fucking dogs ripped his throat open.” The cop grabbed me by the throat. “I should rip your fucking throat out.”

“Not here,” said the cop holding me.

After the EMTs got an IV going for Billie, they lifted her onto a stretcher, but waited for the unconscious cop to be evacuated first.

Despite the activity all around me, I sensed things as being done in slow motion. I looked up at the run-down apartment buildings that flanked the open backyard. Lights were on, windows were open, and people on every floor were watching and taking pictures with their phones.

A dozen or so cops moved to surround me — the guilty one — and pushed me back inside. When they marched me past the body of the dead cop, they stopped and forced me to look. I threw up. Billie was right — this one was on me.

Out front, the scene was militaristic; helicopters shone searchlights on the shelter. As I was being shoved into a squad car, one of the cops Mirandized me.

A convoy of squad cars escorted me to a precinct, the 25th. I was taken straight to an interrogation room and handcuffed to the table.

I had the good citizen’s certainty that I would be cleared. But I felt the soul-honing fear that I would not.

There would be no witness if the second cop died. Even if he lived, he didn’t know who was responsible. It would be Billie’s word against mine, and she had the bullet in her body.