Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

for the Q-Tips, the ear cleaner, and the otic antibiotic. After listening to my messages, I headed back to Lisa’s apartment to watch her t’ai chi tapes, look through her books and papers, listen to her music, and gaze out her windows.
    Late that evening, still wearing Lisa’s scarf, I walked over to Bank Street T’ai Chi to keep my appointment with Avram Ashkenasi . I took the elevator to five and tied Dashiell’s leash to the railing at the top of the stairs, just across from a long, low shelf filled with pairs of black cotton shoes of all sizes, the kind you see for sale in Chinatown , only used. Since this was the top floor, and it was so late the building seemed deserted, I thought it would be safe to leave Dashiell in the hall while I spoke to Lisa’s mentor and former employer.
    He opened the door, looked us both up and down, then motioned with a sweep of his arm for me to follow him.
    “Yes,” he said as if I had asked a question. “Bring him, too.”
    He was a troll—barrel-chested, short waisted , long armed, his meaty hands, red and hairy, hanging at his sides, fat, clumsy, and useless looking, his yellowish white hair long and held in an elastic band, the scraggly ponytail reaching halfway down his back, his stem-looking face half hidden behind an untrimmed white beard.
    Santa Claus. In a horror movie.
    “Take off your shoes,” he commanded before we walked onto the polished wooden floor of the studio.
    He was cranky, too.
    Most of all, he looked dangerous, like one of those professors the other girls would tell you not to get caught alone with.
    Keeping my eyes suspiciously on him, I obeyed, taking off my shoes and leaving them, toes touching the wall, next to another pair, black cotton shoes, small, like mine, not big, as his would be.
    He pointed one of his big hands to a spot against the mirrored wall of the studio. “Sit,” he said, as if I were his dog. I did.
    “You, too,” he told Dashiell, who usually obeys no one but me unless I hand over his leash. Dashiell sat, too.
    Turning toward the adjacent wall, also mirrored, he began the form, first breathing deeply, then finding shoulder width with his feet.
    He raised his too-long arms as if they had been lifted by a string attached to his wrists. Next the fingers rose, and soon his body began to move, ever so slowly, as if propelled not by his own power but by another force. A weather vane, pushed by the wind.
    Legs folded in front of me, Dashiell at my side, I watched as he moved silently through space, strong, smooth, and graceful, his body shifting direction, his arms and hands slicing through the air, decisive, deliberate, and painfully slow, like foreplay. Before my eyes the troll became beautiful, transformed by movement into something almost holy.
    When he stopped, I stood, full of questions. I had come, after all, about Lisa.
    “Mr. Ashkenasi —”
    He stopped me with one finger to his lips. “Now you,” he said.
    “Look,” I said, straightening my back, “I came about Lisa, not to learn t’ai chi. As I told you on the phone—”
    “Yes, yes,” he said, “you’re a friend of the family. You want to know about Lisa. You have many questions to ask.”
    “A cousin.”
    “A cousin?”
    “Yes. And I’ve promised my aunt and uncle—”
    “Of course you did,” he said. “I am going to help you, Rachel. If you’ll trust me.”
    It was a question. Though it wasn’t spoken as one.
    “I— “
    He smiled to himself.
    “I know. It’s asking a great deal of you, an enormous leap of faith on the word of a stranger. But you are asking a great deal, too, Rachel, to try to understand a person who—” He waved his hand in the air. “Has vanished from our midst. But, of course, you knew her, your cousin. So—”
    “We weren’t close,” I said. “It’s sad, when you think about it, living in the same city but being so wrapped up in our own lives—”
    “That happens, of course.”
    “The truth is,” I said, “I hardly knew her at all. I hadn’t seen her since we were kids.”
    Had I been a wooden puppet, he would have been impaled on my nose by now.
    I looked into his pale eyes. He seemed moved to tears.
    Damn, I was good.
    “You won’t learn anything worthwhile about Lisa by asking questions,” he said softly, so softly I had to lean closer to hear him. “The police have already done that, Rachel, and what have they learned? If you want to learn about Lisa’s life, you must walk in her shoes.”
    He