Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

“That leaves key number 306.” She held up the last key, the brass tag with the number of the room hanging down. Sky, Cecilia, and Dashiell all stood. Sky barked. Dashiell did a paws-up and turned to look at me. Cecilia landed on the table and walked between, but never on, the dirty dishes. But she stopped before getting to the dangling key. There was a lovely piece of brie on one of the dessert plates, and it made her forget why she’d jumped up onto the table in the first place.
    “Naughty girl,” Beryl said, lifting her off the table. Boris stood and reached for his key. Then one by one, we gathered ourselves up, took our dogs out front for a quick one, and headed off to what we dreaded, the silence of our own rooms and time to think, although with the amount of vodka consumed in the last few hours, only those of us with cast-iron stomachs would be awake for long.
    I walked down the front steps of the hotel with Dashiell and turned south, walking downtown toward the tip of the park, glad I had stopped drinking halfway into the evening. There were times I was happy that Dashiell was a pit bull and not a Chihuahua, and this was certainly one of them. The streets were empty; even the traffic was sparse. I walked Dashiell down to Central Park South, hoping the sight of all those hotels and restaurants would cheer me up, but everything was closed up tight until morning.
    We headed back to the Ritz, Dashiell close to my side. As we approached the hotel, I looked up at the stone facade, almost medieval looking, the way the building loomed over the street, most of the large windows draped and dark None of the others were out They had probably just gone across the street and walked their dogs along the wall that separated the park from the avenue.
    I took the stairs, noticing the way the carpet was worn on the side nearest the wooden banister rather than in the middle or on the side of the wall. I could hear the whine of the elevator when I got up to three, but it continued on up to a higher floor.
    My room was dark. I kept it that way. There were only a few hours left until morning. I spent one of them sitting at the window, staring out at the park and up at the dark sky above, thinking about life and death and the stuff that happens in between, afraid to give myself over to the possibility of dreaming until staying awake any longer was completely out of the question, at which point I was grateful for the second time that evening that I harbored a pit bull rather than a Chihuahua. Pressed against Dashiell’s back, I finally fell into a fitful sleep.



I HOPE YOU’RE WRITING YOUR PARENTS

    S ince we’d heard about Alan’s death, no one had mentioned an early-morning program for Tuesday. It was a miracle we were all up for breakfast and to attend Cathy’s talk on basic training for puppies at ten. Twice I saw little pill vials being passed left, then right. Excedrin, I figured, or Advil. Even Boris was quiet, for Boris. But he had ordered more food than anyone else, perhaps just his way of showing off his powerful constitution. It remained to be seen if the food would actually be eaten.
    Cathy poked at a small bowl of fruit, rearranging it rather than eating it. I was wondering where she’d get the energy for her talk.
    Audrey had ordered a soft-boiled egg, but she was feeding it to Magic and hadn’t even touched her coffee.
    Chip had finished two cups of coffee already and was signaling the waiter to bring a third.
    Martyn was eating a sweet roll. The sight of the gooey icing made me look away.
    Beryl was finishing off a plate of bacon and eggs. Her half grapefruit, looking like a toothless mouth now, had been pushed off to the side, and there was an empty cereal bowl near her plate as well.
    Rick Shelbert had an appetite too. His food arrived just as I sat down, a big bowl of cereal with bananas, apples, berries, and whole almonds on top. He began picking off the fruit and eating it even before adding milk and sugar.
    But Boris was clearly the champion. He seemed to already have consumed a Russian man-sized portion of pancakes, and was starting on a plate of runny fried eggs with home fries, mopping up the first leaking yolk with a hunk of buttered white bread. I watched for a moment to see if Sasha was chewing, but he was fast asleep behind Boris’s chair, which meant not only did Boris have an appetite, but he’d had the energy to take his dog out for a long hike before breakfast.
    “American police,”