Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

say something or do something that would allow her life to make sense again.
    I’d stopped and knelt down. When she leaned against me, I’d put my arms around her and laid my face against her thick neck. I could hear the brakes of a bus somewhere in the direction we were heading, and people laughing. I’d told Blanche she was a good girl. I’d wanted to tell her more, that I’d take care of things, that everything would be okay, but I couldn’t. I could lie to a human being when it was absolutely necessary, and be believed, but even if I was willing, there was no credible way to lie to a dog.

Chapter 9
    I Took a Bite of My Sandwich

    On my way uptown I called The School for the Deaf.
    “It’s Rachel Alexander,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Ruth, but I have some bad news.”
    “We heard,” she whispered.
    I waited a moment. “I was wondering if we could talk, perhaps at lunchtime today.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Meet me at noon, at Zeke’s. It’s not much, but it’s close, right on the corner. You can’t miss it.“
    “How will I know you?” It seemed a minute ago that I’d asked Sophie the same question. “Wait a minute,” I said, “it’s not a problem. I’ll have a dog with me.”
    “Blanche?”
    “No. My own dog. He’s also white.” I didn’t tell her he was a pit bull. I didn’t want to put her off.
    I knew the school was on Twenty-Third Street and I knew I could get there with time to spare, too much time to spare, so I headed back to the meatpacking district, to the building I’d looked at last night. This time, I rang one of the first-floor bells, said my name when asked, and got buzzed in. The sign on the door told me this was a design firm, but it didn’t say what sort of design. It turned out to be print design—stationery, business cards, advertising layouts. There was a young man at the desk, his eyebrows already raised when I opened the door.
    “Ms. Alexander? What can we do for you?” he asked, his chair a half turn away from his computer now.
    “I was actually looking for a veterinary practice I was told was in this building, on this floor. But I can’t tell by the names on the bells.”
    “A veterinary practice, here? I don’t think so.” Now he turned his attention to Dashiell, perhaps wondering if he had a zoonotic illness, something he could catch merely by inhaling.
    “Have you been here long?” I asked.
    “Since the building was renovated. We were the third business to move in. We would have been the first, except for the tile man. It’s still not right.”
    I nodded as if I cared.
    “And you were with the firm then?”
    “Well, no. I’m only here three months.” His mouth looked as if he’d just tasted something surprisingly sour and he sat up straight in his chair, making himself appear at least a half inch taller.
    “Is there someone I could talk to for just a minute, about the veterinary office? Perhaps someone who was here in the beginning might remember it. It might have been here for only a short while.”
    “I’ll see if one of the partners will talk to you.”
    A moment later, he came back shaking his head.
    “No.”
    “No they won’t talk to me, or no they don’t recall a vet’s office here?”
    “The latter,” he said. He sat, swiveling his chair away so that he faced the computer. “Well, the former and the latter.” Hands on the keyboard, he looked back at me once more, as if to ask why I was still standing there.
    “Thanks,” I told him on my way out.
    “Anytime,” he chirped back at me.
    There were four offices on the first floor. Sophie had said the veterinary office was in the back. I tried the office on the right first. It was some sort of medical office, a lab, I thought, one of those places that tests bodily fluids and looks for conditions you don’t want them to find, but I wasn’t sure. It only said the doctor’s name, P. Mellon, M.D. With two l’s, not like the fruit.
    I didn’t get to speak to P. Mellon. I spoke to a young woman who sat behind one of those off-putting Plexiglas partitions. She said she’d been with Dr. Mellon “forever” and didn’t have any recollection of “a veterinary facility” in the building, neither in the office they occupied or in any other.
    The back office next door was now occupied by a CPA, a J. Fleming, but no one answered the bell. It wasn’t tax season. Maybe J. Fleming was in the south of France.
    There was one more office on the ground floor, Ink, Inc. From