wasn't clear on what the commercial was about, except that it somehow figured a rodent and a copy machine. It turns out to be a crosscut kind of thing, back and forth between me, affectionately referred to as Lab Rat, whose copier jams and shreds paper, and another guy, Office Worker, the one dressed in a stylish-looking business suit, the one who bought a Dobbins. In the first shot, Lab Rat is sniffing curiously around a copier, lifting levers, pulling open doors. This is where I'm thinking an ear scratch would be a nice piece of business. Then cut to Office Worker casually loading a stack of documents into the feeder. Then Lab Rat, and he's running on one of those hamster wheels. Then a couple of shots of the copier and all its features. Then back to Lab Rat on the wheel again. Next shot is Office Worker chatting on the phone, feet up on his desk. Finally, Lab Rat lying belly up on the wheel, hysterical and exhausted. And then some artwork with the Dobbins logo.
All the dialogue is in voice-over, so I don't have any lines to worry about. Nothing to worry about, I keep telling myself. A couple of squeaks, a couple of turns on the ol' hamster wheel, and I'm out of there. Piece of cake.
Puck is pawing at the side of the mattress, letting me know that he needs to go out. I roll away from him but then feel guilty, imagining his sorrowful eyes watching my back and waiting. He's developed the patience of Buddha, this dog. When he was younger, he'd get half his exercise before we even got out the door. An elaborate dance of solicitation, prancing toward the door and then circling back until I put on my shoes and followed him. When the leash came out of the closet, his eagerness would crest into a volley of frenzied yelps and leaps, and he'd spin in skidding circles on the parquet. Now he waits quietly, trusting me to do the right thing.
Robin and I are playing phone tag. When I got in last night, there were two hang-ups on the machine, a message from Hal – sorry he missed me, out for a run, but, yeah, let's get together some time – another hang-up, then a message from Robin.
'Dan?' There was a pause, while she waited for me to pick up. When I didn't, she announced the time, one- thirty in the morning, in what I'm guessing is the exact same tone of exasperation that her mother used with her however many years ago. And then another pause before her tone shifted to brisk. 'Okay. I'm just returning your call. I'll be around in the morning if you want to talk, but then we're heading out. Okay, then.'
I tried to calculate how early was too early to call, but I misjudged on one side or the other because at eight this morning, I got their answering machine again. 'Hi, it's Dan again,' I began, and suddenly I was imagining a scene on the receiving end of my phone call. With the clarity of a psychic, I could see Robin and Jack and Mina, all of them pink with sunburn and still in their pajamas, and they're eating their granola and sipping their coffee while my voice rattles over the machine. 'Sorry about last night. I was out with Stuart. Haven't heard on the commercial yet. But I was thinking, hey, maybe I could rent a car and drive up there Saturday. Let me know what you think. Hey Jack, Mina. Catching any fish, Jack? So give me a call when you get a chance, sweetie. We're doing great down here. Puck misses you.' Even before I hung up, I was wishing there was some way to erase the tape and start over. This time, try to sound a little less like a used car salesman. And lose the pathetic line about Puck. What was that supposed to mean? The dog misses you, but I'm doing fine?
The dog.
I lurch upright and search the floor for my shoes. Puck's tail thumps twice in gratitude. He follows me down the hall and, when I hook the leash onto his collar, makes a sort of stiff-legged curtsy, a substitute for sitting and then having to clamber all the way up again. I find the keys on the hall table, stuff a couple of plastic bags into the pocket of my shorts, and we head out to the elevator.
Our building is old and slightly shabby, but if one can look past the naked bulb on the landing and the gouged and whitewashed walls, there are still hints of its grander beginnings. The worn marble landing is the size of a spacious studio apartment, and the scrolled plaster ceilings are twelve feet, echoing a time when space was not at such a premium. The building is rent-controlled, so nothing has changed in years, not the tenants, not the paint.
While we're waiting for the elevator, I hear what sounds like movement behind Mrs. Doherty's door. There's no light coming from under the doorsill, but I wouldn't be surprised if, even at this hour, she is eyeballing me through her peephole, alerted by the groans and squeaks of the elevator as it heaves its way up from the ground floor. She leaves her apartment only every few days for groceries, pushing her wire cart in front of her like a walker and glaring at me suspiciously whenever I greet her. When we first moved in, I tried to win her over with friendliness, but six years later, she persists in regarding me warily, as though I might one day force her back into her dusty foyer and rob her of all the china figurines and crocheted doilies that can be seen crowding the dim interior of her rooms. Robin has gradually gained her confidence, however, at least enough to discover that her first name is Mary, that she raised three children here, and that she can recite the dates and apartment numbers of every burglary, every change of tenants through death or divorce, every mishap that has occurred in this building over the last several decades. Until our break-in, the fourth floor held the record for the fewest burglaries. 'And none of them came in through an open window.' Robin thought she heard accusation in Mary's voice, as though our carelessness has spoiled it for everybody.
The elevator is one of the slowest rides in the city, and while we descend, Puck paces the confines of the bronze cage, in a hurry to get outside and relieve his aging bladder. I am nowhere near so eager. This late-night descent into the streets charges me with enough adrenaline to keep me alert for the rest of the night. As we emerge from the relative safety of the building, I check both ways down the avenue. That I don't see anyone in no way eases my anxiety. Puck, oblivious, lifts his leg and drowns a weed that has sprung up through a crack in the concrete.
It is actually a beautiful street, edged on this side by graceful limestone buildings and, on the far side, by Prospect Park. All of the buildings but ours have gone co-op over the past ten years, sandblasting the grime from their gargoyles and unfurling fresh awnings onto the avenue. But the quiet prosperity is misleading. This pocket of gentrification is a scant few subway stops from half the projects in Brooklyn and an inviting destination spot for the criminally minded. The length of the avenue is a particular favorite with muggers, because they can hit their target and then disappear into the foresty expanse of the park across the street. Last winter, a man on the second floor was held up at gunpoint right where I'm standing, in the shadow of our awning.
We move into the peachy glow of the sodium streetlights, and Puck shuffles slowly toward the curb. The curb glitters with safety glass, where car windows have been smashed in search of phones and tape decks. I wait impatiently while he sniffs the leg of a newspaper box and then waters it. Next is the bus stop sign, and then the light pole and mailbox on the corner. Usually, this is as far as we go at night, just twenty paces to the corner and back, but it takes a good ten minutes to inspect and mark each stop on the route. When I try to hurry him, he gives me a wounded look and, I swear it, exaggerates the arthritic stiffness in his gait. Then he gives his end of the leash a small tug toward the tree trunks down the slope.
Something is fluttering from a lower limb of the old plane tree. I can't make it out from this distance, but then I notice that the trees all the way down the block are festooned with paper. On closer inspection, they turn out to be crayoned drawings of the trees themselves: row after row of green lollipops, some with bluebirds and yellow ball suns. 'Save Our Trees' is lettered in a careful, childish hand across this first one. Taped to the next trunk is another drawing, but its message is lost in the deep shadows.
Early this spring, a utility crew showed up unannounced and started surveying the block to install new pipeline. The project would entail digging into the gnarled root system that underlies the entire length and width of the block. From the city's perspective, the old trees are a nuisance anyway – their roots curdle the sidewalks and push up asphalt – but when they blithely started ribboning off old willow oaks and plane trees, they severely underestimated the depth of the neighborhood's affection for those trees. They also didn't take into consideration that half the newly renovated brownstones are inhabited by attorneys with inflated property values to protect. Wham bam, the city was up to its eyeballs in court injunctions before they could even finish staking.
A sheet of butcher paper has been wrapped around one trunk about eye level and secured with tape. I have to walk around the trunk to read the length of the message: 'This tree was planted in 1927. It will take another…'
There is movement in the shadows. I feel the presence of another human being before I see him. A dark silhouette. He is maybe fifteen paces off, coming down the sidewalk in my direction, but even at this distance I can tell he is not one of the attorneys coming home late. When he sees that I have spotted him, his gait becomes exaggeratedly casual.
He is thin, I see now, and his clothes are several sizes too large. They hang off him like a scarecrow. Enormous jeans ride low on his hips and drag at the heels of absurdly large and elaborate running shoes. It is the uniform of clowns and young urban wannabes.
