Black Diaries

05. Dog Power

The hotel was just as comfy as Chuck had described it, and I couldn't help but feel a pinch of regret for storming out on him like that. It had been pretty nice of him to help me get settled in the city, considering I had almost killed him about half an hour earlier.

I only stayed at the hotel for a couple of days. With luck, a few bribes, and the big pleading eyes of my pet cat who accompanied me to each and every viewing of prospective flats, I managed to find an apartment in a reasonable time. It was even near Central Park, and quite affordable.

There was only one catch: the reason it was affordable was that it was underground, in a converted garage. Well, when I say "converted," I should really should say half-converted. The walls were bare concrete, except for one, about a third of which had been painted in blue. There was running water and heating, but the old garage lighting was still fixed to the ceiling, and a rusty old Chrysler was sitting in the corner, waiting for an owner to pick it up who had probably been dead for fifty years.

"Are you sure you want to stay here?" the real estate agent asked, ducking under a few cables that hung from the ceiling like rainforest lianas.

I looked around the room—not a single piece of memorabilia, no piano, no double bed. Not a single one of those items Matt had surrounded me with back at home. No dangerous memories. Instead, there was just lots of space, and funky stuff in the corners.

Lucky darted from my arms, towards the ancient Chrysler. She disappeared and there was a cacophony of clanks and clatters from the rusty wreck's interior. Only moments later, she appeared on top of what was left of the roof, proudly staking her claim on her new realm.

"Definitely," I told the agent. "Do the lights work?"

Apparently, they did. There was a bit of a lightning storm every time I switched on the flickering halogen lights, but once they were up and running, the whole place looked quite cozy, in a zombie-apocalypse kind of way. Once I had dragged in a few bean bags to slouch on, and draped some ivy growing in a large clay pot around the cables hanging from the ceiling, it started to really feel like home.

"I should go looking for work, now, don't you think?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Our money won't last forever."

Lucky was busy licking milk out of a discarded Chrysler headlight, which had become her favorite milk bowl since we had moved in. She didn't reply, just waved her tail a way that said, "I'm far too busy with being the supreme queen of the junk pile to work, so you had better do it."

"All righty. Let's have a look at openings."

From then on, I could often be found in the nearest internet café, studying web pages with job offers for vets in New York. There were plenty of those—unfortunately, there also seemed to be plenty of applicants.

I went to one establishment after the other, handing out copies of my résumé like confetti. Yet as soon as they got to the part where they asked:

"Where did you work before? Any of the big animal clinics in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, or Paris maybe?"

And I answered:

"Um... At Aunty Audrey's Home for Furry Friends in Hilly Springs."

They seemed to lose interest, every single time.

Finally, I was close to giving up. There was just one more stop on my list: Darren's Dog Hutch on Sedgwick Avenue. In spite of the diminutive name, it was an impressive establishment: five stories of tastefully curved glass overlooking the Harlem River, and out of the shadow of the larger buildings behind it. Expensive cars were parked out front, and I could see two ladies in fur mantles leading poodles around on jewel-incrusted leashes.