The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler [16]
But she didn’t meet him in New York today.
She didn’t even meet him in Baltimore.
He collected his car from the lot and drove into the city through a glowering twilight that seemed to promise something—a thunder-storm or heat lightning, something dramatic. Could she be waiting at home? In her striped caftan that he was so fond of? With a cool summer supper laid out on the patio table?
Careful not to take anything for granted, he stopped at a Seven-Eleven for milk. He drove to the vet’s to pick up Edward. He arrived at the Meow-Bow minutes before closing time; somehow, he’d managed to lose his way. There was no one at the counter. He had to ring the service bell. A girl with a ponytail poked her head through a door, letting in a jumble of animal sounds that rose at all different pitches like an orchestra tuning up. “Yes?” she said.
“I’m here for my dog.”
She came forward to open a folder that lay on the counter. “Your last name?”
“Leary.”
“Oh,” she said. “Just a minute.”
Macon wondered what Edward had done wrong this time.
The girl disappeared, and a moment later the other one came out, the frizzy one. This evening she wore a V-necked black dress splashed with big pink flowers, its shoulders padded and its skirt too skimpy; and preposterously high-heeled sandals. “Well, hi there!” she said brightly. “How was your trip?”
“Oh, it was . . . where’s Edward? Isn’t he all right?”
“Sure, he’s all right. He was so good and sweet and friendly!”
“Well, fine,” Macon said.
“We just got on like a house afire. Seems he took a shine to me, I couldn’t say why.”
“Wonderful,” Macon said. He cleared his throat. “So could I have him back, please?”
“Caroline will bring him.”
“Ah.”
There was a silence. The woman waited, facing him and wearing a perky smile, with her fingers laced together on the counter. She had painted her nails dark red, Macon saw, and put on a blackish lipstick that showed her mouth to be an unusually complicated shape—angular, like certain kinds of apples.
“Um,” Macon said finally. “Maybe I could pay.”
“Oh, yes.”
She stopped smiling and peered down at the open folder. “That’ll be forty-two dollars,” she said.
Macon gave her a credit card. She had trouble working the embossing machine; everything had to be done with the flats of her hands, to spare her nails. She filled in the blanks in a jerky scrawl and then turned the bill in his direction. “Signature and phone,” she said. She leaned over the counter to watch what he wrote. “Is that your home phone, or your business?”
“It’s both. Why? What difference does it make?” he asked.
“I was just wondering,” she told him. She tore off his copy, in that splay-fingered style of hers, and put the rest of the bill in a drawer. “I don’t know if I mentioned before that it so happens I train dogs.”
“Is that right,” Macon said.
He looked toward the door where the first girl had disappeared. It always made him nervous when they took too long bringing Edward. What were they doing back there—getting rid of some evidence?
“My speciality is dogs that bite,” the woman said.
“Specialty.”
“Pardon?”
“Webster prefers ‘specialty.’ ”
She gave him a blank look.
“That must be a dangerous job,” Macon said politely.
“Oh, not for me! I’m not scared of a thing in this world.”
There was a scuffling sound at the door behind her. Edward burst through, followed by the girl with the ponytail. Edward was giving sharp yelps and flinging himself about so joyfully that when