Before You Knew My Name (10)

In the beginning, I disappeared on purpose. Extricated myself from a life I didn’t want, just like Ruby did. But unlike Ruby, I didn’t tell anyone where I went. Not even my best friend. I let Tammy think I had stayed right where she left me; I wanted to slip out of my old life unseen. And if certain people stayed on my skin, if they came along in my suitcase uninvited, at least they wouldn’t be able to cause any fresh wounds. That felt like a start, like I would have time to heal from all the ways they had hurt me.

I wanted to start over. I wanted to disappear.

But that’s not the same as being forgotten. To be clear, I never, ever wanted that.





FOUR

WE ARE EATING BREAKFAST ON DAY EIGHT WHEN NOAH offers me a job. The next in a series of unexpected gifts. Over the last few days, he has continued to leave mostly small, always useful items in my room, so that I will come home from exploring the city to find a silver water bottle or sports socks on the end of my bed. Whenever I emerge, holding the latest trinket he has left for me, he merely waves at the refrigerator door, where my collection of IOUs is growing.

‘I’m not a fan of delayed gratification,’ he said yesterday, when I protested the purple, puffy jacket that sat waiting for me on the dresser. Socks and water bottles were one thing, but the jacket felt extravagant, and I wasn’t sure I should accept it. ‘You’ll pay me back sometime,’ Noah said calmly, dismissing my concerns. ‘Until then, with all that walking you do, there’s no point in catching your death, Baby Joan.’

I read about crows, taffeta birds I used to call them when I was little, both afraid and fascinated by their crinkle of black feathers. Crows are known to randomly leave presents for people they like and trust; shiny, pretty things, and practical objects, too. It’s their way of communicating without words, and I’ve come to think of Noah’s gifts in this way. Even if I don’t fully understand what I have done to earn his trust so soon, or why he has decided to take me under his human wing.

(Death birds, my mother used to call them. Harbingers circling, waiting. We never did agree on her superstitions.)

And now the biggest surprise of all. The offer of money and independence. A job! Noah says I can be his assistant, helping him with the dogs. Noah is a dog walker, see. Up here on the Upper West Side. He used to have some other job, some suit and tie affair downtown, and it must have been important because he owns this place—barrelled windows, piano, chandelier—but he definitely prefers dogs to people these days. Plenty of dogs around here need walking, too. It’s not like they have their own yards to play in, and I’ve never seen one roaming the streets on its own, so it makes sense when Noah tells me he’s been thinking about introducing a home-care service to his business. It will mean people from the neighbourhood have a place to leave their fancy purebreds and cute old mutts when they go out of town on business trips, or spend their weekends in the Hamptons, which is a place rich people seem to go to a lot, though Noah tells me he hasn’t been there himself in years.

(Noah doesn’t appear to have any friends. If his phone rings, it’s only ever about a dog. And while there is a lot of expensive looking art on the walls of his apartment, I haven’t yet come across a single framed photograph. I didn’t bring any with me either, so I suppose it’s not so strange. Or if it is, we are only as strange as each other. No doubt there are people he sees behind his eyelids, too. People he consciously blinks away, but I figure it’s none of my business who they might be. He is kind to dogs, and to me, and that’s all I need to know about him for now.)

My mouth is full of bagel and cream cheese as Noah explains the terms of his proposition. Rent, he says, will be taken out of my salary from now on, and this will also cover food and amenities for the apartment. He refers back to scribbled notes on a yellow pad between us, combinations of words and equations in a scrawl I can’t make out, and when he looks up, he tells me this should leave me with a hundred and fifty dollars per week, cash in hand.

‘You’ll be required to work four days, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. A combination of dog walking and dog-sitting, depending on who we get on the day. Each dog will come with its own care routine, and you’ll never have more than two, plus Franklin, to look after at any one time.’

He crosses something off in his notes and looks at me with his bright eyes, his hand extended. I see an image of black feathers, rustling.

‘Are you in?’

Alarmingly, I once again want to cry, but I nod silently instead, tongue pushing against the roof of my mouth, because I once read you can’t physically cry when you do this. Even so, my eyes pool with water as I shake Noah’s hand. I know there could not possibly be any combination of numbers in his scribbled equations that would cover rent and food and bills, and still leave me with money in my pocket. I know, too, that Noah doesn’t really need to be in the business of more dogs, that he works not for money, but for contact with his four-legged friends, and a chance to be out in the world from time to time. I’m not always able to read people’s motivations so well, but I know without doubt that this new home-care business has been formed around me. And I sense, grasping at a future truth, this might be Noah’s way of making sure I come back to him each day.

Thoughts swirling, I am overwhelmed at the door Noah has swung open. I do not know why he is helping me like this, why he shows me a kind of care he doesn’t seem to afford many, if any, other people. Later, when we have grown more accustomed to talking about real things, I will ask him why he placed that ad for a room in his apartment, what motivated this self-confessed introvert to open up a door in his life, too. For now, it’s enough to know that I am profoundly grateful for this place I have arrived at, and as we map out my first shifts at our new doggy daycare, I allow myself to believe I deserve what comes next. The beginning of a life where I take up space, where I belong.