1

Jonathan came home from work one day to find the dogs talking about him.

They weren’t even his dogs.

“Just a few months, six maximum? Don’t worry about changing your lifestyle,” his brother pleaded. “Take them out before you go to work and when you get home again in the evening. They’re great dogs and won’t trash your place. Honest, you’ll love them.”

James (typically, it had to be said) had understated the nature of the ask. He never once mentioned the byzantine quality of his dogs’ inner lives, the practical and spiritual difficulties of caring for other sentient beings, the intense and constant scrutiny to which Jonathan was now subject.

Jonathan very much wanted the dogs to be happy, but it was turning out not to be as simple as walks and bones.

Sissy padded up beside him and sat at his feet, looking yearningly into his face as if searching for the key to her future. She emitted a soft whine, a pleading noise that might have meant anything— I’m hungry, I need more love, we’re bored here all day, please turn over the reins to your life so we can sort you out.

Jonathan stared. The reins to his life? He hadn’t even known his life had reins. And if it did, would it be wise to turn them over to a dog?

He pointed at her bed.

“Lie down,” he said. “And stop confounding me with impossible philosophical options.” Her back was to him now, as was Dante’s, their heads together. Awww, he might once have thought. But now he squinted at them, anxious. Were they plotting to take over his life? And if so, how?

He had to admit it was nice being greeted with enthusiasm when he came home from a hard day at the advertising coal mine. Long walks took the place of going to the gym, and the dogs’ ability to sleep calmed him, took the edge off work. They were good-looking dogs, and people stopped him on the street to admire his fine taste in pets. At the beginning he’d demur, saying they belonged to his brother in Dubai, but after a while he just said, “Thank you,” and “Your dog is nice too,” even when the other dog wasn’t, particularly.

But lately something had shifted in his relationship with them. He sensed they disapproved of his lifestyle.

Which was fair enough. He disapproved of it too.

Jonathan looked up and saw the critics at the door, waiting. Walk time. At least he had a park. Most dog owners in New York had to walk miles to find one, or hire someone to transport their dogs to Central Park. It was one of the deciding factors for James.

“You have a dog run practically across the street! How lucky is that?”

How lucky was it, mused Jonathan, though it was way too late to move now. He turned up the collar of his jacket, trudged the three blocks to Tompkins Square Park in the rain, unclipped the leashes, and off they ran, skipping for joy, sniffing other dogs and snaffling up bits of discarded food. Jonathan pressed himself up against a tree for cover.

He thought about work while the dogs played with their friends, until he noticed that they’d stopped frolicking and were standing, staring at him damply. James always threw a ball for us, their expressions said. He played hide-and-seek and introduced us to other dogs.

Jonathan stared back at them. What? Now dogs needed introductions? “Whatever happened to butt-sniffing? Go sniff a butt,” he said, waving in the direction of the teeming pack. “Make your own social life. Stand on your own four feet.”

An older man with a husky and a large blue golf umbrella turned to look at him. “You tell ’em,” he said. “In my day we sniffed our own butts.”

The rain tapered off. Sissy trotted off toward a teacup version of a foreign dog who’d wandered in from the small-dog gulag. It was a fluffy gingery thing straight out of the Mattel factory. Next to the puffball, a Weimaraner with a long-suffering expression wore a padded rainsuit in pale pink-and-green paisley with matching boots and hood.

Why did people think dogs wanted to wear clothes? The Weimaraner’s owner glared at him and he wondered if he’d been thinking out loud again.

“Nice dog,” he said with a smile, but the woman turned away.

He caught Sissy’s eye. What kind of life was this for a dog? Maybe his dogs hated New York City, with its emphasis on labels, money, and grooming. Maybe they wished they lived on a farm, where they could run and play and be useful. But surely the dogs and cats and rats and squirrels and birds and humans in New York all adjusted to life well enough? They walked the streets, they ate great food, they were fine, Jonathan thought. Weren’t they? His own life wasn’t bad. Not long out of art school, a junior copywriter at Comrade, his own apartment, and a not-unimpressive girlfriend by the name of Julie Cormorant. The dogs should admire him.

“Come on,” he called. Sissy bounded up, and Dante made a show of saying an elaborate farewell to the ginger fuzzball before turning and trotting slowly back to his legal guardian. As Jonathan bent to clip on Sissy’s leash, the spaniel met his eyes with an expression of profound sympathy. Dante lifted his leg in the general direction of Jonathan’s foot.

“Hey!” Jonathan growled, and after an instant’s hesitation, the pack sloped off toward his apartment on the third floor. The heavens opened half a block from home and they arrived drenched.

2

For his first five weeks in New York, Jonathan lived on his best friend’s couch.

“Are you kidding me?” Max said, throwing a couple of cleanish sheets over the blue corduroy cushions. “I’d be mortally wounded if you stayed at the Four Seasons.”

“I’ll pay you back someday.”

Max clapped his shoulder. “Non necesario, amigo. Mi casa es tu casa.”

“Muchas castanets, pal.”

Max lived in Bed-Stuy, in a one-bedroom apartment he shared with whichever gorgeous girlfriend he happened to be going around with at the moment. Jonathan didn’t mind the couch, which was comfortable enough, and Max was a perfect guide to first-time living in New York, with his intimate knowledge of every bar between Harlem and Canarsie, not to mention a single-minded determination to get Jonathan a job at Comrade, his own place of employ.

“Ten-thirty interview tomorrow,” he said. “It’s all fixed with Ed. I’ve done the subliminal thing with him, muttering your name whenever we’re in the same room so he already thinks it’s God’s will to hire you.”

“You really think he’ll do it? Don’t I need some kind of skills?”

“Nah.” Max flipped the cheese sandwich he was frying. “The hard part will be convincing him you’re a genius who’s temperamentally incapable of rocking the boat. Everything we do is blindingly obvious, dressed up with a mountain of marketing to look like time travel.”

Jonathan had resigned himself to weeks of answering ads online, interviewing for jobs that didn’t exist, accepting internships...