The Minder

It is Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog I mind on occasion. Mrs. Chattopadhay is a clairvoyant woman, a woman with powerful black eyes and smooth skin, my upstairs neighbor. Her mouth looks sensitive. Foregathered inside it are precise dictions that acquire a curious inflection—it is beautiful to hear. When we meet, Mrs. Chattopadhay and I, her dog sniffs at my doormat and looks for a corner. In a moment, Mrs. Chattopadhay turns around delicately with her suitcase and leaves behind her dog, little and white and with a nub of a tail that is like the curls of an unctuous lamb.

Mostly, it is just me in my apartment and no one else. It is very quiet. I don’t own a TV because it is boring to watch TV alone. Moreover, lives begin and end in TV like it is simple to begin and end. I take advantage of this deficit and look out the window and see everything extraordinarily well. This could mean I live a peaceful life.

I do, I do.

No one to follow me from one room into the next. But what does it matter.

Now Mrs. Chattopadhay’s little white dog watches me move into clothes with its red-rimmed eyes after I shower. It really is like a lamb!

I don’t feel ashamed. Instead I move as if I usually dress without peace and am very sad.  

Hours pass and Mrs. Chattopadhay calls from someplace I’ve never known. She asks me to put the phone up to her dog’s ear. But I don’t. I listen instead to the space between us and wonder what is within this distance; its emptiness is exceptional. Then Mrs. Chattopadhay tries to communicate to her pet: Yes, I’m fine. I’m a pillar. It’s not obvious and it’s difficult to understand. I leave in order to see.

I imagine Mrs. Chattopadhay on a bed.

No.

In a chair next to a window above a realized city with a glorious view.

She says: I miss you. How is it? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?

I breathe into the phone so as not to sound human.

Mrs. Chattopadhay says: You do.

She is silent. Everything between us expires. Meanwhile, her dog licks my hand.

Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog pulls hard on its leash. It is foggy outside and everything cannot be seen. It is like we are walking inside a king-sized glass of milk. Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog, despite its small size, pulls me across the streets I don’t want to cross. I lurch. I think what the dog is doing is ingenious somehow. I wonder how Mrs. Chattopadhay walks with her dog, how her steps might look, transmuted. I observe her dog nip at overgrown grass. There is gray in its gums. For some reason, this devastates me. Then Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog lifts its head and pulls hard. The leash escapes my hand. Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog darts across the street and disappears. It is a worry.

I move as if to avoid my next step and the steps afterward. Come back? I call out.

Once or twice, I have come across posters of lost dogs, loved. The words and descriptions used to describe them were desperate because of love. I have never felt this manifest form of desperation in any kind of loss I’ve endured.

Why not?

I say, in imitation of Mrs. Chattopadhay: Do you miss me as much as I miss you? But I cannot imitate Mrs. Chattopadhay’s voice. I walk and the ground goes on and on. It is the longest I’ve been outside since I can remember. It’s easy to forget what I’ve missed.

I am about to give up when Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog reappears and runs toward me.

Triumphantly, its collar chimes with its gait and its leash curves along the ground like a reckless snake.  

I wait for it. I kneel down. I reach out my hand and click my tongue three times.

Yes, I say. I am fine.

I hear my words at the edge of myself. For the time being, it is like a dream.