Part 4
June called Lena from the floor, before she could get up and put the offer in a drawer. She asked to see the apartment in the morning. Lena gave her the address twice, then asked whether she was bringing Otis.
“Just to look,” June said.
Lena lived behind a shuttered barber shop, two rooms with a narrow strip of fenced grass outside. She opened the gate and waited for June to come through before shutting it. Inside, Otis inspected the space beside the refrigerator, then the lower shelf where Lena kept her shoes.
“I moved the cleaning stuff up,” Lena said. “And I asked the landlord again. He said yes.”
June went back to check the fence latch. She had spent part of the night imagining every way the arrangement might fail, including ways that didn’t involve Lena doing anything wrong. Otis could push through a loose board; June could sleep through an alarm after a cleaning shift. She had written down a schedule on the back of his food instructions.
“I can do mornings,” she said. “And most afternoons. If you have to be out, call me.”
“What if you’re asleep?”
“I’ll keep the phone beside me.”
“I need somebody else to call, too.”
June gave her Ruth’s number. Lena entered it into her phone while June watched, then asked about the cost of his food. She couldn’t manage vet bills, she said, and she wouldn’t be able to keep him if she had to move when her lease ended in February.
“I’ll pay for him. I’m working.”
“I wasn’t saying you weren’t.”
Otis had found the clean rug beside Lena’s chair. He scratched it into a lump until June bent to flatten it, but Lena told her to leave it. He turned once, found the mound suitable, and lowered himself with a long exhalation.
June stood with the instructions in her hand. “I’m still angry with you.”
“I figured.”
“And I’m sending in what I did. With the key.”
Lena looked down at the dog. “Don’t do that to help me. You didn’t put him back in there.”
“No. I didn’t.”
June left the instructions on the refrigerator. She took Otis home to Ruth, then walked to the agency with the unsigned offer and four copies of the account she had written at her kitchen table. One was for Beth and one for her own records; she had addressed the others to the board chair and Diana.
Beth met her in the outer office. The check was there, clipped to the agreement. June thought of her landlord waiting for a call and the emptied cupboard behind Ruth’s sewing machine.
“I asked the chair about adding the key arrangement,” Beth said. “They want advice before they agree to anything else.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
June set down her own account. It said she completed the inspection, saw Walter inside, and went home. It said Lena subsequently helped him board. It also described the key June asked Beth to have cut and the waiting arrangement she taught Lena, with no written transfer of responsibility when someone boarded again.
Beth read to the bottom. “You understand this gives them a different reason to question your work.”
“I know what I wrote.”
“I’m trying to get you something before you’re out of that apartment.”
June put the unsigned agreement beside the check. She had imagined accepting the money and telling the rest afterward, then spent an hour looking at the sentence that required her to call the account complete. She couldn’t sign it without thinking of Lena across this same desk in May.
“I need you to date my copy. That you received it.”
Beth found a pen. She wrote the date beside June’s signature and her own initials beneath it, pressing hard enough to mark the page below. June separated the sheets before Beth could hand them back together.
“Are you refusing this offer?” Beth asked.
“Yes.”
Beth unclipped the check and put it in her desk. Neither of them reached for the phone. June took her dated copy and walked out past the counter where Otis’s water bowl used to stand.
She mailed the other two copies at the post office. Then, on the bench outside, she called her landlord and confirmed that she would be out Saturday. The woman asked whether she was sure, and June watched an employee load mail tubs into a truck while she said yes again.
Ruth didn’t try to talk her out of it when she came home. She put a chair beside the half-filled bags and asked which dishes June wanted in the bedroom. June chose one bowl, one plate, and the heavy mug that wouldn’t tip if Otis caught it with his tail.
By Saturday afternoon, there was a clean rectangle on the kitchen floor where his food bag had stood. June put his blanket, the measuring cup, and two old socks in a tote, and set his food bag beside it. She called the rescue volunteer to cancel the couple’s visit, thanked her, and folded the borrowed crate for Ruth to return.
At Lena’s gate, Otis tried to go straight through before June could unclip the leash. She stopped him, waited for the gate to shut behind them, and let him loose in the little yard. He lifted his leg against a weed, then went inside without checking whether June followed.
She followed. Lena had put down the lumpy rug and a bowl of water, and June moved the bowl a few inches to keep it clear of the door. Lena watched, then moved it back.
“He’ll knock it where you put it,” she said. “The door opens inward.”
June looked at the hinge. She stepped aside and let Lena show her, then put the tote on a chair. The room was small enough that she could hear Otis drinking while she explained the clothespin on his food bag.
“What time tomorrow?” Lena asked.
“Six-thirty. I’ll be through cleaning by six.”
“Text when you’re leaving work. I’ll have my shoes on.”
Otis finished drinking and came to June. She bent over him, working her fingers through the thick hair beneath his collar until his eyes half closed. When she straightened, he stood ready to follow.
June reached automatically for the leash hook. Lena waited beside the door, her hands empty. June took the leash down and placed the loop in Lena’s palm.
“Six-thirty,” she said.
Lena clipped it on and brought him as far as the gate with June. June had to lift the gate slightly to settle its latch into place; she did it carefully, then let go. Otis stayed on the other side, his breathing loud through the narrow gap.
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