small dog in the big city

it is a while since guthrie has been to manhattan. it is a while since he's been on a train, too, but we hop on the f train right by our apartment today because the car and the sweetie are both in the city already, waiting for us, ready to drive up to our little snow-battered house. when we get to the platform a man in a very nice green wool coat about three sizes too big is leaning over a woman sitting on one of the rare wooden benches the swankier platforms have. he has a guitar. a big, pretty wooden one, too big for him the way the coat is. the woman is smiling but her posture and his say they've just met. when the train comes, we all get on the same car, the woman a few seats down from us, across, with the man standing still, next to her, guitar ready. the car is mostly empty, friday afternoon manhattan-bound empty, littered with folks who don't wear suits or work business hours.

the man begins to play. laughs. the first clear notes of norwegian wood fill the car and although he's playing each note exactly, on what appears to be a properly tuned guitar, i wait for the miserableness that is the voice of the subway performer. i prepare to put cupped hands over guthrie's ears. he is watching, eyes bright, head cocked. the man is already singing about the missing chair and then the wine when i realize i am swaying back and forth like some unabashed hippie, singing along softly. the woman is smiling. there is a rattling at the other end of the car and a man dragging what used to be a pickle bucket in one hand and a chipped up wooden broomhandle in the other comes dancing down center of the car, stopping near the guitar man. he flails his arms and spins around so fast the hood of his raggedy sweatshirt falls back a bit. he sings, too. like me, he is not meant for singing but nobody seems to care. the song lasts a few stops, up above the ground at ninth street, the highest spot on the entire rail system, back down past carroll and maybe bergen.

and when the song ends the man smiles at the woman and probably says something, then walks with his too big coat and his too big guitar toward the other end of the train, walks past me and smiles at the small brown dog on my lap. he says good things about dogs, says they're our best friends, says goodbye. he leaves the train. the woman sits very still and the man with the bucket and pole turns to face the window in the door behind him.

a stop or two later a little girl gets on the train with her father, sits across from us. the father opens up a styrofoam box and hands the girl a plastic fork. she spears a small round fried something and as she is raising her fork toward her mouth, she sees us. sees guthrie. she takes the tiniest bite as she's looking at us, as what we are registers. her chin falls down and her eyes glitter. the fork with its fried thing hangs in the air and she nudges the man. he smiles. she waves with the fingers of her fork hand. i hold guthrie up so he is standing on my lap and flap one of his front paws at her. her eyes open dangerously wide she giggles. there is an extremely animated conversation across from us in a language i do not know. she points and smiles quite a bit and the man smiles, too. guthrie is stretched out on my lap now, close to sleep. she waves again and it is enough for her that his ears move in acknowledgment. when we get off the train, that same bit of fried thing with one bite missing sits on the end of her fork.

we come up into the world on sixth avenue, around 23rd street. the sidewalks are clogged with friday after 5 going home folks, hurrying, pushing, not interested in looking where they are going, not able to see a small brown dog dodging their stomping feet there on the ground. we cross busy sixth avenue and guthrie freezes in the middle. i know what you're thinking but i mean the exact middle. two parking lanes, two uptown lanes, two downtown lanes and guthrie sits his little self down between the innermost uptown lane and the innermost downtown lane, right on the dividing line between. the walk light is flashing so i tug on the leash and he holds his ground. i drag him, while traffic waits, across the two downtown lanes and the parking lane, trailing little nuggets of poop along behind him like breadcrumbs.

we walk up a bit and find the tall building where the sweetie works. it is not one of those shiny new skyscrapery things. it is certainly more than twenty stories, but the stories are arranged like layers on a wedding cake, getting smaller and more ornate as they get closer to the sky. it is in a part of town where there is still plenty of that left, near the empire state building. near buildings with shaftways. and because i have forgotten my phone, i do not know what time it is and cannot call the sweetie to tell him we are here. but it is a nice day out and we wait in front of the big revolving doors where guthrie has a good view of the bank of elevators inside. he mills around on the ground for a while until it becomes clear to both of us this is not safe. i hold him and he stares intently at the revolving doors, where people keep pouring out of building.

now, in brooklyn folks love guthrie plenty but he is walking around on the ground, doing dog things. in manhattan, he is at almost eye level and is right outside the door to a workplace in what is decidedly not a residential section of town. and what was cutecutecute in brooklyn becomes something else altogether. people come out the door, turn onto the sidewalk, realize they just saw a real live dog and stop. they come back. they pet him, talk to him in little smoochy baby words he obviously does not know. several kiss him. shove their faces right up into his. he bears all this with a surprising amount of grace for someone who will eat his own poop. some of them talk to me a bit. they have dogs, usually dogs like him. they all ask how old he is. this is what you ask when you see human babies or dog babies. i do not know why, but i do know that every time i say eight people look confused. nonono, they insist. he is a baby. a puppydog. and i do not tell them that real puppies would love them more than guthrie does because they love everyone the same, that what makes him not a puppy is his awareness that i am me, his person, and everyone else is not and is therefore less interesting.

in the twenty minutes we end up standing outside on the sidewalk, we never have more than thirty or forty seconds to ourselves. we do not get bored. guthrie manages to drag kisses and ear scratches and head rubs and back pats out of men with nicely tailored wool suits and from at least one heroin addict. a very angry teenage girl forgets a few seconds to glare as she passes by. some sort of supermodel type slows her clicking heels to make kissy faces at guthrie. a woman coming out of the building tells me about a children's book called pretzel. a man asks if he is a great dane. now, this has happened before and i think this time the man is joking, so i say, no, but he thinks he is. the man's face shows how hard his brain is trying to make sense of this. he asks his question again. no, i tell him. he's a dachshund. oh, says the man, looking more unsure than he really needs to. maybe thirty people in that short time cannot resist a small dog within petting range. the sweetie says it's because it's a business area. folks aren't used to seeing dogs there. but these people act starved. giddy. like they have been crawling on their bellies across the hottest, driest desert and have finally, after much suffering, come upon a small oasis with speckled fur, softsoft ears, one blue eye and one brown.