“I get it.” I nod, keeping my hands in my pockets and looking at the selection of sneakers at KICKS UNLIMITED, our destination, without touching it. Just because you’re a sneaker aficionado doesn’t mean you enjoy touching strangers’ used footwear.

“Your mom must be a mess.”

“She’s seeing her therapist twice a week this month.” Ming sighs, checking the stitching of a decent Jordan high-top with a sole that’s unfortunately too worn out to warrant the scrutiny. Hazards of secondhand life. “But Dad keeps assuring me that it’s not about me.”

As far as I can tell, Ming’s parents have always been open about his adoption, but his mom is also probably apoplectic about her only son moving across the planet.

“She hugged me four times this morning,” Ming says. “She even brought up buying us a condo in Beijing. It’s . . . a lot.”

Halfway through our third bin, I get a text from Mrs. Berjaoui, one of my clients, and finally notice the three missed calls in my voice mail from her.

“Uptown Updogs,” I say as soon as she answers the returned call.

“Finally!”

“Sorry about that, Mrs. Berjaoui. I was on a walk. It’s company policy not to take calls.”

“I’m sorry, Henri. I have the Uptown Updogs email but just realized that the only phone number I have is yours.”

“Oh, that’s strange. I’ll get you the number.”

Crap, do I need to invest in a separate phone number now?

“Another time! This is a bit of an emergency, I’m afraid,” she says, sounding frazzled. “That’s why I was trying to get to the company directly. I know you have a packed schedule as a student and all, but I need a dog walker ASAP.”

Apparently, her husband is traveling for the week and one of her more deservedly incompetent coworkers has just been fired, and somewhere in the shuffle of meetings and extra work that landed on her desk, she ran out of the apartment this morning completely forgetting that her reminder to walk the dog was falling onto the ears of exactly no one.

“Please,” Mrs. Berjaoui says in the foreground of ringing phones. “Can you ask them to send a walker? Wasn’t that one of their emergency services in the pamphlet?”

In my defense, it sounded good at the time. The sort of little something extra that might send apprehensive dog owners over the hump. I didn’t plan on it becoming a factor, with a bonus debate practice in two hours while in another borough with Ming.

“I know you have the key, but maybe you can coordinate with them or something? I’ll pay double. I just can’t get out of here until at least nine tonight, and I hate to think of Buddy alone for all that time.”

Me too.