The gleam in his eye suggested that he knew my name, but was choosing not to use it.

“What’s up, Doc?” I said.

“Bad day so far,” he said. “A woman brought in a hit-and-run. The dog needs emergency surgery but he’s got no tags, and nobody’s called to claim ownership.”

“So what happens next?” My interest was polite, if not purely academic.

“We don’t usually do major procedures without payment or ID,” he said.

“So you’re going to let it die?”

“We’d rather not.”

I clocked him a little more carefully, examining the smirk that seemed to play permanently around the edges of his mouth, especially when it wasn’t warranted.

“Have you been telling this story to everyone who comes in?” I said.

“Sure,” the boy vet said. “We want someone to save the dog. Any chance it’s you?”

Here, here was the curve. For all of my many faults, I am hopelessly susceptible to appeals for help, the more animalcentric, the better. Julia had recycled enough follow-up mail addressed to me from the World Wildlife Fund to replant an old growth forest full of new red pandas.

“How much is the surgery going to cost?” I said.

“Looking like two thousand bucks, give or take.”

“Shouldn’t you know for sure?”

“Well, the damage could prove to be more, ah, extensive than we assume.”

The boy vet was bobbing his head to some invisible tune as he spoke, pulling me in. Kiki was whining to get out of there, but I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I didn’t have that kind of money to spare. On the other, I had a credit card with a criminally generous limit, and, given my lack of income, no sense of a budget whatsoever.

“What kind of dog is it?” I said.

“Looks like a corgi mix,” he said. “Maybe some kind of terrier or collie in there.”

Julia specifically hated corgis. She’d lived next door to a pair of them one summer and still heard phantom yapping late at night.

“Do we have to keep him if I pay for the surgery?”

“Of course not. You can pay for him and then he can go to the shelter. They’ll probably wait a couple of weeks before they put him down.”

The world, I remembered, was a terrible place.

“Christ, I’ll take him,” I said. “You knew I was going to do it.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured you would,” he said, and shook my hand. The smirk was there in force, and it had colonized his face.

I gave the desk nurse my credit card. She took down the number and said they’d call me if the medical expenses went higher, at which point I’d have to decide all over again whether or not to save the dog.