And then driving without even knowing I was doing it the four blocks to the shelter, where I couldn’t stand to be—all those dogs in all those cages—and the first dog out, humping my leg and then getting loose, poor Georgie, and me frantic and frightened, the thing I’ve always been afraid of in my years of volunteering, letting a dog get loose, and there it is happening. But she simply sat down, looked very sorry, and let me slip the lead over her head again. Started humping me once more. And then Doug and Ann rescuing me, and then all of us working with her, walking and treating her, teaching her how not to get aroused and overwhelm the humans. Until she was panting with exhaustion, not from movement but from the work of thinking, trying to figure out what we wanted and do it for us and from the work of having three people at once paying attention to her and being out of the shelter and into the sunshine and cold Westchester air of the parking lot. We put a pink collar on her, stout black pit in a pink collar, and I know she slept well that night, dreaming of the three people who wouldn’t stop petting and praising her, handing her training treats, paying attention like what a dream, what a dream, Georgie Girl, actual humans looking at you. As though you matter, as though you are important, as though their hearts, already broken in one case, are breaking for your effort and your unquenchable hopefulness. The bright sunny cold air of a Westchester afternoon with Jackson Browne somewhere in the background, running down a road trying to loosen his load, and downtown Yonkers and P.R. and M. over the telephone in a hallway somewhere, outside the real place of wherever he was, and me being spoken to as though I were illicit, as though I were the one blowing his nose and dropping the Kleenexes discreetly everywhere. For the mother to pick up, for the lady of the house or the maid.