And now, I thought—No more.

YET STILL, THERE WOULD BE MORE. IT DID NOT (YET) END. FOR A few days later when I returned to the house on Cayuga Street it was to discover, on the small front porch, barking and whimpering as I approached—Brindle! The little French bulldog secured by a short leash to a porch railing, a flimsy red scarf about his neck, badly twisted so he’d nearly throttled himself.

“Brindle! My God.”

Astonishing—Brindle was alive, and Brindle was here.

Afterward I would wonder if Metti had been boarding him at a kennel, after our disagreement. He’d wanted me to think the worst, as a way of punishing me.

I would wonder if Metti had changed his mind about having the bulldog put down or whether in fact no veterinarian would consent to do such a thing. Whether Metti’s daughter had told him definitively that she didn’t care to take the dog back.

Brindle was overcome with joy to see me. His deep-chested dwarfish body quivered, shook from side to side with the agitation of his skinny tail. His left eye was cloudy but luminous. He was panting, slathering spittle on my hands.

“Oh, Brindle. What the hell am I going to do with you . . . .”

Whether in derision, or for some other motive, Metti had tied the red silk scarf around Brindle’s neck, over his collar. In his agitation the dog had torn the delicate material with his claws and soiled it.

I wondered if Metti was somewhere close by, observing. I did not want to look for him—the Jaguar parked on the street. No. I carried Brindle up the stairs, to my room. And here too, a surprise—an envelope stuffed with cash, pushed beneath the door.

Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. One thousand dollars!

No note, not a word. Just the dog, the scarf, the envelope filled with cash. Somehow this did not (yet) feel like an end.

AND SO NOW, I WOULD LEAVE CATAMOUNT FALLS. I WOULD NOTIFY the telephone company, disconnect the phone. (Metti paid the phone bills: he would see that I’d terminated the account.) The previous week was the end of the university spring term, many of us would be departing soon. I felt a sudden stab of regret for that other life, the life of which Orlando Metti had no knowledge, my life as a university student who came onto campus only after dark—diffident, diligent, dutiful—a young woman who sat near the front of classrooms taking notes as if her life depended upon it.

Packed the Honda Civic with the little French bulldog (in a secondhand carrying cage: I didn’t trust him to behave himself in the car) and my (few) possessions. On the way out of Catamount Falls dropping by the Agency to say goodbye to Ava Schultz who’d become my only friend there and to inquire if they’d heard more from Orlando Metti.