Danielle Steel - The Apartment

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said to him through the glass, and he barked again. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. “I can’t,” she said, staring him in the eye. “I live in an apartment.” His next bark sounded like “I don’t care.” She walked away from him, and he started barking frantically, as she glanced at a dog whose sign said it was a Lhasa Apso, but she was very old. And suddenly Abby knew she had to leave before she made a terrible mistake and went home with a dog. She had just gone to see them for the fun of it, to cheer herself up, and now they were tugging at her heart. The enormous black dog was still barking, standing up in his cage, and he was as tall as a man.

“What is that?” Abby asked an attendant walking by.

“He’s a Great Dane, he’s two years old, he was a show dog, and his owner left him here because he moved away. He couldn’t find a home for him. His name is Charlie. He’s a good guy. Would you like to meet him?” She felt like she was being fixed up on a date. And before she could stop herself, she said “Okay” with a slight feeling of panic. She wasn’t afraid of the dog, but of herself.

Charlie emerged from the cubicle she’d seen him in, and he came out politely, sat down in front of her, and held out his paw for her to shake.

“Hello, Charlie,” Abby said meekly. “I want to be clear with you. I can’t take you home with me. I have three roommates and live in an apartment. And they’d kill me.” His mournful eyes reminded her that it was a loft with a lot of space.

“How much does he weigh?” Abby asked the attendant out of curiosity.

“A hundred and eighty pounds.”

“Oh my God,” Abby said. Ivan had only weighed one sixty-five. Charlie was as big as a man, bigger in some cases. He sat looking at her expectantly, and she could see that he was very well trained. But what would she do with a hundred-and-eighty-pound dog? “What does he eat? A side of beef?”

“Ten or twelve cups of kibble a day, or a couple of cans of dog food.” It didn’t sound like a lot to her, given his size. “He sleeps a lot, and he’s very well behaved.” As the attendant said it, Charlie held out a paw to her again, with pleading eyes.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” Abby said to the dog directly. “I can’t help you out. I told you, I have roommates.”

The look in Charlie’s eyes said, “So?” She was having an entire conversation with his very expressive face. And he was not letting her off the hook.

“Does he attack people? Has he ever bitten anyone?”

“Never.” The attendant looked offended. “He’s the gentlest dog here, and he’s kind of a scaredy-cat. He hides when other dogs get aggressive. I don’t think he knows how big he is. He thinks he’s a lapdog.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said to the attendant, said goodbye to Charlie, and headed down the stairs. And as she did, Charlie broke free from the attendant and ran after her, and then lay whining at her feet. Abby was nearly crying as she patted him, and told him he had to go back. And then he put his hands on his head, while he lay there, as though it were the worst news he’d ever heard, and he didn’t want to hear it. Abby sat down on the steps next to him, and gently stroked his coat as he gazed up at her imploringly, begging her to take him. She felt a wave of insanity come over her then, stood up, faced the attendant, and said, “I’ll take him.” The attendant beamed and Charlie barked, and then the attendant asked her a question.

“Do you have a garden? He needs room to walk around.”

“I live in a three-thousand-square-foot loft.”

“That’ll work.” He went to get a leash for Charlie, the diet he’d been following, the vitamins he took, a sheet of instructions, and the adoption papers for Abby to fill out. The dog was glued to her side, and she glanced down at him with a stern expression.

“If they get pissed at me and throw me out, it’s all your fault. You’d better be nice when we get home.” He almost seemed like he was nodding, and the attendant put everything in a shopping bag after Abby signed the papers, and paid the ten-dollar adoption fee for the dog. This wasn’t about money, it was about love and finding a good home. “Okay, let’s go,” she said to him, and he followed her down the stairs, politely. He had won.

Abby took him for a walk on the way back to the apartment, as the dog loped along. He really did look like a small horse, and people gave them a wide berth, not sure if the enormous dog was friendly. But he didn’t react to anything on the way home, strollers, kids, bicycles, roller bladers, other dogs. He just trotted next to Abby, and once when a small dog barked at him, he panicked, and she remembered that the attendant had said he was a coward.

He ran up the stairs, and Abby was relieved when she saw that no one was home. Charlie sniffed around the apartment, and then lay down at her feet, as she grinned at him. This was going to be fun, if the others didn’t kill her. The way he looked at her, she felt like he was talking to her. And when she sat down at her computer to work, Charlie went to sleep.

Everything was fine until Morgan came home from the restaurant during a break to change her shoes. Her legs were killing her after standing up all through the lunch rush in heels, and she wanted to put on flats. She saw Abby working, and then she saw the enormous beast and let out a horrendous scream. Abby jumped a foot where she was sitting, and Charlie dove behind a chair, and lay there shaking, terrified by the scream. But at least he didn’t attack her, Abby thought gratefully. The dog was cowering behind the chair, shaking like a leaf with eyes that begged Abby to protect him.

“What is that?” Morgan asked, advancing on them both with a determined expression.

“That?” Abby said innocently. “Oh, that. It’s a dog.”

“No, it’s not, it’s a horse. And how did it get here?”

“It walked up the stairs,” Abby said, looking nervous. Abby was a tiny person, which made the dog’s size seem even more incongruous, and Morgan was the tallest of the group.

“And why did it walk up the stairs?” Morgan asked her with a fierce stare.

“He was too big for me to carry,” Abby answered.

“Why is he here? Please don’t tell me he moved in while I was helping Max at lunch.”

“Uh…well…actually…his owner moved away, and he had no home, and he looked at me so pathetically, and I couldn’t, I had to…it’s really his fault.” Charlie was peeking around the chair by then, since no one had screamed again, and sensing an opportune moment, he walked cautiously over to Morgan and held out his paw. Morgan shook it and almost smiled, which Abby thought was a good sign. And Morgan was relieved to see he wasn’t aggressive, even if he was huge.

“His name is Charlie, by the way,” Abby told her.

“Abby, please tell me you didn’t buy this dog.”

“I didn’t. I adopted him. It was only ten dollars. And the first week of food was free.”

“You can’t keep him in an apartment. It’s not fair to the dog. He should live on a farm, or an estate, a ranch, or something.” And as she said it, he rolled over onto his back with his paws in the air, to indicate how much he loved his new home. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Neither can I,” Abby said honestly, as Alex and Sasha walked in. Charlie dove behind the chair again.

“Wait till you see what Abby brought home,” Morgan said with a look of exasperated amusement, as Alex and Sasha approached. Charlie was invisible behind the chair, cowering again.

“What did she bring home?” Sasha asked with a smile, thinking it was something to eat or a piece of furniture, and as she asked, an enormous head peeked out from behind the chair, and she jumped. “Holy shit! What is that?”

“She claims it’s a dog, but it’s actually a horse. His name is Charlie.” At the sound of his name, he walked out, and came to nuzzle Alex’s hand. Maybe he reminded him of the owner who had moved away.

“Great. He likes you. You take him home,” Morgan said to Alex.

“Are you kidding? He’s bigger than my whole apartment, and I’m never there.”

“Neither are we,” Morgan pointed out. “We all work.”

“I don’t,” Abby said meekly. “I’m home all the time now. He can stay with me.”

“Does he live here?” Sasha asked with a look of panic.

“What are you worried about? You’re moving out in June.” It was the first time anyone had said it since her engagement, and they all suddenly realized what her wedding meant. She would be moving out. And Charlie had moved in.

“Well, I’m not gone yet. Abby. You can’t handle a dog this size,” Sasha said practically.

“He’s very well behaved,” she pleaded his case, while Charlie waited for the verdict, go or stay.

“Why don’t you all try him out, and see if it works? If it doesn’t and he’s a problem, Abby can take him back where she got him,” Alex suggested. Morgan looked dubious, but it sounded sensible to Sasha and Abby, who both said okay. And as though he knew what they were talking about, Charlie lay down again with a sigh and stretched his legs and closed his eyes, and a minute later he was sound asleep.

“He’s kind of sweet,” Abby said, looking down at him, as her two roommates laughed and Alex grinned.

“Never a dull moment around here,” Alex commented.

“You couldn’t get a Chihuahua or something small?” Morgan asked her as she went to get her shoes.

“He talked to me,” Abby said to Alex and Sasha, as Alex leaned down to stroke him, and Charlie groaned with pleasure. He was one lucky dog. And for the moment at least, Charlie had a home.

Sasha tried to reach Valentina again that night to tell her about her engagement, but the call went straight to voicemail. Sasha didn’t want to just leave her a message about something that important. And the next day, she and Alex were at the hospital, and Sasha had no time to call. All the pregnant women who had held out through Christmas past their due date were delivering that day, two days after the holiday. Alex and Sasha had been engaged for three days.

By ten o’clock that night, Sasha had been on duty for fourteen hours, and she finally got a break. She had just done her last C-section, and put a ten-pound baby boy in his mother’s arms.

“There can’t be a baby left to deliver in New York. I think I delivered them all today,” she said, as Alex rubbed her back in the doctors’ lounge. Her cell phone went off as she said it. She looked, and a number she didn’t recognize came up.

“Dr. Hartman,” she said into her phone, in case it was a patient.

“Lieutenant O’Rourke, NYPD,” the voice said, sounding official. “We have your sister here. You’re listed as her emergency contact and next of kin.” Sasha’s heart started to pound as she listened. “She’s all right,” he said in a gruff tone, “but she’s been injured. There was a homicide. The victim was shot in the back, and the bullet went through him and lodged in your sister’s leg. It missed the artery, but she’s lost a fair amount of blood. She’s conscious. She’s in the trauma unit at NYU hospital. Can you meet us there?”

“Oh my God, I’m upstairs. I’ll be right there,” Sasha said, and hung up, and looked frantically at Alex.

“What happened?”

“Valentina. Someone got killed and the bullet went through him and lodged in her leg. She’s in trauma.”

“Here?” She nodded and ran out of the doctors’ lounge to the nurses’ desk.

“Get someone to cover for me,” she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “My sister’s been shot. She’s downstairs in trauma. If you can’t find anyone, I’ll come back. We don’t have anyone in labor.”

“Yet,” the nurse added, shocked by what Sasha had told her. “Is your sister okay?”

“I don’t know. I think so. She was shot in the leg.” She kissed Alex goodbye then—he had to go back to work—and she left the floor at a dead run and went down the stairs to the main floor to the trauma unit. She asked for Valentina, and found her in a cubicle surrounded by policemen, covered with blood from head to foot, and hysterical. “What happened?” Sasha asked her. She was deathly pale, and they were examining her leg, and had given her a shot for the pain.

“They killed Jean-Pierre. We came back today. We were making love, and someone shot him. The bullet went through him and is in my leg. But they killed him.” She was sobbing, and was in shock. Sasha watched them sedate her, and left the cubicle when Valentina got drowsy, and went to look for Lieutenant O’Rourke. He was waiting for her outside. After she introduced herself, she watched him do a double take when he saw her. He took her into an examining room to explain. Kevin O’Rourke was a burly Irishman, and he announced himself immediately as “Homicide. NYPD.”