“The kitchen is sealed?” Finn asked.
“Sealed, sanitized, and Rod’s standing guard,” I said. “If a dog gets within ten feet of his prep station,I think he’ll actually bark at it.”
“And Peter’s comfortable with this?”
I looked across the room at Peter. He was kneeling beside a crate containing a nervous border collie mix, speaking to the dog in a low, steady voice while his hands worked the latch.
“He’s in his element,” I said.
Finn followed my gaze.
Whatever he saw on my face, he chose not to comment on it, which I appreciated, because I wasn’t sure what was on my face and I didn’t want to find out through Finn’s lilting interpretation.
The doors opened at six.
By 6:30, the bar was full.
It wasn’t full the way it got on hockey nights, when the crowd was rowdy and beer-focused and largely there to watch men on ice hit each other with sticks.
This was a different kind of full.
It felt warmer somehow. Softer.
People came in pairs and small groups. They moved toward the adoption area with the tentative, hopeful energy of humans who were thinking about opening their lives to something precious that would need them. They looked scared and excited in equal measure.
I worked the bar while keeping one eye on theevent. Jacks handled the heavy lifting so I could pour the specialty cocktails I’d developed for the evening:
The Mutt-ini (vodka, elderflower, a twist of lemon, served with a tiny paw-print stencil on the foam), the Rescue Sour (bourbon, lemon, honey, a splash of bitters), and the Foster Fizz (prosecco, peach, rosemary sprig, zero-alcohol option available).
They were good drinks.
They were also extremely Instagrammable, which Mia had insisted on and which proved to be the correct call when every third customer photographed their cocktail beside an adoptable animal and posted it with the hashtag she’d created.
The animals were extraordinary.
Not because they were extraordinary animals, though some of them were, but because they were ordinary animals in an extraordinary situation, rising to meet the attention with a courage I found genuinely moving.
There was a one-eared pit bull named Biscuit who had the gentlest mouth I’d ever seen on a dog and who, within thirty minutes, had been photographed with approximately forty people, all of whom Biscuit regarded with the same patient, slightly bewildered affection.
There was a pair of bonded tabby cats, brothers,who had been at the clinic for four months because people rarely adopted bonded pairs. They spent the evening curled around each other in their shared crate. When a young couple kneeled down to look at them, one of the brothers reached a paw through the bars and touched the woman’s finger. She burst into tears. Her partner pulled out her phone and filled out the adoption application on the spot.
There was a senior beagle named Ruthie with a gray muzzle and cloudy eyes and the slow, dignified bearing of a dog who had seen a great deal of the world and had decided, on balance, that it was acceptable. Rod, who had been ferrying plates from the sealed kitchen with his usual steady efficiency, stopped at Ruthie’s crate on one of his passes, looked at her for a long time, and then sat down on the floor beside her without saying a word.
He didn’t get up for twenty minutes.
When he did, he went to Peter and asked, in a voice I’d never heard Rod use before, something quiet and serious that I couldn’t hear from behind the bar.
Peter nodded.
Pulled out a form.
And watched as Rod took it to a corner booth and filled it out without speaking to anyone.
Jacks caught my eye. “Is Rod adopting that beagle?”
“I think Rod is adopting that beagle.”
“He’s wanted a dog for years. He said something about it once when we were closing. Said his apartment was too quiet.”
