In Mrs. Giverney’s Teeth

I’d taken my girlfriend on vacation to New York City, to show her places highlighted throughout the many stories she’d heard of my college days. I knew the city better than those born and raised there, I often insisted. “Had you been born into a family fortunate enough to own one of these brownstones,” I was sarcastically informing her as we walked past the famous homes surrounding New York’s Gramercy Park, “you’d have been born with a silver key in your mouth instead of a spoon.”

I paused in front of a park gate and she held onto the iron bars, pressing her face into the gap to see as much of the elite park as possible. “Even if you possessed a rare key to unlock it,” I continued, “you still wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the grass, ride a bike, feed the birds, or even toss a ball or frisbee once inside. It’s the most uptight park in the world.” I was a fount of knowledge, ever showing that even if I wasn’t born into the upper class, I surely was as intelligent as their lot. But my intellect wasn’t what shone brightest that day, for as I was about to elaborate on the rarity of owning one of those keys, an elderly man’s voice was competing with the never-ending chorus of honking cars on East 20th Street.

“Stop! Stop, Mrs. Giverney, stop! No, no … oh, no! Stop!” Even though he wasn’t visible at that point, his age was apparent from the sound of his voice, with the in-and-out airy, belabored breathing of his “no, no … oh, no!” cries.

From around the corner a dog rushed towards us. It was Mrs. Giverney, an Afghan hound, clutching a little black book in her teeth. She began to dart diagonally across the street, directly in front of traffic. Without thinking, I ran into the street to rescue her, but got knocked in the knee by one of the iconic checkered yellow taxi cabs and fell into a tumble on the street. Around me played the city orchestra’s surround-sound cacophony of horns honking and tires screeching, accented by my girlfriend’s shrieks, and the elderly man’s increasingly hoarse chorus of “No, no … oh, no!” cries.

Mrs. Giverney was unfazed by the commotion caused by the taxi hitting me, so she continued with her escape, running directly past me. Within seconds I was back on my feet, lunging toward her, only barely slipping my fingers beneath her collar before reaching the middle of the street. As I was capturing her, my mind was racing with thoughts about her life. Was being the pet of an upper class family more, or less, desirable to living freely on the streets as a stray dog unowned by anyone? I wondered where she was headed, and whether I was rescuing her from a possible life as a stray, surviving on the city’s buffet of food scraps, or returning her to what she possibly viewed as enslavement with too many rules on behaving as a “proper” dog, eating from a bowl engraved with her name.

She looked into my eyes, surprised by my sudden appearance next to her, and she tugged against my grip on her collar. I wondered if she’d have tried to snap at me had her teeth not held on so tightly to that little black book. “Do such sophisticated dogs actually bite people?” I wondered.

My girlfriend was now at my side, others were surrounding me, and the elderly man was approaching. “Oh! Oh, thank you! Thank you.” He quickly tried to retrieve his book from the dog’s teeth, but Mrs. Giverney would have none of that. He clipped a leash onto her collar and my fingers slid away. Car horns increased their intensity, insisting on an end to the excitement, and except for my girlfriend and the older man, other people had quickly resumed whatever they were doing before my leap-and-fall into traffic.

We stepped from the street back onto the sidewalk and the elderly man began scolding Mrs. Giverney, while explaining to us that he was a mathematician visiting New York for the first time. He said his name with an air of importance, as though we should have recognized him by it, and he nodded his head up towards one of the brownstones. “Mrs. Giverney is a native New Yorker and has been in my care this past week. She’s become quite jealous of the time I spend working in my book,” he said as he once again attempted to tug it from Mrs. Giverney’s teeth. “I was only briefly pausing our walk to quickly jot something down when she grabbed it and ran directly around the corner and into traffic,” he shuttered while he reached into his pocket and removed a checkbook which he immediately began filling it out.

He asked for my name. I heard him asking, but my mind was racing from the adrenaline of all that had just taken place. I tried to imagine what he was doing, why he was asking for my name, and I wondered if this day was turning into a New York City story my girlfriend would now be able to share with me. I heard her saying my name to the man, replying for me, repeating it again with proper spelling as his hand shakingly finished writing my name on the check.

He handed it to me with a sigh of relief, and a slight thankful nod of his head. There, in my hand, was a check made out to my name for $20,000. It was surreal, even though my knee was throbbing by that point letting me know it was, indeed, truly happening. “That must be some really important information written in that little black book of yours,” I mused out loud, partly trying to make conversation after being handed such a gift, but also because I wondered what could be so important to merit the amount of money he just handed to me.

“Oh, not at all. All that information remains in my head and it would only cost me time to write it down again, son,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Giverney’s rescue for which I’m most grateful; you’ve saved me from a potentially horrid time of explaining her loss to the owners,” he concluded as he carefully crossed the street with Mrs. Giverney, still holding his little black book in her teeth, and they entered the brownstone diagonally across from us.

“He was walking around the park,” I began telling my girlfriend, “because even though he probably has a key to the gate, pets aren’t permitted inside no matter what your name is.”

My girlfriend chuckled, insisting that with all my knowledge about so many things, I should have recognized the man’s name and realized that the little black book was probably worth a lot more than the old mathematician let on.