Perfect.

No wonder I’d never had a boyfriend.

“Hi,” I said, trying to sound super-casual, but aware that my voice was coming out super-high-pitched and, indeed, somewhat Shrilly.

“What are you doing here?” Dash asked, stepping back a few feet farther from me and Boris. “And why do you have so many keys?” He pointed to the huge key ring clasped to my purse, which had the keys for all my dog-walking clients attached to it. “Are you a building super or something?”

“I WALK DOGS!” I shouted over Boris’s barking.

“CLEARLY!” Dash shouted back. “But it looks like he’s walking you!”

Boris leapt back into action, dragging me behind him, with Dash running to our side—far to our side, as if not quite sure he wanted to participate in this spectacle.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Dash.

“I ran out of yogurt,” Dash said. “Went out to get more.”

“And to defend your good name?”

“Oh, dear. You heard about the crimson alert?”

“Who didn’t?” I said.

He must not have seen my posted sign yet. Could I take it down before he reached that tree?

I tugged on Boris’s leash to turn us in the opposite direction, away from the Washington Square arch and toward downtown. For some unknown reason, the direction change calmed Boris down, and he switched from his full-on gallop to a mild trot.

Logically, based on what I knew of boys generally and specifically of Dash, I would have expected Dash to bolt in the opposite direction at this point.

Instead, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I come with?”

Seriously?

I said, “That’d be awesome. Where do you think we should go?”

“Let’s just wander and see what happens,” Dash said.

seventeen

–Dash–

December 29th

It was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.

“So which way should we go?” Lily asked.

“I don’t know—which way do you want to go?”

“Either way.”

“You sure?”

She was definitely more attractive sober, as most people are. She had a winsome quality now—but smartly winsome, not vacuously winsome.

“We could go to the High Line,” I said.

“Not with Boris.”

Ah, Boris. He seemed to be losing patience with us.

“Is there a certain dog-walking route you take?” I asked.

“Yes. But we don’t have to take it.”

Stasis. Total stasis. Her sneaking peeks at me. Me sneaking peeks at her. Teeter teeter teeter.

Finally, one of us was decisive.

And it wasn’t me or Lily.

It was as if a dog-whistle orchestra had suddenly struck up the 1812 Overture. Or a parade of squirrels had marched into the other side of Washington Square Park and started to rub themselves with oil. Whatever the provocation, Boris was off like a shot. Lily was caught off balance, dragged onto a sleety patch, and knocked from her footing entirely. The bag of poop went flying in the air. Much to my deep delight, as Lily fell, she let out a raucous “MOTHERSUCKER!”—a curse I had not heretofore heard.

She landed gracelessly, but without injury. The bag of poop narrowly missed popping her on the temple. Meanwhile, she had let go of Boris’s leash, which I foolishly grabbed for and caught. Now I was the one who had the sensation of water-skiing over pavement.

“Stop him!” Lily yelled, as if there were some button I could press that would shut the dog down. Instead, I simply added worthless ballast as he charged forth.

It was clear he had a target in mind. He was storming toward a group of mothers, strollers, and kids. With horror, I saw he’d zeroed in on the most vulnerable prey around—a kid wearing an eye patch, chomping on an oat bar.

“No, Boris. No!” I cried.

But Boris was going to go his own way, whether I was on board or not. The kid saw him coming and unleashed a shriek that was, frankly, more appropriate to a girl half his age. Before his mother could whisk him out of harm’s way, Boris had barreled into him and knocked him down, pulling me in his wake.

“I’m so sorry,” I said as I tried to pull Boris to a stop. It was like playing tug-of-war with a garden party of NFL linebackers.

“It’s him!” the boy squealed. “IT’S THE ATTACKER!”

“Are you sure?” a woman I could only assume was his mother asked.

The boy lifted his eye patch, revealing a perfectly good eye.

“It’s him. I swear,” he said.

Another woman came over with what looked like a wanted poster with my face on it.

“CRIMSON ALERT!” she yelled into the air. “WE ARE UPGRADING FROM MANGO!”

Another mother, about to take her baby out of its stroller, let go in order to blow a whistle—four short bursts, which I had to imagine corresponded to crimson.

The whistle blowing was not a wise idea. Boris heard it, turned, and charged.

The woman jumped out of the way. The stroller could not. I flung myself to the ground, trying to make myself as heavy as possible. Boris, confused, crashed right into the stroller, dislodging the baby inside. In slow motion, I saw it fly up, a shocked expression on its docile face.

I wanted to close my eyes. There was no way I could get to the baby in time. We were all paralyzed. Even Boris stopped to watch.

In the corner of my eye: movement. A cry. Then the most magnificent sight: Lily flying through the air. Hair streaming. Arms outstretched. Entirely unaware of how she looked, only aware of what she was doing. A flying leap. An honest, bona fide flying leap. There wasn’t any panic on her face. Only determination. She got herself under that baby, and she caught it. As soon as it landed in her arms, it started to wail.

“My God,” I murmured. I had never seen anything so transfixing.

I thought the crowd would break into applause. But then Lily, recovering from her flying leap, took a few extra steps, and a mother behind me yelled, “Child stealer! Stop her!”

Mothers and other bystanders all had their cell phones out. Some in the mommy circle were arguing over who would send out the crimson alert and who would call the police. Lily, meanwhile, was still in her golden moment, unaware of the fuss. She was holding on to the baby, trying to calm it down after its traumatic flight.

I tried to get up from the ground, but suddenly there was a formidable weight on my back.

“You’re not going anywhere,” one of the mothers said, sitting on me firmly. “Consider this a citizen’s arrest.”

Two more mothers and the eye-patched kid piled on. I almost let go of the leash. Luckily, Boris seemed to have had enough excitement for the day, and was now barking out orders to no one in particular.

“The police are coming!” someone yelled.

The baby’s mother ran over to Lily, who had no idea that it was the baby’s mother. I saw her say, “One sec,” as she tried to get the baby to stop crying. I think the mother was thanking her—but then a few other mothers descended and boxed Lily in.

“I saw this on Dateline,” one of the louder mothers was saying. “They create a diversion, then steal the baby. In broad daylight!”

“This is absurd!” I yelled. The kid started bouncing up and down on my tailbone.

Two police officers arrived and were immediately besieged with versions of the story. The truth went vastly underrepresented. Lily looked confused as she handed the baby over—hadn’t she done the right thing? The police asked her if she knew me, and she said of course she did.

“You see!” one mother crowed. “An accomplice!”

The ground was cold and slushy, and the weight of the mothers was starting to rupture some of my choicer internal organs. I might have confessed to a crime I hadn’t committed in order to get out of there.

It was unclear whether we were being arrested or not.

“I think you should come with us,” one of the officers said. It didn’t seem like Actually, I’d rather not was an appropriate answer to give.

They didn’t cuff us, but they did march us to the squad car and make us sit in the back with Boris. It wasn’t until we were back there, with some mommies calling for vengeance and the flying baby’s mother concentrating on making sure her baby was okay, that I got a chance to actually say something to Lily.

“Nice catch,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she said. She was in shock, staring out the window.

“It was beautiful. Really. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

She looked at me for what felt like the first time. We held like that for a few heartbeats. The squad car pulled away from the park. They didn’t bother with the sirens.

“I guess we know where we’re going now,” she said.

“Fate has a strange way of making plans,” I agreed.

Lily had relatives all across the five boroughs, but unfortunately none of them were in law enforcement.

She listed many of them for me, trying to figure out who would be best suited to get us out of this jam.

“Uncle Murray got indicted, which is pretty much the opposite of what we need. Great-aunt Mrs. Basil E. dated someone in the district attorney’s office for a while … but I don’t think it ended well. One of my cousins went into the CIA, but I’m not allowed to say which one. This is so frustrating!”

We weren’t, thankfully, locked in a cell. Instead, we’d been marched into an interrogation room, although nobody had thought to interrogate us yet. Maybe they were just watching through the mirror to see if we’d confess something to each other.

I was surprised by how well Lily was taking our incarceration. She was far from a wee timorous beastie—if anything, I was the one who was jangled as we were ramrodded into custody. None of the police officers seemed particularly impressed that neither of us had parents who were currently within bailing-out distance. Lily ended up calling her brother. I ended up calling Boomer, who happened to be with Yohnny and Dov at the time.

“It’s all over the news!” Boomer told me. “Some people are calling you heroes and others are saying you’re criminals. The videos are all over the Web. I think you might even make the six o’clock news.”

This was not how I’d seen the day going.

Lily and I hadn’t been read our rights or offered a lawyer, so I was guessing we hadn’t actually been charged with anything yet.

Meanwhile, Boris was getting hungry.

“I know, I know,” Lily responded to his whining. “Hopefully your daddy doesn’t have Internet where he is.”

I tried to think of interesting conversational topics to bring up. Had she been named after the flower? How long had she been dog walking? Wasn’t she relieved that none of the officers had thought to use a billy club against us?

“You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” she said, sitting down at the interrogation table and taking the red notebook from her jacket pocket. “Do you want to write something down and pass it over to me?”

“Do you have a pen?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s in my bag. And they took my bag.”

“I guess we’ll have to talk, then,” I said.

“Or we could take the Fifth.”

“Is this your first time in prison?” I asked.

Lily nodded. “You?”

“My mom once had to bail my father out, and there wasn’t anybody at home to watch me. So I came along. I must’ve been seven or eight. At first she told me he’d had a little accident, which made me think he’d peed himself somewhere inconvenient. Then I was told it had been ‘disorderly conduct’—it never went to trial, so there’s no paper trail.”