This Dog for Hire Read Online Free PDF

sounds grand, it isn’t. What is grand is the deal I got.
    Sheldon and Norma Siegal, who own the town house on the left and the cottage, are rarely around, so more than a tenant, they wanted a caretaker, someone to watch over the house whenever they’re away. In exchange for services rendered, the rent pay is nominal. Which is exactly what I can afford.
    The cottage has two floors of living space and a basement for storage. There are two small bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, a living room with a fireplace and a small, open kitchen on the main floor, and one big room, with another bathroom, downstairs.
    Downstairs is where I keep all the things I still haven’t unpacked since I moved here four years ago. I simply haven’t found the need for good crystal in my current lifestyle.
    The house works well for us, storing all the books, files, and rawhide bones we need to keep us reasonably happy. But best of all is the garden, wonderful when it snows, because Dash gets to make the first paw prints, terrific in spring when the perennial herbs and flowers return as if by magic, amazingly cool in summer, especially in the evening and at night, and mysterious and sad in the fall when the cycle draws to an end in a blaze of beauty, all hidden from Tenth Street and the rest of the world.
    I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, fed Dashiell, and went straight up to bed. I had the tape from Clifford Cole’s answering machine in my coat pocket, where I had put it before leaving the loft, replacing it with a new tape I found in the drawer of the table the machine sat on. I had wanted to hear it again, but suddenly the day caught up to me and I could no longer think of anything but sleep.
    There were only three messages on the tape, anyway. The National Dog Registry, someone selling home delivery of the New York Times, and a squeaky-voiced lady who wanted to mate her bitch to Magritte, that adorable little stud.
    Dashiell was already asleep. I closed my eyes and thought about Dennis’s reunion with Magritte. I had knocked on the door and when he asked who was there I had said, It’s me, Rachel, I’m ready to draw you that first picture. When he opened the door, the basenji dog had squealed. Dennis had bent down, and the little dog had kissed him al! over his face. I thought about the look in Dennis’s eyes, when he finally could take them off his dog.
    I also believed my dog to be the best thing since indoor plumbing. I had rescued Dashiell from some wrong headed, mean-spirited young entrepreneurs I had run into on a case, people who planned to make money fighting him when he grew up. I liberated him in such a fashion, let’s say, that I didn’t take the time to get his pedigree.
    Sometimes when the right dog finds you, he has papers. Sometimes he doesn’t. Hey, I have papers. My divorce document. It’s not much to cur! up against on a cold night. A dog is much better suited for that job.
    Hugging Dashiell, I fell asleep happy, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a start. Was it a dream that woke me? I couldn’t remember. All I could remember was that sign at the pier.
    Don’t be caught alone.
    I almost always was, more and more of late. I was thirty-eight, suspicious, competitive, too independent on the surface for the taste of most of the men I met, and under the surface, much too frightened to suit my own.
    Even if I could have fallen asleep again, it wouldn’t have been worth lying there and rehashing my whole life before I finally got fed up enough to sleep. I got up and went into the spare bedroom, a little two by-four job where I did my paperwork.
    Dennis’s book was on the desk where I had tossed it earlier. I took it onto the guest bed, slid under the blankets, and began to read about Antonia, who was five and who had always wanted a dog, ever since she was four and a half. When she finds Eliot, she is sure that he was meant to be hers.
    “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” I told my sister,