Three #2
“After midterms?”
“The dog might be dead by then.”
“Oh God,” she said. “Oh Ferry.” Jesus. Was she crying again? Again?
“Dos,” he said. “Mom, I was just kidding. Mom. Come on.” Sometimes he also called her Mom.
“A strange woman told me something was wrong with Roxy today. At the park.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Is Roxy okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“But you’re not okay.”
“I guess I’m not,” she said, and she hated herself for relying, once again, on his good sense and his intuitive nature and his calm. It wasn’t fair—she was his stepmother! A parental figure!
“You should go find the dog,” he said. “You know how to find lost dogs.”
“I do.”
“Seriously. You’re probably the only person in the world who could help them.”
“Lots of people know how to find dogs, Ferry.”
“Yeah, but you have like—have a sixth sense.”
“I’m not going to Georgia, Ferry.”
“You’re not teaching this semester,” he said. “You should think about it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” he said. “I gotta get back to studying. Love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said, and then she hung up the phone and gave Licky the last bite of her sandwich.
She flicked back to the Justice for Angelozi page, a rudimentary website that listed the various efforts to find the dog alongside increasingly incendiary theories about who might have done such a thing to the children of Tbilisi’s noble furry friend (hoodlums, vandals, Russians, Russians).
A new update: rumors that Angelozi was kidnapped and was going to be held for ransom by a group of Russian defectors who desperately needed money to afford Tbilisi’s exorbitant rents, the cause of which was, of course, the Russian defectors.
A preposterous theory except—except!—that rents really had tripled in Tbilisi.
A photo of Angelozi: Lab-shaped, expressive brows, off-white fur, fluffy and soft.
She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t! The pain that humans inflicted on one another was bad enough, but the pain they inflicted on animals—the habitat loss, the factory farming, the heartless neglect—She was feeling too much today, she needed a Xanax—
And then the chat feature came to life on the laptop. “Hello good evening is this Amy Webb of New York City?”
Scammers had figured out how to access her email chat?
“I am Irine Benia from Justice for Angel . ”
Amy felt her big eyes get bigger behind the screen. She blinked hard. “Angel?” she typed. “Did you find her? I’ve been watching the search from New York—”
A pause. She should probably try using Google Translate, it wasn’t fair to ask this person to write in English.
“I want to thank you for your generous donations, Miss Webb,” Irine said. “You have given so much to our cause and helped our volunteers purchase torches and make flyers. And purchase food to keep them from hungry while they search. Thank you.”
“No, thank you!” Amy typed back, amazed that there seemed to be someone real on the other side, embarrassed to be thanked for doing virtually nothing. “Thank you for what you’re doing for poor Angel.”
“You have donated over three hundred US dollars,” Irine Benia typed.
She had? It was so easy to lose track.
“Well, I just want to help however I can,” Amy wrote. “It’s really nothing,” and then felt profligate and ashamed. To tell this woman in Georgia that $300 US was nothing.
“I am writing to see if it would be all right with you if we used some of the money to help provide support to the other dogs in our care,” Irine wrote. “This is a lot of money for us and our organization is rather small.”
“It is?” Amy wrote. “I thought lots of people were looking for Angel.”
“Yes”—Irine, after a pause. “Many people have Angel in their hearts, but it is hard to give up everything and look for a dog. People are quite busy after all.”
“Yes, but what about the parents?”
Another pause. “Parents are busiest of all.”
Well.
“It is mostly me and my daughter. When she has time.”
“Yes, of course.” For some reason Amy had convinced herself that Justice for Angel was a real movement, that there were leagues of Georgians searching the streets and the shelters for their poor injured friend, that the dog was a national animal hero along the lines of Smokey the Bear.
But where had she gotten that idea? The videos she watched on repeat really told the same story in slightly different ways.
“Have you tried a drone?”
“What is this?”
“It’s like a camera that flies—or maybe you could use a stop-motion camera? By an outdoor food bowl?”
“I do not understand,” Irine typed, after a moment. “Perhaps we do not have these things in Georgia.”
No drone, no camera. These were serious handicaps.
“Maybe you could set up a station by her old house? Use some of the clothing of the kids who went to school with her?”
“I should use kid’s clothing?”
This was going nowhere. “I will come,” Amy typed, surprising herself. “To help with the search.”
“From New York City?”
“Yes,” Amy typed. “I will come this week to find Angel.”
“But—” Irine wrote. “You live in New York City.”
“Yes. I will take a flight.”
“To Tbilisi?”
“Yes.”
“You have a place to stay?”
“I will find a place to stay.”
“You stay with us,” Irine wrote.
“I couldn’t put you out,” wrote Amy, automatically, while thinking: Jesus what am I doing?
“You stay with us,” Irine wrote. “I have room. Tell me your flight information when you receive it. I am very happy you are coming. You are the patron saint of animals.”
“Thanks, but I’m not,” Amy wrote, although there were indeed several rescued cats gathered around her. “Is this the best way to find you?”
Irine sent her email address and her phone number and “god bless you Miss Webb,” and Amy wrote, “really, you can just call me Amy if you want” and Irine wrote “Okay Miss Webb,” but then a smiley face to show she was kidding.
And Amy thought how remarkable it was that this person across the world could make jokes in English, and had also offered her, a complete stranger, a place to stay, and that she probably wasn’t a murderer.
Also, she had already spent $300 on Angel and thought: well then she might as well spend more.
Her passport, refreshed three years ago for a wine-tasting trip to Italy.
Her suitcase: a bit dusty but the zippers still zipped.
What was the weather like in Tbilisi in February?
Astonishingly, according to the internet, exactly like the weather in New York.
When should she leave? Tomorrow? Could she leave tomorrow? No—that was too soon. Wednesday then.
Was she a fool, leaving Judd alone in New York City with Meret?
Encouraged by her suitcase, her passport, her newfound purpose: she would take care of Meret before she left.
Were there ATMs in Tbilisi’s airport? The internet confirmed that there were.
Was Georgia a safe country? The state department website confirmed that it was, one of the safest in the world.
Surprising. Could she really book a ticket?
Flights through Istanbul, but they left from Newark, and she hated going to Jersey.
A flight from Kennedy through Paris was $1100.
A flight on the same day through Warsaw was $200 cheaper.
Oh, but she loved Paris, it had been the only city she had ever truly loved , when she first went with Judd she’d felt like she’d not only died and gone to heaven but risen from the ashes—and even though it cost $200 more, she could smell the croissants rising in the airport kiosks.
And as she was thinking about it, Google was filling her stored address and credit card number into Kayak and then the flight was booked. The flight was booked!
Was Irine Benia even a real person?
She clicked over to the Brittanica Country Guide. Georgia’s climate was warm and pleasant, “Mediterranean-like,” on the Black Sea coast. The main economic drivers were agriculture, mining, and the production of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages.
Their government was an unstable coalition between pro-European centers in the cities and Soviet nostalgists in the countryside.
Since 2008, Russia had occupied parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
But otherwise, the country was peaceful, holding regular elections and boasting a “vibrant civil society.” And although the birth rate was lower than the world average and the death rate was higher, Georgians were known for their “hospitality, love of life, lively intelligence, and sense of humour.”
Well, that sounded nice.
Over on YouTube, she played a few introductory lessons to the Georgian language, which sounded, to her ears, like a very Slavic German: lots of multisyllabic words, looping vowels, and heavy throat-clearing sounds.
Hello was “gamarjoba” and good-bye was “nakhvamdis,” which was hard to say but not impossible.
Thank you was “madloba.” Bodishi meant “I’m sorry. ”
She texted Ferry: “I’m going. To Tbilisi. To find the dog.”
He didn’t text back, which was okay—which was good! He was in class or he was studying. “Judd!”
He came into Ferry’s room; he was showered, he had shaved. He bent down and kissed her on top of her head. “You okay?”
“I’m going to Georgia.”
“Georgia? Really? What’s there?”
“The country.”
“The country?”
“I’m visiting a friend.”
“You have a friend in Georgia?”
“You’re not the only one with a secret life, pal.”
“Amy,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to Tbilisi, Georgia, on Thursday to visit a friend that you don’t know.”
“I see,” Judd said. He sat down on Ferry’s bed, which sagged under his weight.
“I just bought a ticket. I fly through Paris.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I do not.”
“I love Paris.”
“I’m not really going to Paris,” she said. “I’m going to Georgia.”