Upper East Sider

When the Present Ex moved here from Philly, we went from never living in the same city together to living together. Yikes.

The first few months were a rotation of good and bumpy. Mostly good, but really bumpy.

Our one bedroom apartment was on 72nd between 1st and York. No Man's Land. It was on the first floor in the back of a five or six story building. It was cute. You walked into the living room/kitchen area. The bathroom was to your left. The bedroom was big and we painted it a grey blue.

I wanted a dog. I had always wanted a dog but Present Ex was dead set against it. Until one day he called me and said he had walked by a pet store on Lexington and saw the cutest Shih tsu in the world. I was working as an AD on a Broadway show at the time and I told him I would try to get by to look at her as soon as I good. Present Ex, at the time, was working at a mortgage company in Mineola, Long Island. He would wake up at the crack of dawn and reverse commute every morning. Pain in the ass.

So the next day, before rehearsal, I stopped at American Kennels on Lex to take a look at the puppy. She was the cutest dog in the world. Unlike most Shih tsu's her face didn't look like she had just run into a wall. She had an extended snout and was full of love. So I put a down payment on her, told them I'd pick her up after work and called Present Ex to say that someone else had bought her. He was devastated.

When Present Ex came home that evening, he opened the door and I was sitting at our tiny, 2 person kitchen table that we bought at the local framing store on the corner, with the little pup on my lap. Present Ex started to cry. Happy anniversary, I said.

We named her Chloe. I can't remember how we got to that particular name but it took about a week of trial and error.

With Present Ex leaving so early in the morning and coming home so late at night, Chloe and I took to taking looooong walks around the Upper East Side or, Yorkville as the cab maps called it. It's a neighborhood I grew to adore. It was Manhattan, but not. There was almost always sky. I could walk to the river. It was quiet. It was home.

One evening, Chloe and I had made it all the way up to 86th Street and pretty far west when all of a sudden she started tugging hard at the leash and pulling me. She was retracing our steps and she wanted to go home asap. For once, she didn't stop to sniff anything or stop and look up at people for attention. She just moved as if on a mission. We rounded 72nd street and up ahead, not far from our apartment, a group of people had gathered and something was making an inhuman moaning noise. Chloe slowed down but kept moving forward. I tried to make out what was happening. I passed a woman and her dog a few feet from my apartment and she said , "Awful. Just awful." I passed her and the apartment and peered around the assembled group of people. There on the ground was a tiny Asian woman holding a big white dog and moaning, screaming and crying. The dog had just dropped dead. She was inconsolable and no one knew what to do. I instinctively picked Ripley up and hurried inside to Present Ex and our safe home. But that woman's wailing has stayed with me ever since.