City of Dogs by Ken Foster & Traer Scott

Author:Ken Foster & Traer Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

ALISTAIR & ELIZABETH

WEST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN

Elizabeth Wurtzel is famous—some might say notorious—for her honest and raw memoirs, including Prozac Nation, but when she walks the streets of Greenwich Village, it is her dog who is the star. This is completely fine with Elizabeth. In fact, it was what she hoped for. Her previous dog, Augusta, was a star as well. “Before Augusta, I did not know I could love that much,” she says. “Augusta stunned me when she had to say hello to every person at every table at every outdoor café as we walked along. She thought she was a movie star. She would stop and wait to be noticed. She wanted people to pet her and say she was gorgeous. She was an insanely extroverted dog. I admired her moxie.”

Elizabeth’s apartment manages to be simultaneously spacious and cluttered, in the best possible way. Every object tells part of the story of how she got to this moment. There are lots of books. There are also framed photos of herself that were the covers of her books: a pensive outtake from the shoot for Prozac Nation and topless for Bitch, her celebration of difficult women. She even has the peculiar New York Times marriage announcement on display: “Elizabeth Wurtzel Finds Someone to Love Her.” But the most important thing is Alistair, and he’s never more than an arm’s length away.

A walk to Washington Square confirms Alistair’s status: you know you live among dog people when the folks on the street first make eye contact with and say hello to your dog before, perhaps, raising their gaze to greet you, too. Once they have passed through the arch, Alistair takes a quick dip in the fountain and Elizabeth follows. A crowd of tourists circles, phones outstretched, not for a moment considering that what they are doing might be a bit odd, because Alistair is a mesmerizing presence. On the way back home, there’s a stop in a tiny espresso bar, where Alistair suddenly seems enormous, and after some polite conversation his admirers notice that Elizabeth is there, too.

Elizabeth didn’t think she was ready. She had been sitting in a coffee shop following radiation treatment for breast cancer, and remembering her dog Augusta. People thought breast cancer was bad, but for Elizabeth, the death of her dog was more traumatizing. But maybe it was time to just begin to look, she thought. She had found Augusta at a city shelter, so she pulled up their website and saw that there was another border collie mix at the Brooklyn branch. She didn’t even know where the Brooklyn shelter was, but she called a car.

“We named him Alistair,” she says. “It is a ridiculous name for a dog. It is a ridiculous name for a person.” At first she tried to resist his charms. It didn’t work. “I think it’s love,” she says. “It must be love.”

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