chapter o ne

Pug Night

It was a decision we would later look back on with regret.

There were pugs running loose in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Imagine a vast army of pugs attempting to summit
the grand central staircase of the Met. Only, the pugs were
not on the stairs. They were contained—if the word “con-
tained” can even be used in the same sentence as “pugs”—
in the Temple of Dendur Hall, a great expanse of rose-hued
marble running the length of one side of the museum. True,
this fact was only a small solace. But I’ve long been a be-
liever in taking solace where you can get it.
At the center of the Temple of Dendur Hall, the name-

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sake temple has been reconstructed and elevated so that peo-

ple, and now pugs, can walk around it and within it. In front
of the temple, there is a reflecting pool. An entire wall of
the room is made of slanting windows that look out into
Central Park. That night, an early evening in late April, the
setting sun flooded in through the wall of windows and
bathed the room, and the pugs that ran throughout it,
in shades of orange, red, and purple. I remember that. I re-
member the light. Some of the pugs pounced on the rays
of light. Others strode dangerously close to the aforemen-
tioned reflecting pool.
Classical music played in the background. A long buffet
table covered with a thick white cloth held a stunning ar-
rangement of flowers, rows of champagne flutes, and many
plates of canapés. There was tuna tartare on tiny, perfect
potato chips; mini quiches; slices of filet mignon on bite-
sized pieces of fresh baguette. Two tuxedoed men stood be-
hind the table, their backs to the grassy knoll of Central
Park just outside the window, making sure that the cham-
pagne glasses were all filled to the same height, that their
rows were perfectly spaced, that their numbers on the table
remained exact. They were vigilant in making sure that none
of the hors d’oeuvre trays ran out or ever looked skimpy.
They were good at this. Waiters were weaving gracefully
throughout the room, refilling champagne glasses, passing a
selection of the hors d’oeuvres from the table, and, most
likely a first for them, keeping an eye on close to fifty pugs.

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The pugs were also vigilant. They ran wild through the
room. They ran up the stairs that led to the temple, into it,
around it, and through it. They were zealous as they forged
a track, panting and gasping and struggling for air like so
many marathoners. The floor was perfect for sliding, and
the pugs slid. They returned, frequently and without fail,
to the long and inviting buffet table, where they would sit
waiting, hinting at their anticipation in the way that only
a panting, bulging-eyed pug can. Their goal: a taste of the
passing snacks.
The pugs were gathered that night to honor one of the
museum’s top donors, Daphne Markham, a famed New
York philanthropist who had recently announced plans to
donate a substantial sum to the museum. And I was there.
And even better, my pug, Max, was there, too. Though I
usually think of my job at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art as one tremendous perk, this particular perk of being
with Max at a party at the Met for pugs was, for me, the
ultimate.
Gil Turner, of the Development Office of the museum,
had planned this party in Daphne Markham’s honor due to
the fact that the aforementioned anticipated donation was
“far beyond significant.” His words, not mine. Gil Turner is
a man who often says things like “far beyond significant.”
And he says those things in a tone of voice and with a
method of delivery that can best be described as haughty.
This party, which had come to be called Pug Night, was

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the museum’s Gil Turner–engineered acknowledgment of

Daphne’s gift, its way of saying thank you in advance.
The reason for the pugs was simple. The pugs were there
because Daphne Markham loves them. While Daphne was
world famous for her philanthropic endeavors, she was
almost as famous for her love of pugs: pugs in general and
specifically her own pug, Madeline. Daphne Markham is a
person who is often photographed arriving at parties, bene-
fits, and dinners. She is always beautifully dressed. And she
is always toting her butterball of a pug, Madeline. I’m the first
person to know that dogs are not allowed everywhere, that
one cannot tote her canine wherever she may please. But if
one is Daphne Markham, one can. It was this—Daphne’s
love for pugs, her long history of generosity to the Met, and
her most recent plans for a “far beyond significant” gift—
combined with a just-about-to-open exhibition of nineteenth-
century paintings from the museum’s collection, that had
gathered fifty pug-loving patrons here at the museum.
The night was not exactly a democratic or far-reaching
or “all pugs are welcome here” type of night. Pug Night was
more a gathering of the most glamorous pugs in New York
City, of pugs belonging to socialites, philanthropists, and les
amateurs d’art world. Pugs are very popular in New York;
I’d long known that. But before that night at the museum, I’d
never known how many extremely fancy New Yorkers had
a pug to call their own.
It was as if the pages of Town & Country and the Sun-

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day Styles section of the New York Times had come together
that night in the Temple of Dendur Hall, in tandem with all
those pugs off their leashes. I had heard that an event like this
had happened once before, years earlier, when Sotheby’s had
a pug-friendly preview for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
auction. Apparently Wallis Simpson had been a great appre-
ciator of not only the pug but also of a great deal of pug
accoutrements. I wondered if Gil might have culled the con-
cept and maybe even parts of the guest list from Sotheby’s.
The beautiful people looked beautiful. The pugs, almost
every single one of them, looked crazed with glee. I kept a
careful eye on Max, stationed over by the buffet with so
many others. A smaller pug in a pink rhinestone harness sat
right next to him. I should admit that many pugs are smaller
than Max. Max’s weight has ballooned in recent months.
But I’m on top of the situation. I’ve been working on an ex-
ercise regime for him. I do my best to walk him across the
park twice a day, with bonus activity excursions on week-
ends. I gazed across the room at the wonderful, if perhaps a
bit porcine, Max and thought about how much I loved him.
I watched as this other, leaner pug looked up at him as if he
were her leader. I got that. In the year that I’ve known Max,
I’ve come to see that he is very wise, and patient, and thought-
ful. I’m certain that in a situation like this he acts as a role
model to other pugs. Surely the others see that in him.
“Yes, I think they’re going to drop a snack any moment
now,” I imagined Max saying to his new friend. “I really do.”

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As Max and his new companion continued to sit with

laserlike focus in front of the buffet table, I took a moment
to look around the room. On the side of the room farthest
from the sloping wall of windows stood Valentino with his
cadre of seven pugs circling close around him. Valentino’s
pugs did not stray. They did not heed the siren call of the
canapé. They did not run wild through the room as so many
of the other pugs did. Pugs are nothing if not savvy. Valen-
tino’s pugs jet around the world on a private plane. Valentino’s
pugs live in a stunning palazzo in Rome, a chalet in Gstaad,
un château just outside Paris, the largest private house in
London, a house in Tuscany, another in Capri, and a New
York apartment right by the Frick museum. Valentino’s pugs,
no fools they, didn’t let Valentino out of their sight. My
pug lives in a third-floor walk-up alcove studio on a kind of
sketchy block, albeit very close to the park. Thoughtfulness
aside, Max had better-dealed me for the hors d’oeuvre table
the moment we’d arrived.
I hung back, watched the pugs, hoped the slightly girthy
Max didn’t get too much to eat. I didn’t socialize very much.
I’m not generally a cocktail-party-with-the-patrons-of-the-
museum kind of person. I’m one-or-two-good-friends to
someone else’s entourage. I’m stay-in-with-a-good-book
to someone else’s night-on-the-town. I am more of what I’d
call a background type.
Andy Warhol once said, “I’m the type who’d be happy
not going anywhere as long as I could watch every party I

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was invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.” I think that

pretty succinctly sums it up for me. Except for this party;
this party I wanted to be at. As soon as I’d heard about it,
all I could think was: pugs. In the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. It made me think, and I almost never think this: How
could I miss it? The answer was simple: I couldn’t. No, tech-
nically I had not been invited. But! I worked at the Met, and
I had a pug. I’d decided faster than I decide most things that
I would absolutely stop by. I’d never once thought of it as
crashing.
For a moment, as I stood off to the side in the Temple of
Dendur Hall, surrounded by pugs, I had that feeling that
everything was right with the world. Usually I’m a firm be-
liever that you should avoid such a feeling, because surely
it’s written somewhere that as soon as you feel something
like that, everything in your life will go very wrong. But
still, I felt it. I felt as if my only care that night, other than
maybe my hope that Gil Turner didn’t cotton to the fact that
I wasn’t on the guest list, was finding a photographer for a
portrait of Max for my boyfriend, Ben.
Sometimes, just because it’s easier, I call Max “my pug.”
Technically, he’s not. Technically, Max is Ben’s pug and I’m
his caretaker ever since, eight months after we began dating,
Ben took a job with Lawyers without Borders and left, full
of hope and purpose, for a five-month stint in Kinshasa.
Really. In case you’re not familiar—I wasn’t—Kinshasa is in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in sub-Saharan

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Africa. It is not ideal. But I love Ben and admire what he’s
doing. I love Max, and I’m grateful that even if I do not
at this moment live in the same country as my boyfriend, I
have his pug. It counts for something. It counts for a lot.
Perhaps I had more on my mind than the portrait, but the
portrait was up there.
Then, quite slowly at first and then faster, the whole
system began to melt down. I watched as a fawn pug, a
long-legged, remarkably slender pug, the Lara Flynn Boyle
of pugs, skidded on the marble floor and slid across the
entirety of the eastern side of the room, barking as she went.
In a different corner, a rather large, almost perfectly round
pug in an orange leather harness first showed tooth, and
then lunged with a great deal of snarling at a much smaller
pug who’d been outfitted for the occasion in a tartan sweater.
A black pug who for a second I thought to be Max, but
luckily wasn’t, vomited in a corner. Another one skidded
across the south end of the room, making a soft howling
noise as he progressed.
I scanned the room quickly for Max. He was still fixated
on the amuse-bouche. Assorted pugs were peeing on several
different surfaces. One left what could be viewed as a call-
ing card on the polished marble floor. Maintenance men
appeared with rolls of paper towels and spray bottles. Party
guests fell silent, hushes ensued, and then people began to
talk again.
In the background, Daphne Markham could be heard

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calling out “Ahoy!” over and over again as if a record were

playing, one that no one had realized had skipped.
“Ahoy!” she said to everyone who passed her. Her voice
crescendoed throughout the room, over the din of conversa-
tion, over the clink of champagne glasses, punctuating the
occasional pug-mishap-related hushes that broke out. “Ahoy!”
I leaned back against the wall. From this vantage point, I
saw Gil Turner enter the hall. As he entered, he paused for a
moment and straightened his tie. He took an iPhone out of
his pocket, glanced at it with a half sneer, and then looked out
across the room. As he did, his half sneer turned into a smile.
He shifted his shoulders back and strode into the room like
a famous actor onto a stage. He glided across the floor, al-
most like a pug who had lost his footing, and headed over to
Daphne and her famed, held-aloft pug, Madeline. He looked
happy, confident, pleased with himself. He didn’t yet know
that his party, along with the pugs within it, was teetering
very close to the precipice of out of control.
“Ahoy!” Gil called out to Daphne, and I smiled, I think
because something about Gil calling that out to her didn’t
quite work and it fell flat. He sounded foolish. Not nice, I
know, but Gil didn’t always bring out the best qualities in me.
I looked again toward Max, still way over at the far end
of the buffet table. Suddenly he perked up and stood very
alert, at attention. Then, it was as if everything else in the
room had gone dark and a single bright spotlight had been
shone upon Max. I looked across the room at him standing

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so still and watchful. He reminded me of these two German

shorthaired pointers we sometimes see in Central Park. Like
pointers who’d just seen a gunned-down grouse, Max was
frozen, rigid, determined, moments away from bursting into
action. Right then, he was the absolute embodiment of the
calm before the storm. The calm part I could see; the storm
part I knew was coming. Keeping an eye on Max was no
small task in the sea of serpentining pugs, but it was made
at least a little easier by the fact that Max is a black pug,
and also, by his waistline.
I believe that just as the animals in the tsunami knew to
get the hell away from sea level, I somehow knew something
not good was a-coming. I also somehow knew that that mo-
ment was as good a moment as any for a fortifying sip of
champagne. I took a sip of my champagne. I took a step to-
ward Max, still statuesque beyond yonder buffet table. And
then he wasn’t, neither statue still nor beyond yonder buffet
table.
Max took off like a bullet in my direction. For one last
delusional moment I allowed myself to believe he was run-
ning right toward me, that this was nothing more than a
dramatic outburst of affection. But it was not so. Instead
of bounding into my arms in a pug reenactment of the final
moments of Lassie Come Home, Max stopped several yards
away from me. He stopped right at Daphne Markham’s heels
and began barking up at her and her pug, ferociously. He

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barked more ferociously than I believe I have ever seen any

pug bark.
Someone I recognized from photographs in magazines
turned to another and said, “That’s not okay.”
“No,” someone else who happened to be wearing a tiara
agreed. “It’s really not.”
Daphne’s pug, Madeline, safe in Daphne’s arms but per-
haps outraged at the assault, angled her face ceilingward and
began to howl. And then (then!) she jumped down from
Daphne’s arms and began running, at full speed, in the direc-
tion away from Max. Completely unfortunately, that di-
rection also happened to be on a collision course with the
reflecting pool. I hastily put my champagne on the tray of a
passing waiter and hurried through the crowd.
“My goodness!” I heard someone say as I passed.
“Oh, dear God!” someone else exclaimed as Madeline
lost her footing and slid several feet before landing directly
in the reflecting pool. It is to date the only time I have ever
seen a pug aquatic. I will say she did a remarkably good job
of swimming herself to safety.
By the time I arrived at the reflecting pool’s edge, Daphne
was there, too, collecting the soaking-wet Madeline in her
arms. Max, who was now foaming at the mouth, had fol-
lowed her. A crowd had gathered, a crowd that unfortu-
nately included Gil.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, as I swooped down on Max and

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picked him up. Not that Max had ever had an outburst like
that before, but picking him up had always had a remark-
ably soothing effect on him. This time it didn’t. Max contin-
ued to bark, to foam a little at the mouth, too, and his new
airborne status served only to set off the unsettling wheez-
ing sound he sometimes makes.
Daphne Markham was calm, sanguine, wet. Someone
asked if she’d like to go to the ladies’ room to towel off
there.
“Yes, yes, all right,” I heard her say. She held Madeline
close as several waiters offered rolls of paper towels. She
looked over at me and smiled. Shamed, I looked away. And
then, without another word, Daphne carried Madeline out
of the hall. Several people followed her. Throughout the
room, people began gathering up their pugs and heading
toward assorted exits.
The weight of what I instinctively knew was Gil’s stare
bored into the back of my neck. I turned to see his eyes, usu-
ally so beady, bulging out at me in exaggerated exaspera-
tion. He jutted his nearly nonexistent chin in my direction
and mouthed the words, “Out. Of. Here.”

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