EVERY DAY for the rest of the week, I woke up with an idea in my head and each day, the thought of following through on it became more insistent. It wasn’t like the idea had formed a logical conclusion of some well-thought-out plan of action; not at all. I just had a feeling that there were things I needed to find out, and very few ways to do so other than the one that had occurred to me, seemingly out of, well . . . the wild blue yonder. However, I had still done nothing when a small event took place that made me think, okay, here’s karma at work and karma, when it walks through your front door, probably should not be ignored.

Actually, it was my neighbor, Sassouma, who came into my apartment. It was around lunchtime on a weekday, and she needed help with some forms that her children’s school required before classes started up again in a week or so. I filled out the paperwork for her—mostly proof that the kids had received various inoculations and booster shots—but just before she left, I asked her for her cousin-in-law’s telephone number. She gave it to me without question, which I assumed meant that it would be all right to call him. At least, all right with her.

Dr. Carpenter did not seem particularly happy to hear from me when I reached him. Apparently, Sassouma had given me his home number, and he said he was too busy to talk. However, he said he would be at the university during the week because he was preparing for the fall semester, and he could spare me some time, if I insisted. No, I said, trying to be nice, I wasn’t insisting at all; I was just hoping he could answer some questions I had. When he asked me about what, I answered, simply, that I wanted to talk to him about the dog.

He said that he’d told me everything there was to know about the dog, but I was kind of relentless in my wheedling, so much so that he finally agreed that we could meet. He told me to come up to the Columbia campus on Morningside Heights around one o’clock the following day, which meant that afterward I would have enough time to get back on the subway to Queens and catch the AirTrain that would take me to work. He told me where I would find him, which building, which room, and then, quite unceremoniously, hung up.

I rose at a relatively early hour the next day, walked the dog, got myself ready for work later in the afternoon and then headed for the subway. As usual when I was trying to get almost anywhere in the city, I had to change trains in the middle of my trip, but finally arrived at a stop near one of the entrances to the imposing complex of university buildings just after twelve thirty.

It was a warm, lazy day on campus. Columbia seemed like a city unto itself, with vast paved walkways leading to pillared libraries and lecture halls that look like the ancients might have hewn them out of giant blocks of stone. It was a somewhat intimidating atmosphere for me, but my feeling of being an uneducated slouch was somewhat mitigated by the fact that there were not a lot of students around. It was the week before Labor Day and probably, most people were off trying to enjoy their last few days of vacation before the academic year officially got underway. I, on the other hand, was scheduled to work all through the holiday. I wasn’t going to have a day off until the middle of next week.

The building I was looking for felt like it was a mile away from where I had exited the subway. When I finally found it, I had to show identification to a security guard and let him peer into my shoulder bag before he directed me to an elevator that carried me up a few floors and let me out in a wide, quiet hallway where the warm air was infused with the paradoxical scent of both summer and school.

I expected to find Dr. Carpenter in an office but, instead, the room number he’d given me turned out to be a classroom, though one much larger than any I’d known in my aborted high school career. There must have been a hundred empty chairs scattered haphazardly around the room, some with those flat, plank-like arms for resting a notebook on. They looked abandoned, like they’d been unused for a hundred years. Tall windows, the kind that have to be opened with poles, let some light into the otherwise dim room. The floor was worn wood planking; the blackboard at the front of the classroom was blank.

Dr. Carpenter was sitting at a desk in front of the blackboard, leafing through a book and making notes on a yellow pad. He did not take any notice of me when I walked in.

I seated myself in one of the chairs nearest to his desk and waited politely for him to acknowledge me. Finally, he looked up.

“So, Ms. Perzin. You managed to find me.” He made it sound like he wasn’t exactly pleased that I had.

“It’s a big place. I had no idea.”

He closed his notebook and sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “now that you’re here, what is it that I can do for you?”

I didn’t reply right away, reacting, first, to how different he somehow seemed to me than when he had been in my apartment. The change I sensed was subtle but, at least to me, unmistakable. His demeanor was still decidedly off-putting, but he was less stiff, less formal than I remembered. Annoyed to have to give me some of his time, perhaps, but not adding the extra effort of presenting himself in the role he had played when he was in the presence of Sassouma: the wise family elder, called upon to carry out some official task.

“Why did you give me that dog?” I asked. All during my ride on the subway, I had tried to figure out how to begin this conversation, and I had arrived at the gate of the university still not sure what I would say. But the words that had just come out of my mouth now seemed as good as any. At least, they seemed like a start.

“I thought that was clear. It was a favor to my cousin’s wife, who is fond of you.”

“I understand that. But I’m wondering if maybe something else is involved.”

“Like what?” Dr. Carpenter asked, sounding irritable.

“I don’t know. That’s why I came to see you.”

“Is it that you don’t want the dog? If so, I’ll take him back. They’re not easy to breed, so each one is valuable.”

“No, I don’t want to give him back,” I protested, alarmed by the way Dr. Carpenter had chosen to interpret what I was saying. “He’s my dog,” I insisted, knowing that I now sounded childish and stubborn, but Dr. Carpenter’s inhospitable attitude was bringing that out in me. “You said so.”

“It was Sassouma who said that, if I recall.”

“But you brought him to me.”

“I did. As you have pointed out. So I am still waiting to hear what it is you want.”

“Is there something . . . some significance about the dog that I don’t understand? That maybe you didn’t exactly tell me?”

Dr. Carpenter narrowed his eyes. “And why do you think that?” he asked.

“It’s what Raymond Gilmartin thinks,” I said. “He told me that he tried to get you to give him a Dogon dog.”

“I see.” The voice in which Dr. Carpenter now spoke to me was still controlled, but perhaps even more icy. “I had no idea that you knew Raymond.”

“I met him. Recently.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” Dr. Carpenter replied, and then said nothing more.

Outside, it was a sunny summer day, but here, in this dim room, my vision seemed limited. Though he was sitting just a few feet away from me, Dr. Carpenter almost seemed to be fading from my view and I thought I probably looked the same way to him—like I was on the other side of some great divide, an indistinct figure, hard to focus on, hard to see. Turning away, I glanced toward the windows, which were like bright panes of light framing the boundaries of a different world than the one I inhabited here, in this moment, in the shadowy classroom of Dr. Carpenter.

Finally, he spoke again. “So,” he said, “are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess? You’re here on behalf of Raymond Gilmartin, aren’t you?”