Labor Day

Labor Day serves as a practical boundary in the narrator’s account of temporary refuge with Apollo. A friend offers them a Long Island cottage until its new owners take possession after the holiday, turning the calendar into a limit on their stay and a point of return to the unresolved question of Apollo’s place in the narrator’s apartment.

A Deadline for Temporary Refuge

The cottage becomes available because the friend’s mother has entered a nursing home and the property has been sold, but the buyers will not take possession until after Labor Day. They intend to gut and renovate it, so damage from a dog is not a concern; Apollo can also spend much of his time outdoors. The friend describes the arrangement as lasting only two more weeks, making clear that this is a short reprieve rather than a permanent solution.

The move follows a period of strain. Someone sympathetic to the narrator advises getting away for a while and letting the apartment air out. The friend offers not only the cottage but help with the apartment while the narrator is gone. At the time of the account, the planned departure from the cottage is a week away, and the friend is expected to drive them back in his SUV. The relative time markers show the respite narrowing toward its end without supplying a specific calendar date for Labor Day.

The Apartment Conflict Behind the Calendar

The holiday deadline sits within the longer dispute over Apollo’s presence in the narrator’s Manhattan apartment. When the narrator brought him home, Hector, the building superintendent, was away in Mexico for his brother’s wedding. On Hector’s return, he encountered them going out for a walk and told the narrator that the dog could not stay, even temporarily. The narrator had held the rent-stabilized apartment for more than thirty years and had not anticipated needing to keep a dog there.

The narrator recalls being told that a tenant who keeps a dog openly for three months without the landlord taking eviction action may then keep it under New York City law. Apollo could not plausibly be kept hidden: the narrator walked him several times a day, he became a neighborhood curiosity, and after one woman declined to share the small elevator, they began taking the stairs. Later, a letter from building management demanded that the dog be removed immediately or face further consequences.

A Reprieve, Not a Resolution

The narrator pursued permission to keep Apollo as an emotional support animal. When the certificate arrived, she showed it to Apollo and placed it under a magnet on the refrigerator; a copy went to the building’s management agent. The narrator recognized concerns about people misrepresenting ordinary or exotic pets as service animals and promised not to take Apollo into places where he would not ordinarily be allowed. She planned to leave the certificate and registry badge at home.

Hector eventually brought word that management had advised the landlord not to contest the request, noting the absence of complaints from other tenants. The narrator was relieved, but the Labor Day cottage arrangement remains a separate, explicitly temporary interval. Its calendar offers time away and a planned return, not a new permanent home for Apollo.