New York City is more than the setting for the narrator’s life with Apollo: its apartment rules and street-level routines make their bond visible, vulnerable, and difficult to separate from the surrounding community. A rent-stabilized Manhattan home offers continuity, but its no-dog lease turns the decision to shelter a dead friend’s dog into a threat to that security. Outside, Apollo’s size draws attention wherever they walk; inside, the possibility of remaining together depends on how the building’s management responds.

Setting and Urban Geography

The narrator lives in a rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment that she has taken care to keep for more than thirty years, including periods when she lived elsewhere for work. When she signed the lease, she had two cats and no expectation of getting a puppy, so the building’s prohibition on dogs seemed immaterial. The landlord lives in Florida, and the superintendent, Hector, lives in a neighboring building owned by the same landlord. These arrangements leave the narrator dealing with a rule whose distant owner she has never met, while the superintendent becomes the person she encounters on the ground.

The city’s geography also enters through movement between boroughs. In a later scene, a woman travels by subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn to visit a friend, buying daffodils at a florist near the Manhattan station before boarding. The detail places the boroughs in everyday relation: a subway ride and a small errand connect the city’s neighborhoods. New York City also appears as the home of the author, Sigrid Nunez, who lives there, giving the setting a biographical connection alongside its role in the narrative.

The Apartment Rule and the Threat of Removal

Apollo comes to the narrator after his owner dies suddenly, and she explains to Hector that there is no one else to take him and that his stay is temporary. Hector answers that the dog cannot remain, even temporarily. The conflict is sharpened by the narrator’s attachment to the apartment: keeping Apollo risks the home she has preserved for decades, rather than a residence she can readily give up.

A friend tells her about a New York City rule under which a tenant who keeps a dog openly in an apartment for three months, without the landlord taking eviction action during that period, may then keep the dog without being evicted for doing so. The narrator initially doubts the claim, but understands it to be the applicable rule for dogs in apartments. Its condition that the dog’s presence be open, not concealed, is decisive in practice. Apollo is walked several times a day and has become a neighborhood spectacle; concealment is not a realistic option.

The management office eventually sends a letter saying that the narrator is in violation of her lease and demanding that Apollo be removed immediately. Later, a final warning prompts her to consider appealing directly to the landlord, perhaps at least to ask for more time. She calls the managing agent for his Florida number, but is told that it cannot be given out. The sequence makes the landlord’s distance concrete: the narrator is facing the consequences of a lease restriction without a direct route to the person who owns the building.

Streets, Neighbors, and the Work of Care

Apollo changes how the narrator moves through Manhattan. Some neighbors are startled by his first appearance, and a woman refuses to share the small elevator with him. The narrator decides they should take the stairs instead. Galumphing down five flights, the large dog looks comical and ungraceful, a physical presence that cannot be made discreet even when the narrator would prefer less attention.

The street brings a different practical risk. Although Apollo is always walked on a leash, he sometimes squats dangerously close to the curb. The narrator cannot simply let him use the sidewalk as J. R. Ackerley did with his dog, and she is careful to clean up after him. When Apollo stops too near traffic, she positions herself between him and the approaching cars, reasoning that drivers may be more careful to avoid a person. Manhattan drivers sometimes curse her for holding them up, while pedestrians and other passersby slow down to stare.

The cleanup itself becomes a public performance she cannot escape. Strangers comment on the size of Apollo’s droppings as she stands nearby with a pail and shovel. She makes the task manageable with a child’s sand pail lined with a plastic bag and a small garden trowel. The improvised tools are a modest piece of urban problem-solving, but they also reveal how caretaking in a crowded city takes place under other people’s eyes.

A City That Draws Attention

The narrator had argued that a long walk with a dog was not genuine flânerie, or aimless wandering, because responsibility for the animal prevents the walker from falling into abstraction. Walking Apollo now occupies so much of her time that she cannot imagine going out simply to walk alone. Yet it is not only the practical demands of the dog that interrupt thought: his conspicuous presence draws attention, and the narrator dislikes strangers’ scrutiny. The contrast turns a familiar urban ideal—wandering as private observation—into a routine of responsibility and unwanted visibility.

Apollo’s public presence can also be met with admiration. A woman in the street calls him sexy and tells the narrator she is lucky, an appraisal that unsettles her rather than simply pleasing her. The episode shows how quickly passersby treat the pair as an invitation to comment. In winter, however, the city becomes easier to inhabit. The narrator and Apollo like the cold and the city in winter: the sidewalks are less crowded, there are fewer gawkers, and Apollo is less likely to stop for one of his rests. The season does not remove the city’s pressures, but it changes their intensity.

Support-Animal Request and Resolution

The narrator obtains a certificate identifying Apollo as a support animal and places it beneath a magnet on the refrigerator after wafting it under his nose. A friend, called Wife One, points out that using the certificate could be considered fraud, even if the purpose is good. The narrator recognizes the concern of people with genuine support needs about others presenting ordinary or exotic pets as service animals. She therefore promises not to take Apollo into places where dogs would not normally be allowed. She sends a copy of the certificate to the building’s managing agent and keeps both the certificate and the National Service Animal Registry badge at home.

The immediate purpose of the certificate is narrower: it supports the request to keep Apollo in the apartment. Hector later brings the news that the managing agent has advised the landlord that contesting the request is not worth the trouble, particularly because no other tenants have complained about Apollo. The narrator is damp-eyed with relief, and Hector is grinning. The resolution comes not through a direct conversation with the distant landlord or a reported ruling, but through management’s decision not to contest the request. For the narrator, New York City is consequently both the source of the housing threat and the place where an accommodation makes it possible for her and Apollo to remain together.