He ran across the lobby to the front window and stopped and looked out. He ran to the door of the hall and looked down it. He ran to the counter and around the end of it, where nobody but staff was supposed to go, and Toomer heard his nails on the floor back there and heard him knock over the trash can, and he came out the other side. He was looking for something. Anybody could see that. His head was going side to side, low, the bag dragging now, and he was making a sound in his throat that was not a growl and not a whine, a high thin pressured sound like a kettle just before it goes. He went past Adelaide Prioleau without looking at her. He went past Toomer. He went to the middle of the lobby and stood there with the pink bag hanging from his mouth and turned in a full circle, slowly, his nose working, his eyes going to each of them and away and on.
"Get him," said Pinckney Prioleau. "Somebody get hold of him. Is he going to bite?"
"He's not going to bite," said Cassius, who was holding his hand.
"How do you know that?"
"Because he ain't mad," Cassius said. "Look at him. He's working."
And then Sunny stopped turning. He stopped, and his head came up, and he looked at Dessa Gadsden, who was standing just inside the door with her back flat against the glass and both her hands over her mouth. He looked at her for what felt to Toomer like a long time. Then he walked to her, slowly, and put the pink backpack down on the floor at her feet, and sat, and barked once. One single bark, loud and sharp and deliberate, like somebody knocking on a door.
Then he lay down. He lay down flat on the floor at her feet, pressed along the bottom of her legs, and he looked up at her and waited.
The lobby was so quiet that Toomer could hear the box fan ticking where one of its blades caught the grille.
Dessa Gadsden took her hands away from her mouth. She looked down at the dog. When she spoke, it was not to any of them.