Barnaby wasn’t your average hound. With a weathered newsboy cap tilted low over his brow and a tweed vest that had seen better decades, he looked less like a pet and more like a guy who knew exactly which horse to bet on in the fifth race. He sat at his usual corner round-table, the wooden grain swirling under his paws like a fingerprint of the city itself.
The atmosphere in Café Jazz was thick with the scent of roasted chicory, stale tobacco, and the low, jagged hum of a saxophone drifting from the back room. Around him, the world felt beautifully shattered—abstract geometry cutting through the smoke. The waiter glided past like a paper cutout, carrying a tray of spirits to the silhouettes whispering by the bar, but Barnaby wasn’t interested in the hard stuff tonight.