Lester and Devage

Mayer and Louise

As the idea of drawing people and their dogs was developing, I began casting around for new subjects. My friend John Fanning, Maître d’ at Beppe, a fantastic but now sadly missed restaurant, suggested one of his waiters, Lester Garcia. Lester, he said, had a beautiful dog, a principessa named Devage.

Lester came to sit for me and brought the beautiful Devage – Hebrew, he said, for honey. Dvash is actually Hebrew for honey I later learnt. I asked him how he came to have such an unusual breed, a Cirneco dell’Etna.

He said that he’d always wanted a dog but had waited until he had a settled place and job and he then felt the time had come.

Lester spoke to a friend of his and asked if she would mind being a co-parent as his work often entailed long hours. She too had wanted a dog, so it was a perfect arrangement. They’re stylish young people (Lester doesn’t even have lenses in his glasses), so they didn’t want just any pooch or mutt, they wanted an Italian Greyhound. They ultimately found that they couldn’t afford one, so the plan was put on hold until their circumstances improved.

A few weeks later, Lester was out walking in SoHo. It was a crisp, cool day with a perfect blue sky. As he turned the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets he happened upon a woman whose dog was loosely tethered to a fire hydrant. Both the woman and the dog were beautiful, and both had lovely honey-coloured hair (or fur on the dog). The dog jumped up affectionately at Lester, licking his hands, but the woman, who was on her cellphone, was sobbing – crying almost uncontrollably.

Lester remained stroking the dog and waited until the woman had finished her call. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked her, ‘Can I do anything to help?’ ‘Well, you and my dog seemed to have formed a friendship: you could take her.’

Sensing that the woman was in no state to make such a decision, he said he couldn’t possibly. Why did she want him to? She replied that she’d just arrived from Israel, and was going through a horrible divorce: ‘I’m in an apartment that does not allow dogs.’ ‘Let’s have a coffee and talk about it,’ said Lester. ‘I can’t,’ she replied. ‘I have to go.’

‘Well, give me your phone number and take mine. I’ll look after her until you find somewhere that is dog-friendly.’ They exchanged details while the bemused dog looked at one and then the other. ‘What’s her name?’ asked Lester.

‘Devage,’ said the woman. ‘Honey in Hebrew.’

A few months later Lester had a call from the woman, who said she was now in another apartment and more settled but that it didn’t take animals either so the dog was his. And that is how Lester met his principessa.

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Rocco on Velvet, 2009