Leftovers (11 page)

“So?” He wraps his arms around me in the dark, his body warm and dry and clean-smelling, like a flannel blanket.

We stumble over to the stack of old gym mats piled at the back of the shed. They get dragged out during the day
to provide some of the older dogs a softer place to lie than the pebbly ground.

Sullivan's lips fumble around my face until they find my mouth.

His fingers grope under my T-shirt.

I reach down and grab his wrists, knowing this is the part where I'm supposed to wrench his hands away. Instead I nudge them higher.

Minutes later I'm running my hands through Sullivan's spiky hair. His face is buried in my chest. I feel carefree, like I'm on vacation. No worries. And Sullivan may not be a world-class ball player the way Brant professes to be, but he sure knows how to make the most of second base.

Until the lights burst back on.

“Stop staring at me!” I shout, shoving him away from me.

“I'm not,” Sullivan laughs, putting his hands in front of his eyes and peering through his fingers as I struggle to sort out my bra and pull my shirt down.

I push him off and struggle to sit up. “You are so!”

“Sarah, you're like the opposite of those
Look, Don't Touch
signs you see in antique stores.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“If you had a sign it would say
Touch, Don't Look
. You could get it tattooed across your chest. In Braille,” he snorts.

“Very fucking funny.”

“I'm your boyfriend, Sarah. Why are you so weird about—”

“I'm not weird.” Who am I kidding? “Okay...maybe I am weird. So what?”

Sullivan gestures to the jigsaw puzzle. “You're harder to piece together than Rover.”

“Good.” If I have anything to say about it, Sullivan will never sort out the Sarah puzzle. Even I don't know what the finished puzzle looks like anymore.

“Is that why you avoid people at school?” Sullivan asks.

Where did that come from? “I don't avoid people. There are people in the library.”

“Yeah, but they're studying. I never see you talking to people.”

“People ask too many questions.”

“Do I ask too many questions?” Sullivan's watch beeps eleven.

“We've got to go.” I push open the screen door. “Nighty-night,” I call; then I sprint toward my cabin across the field.

I hear Sullivan secure the door latch and run the other way, toward the lodge. I can't help it. I stop to watch him racing through the moonlight. He's so tame, but he moves like a cheetah.

He glances over his shoulder and catches me watching him, almost as if he knew I would be.

Then Sullivan raises his index and middle fingers in a peace sign and yells out one of Humphrey Bogart's lines from that old movie,
Casablanca
. We watched it in the ninth-grade film studies elective.

“Here's looking at you, kid.”

“Testing, testing...
SQUAWK
...Today's the big day!!!...
SQUAWK
...My favorite day of the...
SQUAWK
...year!!!”

I'd been hoping for rain. Or hail. Or a plague of locusts. A global-warming catastrophe. Anything to cancel what Dr. Fred is calling his favorite day of the year.

So much for praying for an environmental disaster. The weather today is glorious. Blue sky, balmy air and just enough breeze to blow the bugs, smog and doggy smell downriver.

And like the weather, I wake up fine. No chicken pox to keep me quarantined in my cabin. No pinkeye or poison ivy to segregate me from the masses. No headaches, no rashes, no cramps even. I am the goddamn picture of health.

According to Dr. Fred, we're expecting everyone he knows to attend: townspeople, past donors, potential donors, people who adopted pets from his clinic in town, newspaper reporters and (aggggh!) photographers from all the little towns along this stretch of the St. Lawrence.

And everyone's dogs too.

I intend to spend all day in the kitchen hiding behind the pots and pans.

While I wash my hands at the kitchen sink, I run through the day's menu in my head. I had prepared an enormous cauldron of chili last night. I still need to make chicken salad, a sweet potato salad, two kinds of coleslaw and a tossed salad with spinach and cherry tomatoes.

I also have to squeeze lemons for the lemonade, brew tea for the iced tea, blend the fruit smoothies, slice the veggies, mix the dips, cut the cheese, lay out the crackers and defrost three different desserts: chocolate brownies, apple tarts and oatmeal cookies.

And that's just for the two-legged guests.

For the dogs, I've already made an assortment of treats: chicken and cheese nibbles; sesame seed and molasses morsels; mixed-vegetable muffins with beef glaze; and Judy's new favorite, peanut butter bones. And I've jotted down the details for an extra-special iced and decorated birthday cake for Trixie the beagle, Camp Dog Gone Fun's oldest camper ever. The old girl just turned eighteen. The actual cake will be a blend of oatmeal, ground beef, eggs and brown rice baked in a springform pan, with icing made from a large can of Eukanuba Senior, blended until smooth and spreadable. Decorations will include hot dog slices and carrot shavings. It will take me about an hour to prepare and about forty-five seconds for Trixie and her pack of canine buddies to devour every last scrap of it.

By midafternoon, the island is a zoo. Worse than a zoo, because there are no barricades to keep the visitors at a respectable distance.

The Moose Island dog population has tripled with all the canine visitors, and, as Dr. Fred predicted, a couple of hundred humans are milling around on the field, vying for shade, many armed with cameras or video recorders.

Shuddering, I back away from the window, preferring the company of the oven, the stove and Judy (who was banished from the field midmorning after tackling and upending the port-a-potty Dr. Fred had rented for the day. Brant was inside at the time, ha ha). Victoria, Taylor and Nicholas have all offered to help with the cooking so I can take a break, but I send them back out to work the crowd with trays of food.

I am up to my elbows—literally—in dog biscuit batter (we'd already run out of all my pre-made biscuits) when Dr. Fred rushes into the kitchen through the screen door, a strange woman in tow.

“Well, aren't you a big doggie!” The woman makes a beeline for Judy, who is tied to the table leg to prevent her from jumping onto the counter after brownies and cinnamon rolls. The woman is treated to a tongue bath and is hip-checked into a chair.

To her credit, the woman laughs. Uproariously. “And so friendly!” she gushes, giving Judy's haunches a good rub.

“Sarah, this is Helen Minter!” Dr. Fred exclaims, as if Helen Minter is a movie star or a politician. Someone I should know.

Helen smiles broadly and extends a right hand worthy of a lotion commercial: perfectly soft skin, long fingers and shiny unchipped polish on manicured nails that probably cost her over a hundred bucks a month to maintain.

I glance down at my own right hand, at the worthy-of-a-horror-movie chapped skin and chewed-down nails covered in grayish brown biscuit batter. I quickly rinse my hands under the tap, wipe them dry on my shorts and extend one to Helen.

Dr. Fred is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, trembling like a puppy, so excited I wonder if he's going to pee right there on the kitchen floor.

“Helen is an old friend of mine, Sarah,” he says. “We went to high school together up in Cornwall. She lives in Toronto now, but she's been spending a few weeks with friends upriver, at Wolfe Island. They brought their boat— and their dogs—down to check out the fun today.”

“I'm a
huge
dog lover,” Helen gushes. “I have two Jack Russells and a cocker—”

“Uh, excuse me,” I interrupt, sniffing the air. The peanut butter bones will start burning in exactly ten seconds. I grab an oven mitt off the counter, stick my hand in the oven, extract the tray of dog cookies, set it on top of the counter, grab a fresh tray of unbaked biscuits,
shove it into the oven and slam the door shut. All in one fluid movement, like my own private culinary ballet.

I look up and Dr. Fred and Helen are still there, smiling at me benevolently.

“Helen's a holistic pet-food manufacturer, Sarah,” Dr. Fred says. “Tricks for Treats, Inc.”

“How would you like to have your dog biscuits mass-produced and marketed all over Ontario?” Helen asks.

Is she talking to me?
Several strands of hair have fallen out of my ponytail into my eyes. I peer at Helen through them. The woman can't be serious.

Except she is. “Let me explain. Dr. Fred tells me you are quite the chef. More importantly, he was telling me how you've been experimenting with dog biscuit recipes. My own dogs are out there gorging on your creations as we speak. And, well...” She leans toward me and whispers, “They looked so tasty I even nibbled on a few myself.”

So that's why the biscuits disappeared so fast. The humans were eating them. “You want to buy my recipes?” I ask.

Helen nods. “Dr. Fred would be willing to endorse the final product, of course. He tells me you've been reading up on pet nutrition in your spare time and clearing all your ingredients with him before you bake. It's essential that you don't use food items that would jeopardize the dogs' health.”

I nod. “Like chocolate and onions.”

Helen continues. “What I'm especially taken with is your presentation. It's quite clever, Sarah, using cookie
cutters to make festive shapes, cornmeal sprinkles for texture and veggie puree for color.”

“The dogs don't really care about all that,” I admit, waving a stray fly away from the tray of dog biscuits cooling on the counter.

“No,” Helen agrees, “but their owners do. Think about all those companies that sell designer dog coats. They make a killing. Dogs don't give a hoot if their cold-weather gear is blue or red, or made of wool or denim, as long as it keeps them warm. But the dog
owners
buy the coats, not the dogs.”

“You have to market to the owners,” Dr. Fred pipes up.

“And owners like shapes and sprinkles and colors,” I say, catching on.

“Exactly!” Helen gushes. “So how about it, Sarah?”

“I...wow...” I feel like I'm standing on a rising loaf of bread.

Dr. Fred pulls out chairs. “Here, ladies. Let's sit.” He yanks open the fridge door and pulls out a pitcher. “Lemonade?” he asks Helen.

“Sure.”

“Sarah?” He offers me a glass.

I look frantically around the kitchen. “I guess I could take a short break,” I say, slowly lowering myself into a chair.

“I know this must seem a bit overwhelming,” Helen says to me kindly. “But it will be a while, a year
at least
, before you'll actually see your products on the shelves of the big-box pet stores.”

How would my father feel about me landing this deal? And so easily. Without ever asking for it. Without even thinking it was something I might want to do someday.

Here's the thing: if the dead can really see the living, I'd so much rather my father be sickly green with envy right now than rosy with the glow of fatherly pride. Except that my father was never the jealous type. He'd be happy for me. Ecstatic. Pleased as rum-spiked punch.

Helen takes a sip of lemonade and continues, “I always have someone do market testing before I commit to full-scale production of new products, so I can't offer you much up front. Would two thousand be okay?”

DOLLARS? That was more money than I'd make in a
year
serving coffee and crullers part-time at the Doughy Donut Emporium.

“Um...sure...that would be great,” I admit. “But... uh...can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

I take a deep breath and glance up through my hair at Helen. “Would you need to take photographs?”

She smiles. “Of course! Visuals are very important. I'll even bring in a food stylist to work with the photographer to make sure all photos of the finished biscuits look both professionally baked and—more importantly—mouth-watering.”