The Wicked Flea (7 page)

“It’s no magic bullet,” I kept warning. “It won’t break up every fight. It won’t even scare off some dogs.” I went on to suggest spray bottles or squirt guns filled with vinegar and water, even though I avoided them myself because they were a nuisance to carry in my hand and a worse nuisance in my pockets, where they always leaked. I’d never tried pepper spray and didn’t suggest it.

“What about those, uh, what do you call them?” someone asked. “Personal alarms?”

“Personal alarm devices,” someone supplied. “They’re smaller. Those things are really small. And they’re even louder.”

Ceci reveled in my effectiveness. “You see, Holly? I knew you’d know what to do, but you’re so modest, you just won’t give yourself credit, and didn’t I say she knew everything about dogs, well she does! I have to get one of those things immediately, because poor Quest, he’s really a bit beyond being able to defend himself properly, not that he’d ever start trouble, but who knows?”

“What we need to do,” said Noah, the group’s unofficial leader, “is to make sure that everyone, including Sylvia, carries one of these horns from now on. Or a personal alarm.
Especially
Sylvia. The problem is that she has no control over Zsa Zsa. With one of these horns, she could stop Zsa Zsa before things got started.”

I’d been trying to make myself heard. Giving up on getting the group’s attention, I spoke to Ceci. “This is totally out of hand! It’s hardly going to improve things at the park if all the dog walkers suddenly start blasting horns and alarms. People who already object to the dogs are going to have two things to complain about instead of just one. And isn’t there some kind of ordinance against loud noise?” I stopped. I’d assumed that Sylvia would catch Zsa Zsa and take her home. In fact, Sylvia was heading back toward the group with Zsa Zsa trailing after her.

“You see what we’re up against?” Ceci commented. “I think maybe it’s time to go home.”

But Wilson started toward his mother-in-law. He pulled a spare leash from his pocket. When he reached Sylvia, he handed it to her. He must have said something, but he was too far away for me to hear. Perhaps because Zsa Zsa’s head was still reeling from the blast in her ear, she proved easy for Sylvia to catch. Wilson didn’t help Sylvia. Rather, he and his lovely corgi headed toward the woods. With Zsa Zsa on leash, Sylvia, however, returned to the group. I expected her to reenter by apologizing to me for the unprovoked attack on my dog. Instead, she repeated all the questions the others had asked about the aerosol horn.

Once again, I pointed out that arming the dog group with horns and alarms, far from solving public relations problems with other users of the park, would exacerbate the situation. Instead of complaining about dogs, the public would call the police about the noise, and when the police started showing up, all the dogs would have to be leashed. Eventually, feeling that I’d sounded enough loud and sour notes, I said lightly, “I’ve had one recent encounter with the police. I don’t really need another.”

“Oh, people won’t make
noise,”
Ceci assured me, “unless they really
need
to, the way you did. You’re just not giving yourself proper credit for a wonderful idea, but I knew you’d know exactly what to do! And so you did! It’s just too bad that you-know-who wasn’t here this morning to see what a miracle worker you are.” Somehow managing to whisper at a volume only slightly lower than the boat horn’s, she added, in case my recent concussion was impairing my reason, “Douglas! That’s who I mean, but we won’t say a word to anyone, will we?” Returning abruptly to my reference to the police, she asked, “Were you arrested? Of course you weren’t. What could you of all people possibly have done, I mean, Holly, you are perfectly law abiding, you probably got a parking ticket, or maybe you were walking your dogs and forgot to carry a plastic cleanup bag and—”

Sylvia interrupted her.
“Were
you arrested? How interesting!”

To avoid a second fight between Zsa Zsa and Rowdy, I’d been back-stepping a bit. Consequently, I had to raise my voice to respond and thus ended up telling everyone the story of my new stepmother’s abortive attempt to scatter her late husband’s ashes in Harvard Yard.

Sylvia was tickled by the idea. “Marvelous! Maybe that’s what I should do with Ian! He’s been sitting in an urn at home gathering dust. Dust unto dust, as they say, but—”

Someone asked dryly, “Wedding bells in your future, Sylvia?”

“You never know,” she replied, “although marriage isn’t exactly what I’ve been thinking about.” Smiling, she hummed a tune that everyone must have recognized: “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.”

It always irks me to hear someone hint at some drastic change without going on to specify what it’s going to be. So what if Sylvia sounded hostile? What could she do that would have any effect on me? Nothing! If she dyed her hair chartreuse, moved to Brazil, and married
two
men, her green-coiffed South American bigamy would have no impact on me, except that I’d be able to accompany Ceci and Quest to the park without the risk of having Zsa Zsa attack Rowdy. Preoccupied with this senseless resentment, and still monitoring Zsa Zsa, I didn’t notice the pretty, petite young woman in black spandex until she’d practically hurled herself at Sylvia.

“Dear God, Pia, what’s the matter now?” Sylvia said. “Pia panics at everything. She always has.”

The runner looked genuinely distressed. Her hair contributed to her startling and startled appearance. It was short and dark, and stood up in locks and tufts, almost as if it were standing on end. She probably just hadn’t brushed it before going for a morning run. Exercise could have reddened her face. But her expression was anxious and aggrieved. “Mother, really! A lot of help you are! Where’s Wilson?”

A couple of people started to tell the young woman that Wilson had left a while ago. Ceci, however, responded to her obvious disquiet. “Something happened to you,” she said. “What is it? It wasn’t that foolish man again, was it?”

“Yes, it was! Miracle of miracles, someone finally noticed. Thank you! Yes, it was the same one.”

“In the ski mask?” someone asked.

“Yes. And the trench coat. Corny, huh? But let me tell you, when it happens to you, it’s not very funny.”

“No one said it was,” Noah told her.

“My mother did.”

“She didn’t mean that,” Noah assured Pia. “Did you, Sylvia?”

“Pia, grow up!” Sylvia ordered. “These things happen. There are a lot of sick people in the world. This exhibitionist is one of them.”

“If you’d had a dog with you—” Noah began.

“It’d still have happened,” a woman finished. “It happened to me three weeks ago, and Pasquale was with me”—she pointed to yet another black Lab—“and he didn’t deter this guy one bit.”

“Did you report it to the police?” someone asked her.

“Yes, and all they did was put it in the Crime Beat column in the paper. Big help that was. At least they didn’t print my name.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ceci said, “since after all, you were the victim of this deviant person, and it isn’t as if you had done anything except just take Pasquale for a walk, speaking of which, my sister will wonder where on earth Quest and I have gone to, we’re usually not this late. Holly?”

As I drove Ceci and Quest home, she lamented Douglas’s absence, but said how glad she was that I’d solved all the problems with Zsa Zsa and had a chance to meet all of Quest’s friends at the park. “And their mommies and daddies, too, of course,” she added.

When Rowdy and I were finally alone in the car driving home, I said to him, “Rowdy, I’m your best friend, and I’m Kimi’s, too. I’m your owner, your hired help, your trainer, your handler, your groomer, nutritionist, nursemaid, and partner. I am all things to you. Except one. I am
not
your goddamned mommy.”

Chapter 10

Subj: Re: Your Rowdy

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

[email protected]
writes:

<

My males are too young or too old or too closely related to Emma. She is CH Jazzland's Embraceable You. Emma's claim to fame is that she went R.W.B. at the National.
¹
I'll send you her pedigree. She is the product of an outcross. Sire is AM/CAN CH Braemal's Alyeska Tuaq, and dam is Jazzland's Fly Me to the Moon.
²
I want to go back into the dogs on the mother's side of the pedigree, and those are the dogs that are in Rowdy's pedigree. Any chance you could send a video of him?

I want a standard size stud, no bigger than 26", good coat, good bone, dark, obliquely set eyes, little ears, a PERFECT tail set, and EFFORTLESS movement. Emma and Howie (her brother, CH Jazzland's How High the Moon) regularly run through the woods on our property. They cruise at top speed over fallen trees, rocks, and shrubs, and their top-lines barely move. They look like they are flat out on a ROAD. They absolutely float. I love to watch them.

Cindy

Jazzland Alaskan Malamutes

WAMAL—WA Alaskan Malamute Adoption League—

President

AMAL—Alaskan Malamute Assistance League—WA

Chapter 11

Rowdy and I next accompanied Ceci to the park about two weeks later. It was early on a Thursday morning. Very early. Too early. So far, Dr. Foote had provided no cure for my predawn insomnia, and since dogs don’t suffer from the symptom, I had no idea how to rid myself of it. The only remotely applicable home remedy I could think of was the ridiculous notion that babies who sleep all day and stay awake all night can be made to reverse the cycle by being held by their heels and whirled around in the air. Absurd! But spun around by my heels was more or less the way I felt when Ceci and I were in the middle of the field with her dog group and she finally had the opportunity to introduce me to the much-talked-about eligible gentleman, Douglas.

I’ll begin my own introduction of Douglas by saying that his dog, Ulysses, was a large, silly-looking mix of what were probably a dozen breeds, most of them scent hounds, including bloodhound, basset, and black-and-tan. Ulysses was long and tall, with floppy ears and an improbable coat consisting of blotches, tufts, and bristles. His predominant color was grayish brown, but a brown splotched with large white splashes and dotted, spotted, and ticked with shades of black. He looked like a long-haired dog who’d been shaved to the skin some months earlier and had then had the misfortune to stand next to someone who spilled a gallon jug of bleach on him. Ulysses’ soulful basset eyes were his best feature. His nose never wandered far from the ground.

Ulysses’ owner, or in park parlance, his daddy, was a pleasant-looking fortyish man, about five ten, with blue eyes and a fading tan. Sound familiar? If not, it will. When I’d seen him before, he’d worn a suit. Now, he’d apparently been running. He had on gray sweatpants, a gray sweatshirt, and expensive running shoes, white with turquoise flame-shaped decorations, probably intended to connote speed. I studied his shoes for a few seconds. It was easier than meeting his gaze. When I raised my eyes, we exchanged knowing smiles. Douglas and I had something in common. We were both in therapy with Dr. Foote.

“I’m so glad that you two have finally had a chance to meet,” Ceci gushed. “I knew that Holly would just love—”

I held my breath.

“—Ulysses,” she finished, to my great relief.

“Ulysses is wonderful,” I said to Douglas. “He’s”—I sought the right word—“unique.”

Douglas’s eyes twinkled. “He’s that. Your dog is beautiful.”

Rowdy was again enjoying the privilege of accompanying me. I hate to play favorites. Most of the time, I take both dogs everywhere. But if Zsa Zsa tackled Kimi? There wasn’t going to be an
if,
not with Kimi at home. “Thank you,” I said. “He’s a good boy.” Standing at my side, his eyes fixed on me, Rowdy wagged his perfect tail.

Douglas was beginning to reply, but a horrendous noise drowned him out. If every horrendous noise I’d heard at the park that morning had been a drop of water, we’d all have drowned. There was no actual rain. On the contrary, the sky was a wintery blue. Despite the chilly weather, the park was a popular place this morning. In the distance, graceful figures danced across the basketball courts and tennis courts. Runners ran, and congenial-looking groups of people, mostly women, walked briskly, as if determined to shake the blubber off their thighs. A few dozen delightfully assorted dogs fraternized in the field, while their self-proclaimed parents exchanged the human equivalents of sniffs and play bows.

If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a certain supposed dog expert, the whole sunlit scene would’ve been a sort of impressionist study in the mundane beauty of middle-class recreation. The appearance of harmony was illusory. When I’d picked Ceci up that morning, she’d shown me two letters to the editor she’d clipped from the
Newton Pulse.