A Hell of a Dog (17 page)

“Some,” I said. “Actually, parts of most.”

“I must confess, I did duck out in the middle of Rick's talk.” He leaned so close I could count his fillings. For just a second, I had the antic thought he was going to tell me why. “Now, of course, I'll not have another chance to hear his theories, and I do think he had an awful lot to offer. But I wanted to get over to the gift shop at the zoo and send a little something off to Graeme and Sheila early in the week so that they'd have it by the time Daddy got home. With a new brother or sister on the way, they need some positive reinforcement of their parents' affection, don't you think?”

Yeah, yeah, the zoo, a little something for Graeme and Sheila. And here I'd been thinking he'd spent tea time coming up with a little something for Cathy Powers.

He lifted his attaché case from the floor next to his chair to the table, snapped it open, and took out two hand puppets, a butterscotch-colored lion with a big mane and a pointy-faced red fox. Slipping a hand in each, he held them up. “Brilliant, aren't they? I must get over to the post office today, after the talk, and Express Mail them to London, even though that means missing Tracy's little presentation. Ah, well. Family first.” He reached for his cup of cold coffee, took a sip, and made a face. “This was not the best time for me to be away, Rachel. I'd just gone home after several months of lecturing here, but Samantha's done so much for me, I couldn't very well say no to her, could I?”

The door opened, and Beryl and Tracy walked in, Cecilia and Jeff at their sides, tongues lolling.

“Is this a rehearsal for this morning's talk or just something to get Rachel to eat her breakfast?” Beryl asked, taking her place at the table just as the waiter came with my bowl of fresh fruit. “I'll have the same,” she said. “And some yogurt as well.”

“Me, too,” Tracy added.

“Then two soft-boiled eggs, sausage, ham and toast, with a pot of tea, and let it steep, young man. I can't drink that watery brew you Americans call tea, not one more morning.”

I looked to see if Tracy was going to me-too the rest of the breakfast, but she was busy feeding Jeff a buttered roll. The waiter waited, but when Tracy looked up, she merely shook her head. Maybe she was one of those secret eaters, eating delicately when with other people and snacking on tons of junk food when she was alone.

Martyn managed to get the puppets back into his attaché case before Sam walked in.

“I see some of us survived the night,” she announced.

My heart flipped over, but when she took the seat next to Beryl's, she was smiling.

“Does anyone need an aspirin?” she asked, opening her purse and looking around. “Or Visine?” She took out a giant-sized bottle of aspirin, shook two into her palm, and put the bottle in the middle of the table.

“Are you using any shelter dogs for the testing this morning?” Tracy asked Martyn.

“No, not any. I'd rather not pull a dog out of such a stressful situation for a test such as this one. I'd rather see a version of the test Cathy uses for puppies used on the shelter dogs, basically just seeing how biddable they are, assessing activity level, and finding out if they're gentle enough. This test judges soundness for work. I don't think that's often an issue in shelter adoptions.”

“But it might encourage—”

“We're supposed to be training professionals here.” He spoke as if he were teaching a five-year-old. For a moment I thought he was going to put the puppets back on his hands to help explain things. “It's not going to be a very productive week if we have to censor ourselves and see if we're being politically correct every minute.”

“Some of the service dog programs do use shelter dogs.” She picked up another roll and buttered it, this time for herself.

“Then why don't
you
use one or two for your little talk, love? Operant conditioning phaseout timing, isn't it?”

Tracy's mouth opened and closed as if she were biting the air. The door opened, and Betty charged in ahead of Angelo, proving a point that was already a given. I could hear Chip and Bucky from out in the hall where they remained, too busy arguing to come in for breakfast.

“There is validity in that part of the test,” Chip was saying. “You have to know how a dog will react under pressure.”

“Gentlemen,” Martyn said, sliding his chair back and standing. He motioned them in with a wave of his arm. “It seems my talk has inspired argument even before I deliver it. I'm flattered.”

“Don't be,” Chip said. “This one's going to fight you every step of the way. Thinks we ought to mollycoddle the dogs instead of testing them.”

“Indeed? It should be a stimulating morning.” He picked up his unfinished letter to his children, slipped it into his pocket, picked up the notebook and attaché case, and headed for the doors.

Sam knocked another aspirin into her hand. “What happened to all the good feeling we generated last night?” She shook her head and took the pill.

“Gone with the dawn,” Beryl said. She looked at her watch. “Oh, dear, no time to eat all that lovely food. Just barely time for a phone call before Martyn's speech.” She made a sandwich of ham and toast to take with her and, with Cecilia following at her heels, left the breakfast room.

Chip sat next to Sam. Bucky took the chair next to mine.

“I used to think he knew what he was talking about,” he said, staring at Chip and shaking his head. “Not anymore.” He lifted a hand for the waiter and pointed to the empty cup in front of him. “Do you have those nice blueberry pancakes this morning?” he asked.

“What exactly were you arguing about?”

“The umbrella test. I think it's excessive. I prefer being all positive with the dogs. You can find out everything you need to know without scaring the hell out of them. Chip thinks it separates the men from the boys, that it's necessary, but really, Rachel, this kind of thing doesn't give the public a very good—”

“I'd like to reserve judgment until I hear what Martyn has to say. Why did we all come here, if we're going to be so closed to each other's ideas?”

Feeling the need to separate one of the women from the boys, I tapped my leg for Dashiell. I wanted to take a quick walk before Martyn's talk.

I hadn't waited for Bucky to answer my question because I already knew the answer. Whatever reasons any of us had for coming here, having our opinions about dogs changed was not one that made anyone's list. Besides, as far as I could tell, the reason you choose to do something in the first place can change, especially when circumstances conspire to make you mad enough to kill.

18

HOW ABOUT YOU? SHE ASKED

“Whatever you have heard about pit bulls, please forget that now.”

Martyn as a speaker was a cranked-up version of the man I had talked to at breakfast. His voice was stronger, strong enough for us all to hear him out-of-doors and without a mike, his inflections were more dramatic, his posture straighter, his command of the audience complete. No wonder he had chosen to spend most of his time lecturing about behavior all over the United States rather than spaying and inoculating pets back home in merry old England. As an added bonus, when he was here, no one was going to ask him to tidy up or take out the trash. Or expect him to sleep with the same woman every night.

Dashiell stood at my side, content to wait and see. He too stood in a commanding way, his legs apart, his eyes benignly scanning the audience spread out before him in the grass of the Sheep Meadow, quietly ready for whatever might come his way.

“First of all, we are going to test the dog's reaction toward strangers, beginning with a neutral stranger who will approach Rachel, shake her hand, and ignore Dashiell. Next a friendly stranger will approach in an animated way and pet the dog. I have asked this audience for experienced assistance, and two of you volunteered”—he turned to look at two men who stood quietly to one side—“both of whom are strangers to this dog, and so can help us in the performance of this test. You have both worked on this test before?” The young bearded man nodded; the older man, who was stocky and balding, lifted one hand as a reply. “Excellent, gentlemen,” Martyn said. He walked over to them, and they conferred quietly for a moment, Martyn occasionally pointing toward me and Dashiell.

I could see Cathy Powers sitting halfway back in the group, Sky lying down alongside her, a tennis ball in his mouth. There was room next to her, and I hoped it would stay that way, because it was where I planned to be after Dashiell's test.

“Let's begin,” Martyn said. With that, the older man came over to where I stood with Dashiell, calmly reached out and shook my hand, exchanged a few pleasantries, and left. Dashiell sat at my side doing nothing more than absorbing the smell and sound of the benign stranger.

After a moment, the second man approached. He was smiling, and he waved at me. When he got close enough, he bent and began to pet Dashiell. Dashiell remained sitting, but his tail swished back and forth on the cool grass.

I could see Sam way in the back of the group, flanked by Woody and Chip. Betty was behind them, her tail sticking out at Chip's side. Rhonda had backed up and was sitting on Woody's thigh, as if he were a chair.

Audrey, Tracy, and Beryl were together, close to the testing area but off to my right. Jeff was sitting in front of Tracy, watching the test. Cecilia, on Beryl's lap, was trying to bite on his ears. I couldn't see Magic. She must have been asleep on Audrey's lap, perhaps with a napkin over her head. Now that I'd tried meditating Audrey's way, I couldn't blame Magic for being so cooperative.

Martyn was getting ready to test Dash's reaction to noise. As a city dog, he'd slept through sirens, car alarms, and the Gay Pride parade. There was nothing Martyn could do that would startle Dashiell.

He flew through the ten subtests, acing every one, reacting where he should have, to the hidden decoy threatening him with a riding crop, and as calm as Balto, the statue of the great sled dog in Central Park, when the younger of the two assistants snapped open the spring-loaded umbrella and lowered it onto the path we'd been asked to traverse. I looked out into the audience for Bucky, who was shaking his head, but Dashiell had not been traumatized by the sudden appearance of a large object in his path. He had gone, as he should have, to investigate and, finding the umbrella to be harmless and inedible, went about his business as if it were no longer there.

“This test is meant to show the level of soundness of a dog's temperament,” Martyn said as I walked toward Cathy and Sky, “and I believe that once that information is yours, you can predict how well a given dog will work. The test does not, of course, assess genetically based skills in the way that a herding test or water test might—”

“Is he going to test Sky?” I asked, sitting cross-legged next to Cathy, Dashiell stretching out next to the border collie, sniffing his nose, and then rolling over onto his side and falling asleep.

She nodded. “I was hoping he'd do some less well-trained dogs. These dogs have proven their temperament through work. So the results are a given, aren't they?”

I nodded. “Makes a smoother show this way,” I whispered. Woody and Rhonda passed us on the way up to the front. “And smooth this man is.” I let that sit in the air between us.

I was looking at Martyn, but out of the corner of my eye I could see that Cathy had turned to look at me.

“Guess who made a pass?” I said, rolling my eyes in case she was still looking. “One minute he's talking about the presents he bought for his kids,” I said, stopping as if I'd gotten very interested in Rhonda's reaction to the neutral stranger, listening instead for a change in Cathy's breathing pattern, “and the next thing I know, he's telling me how unhappy he is at home, that it's the main reason he travels so much. Men!”

Rhonda was walking across a plastic sheet.

“It's that seminar mentality.”

No way was I going to get the answers I needed from Martyn. Deception was the man's middle name. Cathy was my only chance, and even though baiting her felt cruel, I continued. “They all have it. At least that's what Sam says.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, when they're staying in a hotel, without their wives, they feel they can do whatever they want.”

I turned to face her. She was looking at the boxer investigating the open umbrella, no emotion showing on her face. Unless you counted the muscles jumping in her cheeks or that little back-and-forth movement at the corner of her right eyelid.

“How about you?” she asked suddenly, an edge in her voice. “Do you ever feel that way when you're away lecturing?” Her mouth smiled at me, but the rest of her face didn't concur.

“He's cute,” I said. “You have to give him that. And he's smart He's one hell of an attractive man.”

I waited.

“But he's not
that
cute.”

There was an exercise pen laid out flat on the grass to simulate a grating. Woody was walking on the side of it, and Rhonda was walking across it, as if she walked on a surface like that every day of her life, no problem.

“Even if he were single,” I said, “why would I want to get involved with a guy who lived in England? Think of the phone bills.”

She flicked back her long hair and looked toward where Martyn stood, explaining the test results.

“What would be the point? It's not like he's going to leave his wife.”

“He might,” she said. “Some men do. The divorce rate—”

“Oh, please. Not this one. There's another kid on the way.”

“She's pregnant, his wife?”

“That's what he said.”

“But—”

I waited to see if Cathy would say anything else, but she didn't. When Martyn called her to come forward with Sky, she got up without saying another word and walked up front, to where he stood waiting for her, a big smile on his face.