A Hell of a Dog (5 page)

R,

You're off the hook for tomorrow's talk.

S

Had I not gone to the park, I would have guessed that Tina Darling had showed after all. But I had. So I knew that all Sam's worrying had been for nothing. She'd lost an ingenue and gained a star.

5

HE HAD A NECK LIKE A BULLMASTIFF'S

The Truman Salon was blue with wine velvet drapes, swagged back to reveal Central Park at night—pretty as it looked, a place no sane New Yorker would venture unaccompanied after dark. The room was lit by an immense chandelier hanging over the grand oval table. The scene looked like a coed dinner at the New Skete Monastery; each dinner guest, with two exceptions, had a dog on a down-stay behind his or her chair. Martyn Eliot had no dog with him because of British quarantine laws. And Audrey Little Feather's pug was on her lap, her head covered by Audrey's napkin as if she were still meditating.

There were four empty seats. I meant to avoid the one next to Chip and sit across from him, but he caught my eye, and Dashiell caught Betty's, and that was that.

I smiled around the table, the waiter came and poured me a glass of white wine, and then the double doors opened and the vast space they exposed, room enough for a team of Clydesdales and a beer wagon, seemed filled by Sam Lewis, her arm linked around the tweed-clad arm of England's most famous dog trainer, the natty Cecilia at her side.

“I have the best surprise,” Sam announced as she breezed into the salon. I heard the quiet, expensive whoosh of the tufted, leather-covered doors closing and watched the fascinating contrast before my eyes—Sam's pantherlike walk, Beryl's no-nonsense stride, and Cecilia's speedy Mr. Machine gait, her dark eyes scanning the room, looking for the most likely canine candidate to get into trouble.

Sam gestured around the table with a graceful red-tipped hand. “Rick Shelbert, Audrey Little Feather, Martyn Eliot, Tracy Nevins, Woody Wright, Rachel Kaminsky Alexander”—she stopped and grinned at me, proud of her own detective work—“Chip Pressman, Boris Dashevski, Alan Cooper, Cathy Powers”—then she turned and beamed at her surprise—“Beryl Potter.”

There was a round of applause, and one at a time, everyone stood.

“Please, dear people,” Beryl said without smiling. “Let's none of us make any sort of fuss now.” With that, she took a chair at the near end of the oval table, then looked around for Cecilia, who was behind me, tugging on Dashiell's tail.

Sam walked to the far end of the table and pulled out her chair but remained standing. “Perhaps Audrey can address this issue when she delivers her talk on psychic communication,” she said. “We seem to have lost one of our participants—two if Bucky doesn't show, but I've never known Bucky to be on time for anything. I believe that's why his mother named him Baron, to get even with him for refusing to be born until she was two weeks past the due date.”

She stood there doing a Jack Benny face, eyes big and innocent, one hand on her cheek.

“You didn't know his legal name was Baron? Well, now you do. That's what happens when you're late, people, you get talked about. But we won't discuss his last name if he gets here before dessert. I think that's more than fair, don't you?”

There was nervous laughter, and one of the dogs on the other side of the table began to bark. I saw Tracy take some dried liver out of her fanny pouch and lean down to give it to her Golden.

“Well, more to the point, I've been after Beryl to come and teach here, for how long?”

“How old are you, Sam dear?”

Laughter.

“Well, nearly that long,” Sam said, leaning forward and lifting her wineglass from the table. “To Beryl,” she said, and once again we all stood, toasting Beryl.

“Well, as luck would have it, just when I needed her most, to discuss breed character, which she does so brilliantly, she called me to say she'd heard of our symposium, I think we were written up in the
Kennel Gazette
, among other places, and she chewed me out for not including her. Can you imagine!”

Sam bent to pick up her briefcase and pulled out the symposium programs, handing them to Woody Wright, who took one and began to pass the others around. “You'll see that Beryl is opening for the students tomorrow at ten sharp, in the Lincoln auditorium. And, as you all requested, don't blame me when coffee arrives at five-fifteen; you are meeting at six, not six-oh-one, directly across the street for tracking. Alan is laying the track tonight after dinner. Well, not immediately after dinner. At four-thirty in the morning. So when he falls asleep in his soup at lunch, folks, you'll know why.”

“I can suggest something guaranteed to keep him awake,” Chip said, leaning close so that no one else would hear him. I didn't respond. Everyone had started to applaud Alan for his willingness to be in Central Park in the middle of the night. Everyone, that is, except Boris.

“As for the rest of you, listen up, folks, stay out of the park after dark unless you have the National Guard along to protect you. Of course, when we go as a group—”

“Waiting a minute,” Boris said.

“I know the shpeel, Boris. And I know Igor.”

“Igor gone. Sasha now.”

“Whatever. The point I am trying to make is that since you and Sasha are invulnerable, I was counting on you to go along with Alan tonight, staying off the track, of course, but making sure he's safe.”

“He'll be as safe what he's ever been,” Boris said proudly. “You not to worry.”

“Good,” she said, taking her seat. “I'm glad that's settled.” She nodded to the waiter to begin serving.

After the smoked salmon
en croute
and the arugula salad, and halfway through the filet mignon, except for Boris, who claimed he was a “wegetarian” and couldn't eat an animal, apparently with the exception of the domesticated hot dog, the double doors once again opened, and there in all his glory was Bucky King, carrying a Tibetan terrier and flanked by two borzoi. You had to give it to the man, he knew how to make an entrance. His follow-through wasn't too shabby either.

“Sorry to be late,” he said. “I just flew in from the coast. Angelo,” he said, riding the TT up and down against his no doubt hairy chest, “had to tape Leno.” He sighed for emphasis. It's a tough life, his expression said, and thank God
I'm
the one who gets to live it.

He had a neck like a bullmastiff's, a marine do, and an artificial-looking tan, like that stuff you schmear on from a bottle. He still had his New York accent, but he'd eighty-sixed his New York pallor.

I waited in rapt attention for the rest of the puff puff, and had it not been for the fact that the gentleman to my left was trying to resuscitate his dead marriage, I would have pinched him hard on the thigh to make sure he didn't miss a word of Bucky's show.

Then it came, the rest of the obligatory, laudatory, self-congratulatory explanation for the presence of Alexi and Tamara. Bucky looked down as if he'd just noticed them standing regally at either side. “Oh, yes,” he said, “we had to shoot a Stoli commercial, too.” He rolled his eyes to let us know how difficult it was, and what a brilliant trainer he was to have pulled it off.

I looked across the table and saw Tracy blinking as if the light emanating off Bucky were too much for her unprotected eyes. Alan Cooper's mouth formed a thin, straight line, and his left eye had begun to twitch. I felt Chip lean sideways again, as if he were about to whisper something in my ear, but then Bucky noticed Beryl.

“Dame Potter,” he said, bowing from the waist, a neat trick since you couldn't say he really had a waist. It looked more like the equator.

“Oh, do sit down, Bucky,” she said. “Our food is getting cold. No one has the time to watch you make a spectacle of yourself.” Then she turned her attention to the rest of us. “The queen, it seems, has neglected to inform me that I have been knighted,” she said, “and until such time as she does, I'd appreciate it if you all called me Beryl.”

I don't know if Bucky's tan changed colors. I wasn't looking. I heard him putting his dogs on a down-stay. When I did look, he was taking his place at the table, next to a flustered Tracy.

“Too heavy.” It was Alan's subtle-as-a-sledgehammer-dropped-on-your-bare-toe stage whisper. I assumed he meant Bucky. Until he added insult to injury. “Not enough brisket.”

My grandmother Sonya would have thought he was referring to her pot roast. But it was one of the borzoi he was bad-mouthing, a deadly sin if ever there was one. In this circle, you might get away with ranking out the owner, but never the pet.

“The brand of dog food you each requested is being delivered to your rooms as we dine,” Sam said, “along with some special goodies for our hardworking demo dogs. If there's anything else you need, please, people, speak up.”

Three of the dogs barked when Sam said “speak,” which set the proper mood for finishing dinner. Sam had cued the dogs by accident, but there's nothing dog trainers love more than signaling each other's dogs on purpose, just for a goof. Giving a hand signal from behind another trainer's back so that a dog on a perfect sit-stay lies down or comes instead of staying put is irresistible to the lot of us, even those few of us who might consider ourselves mature adults. Of course, if there's another trainer within ten miles, you'd never correct your dog. You'd turn around smiling to show you can take a joke, then plan your revenge. Go big or stay home is the motto, especially when it comes to getting even.

I hoped that's all that would happen this week. And why not? If we could goof on one another, humiliate a fellow professional by getting his dog to appear to be breaking a command during a lecture or demo, let's say, wouldn't that be enough?

Chip, to my left, his back to me, was deeply engrossed in a conversation with Boris, to his left. And Woody, to my right, was chatting up Sam, clever man. I sawed my steak and looked across the table, thinking of all those people in all those singles bars who had to try to look as if they were having fun, sitting all alone nursing a drink, figuring that this was it for the rest of their lives. Rather than feel pitifully ignored, I decided to test my theory.

I turned slightly and clicked my tongue to get Betty's attention, and secure in the knowledge that I would not be heard above Boris's bombastic pronouncements, I gave Chip's shepherd her signal to search for drugs. Betty rose up without moving a paw, slowly, the way Dracula rose from his coffin in
Nosferatu
, and remaining still, nose in the air, she trolled for a scent. Then quietly, the stealth shepherd began to make her way around the table, air-scenting, occasionally stopping to poke at a purse or a briefcase to release the scents inside.

I took a peek at the program while I waited for Chip to notice. Audrey was speaking in the afternoon. I wondered how she'd feel following Beryl, but when I looked up, she didn't seem to be thinking about her talk at all, not the way she was locked in conversation with Marty Eliot.

There were thirteen of us around the table. I hoped it wasn't an omen. Nearly everyone, well, everyone except me, was engrossed in dinner and conversation with the person to his left or right. The real tension wouldn't start to build, I figured, until people started lecturing, at which point everyone but the speaker would think he'd just heard a tale told by an idiot. Watching Betty make her way around the table, I was hoping no one had a video or slide show. God knows what might happen in the dark.

Bucky was regaling Tracy with a great story, how he trained Meryl's dog, went on safari with Sly, or prepared the Laddie Boy Bulldog for his latest commercial. Rick Shelbert and Alan Cooper were arguing across Cathy Powers's dinner. Looking from one to the other, she seemed to be at a tennis match. Rick looked pretty angry, but he kept his voice down, and I wasn't able to catch a word. Then Betty made her find. She was standing behind Audrey, pulling the world in through her nose. Suddenly she sat, her nose pointing to Audrey's purse. She barked once.

Chip stood so quickly his chair tipped over. He started around the table and then stopped cold. As he turned, everyone else did too. Now they were all looking at me. I stabbed a piece of potato with my fork, shrugging as I lifted it to my mouth and began to devour it whole. Surely no one would expect an explanation when my mouth was full. Anyway, how was I supposed to know that Audrey used controlled substances to help her make her otherworldly connections? For all I knew, she really did have second sight, or whatever the hell it's called.

Betty was praised and returned to her place, and everyone else went back to the conversation I'd so rudely interrupted with my prank. I was still being neglected, but at least I felt I had set the proper tone for getting out one's aggressions. It wasn't until the plates were being cleared that I noticed Audrey staring hard at me across the table. I smiled at her, but she didn't smile back, her dark eyes burning in my specific direction.

It wasn't until she'd stopped working as a hairdresser and had started working with pets that she'd begun telling people she was one-third Indian—Seminole, I think. Or was it Cree? Whatever. I guess she learned a different biology than I did, but she was dark, and her hair was straight and black, and obviously she had a substance abuse problem. Who can say if that was or wasn't genetic? I heard that when she lectured, she sometimes wore Native American garb. It ought to be a hoot, I thought, infinitely easier to take than watching Cooper electrocute his dog trying to convince us how quick and easy electronic training is.

After dessert, there was brandy. The men started lighting up cigars, and the women all headed for the ladies' room. I didn't plan on trailing after them like Mary's little lamb, but thinking about how women instantly bond and chat in the john, I changed my mind. Just as Sam lit her cigar, I reminded Dashiell he was on a stay and followed the crowd.