A Hell of a Dog (15 page)

“Boris can't respond to stupid questions.”

“And will you stop referring to yourself in the third person. Who are you supposed to be, the king?”

“You should talk. What is Bucky's motto?” he asked, looking from face to face around the table. “The King of Dog Trainers.” Boris began to nod. “The King,” he repeated.

“It's my
name
,” Bucky said between his teeth. “It's a play on my name. I have every right—”

“Your name, Baron?” Boris said, again looking around for approval.

“Who? Who?” Bucky turned to look at Sam, who was deep into her cold poached salmon, the choice for those of us who preferred something in between a slab of bleeding meat and a dead white square of soy product with a side of roughage.

We all waited as Sam put down her fork, patted her lips with the napkin, and looked up at Bucky. “You sound like a damn owl,” she said. “Now will both of you please contain yourselves. It's perfectly fine that there are a variety of methods from which both professionals and the pet-owning public can choose. Just leave it alone. Everyone here is earning a living. Doesn't that tell you something? Doesn't that show you that the public—”

“The public is naive,” Bucky said. “They hire Boris not understanding that—”

“Gentlemen,” Sam said, tapping her spoon on her water glass the way the guests at weddings do when they want the bride and groom to kiss. “Please.”

“Bucky's right,” Tracy said, looking down into her lap as she spoke. “Telling people who are trying to learn how to be better dog trainers that you have to take a dog apart and put him back together, why, that's so barbaric I—”

“Did anyone get up and walk out?” Woody asked. But he didn't wait for an answer. “You don't give the students enough credit. Shouldn't they hear it all, every possible way of working with dogs, and be given the chance to make up their own minds? After all, there are lots of ways to train, variations on a theme. In certain situations you need to be firmer. Don't you think people ought to know this?”

“Firmer?” Bucky shouted, his face red and sweating. “His methods are downright cruel. They're antiquated. Weren't you there? Didn't you see what he did to that chow?”

“Weren't
you
there? Didn't you see what that chow did to Boris? He was only defending himself against further injury. Look, Bucky, those people who agree with you will ignore what Boris has to tell them. Or they'll find, in all he said, a couple of points they can add to their own spin on training. No one's going to sit out there and swallow anyone else's method whole. If they did, they'd choke on it.”

For the next few minutes, no one spoke. We all poked at our food, moving things around but not actually picking anything up and eating it.

“I apologize. I didn't mean to—” Woody sighed. “It's been a rough week,” he said, as much to himself as to any of us.

“We need to do something positive together,” Cathy said. “Something fun. We can't just sit around brooding and fighting. Perhaps we can agree to disagree about our training methods. Just leave that alone, as Sam suggested. Let's get the dogs out to the park this evening. It's a beautiful night. There's a moon, so it won't be completely dark. And if we're together, we'll be safe. What do you say? We can set up some easy agility games. We can use whatever we can find in the park, branches, low walls, ourselves instead of weave poles. We can have the dogs jump over each other. We can—”

“Super,” Sam said. “This is the way I hoped it would be. Boris? Bucky? Everyone?”

There was grumbling, but there was nodding, too. There were two sides here for each of us—the fierce belief that whatever each of us did was the only effective, humane way to train, and the insatiable hunger for talking about dogs and working them with a group of people who knew what they were all about and who loved them as excessively as we ourselves did.

“In fact,” Sam said, “let me see if we can have coffee and dessert afterward instead of now. Maybe they can leave us something in the tea room. Wouldn't that be lovely?”

For a while, we ate quietly, no one shouting across the table or pointing at someone else with their knife or fork. Sam had gotten up to talk to the waiter. When she came back, she merely put her napkin back over her short skirt and continued eating her dinner. When everyone was finished, she called over the waiter who had been standing attentively in the doorway in case anyone needed more water or wine.

“Kevin will have everything we'll want when we return set up in the tea room. You're a darling,” she told him.

The smile she gave him was so glowing, for an instant I wondered if Kevin was going to be Mr. Tonight.

“Why don't we meet right out front in twenty minutes. Bucky, will you bring the whole family?” she asked. “That way Martyn and I can join in, too.” Bucky nodded. “Excellent. Twenty minutes, then, people. Don't keep the rest of us waiting.”

I waited with Sam until everyone else had left. “Do you think this will turn things around?” I asked her.

“It better.” She dropped her napkin onto her plate and stood. “I'm running out of speakers.”

16

HOW ABOUT HIDE-AND-SEEK? CHIP SAID

Lying on the damp grass, looking up at the stars, I heard Tracy's voice loud and strong, sending Jeff. A moment later I could hear him thundering across the grass toward me, the sound coming closer and closer, and then there was only the sound of my own breathing as he sailed over the three prone bodies lined up side by side on the ground, landing clear of us on the other side. With Woody pressed against me to my right and Audrey to my left, for the moment I felt completely happy, the way you do when you're a child and now is the only thing there is.

“Shall we try four?” Tracy shouted out in the darkness of the Sheep Meadow.

“It depends who's on the end,” Woody said, and we began to laugh so hard I thought we'd never be able to stop.

“I'll do it,” I said, and before I could get up and go around him, he'd rolled me over his body and dumped me on his other side. Audrey scrunched over, and Cathy lay down next to her on the damp grass.

Tracy called Jeff back to her. I thought he'd go back over us, making me first and Cathy last, but he went around us instead. I could hear him thudding along on the grass, and then Tracy sent him again. Something danced in my stomach as I heard Jeff coming our way. He sailed over us, but low enough this time to make me wonder if trying five would be a sane idea, knowing in my heart we would, and that once again I'd be on the end because I found the fear intoxicating.

I was only half right. Suddenly Chip was lying next to me, so close that if we'd stayed that way for weeks, the grass couldn't have grown up between us. Playing in the dark, not one of us seemed to have a serious thought in his head, as if two of our colleagues had not just died.

Sometime between Central Park West and getting to the Sheep Meadow, a miraculous transformation had begun to take place. Instead of pointing at one another with accusations and recriminations, instead of hostility and rage, there was cooperation, there was camaraderie, there was even joy. Under the moon and stars we cavorted with each other and our dogs as if there had never been any conflict, as if nothing at all were wrong, as if we were children and best friends at that. I, for one, intended to enjoy it as long as I could, all night if it lasted.

“Ready for five?” Tracy called out.

“Oh, no,” Cathy said. “At least send Magic instead of Jeff.” And once again, we were giggling like kids.

“No five,” Boris said.

We all groaned.

“Six. Boris on end.”

And with that, Chip Pressman did something I would have thought was impossible. As if to make room for Boris, he moved closer.

“There's a whole park out here,” I whispered, looking not at him but up at the stars.

“I know.”

I could see the Big Dipper.

“I thought we should all get as close as possible so that Jeff can make the jump without landing on Boris.” He scrunched closer still.

“Jeff not to land on Boris,” I heard from the other side of Chip. And then I heard Tracy, and Jeff was coming our way. I closed my eyes this time, waiting. It seemed to take longer this way, nearly forever. Perhaps Tracy had backed up to give the dog a better chance of making the jump. And then I felt him and heard him land, heard the others clapping for him and shouting his name. I sat up. Boris was already standing, taking a bow. Jeff was back with Tracy, ready to go again.

“Let's make it seven. I'll take the end.” It was Beryl, coming to lie down next to Boris.

“Let's try something else, give another of the dogs a chance.” That was Cathy, the voice of reason. She had changed to one of the Huffy T-shirts, the one with Sky doing weave poles on it.

“How about human weave poles, then?” Beryl asked. “I'll send the doggies through, just tell me which ones know how to do it.”

Some of the dogs were on down-stays, others were on their own in the meadow, chasing each other or sniffing all the wonderful new odors. I whistled for Dashiell, and Sky came too. Beryl called Cecilia. Betty came on her own, curious to see what all the fuss was about. Bucky had been sitting with Tamara, who he'd said would only work for him. Sam was next to him, with Angelo on her lap, and Martyn had Alexi at his side and was stroking the big dog's neck. Far off at the edge of the meadow, Sasha was pacing. Boris said Sasha was American dog, keeping the world safe for democracy. But the truth was, he was keeping Sasha away from the other males. The Rottie people say Rotties will never start a fight, but they'll never back down from one either. I say, show me a dog who'll never back down, and I'll show you a dog who will start a fight, any chance he gets. Looking around, I wondered which of us was like that. In the middle of our work, who had taken things so irretrievably far? And why? Then Tracy grabbed my hand and pulled me into the line with the others.

All the dogs except Sasha were lined up for Beryl to send. The rest of us held hands, standing as far apart as we could this time, leaving room for the dogs to weave in and out as they ran down the line as quickly as they could.

Cecilia did the human weave poles like the puppy she was, jumping up for kisses on whichever people she fancied she could manipulate into responding to her cuteness, stopping to pull up some grass, barking when she got to the end, so pleased with her own performance she couldn't keep quiet about it. Alexi and Tamara walked through, as if they were strolling down Fifth Avenue in the Easter parade. Bucky, who held my other hand, squeezed it as his dogs passed around us. Betty was precise, centering herself on each turn and not touching any of us. Dashiell was the opposite, smacking into as many legs as possible on his way. Sky streaked through the poles like a bolt of lightning, never touching any of us, and when he reached the end, turning and running back through, ending with a smart, neat sit in front of Beryl, as if to say, How was that for weave poles, amateurs?

“That's it,” Audrey called out, dropping the hands she was holding and breaking the line. “No one can compete with Sky. Time for something new.”

“How about hide-and-seek?” Chip said.

I thought he'd be shouted down, that Boris would suggest we find a wall for the dogs to scale or that we do a relay race, each of us running with our own dog. I saw that Cathy had a bag of Frisbees and that Woody had brought a couple of gloves for scent discrimination, even though we said we'd use what we found in the park. But suddenly they were all shouting like five-year-olds, hide-and-seek, hide-and-seek. And then before I knew what was happening, Chip had grabbed my hand and we were running toward the line of trees, Betty and Dashiell at our sides.

“We'll give you fifteen minutes,” Beryl shouted, “then we're coming to get you.”

All I could hear was my breathing as we ran in the dark, through the trees and to a narrow dirt path on the other side.

“This way,” he said, pulling on my hand, holding it so tightly I couldn't get it free. He was running in an arc, heading east first, then north, then west. At one point, he stopped so that we could leash the dogs, and I realized we were at the stone wall that lined the park.

“Here, let me give you a leg up,” he said, bending and linking his hands so that I could step on them. Ignoring his offer, I turned my back to the wall, hoisted myself so that I was sitting on it, and then swiveled around and jumped off, calling Dashiell to jump the wall and follow me.

“Where are we going? They'll never find us if we leave the park.”

“Exactly,” he said, grinning.

I stopped walking. Dashiell stopped, too.

“I'm going back.”

“Don't,” he said. “I never had the chance—”

At first he just stared at me. He didn't look like a five-year-old any longer. He looked significantly older. Maybe deep into adolescence.

He started coming closer, too close, if you ask me. When I saw his lips heading for mine, I ducked, leaving him with a mouthful of hair.

“Rachel,” he said. “I never—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You never knew it could be like this. Well, the truth is, it can't. It can't be like anything between us.”

“You don't understand,” he said.

“But I do. I understand perfectly. Everyone is feeling frisky this week, and you feel left out. If I play my cards right, we could be part of it all, you know, the adultery that no one takes very seriously, that doesn't spoil anyone's home life. Because as you might well imagine”—I may have been shouting by then, but hey, this was New York, who the hell would even notice?—“I've been lying awake at night wishing I could have a meaningless roll in the hay with some other lady's husband and then order up some
traif
from room service because there's nothing quite like pork rinds after sex. It's a well-known fact.”