Gone With the Woof (5 page)

I sat down in a wingback chair not far from March's desk. “Before we get started,” I said, “I have something to tell you.”

“Well?” He reached his seat, a cordovan leather chair on rollers, and sank into it heavily.

“Your son came to visit me yesterday.”

“Andrew?” He said the name with a scowl. So much for my not wrecking March's good mood. “Whatever for?”

“He warned me to stay away from you. He told me that there wasn't going to be a book.”

“That's not up to him.”

“That's not what he thinks.”

“What Andrew thinks on this topic is immaterial. My son has always been under the impression that if he wants something, that's reason enough for it to be his. He has thwarted me in the past, but I assure you that despite what he might have told you, he won't succeed this time. Feel free to put him out of your mind.”

I'd be delighted to, I thought, as long as Andrew was willing to do the same for me.

March opened a folder on his desktop and withdrew several sheets of paper. He lifted them up and stared at the top sheet thoughtfully, rubbing it back and forth between his forefinger and thumb.

“I've taken the liberty of drawing up a contract that outlines the details of our arrangement. Considering that this is my story, it seems to me that a ninety-ten split of any potential profits is more than equitable.”

Up until that moment, I hadn't given any thought to the financial aspects of our collaboration. The project had simply come along at the right time, piqued my curiosity, and offered to satisfy my need for adult interaction. But now I stopped and thought about the fact that once I signed that contract, I'd be agreeing to work hard. There was no way I was going to sell my services that cheaply.

“No,” I said.

“No?” He sounded incredulous.

“Ninety-ten?” I made sure I sounded equally dubious. “I don't think so.”

March opened his fingers and let the papers drop. “All right, then, what sounds fair to you?”

I considered for a minute before answering. Even on our short acquaintance, March struck me as the kind of man who would take advantage of a situation if he could. I, however, spent my days dealing with a two-year-old. Which meant that I knew all about setting proper boundaries right from the beginning.

March was right about the fact that this was his book. But without my input, it wouldn't be written at all.

“Twenty-five percent for me, seventy-five to you,” I said.

“Fifteen, eighty-five,” he shot back.

“I'm not negotiating, Mr. March. You asked what split sounded fair to me, and I told you. If you don't agree, you may feel free to find another partner.”

His eyes narrowed, his bushy brows lowering in a ferocious scowl. March gathered up the papers and shoved them back into the folder.

“I'll have the contracts redrawn. You can sign them the next time you're here.”

“It's a deal.”

March wasn't about to let me have the last word.

“Now, if you're finished taking advantage of an old man,” he grumbled, “let's get down to work.”

O
n my first visit to March's house, I'd brought a notebook. This time I'd traded up and come equipped with a laptop. The only problem with that, I realized now, was that I'd left the computer sitting on the passenger seat of the Volvo.

“I'm ready to get started,” I said, hopping up out of my chair. “I just have to run out to my car for a second. I'll be right back.”

“Wait!” March cried.

I was already halfway to the door. When I paused and glanced back, the expression on the older man's face surprised me. He looked more than a little alarmed.

“I'm just going outside,” I told him. “I brought a laptop to take notes on. It'll only take me a moment to get it.”

“Stay right there. I'll call Charlotte.”

“There's no need.” I reached the door and pulled it open. “I know the way.”

“Please . . .”

It sounded like a word he didn't use often. That, more than anything else, stopped me where I stood. As I hesitated in the doorway, Charlotte came running from the back of the house. She skidded to a halt in front of me.

“What's the matter?” she asked breathlessly.

“Nothing.” Was it just me, or was the weird vibe definitely back? “I was just on my way outside to get my laptop so we can get started. I left it in my car.”

“Oh.” Charlotte blew out a breath. It almost sounded like a sigh of relief. “That's fine. Go right ahead.”

I intended to. And I did. As I'd told March, it took me only a minute. Charlotte waited in the hall until I'd returned.

“How about some coffee for the two of you?” she asked brightly. “I was just brewing a fresh pot.”

“That would be very nice,” March replied. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

Very nice? Really? The two of them sounded like they were reciting lines from a play. If this was an attempt to restore a sense of normalcy to what seemed to me like a very odd situation, I wasn't sure it was working.

Back inside the library, I dragged my chair closer to March's desk and looked for a place to set the laptop down. Obviously, the recent effort to reduce clutter had not extended to March's work space.

The desk itself was a massive piece of furniture, but nearly every inch of its polished surface was covered with . . . stuff. Aside from a leather-bound blotter, an ornate lamp, and a phone, there were also stacks of books and files, numerous pictures, and even old magazines, all vying for the same space.

I'm not a neat freak, by any means. But this place was a mess, even by my admittedly low standards. I had no idea how March was able to get anything done surrounded by so much disarray.

“Just push something aside,” he said when I hesitated. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I moved a towering pile of
Kennel Review
s to one side. It merged with a nearby stack of
Gun Dog
magazines. I opened the computer up and turned it on. As I waited for it to warm up, I noticed that the periodical on top of the pile I'd just formed was dated March 2008.

“If you want, before we start, I can do a little cleaning up,” I said. “It might be easier to work in here if we got things organized first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, these magazines . . . they're old.”

In human terms, they were merely old. In dog years they were truly ancient—at least a generation, if not two, from containing current news.

“Those magazines contain valuable information. I like to refer back to the articles. That's why I saved them.”

“Yes, but do they have to sit right here?”

March gazed around the room, perplexed. “Where else would they go?”

“How about over there?”

The longest wall in the room had been lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Unfortunately, they were also already crammed full. The contents had probably started as a display, but now books, figurines, framed photographs, and a collection of old dog show trophies, which were sadly in need of polishing, were all jumbled together in a haphazard fashion.

“That won't work,” March said irritably. “I like to keep things handy for easy reference. You let them out of your sight and next thing you know, they start getting lost on you.”

“Right.” Considering how much junk there was in the library, losing some of it didn't sound like a bad thing to me.

Not my call,
I reminded myself firmly. I turned back to my computer and opened up a new file on the screen. “Puppy Love,” I wrote at the top of the empty page.

“Here's how it's going to work,” said March. “I'll talk, and you take notes. Doesn't have to be word for word. It's the stories, the content, that's the important part. After we get a bunch of pages done, you can print them up and we'll go over them together.”

“Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”

“We'll start with Caroline.” March leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. A small smile played around his lips.

“Caroline,” I typed.

“Was she your first dog?”

His eyes snapped open. “Certainly not. She was the first girl I . . .” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Let's just say, the first girl I ever loved. I was fourteen, and she was sixteen. An older woman.”

“Older woman,” I wrote down. I stared briefly at the description, then added a question mark.

“She had soft blond hair and big blue eyes . . .” March dragged out the words lovingly. He seemed to be enjoying his own descriptive prowess. “And a tiny little freckle at the base of her throat.”

My fingers hovered above the keys. I was waiting for him to say something worth recording.

March glanced my way. “Write that down.”

“Why?”

“So it will go in the book.” As if
that
was obvious.

“A tiny freckle at the base of her throat?”

“It's description,” March said curtly. “It's important.”

“Maybe if you were describing your first Best in Show winner. Your readers will be interested to know what he looked like. Sixteen-year-old Caroline? I don't think so.”

“I didn't ask you to think. I asked you to type.”

“I am typing. Or I was a minute ago. And as soon as you say something interesting, I'll start again.”

March shoved back his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “You know nothing about the publishing business!”

“Maybe not,” I agreed. “But I'm a voracious reader. And if a dog person of your stature wrote a book, I'd be first in line to buy it. I'd love to read about the shows you've participated in and all the great dogs you've had your hands on over the years.”

“Rubbish. That's not what sells books.”

“It would to me.”

March glared in my direction. “I'm aiming for a bigger audience.”

“Well, sure, but—”

“People want salacious details, the more the better. They want to hear secrets and feel like they're reading the inside scoop. Reality TV on the written page, that's what makes people buy books. And that's what I intend to give them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Of course, there will be dogs in the book, plenty of them. It's not like we can put my stories in context without setting the stage. The dogs will make wonderful window dressing. But it's the people I've known and the relationships I've shared that will form the basis for the book.”

“Window dressing . . . ?” I echoed faintly.

“I cut quite a dashing figure in my younger days, and the ladies of the dog show community were more than eager to show their appreciation. Think Don Juan. His stories made him famous.” March nodded with satisfaction. “And now it's finally time for me to tell all.”

Puppy Love?
No wonder he'd chosen that title. What had I gotten myself into?

“Coffee's here!” Charlotte sang out cheerfully. She shouldered the door open and carried the tray into the room. “Let me just set this down and get out of your way. It looks like everything's going splendidly!”

 

“Splendidly, my foot,” I said to Aunt Peg.

We were sitting in her kitchen, eating cake. Aunt Peg has a voracious sweet tooth. She thinks that a good dose of sugar can cure most of the world's ills, and unfortunately for the sake of my waistline, when I'm with her, I find it hard to argue.

March and I had gone on to spend a second hour working together earlier that afternoon. It was all time wasted, from my point of view. We had moved from the chronicles of Caroline to a narrative about Nancy, and had finished up with what I was pretty sure was a total fairy tale concerning a woman named Rosemary. At least Nancy had been a fellow judge. Which kept things slightly on topic, from my perspective.

By the time I left March's house, it was mid-afternoon. I decided to do what I've always done in times of inner turmoil and intellectual confusion: visit Aunt Peg and see what she had to say. Peg loves meddling in other people's problems, even ones of her own making. She has plenty of opinions, and she's never been shy about sharing any of them.

On my way to her house, I'd swung by Davey's school and picked him up before he could get on the bus. In earlier years, the three of us had spent countless hours together. But now with Davey in middle school, Kevin taking up so much of my time, and Aunt Peg's busy judging schedule, it seemed as though our lives were constantly spinning in different directions. Pulling into Aunt Peg's driveway with Davey sitting in the backseat, something I'd done so many times in the past, made me feel a brief twinge of nostalgia for those simpler days.

Then Aunt Peg opened her front door, and I quickly snapped back to the present. Like Sam and me, Peg lives with a herd of Standard Poodles, and I needed to watch what I was doing as the rambunctious horde came spilling down off the porch to circle the car and offer a canine chorus of greeting.

Already laughing, Davey jumped out to join them. Within seconds, he was down on the ground, surrounded by sniffing noses and wagging tails. It was no wonder that he felt right at home, as the group included Tar's dam and both Faith's and Eve's littermates. Our canine families were every bit as intertwined as our human ones.

“There's something wonderfully heartwarming about the sight of a boy and a dog together,” Aunt Peg said happily as she watched the proceedings from the porch.

“Or six dogs,” I pointed out.

My son was barely even visible in the midst of the eddying throng. I wondered if he'd noticed yet that he was sitting in snow.

“Really, Melanie, there's no need to be literal.”

She waved her hand, and the Poodles immediately stopped playing and ran back up the steps. Even Davey leapt to comply. Aunt Peg just has that kind of effect on people. It's a gift. One that I don't share, unfortunately.

“Have you grown another inch since last week?” she asked Davey as we all trooped inside. The top of his head now approached her shoulder; considering that Aunt Peg stands six feet tall, that was no small accomplishment.

“Could be.” My son grinned. He likes to think of himself as a budding basketball star.

“And how is school?”

“Fine.”

“Sports?'

“Fine.”

“How's your little brother doing?”

“Fine.”

My son, the king of the one-word answer.

“Davey,” I said in my best mother's voice, “a little elaboration please.”

He looked up at Peg. “He's fine. Thank you.”

Aunt Peg hooted with laughter. She held up a hand, and the two of them slapped their palms together.

“You know you're only encouraging him,” I told her.

“Of course I'm encouraging him. That's what aunts are for. It's parents who have to worry about things like teaching good manners.” She slipped Davey a wink. “I've got cake.”

Of course she had cake. Aunt Peg always had cake. And so here we were. Davey had already scarfed down two pieces, drunk a tall glass of milk, and regaled his aunt with numerous intricate details about the geography paper he was doing on Lithuania. Then he'd excused himself and gone off to play with the Poodles while Peg and I talked.

“I'm guessing you stopped by to talk about Edward March,” Aunt Peg began. “I'd imagine he's getting on your nerves.”

“Good guess.”

She nodded. “He gets on everyone's nerves.”

“And it didn't occur to you to tell me that
before
I volunteered to work with him?”

“Why would I have wanted to do that? For all I knew, you might have been different.”

At moments like this I can't help but think what a wonderful con artist my aunt would have made. She certainly had the look of injured innocence down pat.

“Well, I'm not,” I grumbled.

“So I see. Pardon me for having higher expectations of my relatives than I do for the general public. I've seen you in action, Melanie. It never for a moment occurred to me that you wouldn't be able to handle Edward.”

“Handling him isn't the problem.”

“Oh?” Aunt Peg deftly slid a third piece of cake onto her empty plate. Good thing Davey wasn't there to see it. “Then what is?”

“It's his book. The one that you and Sam thought would be a historical overview of his decades in the dog show world? Well, it's nothing like that. March intends to write a kiss-and-tell book about his amorous exploits in the dog community. He's calling it
Puppy Love
.”