Stud Rites (22 page)

Turning, I saw that whatever the problem was, it centered on Crystal. The bride’s blond hair was elaborately done up in rows of intricate little braids, twists, and ringlets intertwined with strings of tiny pearls, and she wore a voluminous hot-pink maternity sweat suit decorated with sequins and sparkles that took the form of firecracker explosions on her belly, as if the fetuses inside were igniting Roman candles. Her head looked as though it had gotten accidentally, maybe even maliciously, switched with the one from a Just-My-Size Bride Barbie I’d recently seen at F.A.O. Schwarz. There was, however, nothing doll-like or radiant about this bride’s expression, which was one of enraged petulance. Crystal had drawn a crowd: Lisa, Freida Reilly, Karl, and a lot of other people. Stamping one foot on the floor, Crystal made what I think was a deliberate effort to project her voice. ”When I said I wanted a
puppy,”
she complained somewhat shrilly, ”I meant a
little puppy!
I did not mean a big dog, and the one out there that he wants to sell me is big, and it’s dirty, and it’s not even all that cute! That man took my two hundred dollars! He took it yesterday!” Punctuating her delivery with stomps of her feet, she added: ”And I”
(stomp!)
”want”
(stomp!)
”you”
(stomp!)
”to”
(stomp!)
”MAKE HIM GIVE IT BACK!”
(Stomp, stomp, stomp!!!)

Freida Reilly cleared her throat. To no one in particular, she said quietly, ”This should not be happening.” She fingered a team of tiny gold sled dogs that pranced across her breast. Then she took charge. ”Karl,” she told her son, ”go and find Timmy Oliver for me, and if he’s doing something else, you tell him from me that, no, he isn’t, because I want to see him this minute.” Seizing the opportunity to exert her authority over Sherri Ann Printz, she pointed a finger: ”Sherri Ann, find Elaine for me.” Elaine was the president of our breed club. Sherri Ann’s lips formed what looked like a fleeting obscenity, but she silently departed in apparent compliance. Freida turned to Crystal. ”Was the dog in question in poor condition? Is that what you said?”

”Dirty,” Crystal agreed. ”All of them are. And locked up in little, tiny cages. And with nothing to eat or drink, either.”

Motivated, I thought, more by a desire to get Crystal out of the exhibition hall than by alarm about the dogs, Freida said, ”Holly, see what you can do. Explain things to her, would you? And maybe you or Betty or someone...? If the dogs really are...”

By now, Mikki Muldoon must’ve been halfway through judging American-Bred. Open was next— Kimi’s class—and I desperately did not want to miss seeing Leah and Kimi in the ring. Like everyone else, however, I obeyed Freida. ”I’m Holly,” I told Crystal, taking her arm. ”Show me where the camper is, and tell me what happened.”

Out of curiosity, I suppose, Lisa Tainter trailed along with us. Crystal kept eyeing Lisa’s furs and skins, but otherwise ignored her. As we passed the breed club booth, I caught sight of Betty Burley at the booth beyond it. ”Lisa,” I said, ”would you get Betty? Ask her to come out to the parking lot and find me. Tell her what’s going on.”

Crystal, however, came to a standstill at the door and started fussing about the rain.

”All right,” I conceded. ”So we’ll just stand here, and you can tell me about it. Tim Oliver offered to sell you a puppy. Is that right?”

”Yes, only it isn’t a real puppy. What it is, is a dog, and who wants a big, grown-up dog?” she wailed.

”Anyone who doesn’t enjoy washing floors,” I said, more to myself than to Crystal.

”Can I ask you?” Crystal said. ”Why is that woman dressed like an Eskimo?”

”It’s a costume,” I said inadequately.
We are one with our dogs,
I could have explained,
some of us more visibly than others.
”Look, selling dogs or puppies at a show is strictly against the rules. So, when you said what you did back there, it, uh, made everything very awkward for everyone.”

”He told me we had to keep it sort of, uh, low-key.” Crystal caressed the sequins on her abdomen and pouted at the rain. ”Like there was this rule, but, really, nobody cared.”

”You’re getting married today. This is a really big wedding. Aren’t you going on a honeymoon?”

”Hawaii.” She made it sound like a famous industrial wasteland.

”Well, what were you going to do with a puppy?”

”One of my friends was going to keep it for me till we got back,” she answered defiantly. ”My maid of honor.”

”You know, a puppy is a lot of work—”

”But I wanted one! It’s my wedding, and that’s what I—”

”I want, I want,”
mimicked Betty Burley, popping open an umbrella and raising it over Crystal’s bedecked head. ”Enough of what you want! Now stop whining and show us where this camper is.”

The parking lot was thick with dog-show vehicles —campers, motor homes, vans, minivans, and four by fours—and especially crowded because the parking area at the opposite end of the hotel was cordoned off with crime-scene tape and unavailable to show people, wedding guests, and ordinary travelers and tourists. Despite Betty’s injunction, Crystal groused her way across the blacktop. She knew when she’d been ripped off, she said, and she didn’t take this kind of shit from anyone. Ask her father. Ask her mother. Ask Gregory. She wanted her two hundred dollars, and she wanted it
now.

”That’s it,” she said, breaking off in the middle of what promised to be a bloodcurdling threat. ”That one over there.”

The beige camper at the far end of the lot looked exactly like dozens of others. Without bothering to knock or call out, Betty reached for the handle, opened the door, and stepped up into the camper. ”The dogs are crated,” she told us. The occasional malamute actually will defend property, especially a vehicle, and for all we knew, Tim Oliver’s camper might’ve housed a loose dog of some seriously protective breed.

Even before I followed Crystal up into the dimness of the interior, the reek hit me, a nauseating combination of dog feces, urine, chemical toilet, and spoiled food.

Betty whipped open a big, ugly flower-patterned beige curtain. ”Well, the dogs don’t seem to be living any worse than Timmy is.”

There were three malamutes in three big wire crates: a silver male as dirty as Z-Rocks had been and two big puppies, one male and one female. Both looked about four months old; by four months, a malamute is far beyond the little-ball-of-fluff stage. The adult dog’s tail thumped. Happy to see anyone at all, the puppies scrambled through disgusting nests of damp, torn newspaper and unidentifiable junk, and nosed the doors of their crates. A fourth crate, a big Vari Kennel— Z-Rocks’s, I thought—was empty. As Crystal had reported, the dogs had no food available, but, then, thirty seconds after I feed Rowdy and Kimi, neither do they. All four crates held small buckets of water. The dogs seemed well-nourished. If anything, they, like Z-Rocks, were heavier than I’d have liked. Maybe the secret ingredient in Pro-Vita No-Blo Sho-Kote really was some kind of fat, if not actual snake oil. Cardboard shipping boxes of the stuff stacked three deep in a corner bore telltale stains: The big male had expressed his opinion of Timmy Oliver’s business venture.

As Betty said, the filth wasn’t confined to the crates. Encrusted dishes spilled out of the tiny sink; greasy pans were stacked on the burners; and a cross-country trip’s worth of fast-food wrappers, cartons, and drink containers lay on the floor. An open bottle of the miracle product lay on its side in a sticky-looking pool on the passenger seat. The dashboard and the open compartments under it were littered with wrinkled maps, crushed soft-drink cans, empty and half-empty cardboard coffee cups, a tom-open carton of cigarettes, a fat paperback book with the front cover missing, and what looked like a hundred dollars’ worth of loose change. The only indication that Tim Oliver paid any attention to personal hygiene was evidence that he took off his dirty socks and underwear. There must have been at least a dozen dark-colored socks scattered around, and almost as many pairs of boxer shorts, some in prints, some in solid colors, none that could be called white. Even in the absence of puppies, I’d have been careful where I stepped.

Crystal was self-righteous. ”See! I told you so! The one he wanted to sell me is the one there on the right. Now is that a puppy? No, that’s a great big dog.”

”She’s probably four months or so,” Betty said. ”Really, they’re—”

”Well, that’s not what
1
mean by a
puppy,”
insisted Crystal.

The stench was getting to me. I moved back to the door and pushed it wide open. How could a pregnant woman, even one past the phase of morning sickness, breathe in that camper without vomiting? As if to prove her immunity to nausea, Crystal paced to the front of the camper, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the carton, opened it, searched for matches, and, finding none, pulled a green plastic lighter from her own pants pocket and lit a cigarette. Spitting out grains of tobacco, she glared at Betty. ”Well, you’ve seen for yourself! Now, how do I get back my two hundred dollars?”

Betty and I both knew that we could do nothing about tbe condition of the puppies. Tim Oliver could sell them as he pleased. In the meantime, they had water, they had enough to eat, they looked healthy, and their lives weren’t in danger. It never even occurred to me to try to do anything about Crystal.

”You, young lady!” Betty began. ”Put that thing out this second!” When Crystal failed to comply, Betty snatched the cigarette from her hand and tossed it past me and out the door. An odd look of relief crossed Crystal’s face. ”Babies having babies!” Betty exclaimed. ”Well, now, you and I need to have a little talk, because, you know, it’s terribly important to take responsibility for any life that you bring into this world.”

”It’s twins,” Crystal told her.

”Two! Dear God! You can’t be more than twenty.”

”Twenty-one,” Crystal mumbled.

”Aren’t you supposed to be getting married? Isn’t this your wedding that’s...?”

The pout reappeared on Crystal’s face. ”Yeah, but I’m not invited to this part. It’s a wedding breakfast, and I’m not even invited. Do you believe it? My own wedding, and—”

”Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Betty sighed, ”any puppy I raise is... Well, look. We have very little time, so let’s make the most of it. First of all, forget about your two hundred dollars, because that foolish Timmy Oliver has spent it by now, and there’s no sense wasting energy on something you can’t change. Second, no dogs for you. Another responsibility is the last thing you need right now. And while we’re on that subject...” Betty paused. ”Catholic?”

Crystal looked stunned. So, I’m sure, did I. ”N-n-o,” Crystal stammered.

”Well, that simplifies matters,” declared Betty, with her familiar blend of optimism and practicality. ”Two children are enough for you right now, and thank heaven, there are a lot of options these days.” Betty cleared her throat.

Eager not to miss Leah and Kimi’s appearance in the ring, I seized this opportunity to slip away. If I’d had time, I’d have stayed, though. I really was curious. Although I’d heard Betty discuss reproductive responsibility with dozens of dog owners, I’d never before heard her deliver anything like a spay-neuter lecture concerning human reproduction. I couldn’t help wondering how, and even whether, she’d adapt the standard version to its present purpose. Some points, of course, applied equally to dogs and people. Regardless of species, it is important not to create more creatures than there are loving homes, and it is vital to understand that the decision to bring life into this world means a lifetime commitment. Harvard Square, for instance, has at least as many homeless, abandoned human beings as it does stray dogs; and parents, like responsible dog breeders, often end up getting adult offspring returned when promising placements unexpectedly fail to work out. Myself, I’d have deleted the usual bit about the role of castration in preventing prostate cancer and testicular tumors, and I’d have downplayed such presumably irrelevant behavioral benefits as a reduced incidence of indoor leg-lifting. Oh, and I’d have found it impossible to make the routine promise that Greg would never know the difference.

DURING MY ABSENCE from the exhibition hall, the spectators had swollen in number. Now, in a fashion reminiscent of sociable protozoa, they teemed in a restless, bloblike colony around the ring. The heat of people, dogs, and fierce competition had raised the temperature by ten degrees. Enthroned on a parka-draped ringside lawn chair at the side of Victor Printz, Harriet Lunt kept her eyes on the judging. Her left arm rested in a makeshift sling. With her right hand, she shooed away would-be sympathizers. Out of the corner of her mouth, however, she murmured inaudible comments to Victor Printz. When I approached to ask how she was doing, she thanked me rather curtly for the help I’d given last night. Then, she hadn’t seemed to recognize me. By now, I thought, she’d remembered the eyes and ears of the
AKC Gazette,
seen through my taradiddle, and learned that she had, in fact, been assisted by Alaskan Malamute Rescue.