The Dogfather

by Conant, Susan

  CHAPTER 6

  “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” You know the poem? T. S. Eliot. Well, if you haven’t read it, take my advice and don’t, because it’s just line after horribly depressing line about the bleak existence of a man who is probably best remembered for having measured out his life with coffee spoons. And there you have what was wrong with J. Alfred Prufrock. I, in contrast, was blessed to have measured out my life with dogs. So was Steve Delaney.

  All this is by way of saying that in Steve Delaney’s life, as in mine, the arrival of the puppy was not the mere acquisition of a pet, but an Advent, a spiritual milestone, a reference point that would henceforth divide the calendar of his years into Before and After. Consequently, although the signs directing us to the baggage claim bore no resemblance to stars, I nonetheless felt like one of the Three Wise Men and, in fact, bore a gift. There were differences, certainly. For one thing, I’m a woman, and for another, wise was a bit of an exaggeration. If asked, I’d’ve settled for knowledgeable. My gift was a small hunk of roast beef. When it comes to dogs, I really am knowledgeable. Case in point: In a life spent in the company of canines, I had yet to meet a puppy who gave a sweet dog damn about gold, myrrh, or frankincense. Come to think of it, had the infant Jesus been all that crazy about such wildly inappropriate baby presents? Jesus, I’m sure, had been more than capable of remembering that it’s the thought that counts. Steve’s puppy would take beef over intentions any day.

  When I say that Steve and I waited at the baggage claim, I don’t mean that we watched for a puppy-size airline crate to drop down onto a conveyor belt among suitcases twice its size. Rather, we waited nearby until a rolling metal door surged upward to reveal a small shipping crate plastered with Live Animal stickers, This Way Up arrows, a small transparent envelope of airline paperwork, and, sealed under clear tape, a sheet of paper with information about who was sending the puppy to whom and instructions about what to do if the puppy got marooned somewhere.

  Although auras are invisible to me, I nonetheless saw a glow of happiness radiate all around Steve as he took slow, deliberate steps forward, hunkered down, peered thoughtfully through the wire mesh door of the crate, and finally unlatched the little door. After the long hours alone in a crate in the cacophonous belly of an airliner, any small animal could have been excused for shyness, anxiety, or even outright post-traumatic stress. Not this little guy! When Steve eased the wire door open a scant two inches, a black nose thrust its eager way out, and immediately, catching Steve entirely off guard, the rest of the baby malamute followed. With the confidence built over years of handling wiggly little creatures, Steve enveloped Rowdy’s young son in a bear hug and then sank his face into the soft coat on top of the puppy’s head. Caught between an overwhelming urge to get my hands on the puppy and an absolute unwillingness to intrude on the bonding, I compromised by reaching out a hand and resting it on the pup’s back. Under his soft puppy coat were hard bone and muscle that foretold the power he’d pack as an adult. His ribs rose and fell under my hand. Then, as if responding in kind to Steve’s ursine hug, he scrambled up Steve’s chest like a little bear climbing a big tree. When his face reached Steve’s, he nibbled and licked, and his miniature tail whipped back and forth. He had Rowdy’s blocky muzzle and Rowdy’s perfect pigment and Rowdy’s bittersweet-chocolate eyes. When Steve carefully lowered him to the floor, I could see that this miniature Rowdy was going to have his father’s excellent bone as well.

  Admiringly, Steve said, “Even better than your pictures, aren’t you, big boy?”

  “It’s amazing,” I said. “He already looks exactly like—” For once, Steve interrupted. “Cindy didn’t tell you? She told me. Little male version of Emma. Perfect pigment, blocky muzzle, heavy bone. Just like his mother.”

  “May I point out that Rowdy has perfect pigment? Not to mention a blocky muzzle, heavy bone... but, of course, Emma does go back to the same lines Rowdy does, on her mother’s side. That’s one reason Cindy wanted to use him.”

  With a shy smile, Steve said, “The universal affliction.”

  “Are you suggesting that I of all people am kennel blind? Objectively speaking, this puppy is a carbon copy of Rowdy.”

  Sensibly changing the subject, the duplicate little Rowdy began to sniff and circle in the universal manner of puppies who may not yet realize that they need to go out, but who certainly do.

  “Hurry! I’ll get the crate. I’ll meet you just outside the door.” I pointed to a nearby exit.

  With Rowdy’s son safely in his arms, Steve sprinted off. It took me only a moment to shut the door of the crate, which was pint-size by comparison with the ones I used for Rowdy and Kimi, so small that it had a handle on top. Carrying the crate by the handle, I made my way to the exit Steve had taken, but as I was about to go through the door, Zap appeared. This time, he noticed me.

  “Hey,” he said, “you get the message?”

  Having seen all three Godfather movies, I broke into a sweat. I knew everything about Sicilian messages and was acutely aware that they weren’t ordinary, innocent reminders like Remember to pick up milk or Call me when you get a chance. “What message was that?”

  “About Joey’s funeral. The boss wants you there ’cuz it’s soon and a lot of people might not show up. I’m here picking up his sister, but her plane’s late.”

  “Mr. Guarini’s sister?”

  “Joey’s sister. For the funeral.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

  “You didn’t get the message.”

  “No. I haven’t been home. I’ve been here.” Duh.

  “The boss is sending a car for you. Wear black.”

  “Enzio Guarini, fashion consultant,” I blurted out.

  Zap cracked a smile.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “What day?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “And wear black.” In what I intended as a be-seeing-you tone, I added, “Thanks.”

  For once, Zap remembered his manners or possibly forgot his lack thereof. Instead of departing, he held the exit door open for me. Short of telling him to leave, there was no way to get rid of him.

  The door led to one of those nightmarish airport visions of a cement and asphalt future. Between the ugly concrete building I’d just left and the identical one opposite ran a blacktop road packed with buses, vans, cars, and diesel fumes. Overhead, rust-stained concrete walkways linked the terminals. Terminal. The mot juste, I always think. The world seems doomed to end neither with a bang nor a whimper but with a deadly boring wait in a concrete and asphalt airport that covers the entire surface of the planet, thus making it unnecessary to fly from anywhere to anywhere because you’re already in the same gruesome place you’d go. But there was one sign of hope. Remember the one God sent to Noah? Not the rainbow. The other one. I’m convinced that dove is a mistranslation. But the first two letters are right.

  In the wasteland of the airport Ararat, there had appeared the same sign God sent to Noah, and the people saw it, and they saw that it was good, which is to say the puppy, now wearing a little red collar attached to a red cotton leash, had drawn a clucking and ooh-ing crowd into which I hoped Zap would sink. He did not. Far from it. Rising to the top, Guarini’s driver said, “Hey, you, what the hell are you doing with the boss’s dog?”

  I simply had to intervene. “This isn’t Frey. This is a malamute puppy. See the white feet? And legs? The white on the face? Elkhounds are all gray. You see this puppy’s tail? It’s not curled. This is not an elkhound. This is not Frey.” Without pausing, I added, “Steve, this is Zap. Zap, Steve. I’m, uh, training an elkhound puppy that belongs to a, uh, friend of Zap’s, and—”

  Zap cut me off by addressing Steve. “He’s gonna be big. Look at the paws. That’s how you tell. By the paws.” This to Steve Delaney, D.V.M., who nodded politely. “How much you pay?” Zap demanded.

  I answered. “A fair price, but the puppy is not—
” Zap asked the inevitable, “How much you want for him?”

  In a tone that brooked no dispute, Steve said, “This is my dog. He’s not for sale.” With that, he swooped up Rowdy’s son. Nodding at Zap, he said, “Nice to meet you,” and took off.

  In parting, Zap said loudly, “Tomorrow at ten. Don’t forget.”

  When I caught up with Steve, he repeated, “Tomorrow at ten?”

  I said, “I have a very classy clientele these days. Maybe you noticed.”

  “No one could miss it.”

  “Tomorrow at ten,” I said, “I’m training his friend’s dog.”

  Incredible though it may seem, that was, in fact, what I ended up doing. The dog wasn’t Frey. Still, at Joey Cortiniglia’s funeral, I really did end up training a dog.

  CHAPTER 7

  The interment of Joseph Ignatio Cortiniglia took place at a Roman Catholic cemetery in Munford. Joey's graveside service was the first I’d attended in ages. My father’s intense response to my mother’s death, in combination with my own grief, had left me petrified of funerals. In the past few years, I’d gone to a couple of blessedly bodiless memorial services, and strictly from a distance, I’d observed burials at the famous Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. But I’d successfully avoided actually attending all manner of decedent-present ceremonies. I was as frightened as ever. I went anyway. The only thing I had to fear was not fear itself. It was Enzio Guarini.

  Joey’s shiny wooden coffin was the centerpiece of the event. Suspended just above the grave, ready to be lowered into the earth, it was surrounded on all sides by fake-grass carpeting on which stood a small number of people and at least two dozen large and elaborate flower arrangements, indescribably immense floral wreaths displayed on easel-like stands, and ostentatious sheaves of oversize lilies and gladioli in extra large papier-mâché vases. The coffin was bedecked with rosebuds, baby’s breath, and other selections that struck me as oddly delicate tributes to the brutish Joey Cortiniglia, whose living presence would’ve been more vividly evoked by big orange poppies with coarse, weedy foliage than it was by all this pink and white fragility.

  Still, the lavishness of the flowers compensated for the sparse human attendance by creating the illusion that Joey Cortiniglia was mourned by a great many people, even though most of them weren’t there. Enzio Guarini, of course, was there, together with his entourage: the two silent bodyguards, Alphonse “The Count” Favuzza, Zap the Driver, and the twin body movers, as I thought of them, the identical monstrosities who’d helped lift Joey’s body into the Suburban and who’d mopped his blood and brains from the blacktop. Guarini’s men all wore dark suits, but Al Favuzza, with his widow’s peak, vampirish build, and Transylvanian aura, looked as if he’d just arisen from the flower-strewn coffin and might fall down dead at any moment from the lethal effects of the bright April sunshine. The wizened priest was so ancient that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him die of old age then and there. He kept glancing at Guarini as if seeking permission to begin the service. Two pallbearers hovered, and a round-bellied bald man kept going up to Guarini to ask, I felt certain, whether everything was all right. There were a handful of other men I’d never seen before, including two who stood a few yards away from everyone else. So far, they’d spoken to no one, and no one had spoken to them.

  Anyway, it was the women who did most of the talking. Joey’s sister, whose late-arriving plane had kept Zap at the airport, was sadly easy to identify, because she shared Joey’s Ice Age features: the prognathous jaw, the brow ridge. As if to draw attention to her atavistic countenance, she’d slicked her long dark hair away from her face and fastened it with a big butterfly-shaped barrette. Either she hadn’t received a message from Guarini, or hers had been different from mine. She wore aquamarine. I wore black. My dress was an old wide-wale corduroy shirtwaist I’d dug out of the back of the closet. Joey Cortiniglia’s widow wore black, too. The sateen was as heavy as my out-of-season corduroy, but there ended the resemblance. Hers was a cocktail dress with thin straps and a plunging neckline that would’ve been revealing but for the presence of a tiny, fluffy dog tucked into her décolletage. Try that with a malamute. The minuscule creature belonged to no identifiable breed, but appeared to be a mix of Chinese crested and Yorkshire terrier with a dash of toy poodle and the merest soupfon of Chihuahua. The animal’s most notable characteristics, however, were its ability to emit an amplified version of the sound of fingernails on a blackboard and its determination to exercise that ability nonstop. Because the tiny little squealer almost disappeared between the expanse of Mrs. Cortiniglia’s very large, sateen-sheathed breasts, it would have been easy to overlook the true source of the noise and to imagine that Joey’s widow was uniquely equipped with a highly vocal bosom. With her mouth, she didn’t need one.

  “Joey, Joey, I should’ve never let you eat all that crap! Ham, pork roast, pork chops, and in your coffee, you hadda have cream, not even half-and-half.”

  Joining her sister-in-law in this cholesterol-laden eulogy, Joey’s sister managed to make herself heard above the screaming of the little dog. “And butter. You ever see Joey eat a piece of toast? Butter! All butter. And take breakfast. Bacon and eggs, and I says to him, ‘Look, Joey, you’re Italian, for Christ’s sake, you never heard of the Mediterranean diet? Olive oil, Joey, screw all this butter, but—”

  “On toast?” the widow asked.

  “Carla, you always gotta take everything literally?”

  “Jeannine, shut up!” Lowering her chin, Carla gave the same order, long overdue, to the shrieking dog. “And you shut up, too, Anthony!”

  Al Favuzza, standing on my left, murmured something. The only word I caught was disrespect.

  After summoning the obsequious funeral director with one pointed glance, Guarini apparently gave the go-ahead for the service to begin. The funeral director whispered in the priest’s ear. Fumbling with a small black book, the priest found his page and began to move his lips, but I couldn’t hear him over the renewed yapping and screaming of Carla’s little dog, Anthony. The other people all seemed to follow the service, despite Anthony’s mockery of choir music; people crossed themselves in unison and showed no difficulty in responding whenever the inaudible priest paused. I kept my head respectfully bowed, while simultaneously watching Guarini in case he wanted me to do something about the dog. Indeed, it occurred to me that the obnoxious dog might be the real reason Guarini had wanted me here, possibly because I was one of the few people on earth capable of calmly removing the dog from Joey’s last rites instead of strangling the damned thing.

  Guarini didn’t so much as look at me. The dog kept barking. Just in back of me, two women I didn’t know conducted an off-again, on-again criticism of the proceedings.

  “No viewing! No wake! What kind of crummy idea of a funeral is that?”

  “Mavis, shut up,” her companion said. “It’s a beautiful day for a funeral, and the flowers are beautiful. Carla loves flowers, you know.”

  "Well, if Carla hadn’t been in such a hurry to get him in the ground,” Mavis said, “there’d be a decent crowd of people here to look at them.”

  “Would you not say ground?” the first woman said. “Who wants to think about it?”

  Al Favuzza grunted in apparent agreement. Turning my head, I saw that the Count’s face was green. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

  Feeling like the funeral director, I asked, “Are you all right?”

  Mavis, meanwhile, was saying, “Fact are facts! I mean, your soul goes to heaven or wherever, but your body—” Without saying a word, Favuzza sidled away from me, ran a short distance, and took refuge behind a tombstone. At that precise moment, Carla’s tiny dog, Anthony, finally fell silent, his screams replaced by the sounds of Favuzza’s retching. The priest seemed to be reaching the end of the brief service. The undertaker had moved toward the coffin. The widow, Carla, had removed the dog from her bosom and was now clutching him in her hands. Suddenly, with a wail, she took up the lament she
’d begun earlier. “Joey, Joey, Joey, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna live without you?”

  Behind me, Mavis or her companion whispered, “Drama queen. She rents too many videos.”

  “Joey, I should’ve never let you eat like that,” Carla went on. “I should’ve taken better care of you. What am I gonna do now?”

  One of the funeral reviewers behind me murmured an answer. “Run a flower shop. Enzio’s buying Carla a flower shop, you know that? She’s going to be a florist.”

  “Joey!” Carla persisted. “I can’t live without you!” With that, still clinging to the little dog, Carla made as if to throw herself onto Joey’s coffin and thus presumably into the ground with him. Before actually hurling herself forward, however, she flashed her eyes left and right. Only after having verified the presence of Guarini’s troops did she launch herself coffinward. Guarini’s bodyguards made no move to stop her. Who says it’s hard to get good help these days? If you’re a Mob boss, it can still be done. The bodyguards concentrated on Guarini and left it to the gargantuan twins to prevent Carla from committing suttee. With the same big, capable hands they’d so recently used to wrap Joey in plastic and raise his corpse, they grabbed Carla’s bare arms, thus triggering a fit of screaming and sobbing. They probably didn’t mean to hurt her. Still, Carla’s cries suddenly conveyed genuine pain, and— involuntarily, I’m sure—she released her grip on Anthony.

  Fanciers of toy breeds are convinced that these little guys are exceptionally attuned to their owners. More than Rowdy and Kimi are to me? I doubt it. Still, it’s true that when the bruisers put the brakes on Carla’s rush to Joey’s coffin, her toy dog gave every appearance of acting on her wishes by rocketing through the air and landing in the blossoms in the center of Joey’s coffin. The gravediggers had cleverly sized the opening in the ground to be just a bit longer and wider than its intended contents, and the pseudo-grass carpet masked the gap between the earth and the box. No matter how effectively disguised, the gap had to be there. And the dog was as small as a kitten.