I also discovered, through perspicacious detective work, that Sky had a dozen tennis balls, all mint scented—and those were just the ones that had been packed for the trip—that he shed as profusely as a Samoyed in spring, or fall, come to think of it; that he ate organic dog food; and that his mistress wore underpants made from undyed, bleach-free organic cotton, not a pair of skimpy silk bikinis in sight, leopard or otherwise. “You’re going to believe what you’re told?” Frank used to say. “Find another way to earn a living.”
Two people from a New Jersey shelter and six breeders were retrieving their now-well-mannered puppies up on the stage, and Cathy was standing at the edge of the apron answering questions. I walked up onstage, petted a few of the puppies, and handed Cathy her room key. She slipped it into her jacket pocket as she kept answering questions and handing out her business card, too absorbed in her adoring fans to take any notice.
As I walked off the stage and back to where I’d left Dashiell on a down-stay, I noticed Chip and Woody talking to trainers in the rear of the auditorium. Beryl was on her way out the door with Cecilia when I got there.
“It’s off to the park, dear. Do you and your boy want to join me?”
“No lunch?”
She patted her stomach. “Too many lunches, I’m afraid. I made an awful pig of myself at breakfast as well. At my age, the metabolism doesn’t do what it used to. It hardly seems to do anything at all.
“Throughout my twenties,” she said as we walked through the lobby, “I could drink a milk shake if I was thirsty and not gain an ounce. Now”—she rolled her eyes—“well, you can see what happens now. I’ll probably gain a pound skipping lunch and walking Cecilia in the park.”
We crossed at the corner and walked uptown along the outside of the park until we reached an entrance. Then we turned east and headed for a grassy area where we could keep watch for the park patrol and let our dogs play off leash.
“My Carl liked big dogs,” she said. “Bullmastiffs. I prefer the little ones, border terriers. I like their energy, the way they fling themselves into life with such enthusiasm over the least little thing.”
We stood and watched Cecilia run, with Dashiell following behind her.
“Although I did quite fancy Charles.”
“Charles?”
“The bullmastiff, dear.”
“Oh.”
“Then, so very suddenly, Carl was gone, and by the time I sold his practice, Charles was gone too.”
“How did it happen?”
“Bloat,” she said.
“I meant Carl.”
“Oh, I see, yes, of course you did, dear. It was his heart.”
“So it was quick?”
“A complete surprise. And afterward, I took our little one and went home. But you already know that part, don’t you, love?”
I nodded. “Was that when you became a dog trainer?”
“Oh, no, Rachel. I’ve always been a dog trainer. My mother used to say that my teething ring was a feed pan. My father was a veterinarian too, and my mother bred Irish terriers, wild things they were, so full of the devil. I adored them.
“As far back as I can recall, I was teaching the dogs, manners and commands, tricks, tracking, anything I could. I had one, Hubert, who I taught to ride a three-wheeler, clever thing. The dogs were my companions, my dearest friends. And when you learn on terriers, well, dear, you can train anything, anything at all, so while I was still quite young, eleven or twelve, neighbors began to ask me to straighten out their pets for them and paying me to do so. It was, I think, a perfect childhood.”
“Time for leashes.” I pointed out the green truck of the park rangers, visible as it passed on the other side of the trees that grew at the edge of the grassy hill where the dogs were playing. We called them to us, hooked on the leashes, and headed for the path.
“Hello, there.” The voice was breathless. Someone had been running. “I see I’m not the only one skipping lunch,” she said, the little pug puffing along behind her. “It’s too much food, isn’t it?”
“Yes, dear. I was just saying that very thing to Rachel. Walking is a lot better for the waistline. Besides, no doubt Samantha has another feast set for this evening.”
Dashiell stopped to sniff Magic’s rear and genitals, and then stood motionless, not even his tail moving, as she sniffed his, the traditional doggy handshake. When we turned onto an isolated dirt path, we let the dogs off leash again.
“I can’t believe what’s been happening here,” Audrey said. She picked up her hank of thick, dark hair and twisted it around in her hands nervously. “These accidents.”
But before Beryl or I could respond, we saw Tracy up ahead with Jeff.
“It seems we left Samantha and Cathy with all those good-looking men,” Beryl said.
“What’s left of them,” Audrey said. “I don’t know if I can—”
“Of course you can, Audrey. If you don’t speak, the rest of us will have to carry an even bigger load.”
Jeff spotted the dogs and came running, his tail wagging. Tracy turned and waved, heading our way.
“She’s perfectly right, dear,” Beryl said. “Grace under pressure is the mark of a true professional. ‘Chin up, dear girl.’ That’s what my mother used to tell me. ‘Soldier on,’ she’d say, ‘no one wants to hear you snivel, so just get over it.’ She’d say that no matter what it was. And I believe she was correct. It’s the best thing for you, to plunge ahead, do what’s expected of you; it’s absolutely therapeutic.”
Audrey took a big breath. “I know you’re right. I’ll tell Sam I’ll speak tomorrow afternoon.”
“Brilliant. You’re exactly what we need, too. Meditation. Good for the soul.”
“Are you talking about Audrey’s talk?” Tracy asked. “Oh, please say you’re doing it. You’re one of the reasons I came.”
“We’d best head back, dears. It’s getting to be that time.”
“Who’s speaking this afternoon?” Tracy asked. “I forgot to look.”
“Boris Dashevski,” Beryl told her, and we all groaned.
“Audrey, would you do the walking chant on the way back? It’ll make us all feel so good,” Tracy said. “Is that okay with you guys?” she asked me and Beryl.
“Certainly,” Beryl said.
“I’d love it,” I told them, hoping no one I knew was in the park. For a hard-boiled New Yorker, being seen chanting in Central Park would be almost as bad as being spotted waiting on line for the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building or catching a breeze on the ferry that went to Liberty Island.
Audrey Little Feather stopped, closed her eyes, and moved her arms in circles, the way old ladies do at the beach, splashing handfuls of water on their sunburned bosoms, chanting about what a blessing the coolness is with each splash.
After a moment Audrey’s eyes opened, and her arms were still. Magic was sitting right in front of her, looking adoringly at her face. I thought about the way Dashiell always comes close when I practice t’ai chi, wanting to bathe in the sea of moving energy.
“Ah la,” Audrey sang, her voice as clear and poignant as the call of a bird looking for a mate. “Ah la.”
And so we walked back toward Central Park West, “ah la,” the dogs running ahead, lagging behind, chasing each other in circles around us. Audrey reached out her hands for ours. I took one, Tracy the other, and then Tracy reached for Beryl’s hand. We couldn’t fit four abreast on the narrow walk. Instead we moved in a wavy line, holding each other’s hands and chanting as we worked our way back to the Ritz.
Something funny happened in the park. I began to feel a pleasant buzz, the mantra sweeping through me and leaving a feeling of serenity in its wake. I no longer felt silly about chanting in the park, no longer cared if someone I knew spotted me. I was starting to like these women too, even when that meant getting past a training method I didn’t think much of. There was a generosity here, and camaraderie.
The fighting that had been going on
since we got here was mostly among the men. Males were, after all, the major perpetrators of violent crimes. They were more prone to aggressive outbursts, less likely than women to talk things out. Or work things out. They were more competitive, too.
That was also the way it was in most other species of animals, certainly among any of the Canidae. For wolves, survival is based on competition. When there isn’t enough food to go around, the fact that the stronger, smarter, and therefore higher-ranked animals eat first ensures the survival of the species.
Were we more like animals than we wanted to admit, sleeping in a heap with our dogs for the physical comfort of another warm body, putting up with nearly unbearable unhappiness rather than choosing to live alone, the way my sister was doing, the way Chip seemed to be doing? In the wild, a lone wolf would not survive, unless he was somehow able to get himself accepted by another pack. More often than not, he’d find no takers. Wasn’t that true for us, too, especially as we grew older?
I’d been thinking these “accidents” might be the work of a black widow spider, one who wore leopard underwear, underwear I didn’t believe belonged to my clever employer. But maybe she was right about one thing, that the mating practices of the species had nothing at all to do with the deaths.
So what was happening here? Were the “accidents” the results of one of the men killing off the competition in order to safeguard his own survival? Wasn’t it exactly that fear that had inspired Sam to hire me? Perhaps one of the seemingly civilized wolves she’d brought together found himself unable to stop at scent-marking and posturing in order to assure himself that the territory was his, that he was top dog after all.
15
BORIS TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
“What could you have been thinking, pally, telling all those people that taking the dog away from the owner and correcting the hell out of it is the only way to begin a consultation?” Bucky was pointing a fat finger at Boris. “You’re one of the reasons why this profession has a bad name,” he shouted.
“Boris is only one here who is honest.” He drained his third glass of merlot, stabbed his tofu steak with his fork, and then let go. The fork he’d been holding in his bandaged hand fell over sideways, taking the tofu with it and making a jarring sound as it hit the edge of the plate. “You like to put on kind face for owners, train with treats, handkerchiefs, toys. Boris tells it like it is.”
“You mean like it was,” Bucky said. “Yank ’em, spank ’em. Jesus. Hasn’t anything that’s happened in the last fifty years touched you?”
“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 o
f 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.
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