“Here’s my proposition, friend; tell ya what I’m gonna do ...”
–Sid Stone, “Texaco Star Theater” (NBC)
WE LEFT THE HOUSE the back way and headed toward the kennels. Debbie did not let go of my hand. She was being friendly to the point of coquettishness. Keeping in practice, probably.
“You look wonderful, Matt. Heredity or not, New York agrees with you.”
“You look pretty terrific yourself,” I told her. “The whole family looks well. Grant should be prosecuted for exceeding the handsome limit, but there’s nothing new about that.”
“Flatterer,” she said. She tossed her yellow hair around her as if to shake the compliments from it. Her face brightened. “How about Brenda? Isn’t she turning into a beauty?”
“Has turned, I think.”
Debbie nodded. “It’s a good thing I’m going to be an old married lady. I wouldn’t want to start bringing dates around anymore with her in the house. I mean, she was always pretty, but with her ... condition, she’s always had a tendency to be a little fat.”
“She didn’t look fat the last time I saw her.”
“Oh. When was that?”
Oops. Cobb steps in another one. That stupid engagement party would have been a good topic to leave alone. “Ah, a couple of years ago when I, ah, came up for—”
“Oh, then.” Debbie waved a hand to show me she didn’t mind my mentioning it. “She’d already started trimming down by then. She was just a little plump.
“But now she’s great,” Debbie went on. “I’m so proud of her. She watches her diet and exercises—Dan helps her with that. He is a darling, isn’t he, Matt?”
I looked at her. All I trusted myself to say was “Yes.” It occurred to me that she was daring me to make something of it. I left it alone.
“Anyway,” Debbie went on, “it’s done wonders for her. She used to brood about her leg a lot, call herself a freak and a cripple and things like that, but she doesn’t anymore.”
I had two reactions to that, neither of which I voiced. One, if I were to lose a leg, I might not cry constantly in public, but I don’t think many weeks would pass without my having brooded about the situation at least once. Two, a person who has stopped brooding about something does not mention that something twice in the first thirty seconds of a conversation, the way Brenda had that afternoon.
I smiled all the way through the kennels. One Samoyed can be beautiful, but dozens of them all at once are silly: animated white puffballs, punctuated with black dots for noses and eyes and occasional flashes of pink when mouths were opened.
Dan met us and took us to Spot, who’d already made himself at home in his new luxurious surroundings. He did seem happy to see me, but there was no trace of “get me out of here” in his behavior.
Debbie dropped to one knee and scratched Spot’s throat with one hand while she examined him with the other. It was a brief business, but while it was going on, I could see a different Debbie—no more poses of any kind, just a competent young woman doing a job she liked to do.
Dan saw it, too. “Well?” he asked. “How good a job is Matt doing as foster master?”
She kept her attention on Spot while she answered. “Excellent,” she said. “Really excellent. His coat is magnificent, his teeth are perfect. Beautiful conformation, even if he is the slightest bit undersized for a male his age.” Debbie looked up at me. “I remember you told me once, Matt, that you never had a dog when you were a child.”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head. “Well, you must just come by it naturally. And Rick and Jane have done their part as well. This is a magnificent animal.” She ruffled Spot’s fur. “Magnificent!” she told him. “A magnificent animal!”
Spot is a pushover for flattery; he never gets tired of hearing how beautiful he is. He began to thank Debbie in his customary way, with a big, disgusting slurp job on her face. He’d only dragged his tongue across her cheek once or twice, though, when he pulled his head back, made that snuffling noise dogs make when they have something in their mouths they don’t like, gave Debbie a dirty look, and trotted over to his water dish, where he began lapping noisily.
I was laughing. “This is a first,” I told Debbie. “He usually loves the taste of makeup. The oil in it or something, I suppose. It restricts the women I can bring home to the ones who don’t mind having their makeup licked off.”
“By Spot you mean?” Dan asked, and everybody laughed, including Debbie, who had seemed a little more upset than necessary.
“He ... he wouldn’t like this makeup,” Debbie said. I thought I caught a touch of ruefulness in her voice.
“So you really think I’m doing a good job?” I asked.
“Yes, I do.” She had her hand to her face where Spot had licked it, as if his tongue had burned her. She turned her head away for a second, looked at her fingers, glanced at Dan for a second, then looked at me with her rich-girl smile back in place.
“Yes, I do, Matt,” she said, and she was back to the way I’d always known her. Still, it was interesting, after all these years, to get a glimpse of the girl Dan had fallen in love with.
We walked back to the house. Debbie and I did all the talking, which was unusual with Dan around, but then he had a lot on his mind. He certainly looked as though he had a lot on his mind. He walked a little ahead of Debbie and me with his head down and his hands in his pockets. He would have been kicking at pebbles if the Whitten groundskeepers had been so slovenly as to allow any pebbles to be present.
Debbie still wanted to talk about Spot. “I’m very happy about the way he looks, Matt. You might run him a little more to tone up his muscles into tip-top shape, but other than that, he’s perfect.”
Then she had a proposition for me, or rather, for Spot. “Listen, Matt, let’s breed him!”
“Now?” It was a stupid remark, but it was the first thing that jumped into my head. My brain frequently surprises me that way; I hear myself saying things I have no awareness of having thought of. Out of every thousand times it happens, the ratio breaks down to 800 stupidities, 198 serendipities, and 2 flashes of brilliance.
Debbie answered the question, stupid or not. “No, tomorrow. Vanilla—she’s our prize bitch—is coming into heat, and we haven’t been able to find anyone really terrific to breed her with. They’re related in just the right way, too, so it will be good for the gene pool. I’ll even supervise it myself. What do you think?”
I told her to go ahead; it wasn’t as if Spot were the one who was going to get pregnant, sticking me with a bunch of puppies to worry about.
“You want to come watch?” Debbie asked me.
I was put off for a second, a little anthropomorphism at work. Then I thought, what the hell, it’s not as if the dogs mind, and besides, Spot has been known to sneak in where he wasn’t wanted and watch me doing it. Let him see what it feels like.
“Okay, if I can make it. I’ll be tied up in the first session of that hearing tomorrow until late afternoon.”
“Can you be here by four o’clock or so?”
I told her I thought so, but you never could tell. It was arranged that if it looked as if I was going to be too late, they could start without me.
Then she invited me to stay for dinner, but I told her I had to bone up for the meeting tomorrow. I have become a very good liar through diligent practice.
“In fact, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience, I’d like to borrow Dan. There are some technical computer questions that are going to come up, and I’d like him to vet my answers.”
Dan looked at me quizzically, but he saw I wasn’t fooling and fell in with the gag.
We agreed to make it tomorrow night, after the dogs got through. Back at the house, Grant seemed to be glad Dan and I weren’t going to be hanging around, Brenda mad (she’d spent her time getting prettied up for us, apparently), and the old man indifferent.
I didn’t much care. There were all sorts of currents flying around that house, and I wasn’t going to wire myself up as a conductor for any more of them until my old pal had had a chance to let me know just what the hell they all meant.