A Big Little Life

pieces I’ve written. We began using photos of Trixie in the newsletter, adding funny captions. She wrote reviews of my forthcoming books, solemnly swearing that her praise could not be bought for cookies. Whenever a book failed to include a dog in at least a minor role, she gave it less than a five-star rating. I had so much fun creating Trixie’s singular manner of expression that eventually she would publish successful books “edited by” or “as told to” Dean Koontz.
    As someone with whom I did business and as someone who claimed to read and like my books, X received Useless News and became a fan of Trixie. Eventually, X returnedto California on a business trip, and we arranged a visit at the house before we went to lunch.
    Usually, on hearing the chimes, Trixie bolted to the front door, eager to see who had come calling. This time, she hurried into the foyer as usual, but as I opened the door, she turned and scampered away so fast that X failed to get a glimpse of her.
    I didn’t think much about this abrupt retreat. Perhaps she had heard someone open the pantry door in the kitchen, where her can of kibble was kept. She always assumed that no one could have any other purpose for entering the pantry except to get food for her.
    I welcomed X into the living room, we chatted for a bit, and then I called upstairs to Linda to find out if Trixie was with her. Trix indeed had retreated to that office, and I asked Linda to bring her down to the living room.
    Trixie descended the front stairs warily, but remained in the foyer while Linda came through the living room archway to say hello to X. She tried to return upstairs with Linda, but I said, “Trixie, here,” and she wouldn’t disobey me. She stepped hesitantly to the archway, her tail held low.
    Leaning forward in an armchair, X said, “Here, cutie, come give me a kiss.”
    After a quick glance toward our visitor, Trixie refused to look at X again, as if by doing so she would risk being turned to stone. As X continued to wheedle, Trixie’s ears seemed to droop as if all the cartilage had melted out ofthem, and she hung her head as she might have if she expected at any moment to be beaten.
    When she finally ventured into the living room, she slunk to me, where I sat on a sofa, and pressed up against my leg, as though for reassurance. If a large coffee table hadn’t stood between me and X, I don’t believe Trixie would have ventured out of the foyer.
    Having told X that the Trickster was people-loving, as friendly as any canine who ever lived, so friendly that she made Lassie seem like a savage attack dog, I found our girl’s behavior a little bit embarrassing. In retrospect, perhaps this development should have made me nervous. But I had known X for years by telephone, even if this was only our second face-to-face encounter. I had no reason to think that I was dealing with an individual whose appearance and whose reality were as different as a rose is different from a garlic bulb.
    I suggested to X that Trixie must not be feeling well, and I took her upstairs to Gerda. Thereafter, I drove X to lunch.
    At the restaurant, after ordering but before we had been served more than iced tea, X said, “After lunch, I want to take a tour of your beach house.”
    This statement struck me as somewhat forward, especially because it was delivered as a desire, almost as a demand, rather than as a request. Furthermore, X knew that I was on a deadline, working long days, and that to make up for the couple of hours we were taking for lunch,I would have to stay at the keyboard later into the night than usual.
    Referring again to that deadline, I suggested that perhaps we could tour the beach house the next time X was on the West Coast.
    “Just give me the address, directions, and the key,” X said, “and I’ll have a look at it on my own this afternoon.”
    Faintly but unmistakably, in my mind’s ear, I began to hear the shrieking violins that accompanied every slashing of the knife in Psycho.
    “Well,” I lied, “today isn’t a good day anyway, because the exterminator tented the house for termites. You can’t get inside.”
    We talked about termites for a while, and X revealed no peculiar thoughts about them or about insects of any kind, and then we moved on to the subject of mold and dry rot, which are also problems when you have a house on the water in a warm climate, and somehow we went from dry rot to chatting about recent movies. Minute by minute, the