A Big Little Life

year, but X started calling twice a week. Linda fielded all of this with her customary courtesy and patience, but X soon demanded to talk to me—and started ringing before Linda arrived for work or when she might be at lunch, hoping I would be alone and answering my office phone. Being sent to voice mail offended X. We were, after all, going to be partying together next summer, hanging out with a bunch of beach bums and radical dudes, having the best time of our lives.
    Without giving the reason, I severed my business relationship with the company that employed X, after which we had no reason to talk. Nonetheless, the calls continued for a couple of years—as did demands for free books to be sent to people who were delighted to have met my best friend, X, and were further delighted to hear that they would never again have to buy my novels.
    When I had let X into our house that fateful day, Trixie took one whiff before the door was half open, probably did not even get a glimpse of this person, but understood at once that a deranged individual loomed at the threshold. She scampered away to hide and, when compelled to put in an appearance, would not allow herself even to be touched by the visitor.
    I never again doubted her judgment of anyone, and eventually I came to trust her judgment of other dogs, as well.
    Gerda and I had gone to dinner with Trixie on the patio of a Balboa Island restaurant on at least fifty occasions, sometimes just the three of us, often with friends. She had always been the perfect child, causing no disturbance of any kind.
    Then on a warm August night, when every table on the patio was occupied with customers, our girl glimpsed a dog on the farther side of the street, half a block away,with its master. Her hackles rose. She sprang to her feet and barked ferociously three times.
    She was an exceptionally feminine girl and as gentle as a bunny rabbit, but her voice sounded as big and fierce as that of a 120-pound German shepherd on steroids. Her first bark caused the diners at the other tables to jump half out of their chairs.
    I snared her collar, pulled her head close to me, and clamped her mouth shut with my right hand. Employing the command to stop barking, which I had never used before, I said, “Quiet.”
    She growled through this makeshift muzzle, but settled when I repeated, “Quiet.” She tried to press her tongue between her teeth to lick my fingers. Knowing that she would be silent now, I let go of her.
    To the other diners, who were all looking at us as if wondering which among them would be the first to be eaten, I said, “I’m sorry for the disturbance. We’ve brought her here dozens of times, and she never before barked.”
    A man at one of the farther tables said, “No problem. She’s a good dog, and she knows a bad one when she sees it. That beast she barked at is extremely dangerous. It’s attacked smaller dogs, and everyone who lives on the island is afraid of it for good reason.”
    Trixie had tried to warn me that X was deranged. Now she warned off the neighborhood canine bully.
    We ordered her a plain, broiled chicken breast.
    Trixie not only had a nose for trouble, but she never hesitated to stand up to trouble, as well.
    When we lived in Harbor Ridge, each morning we followed the same route for Trixie’s morning walk: out of our cul-de-sac and then south along Ridgeline, the cleverly named street that followed the top of the ridge. If we went north on Ridgeline, we came at once to a long steep hill that didn’t offer Trixie the kind of terrain on which she preferred to toilet. Since potty was the first priority of the walk, south was the sole viable choice.
    A block and a half from our house, on Ridgeline, a new family moved in with the biggest rottweiler we had ever seen. In the early morning, this brute—call him Big Dog—lay on a balcony that, because of some peculiar architecture, hung only seven feet off the ground. As we approached on the public sidewalk, which lay perhaps twenty feet from the balcony, Big Dog acted as if he had seen Jurassic Park and was a velociraptor wannabe. Saliva foaming from his mouth, he barked and snarled. He threw himself repeatedly against the balcony railing, which shook with every impact as if it would splinter into a million I-Ching sticks.
    Because Trixie had once been bitten by a bad dog, Gerda and I—and Linda on the weekday afternoon walks—carried pepper spray to defend against another attack. This repellent