Animal Appetite

wine, cocked her head, and sighed lightly. “Well, isn’t this just wonderful! Tell me, all of a sudden, are all of us free to earn our livings by pursuing our interests and following our missions? Do I, for example, get to cancel all tomorrow’s patients and spend the day researching whatever takes my fancy?”
    “You think”—I divided the remaining wine between Rita’s glass and mine—“that just because I love my work,
    I don’t really work at all.”
    “What I think,” said Rita, “is that you are failing to actualize your potential.”
    “My potential, Rita, is strictly canine.”
    “You’re scared,” she whispered. “You’re afraid you can’t do it.”
    “I can write about any damned thing I choose.” After emptying my glass, I added, “Even including, if need be, people!”
    “I bet you can’t!”
    “How much?” I demanded.
    “Five hundred dollars. Plus, of course, whatever you get paid for whatever it is you write. If, of course, you do.”
    I stretched my right hand across the table. Rita reached out with hers as if we were going to arm wrestle. If we had, the outcome would have been immediate and unambiguous. Rita has one Scottie, and I have two Alaskan malamutes. I’d have won hands down. Instead of arm wrestling, however, we shook on the deal.
    “Five hundred dollars,” Rita said, “for anything that has nothing to do with dogs.”
    “Nothing whatsoever,” I replied. “Five hundred dollars.” Then I rashly described the statue in the center of Haverhill.
    And that’s how I came to write about Hannah Duston.
     

Two

     
    The next morning, of course, I tried to weasel out of the bet. I persisted for the rest of the week. I was letting Rita off the hook, I told her. We’d both had a lot of wine. I’d been exhausted. If I’d been thinking straight, I would never have agreed. She was my friend. It would be wrong for me to take her money.
    There was no reason to believe that the deal would cost her a dime, she stubbornly replied. Or had I already finished the piece of writing I had contracted to produce? As to my unwillingness to accept her cash, I was, after all, a professional writer, wasn’t I? I didn’t just create for art’s sake, did I? Besides, a bet was a bet. We’d shaken on the deal. She was not letting me out.
    The dispute, I might mention, took place not in the smooth, continuous way I’ve presented it, but in staccato bursts. Arriving home from work, Rita would rap her signature tune on my door and merrily inquire about the progress I was making with Hannah Duston. Returning from a walk with her Scottie, Willie, she’d start in again, and Willie, as usual, would fly at my ankles and yap out what sounded remarkably like a translation of Rita’s challenge into the scrappy language of terriers. By Wednesday, I felt sorry for Rita’s patients. By Friday, I heartily pitied them. On Saturday morning as I hurried out of the house on my way to a bat mitzvah, I ran into Rita and finally relented. “But when I win this bet,” I warned her, “I am donating the money. I am not becoming the object of your charity.”
    Rita’s eyes crackled remarkably like Willie’s. “Splendid! It will give me great pleasure to know I’m rescuing homeless malamutes.” She paused. “As well as to read about Hannah Duston.”
    “This hostility is completely unlike you,” I snapped. “And totally unnecessary. Writing about Hannah Duston will be entirely my pleasure.”
    As it turned out, Marsha Goldbaum’s bat mitzvah offered me not just one, but two, independent opportunities to begin my research. It was also at Marsha’s bat mitzvah that I learned of the murder of Jack Andrews. I have, however, leaped ahead of myself. Marsha, I should first inform you, was what in Cambridge would be called a mentee of mine, meaning that her parents had hired me as her mentor in the world of dog obedience competition. A few years earlier, the family had bought a bright, charming sheltie—Shetland sheepdog, and, no, appearances to the contrary, never, ever “miniature collie.” The dog, Nickie, was supposed to be a family pet. To train him to be a good one, the Goldbaums sensibly enrolled Nickie in puppy kindergarten, where he and Marsha emerged as the stars of the class. (What is puppy kindergarten? I feel like a dope saying so, but remarkably enough, it’s kindergarten for puppies: rudimentary manners, socialization with people and other dogs.) To continue Nickie’s resume: