Black Ribbon

owner, trainer, and handler of Vanderval’s Tundra Eagle, CDX, a creature of stunning brilliance and commanding presence, and also, as it happens, not that I want to make a big deal of it or anything, not that I’m laying claim to a share of Tundra’s achievements, or Anna Morelli’s, either, but… Well, let me just mention in passing, simply as a matter of potential minor interest to canine genealogists, that Tundra and Kimi happen to be first cousins. Make of it what you will. Preferably two UDX’s, of course, but if you felt like tossing in a couple of OTCH’s, too, I wouldn’t exactly object, and neither, I’m sure, would Anna Morelli.
    When we reached Cam and Ginny’s table, I was a little surprised to find Joy and her G-man look-alike husband, Craig, there, too. “They,” Ginny said, apparently referring to Joy and Craig, “have a Cairn, and he’s been through basic obedience, and he has a nice temperament, and I’m telling them to go ahead and try the CGC test this afternoon.”
    Cam carefully set her plate on the table. “Sure,” she agreed. “You’ve got nothing to lose, except whatever it is, eight dollars or something. If he doesn’t pass this time, you find out what you have to work on, and you go home and work on it, and then one of these days you give it another try.”
    “Yes, go ahead,” I advised. “Nothing bad’s going to happen. It should be fun.” I finished layering a lot of cheap cold cuts and a great many paper-thin slices of cheese on the bottom half of a roll that looked soft and felt stale. I piled on tomatoes and near-white lettuce, and, on the theory that if you add enough grease, almost anything tastes good, I spooned on a big glob of mayonnaise. I put on the top half of the roll, pressed it down, lifted the sandwich to my mouth, and bit in. So much for the grease theory. I left the sandwich on my plate.
    I watched Craig swallow. In spite of the muscles, he had a prominent Adam’s apple. He wiped his lips. “Twenty,” he said. “Twenty dollars.”
    Ginny and I exclaimed in unison, “Twenty dollars?”
    “For a CGC test?” Ginny demanded.
    “That’s out of line,” I informed Craig. “In fact, I wonder if... Cam, does AKC set guidelines for that? For how much you can charge?”
    Too orderly a person to consume a messy salad-on-a-roll, Cam had avoided bread altogether and had arranged her food in as appetizing a fashion as the ingredients allowed. She applied her knife and fork to a slice of olive loaf, paused, shook her head, and said, “No, they don’t want to. What they say is, whatever you think is fair.”
    “Well, twenty dollars isn’t very fair,” I said.
    Cam nodded. “Charging a lot violates the spirit of it.”
    Joy looked bewildered. “So should we not, uh, put Lucky in?”
    Cam, Ginny, and I held a wordless consultation. Cam voiced our conclusion. “Go ahead, if you feel like it.”
    In apparent search of information about her own feelings, Joy looked timidly at Craig, who told her, “What the heck. It’s vacation.”
    I tried to remember the last time I’d heard a man Craig’s age use the word heck. It occurred to me that Craig and Joy might be churchgoers and that either he or Joy might find a casually spoken hell offensive or blasphemous.
    “Are you sure?” Joy’s manner induced in me what I believe is called a “clang” association: Joy, coy.
    Craig nodded. Joy beamed. “I’d better go get Lucky ready,” she said.
    “Will you excuse us?” Craig asked.
    Cam nodded. When Joy and Craig had left, she said, “Nice people. They deserved a decent dog.”
    “They didn’t know any better.” I thought for a second. “I hope nobody tells them how awful-looking the dog is.”
    “Oh,” Ginny said, “Eva Spitteler probably has, you know. That’s how she goes through life: saying awful things to people. And about people, too. What do you want to bet that’s what she’s doing right now? I’ll bet you anything she’s over there with Eric Grimaldi telling him terrible things about me. I’m getting coffee. You want some?”
    “Is there dessert?” Cam asked.
    “Rice pudding,” Ginny said.
    Cam had as little interest in rice pudding as I did, but we both accepted Ginny’s offer to bring coffee. When Ginny had departed, I said, “You know, Eva really does go around saying awful things about her.”
    “Eva says awful things about everyone. It’s a miracle that no one’s taken that woman to court.”
    “Ginny could