Black Ribbon

it, to hold it, and to force it even momentarily to do your bidding. I’m serious: If you decided to lure it in, trap it, and boss it around even for one single fleeting moment, where would you begin? With an enticing bait, with an irresistible snare: life itself, and lots of it. Whose life? Anyone’s, everyone’s. Death cares not at all. Bankers will do, clerks, plumbers, salespeople, hairstylists, writers, dog trainers. Taken one by one and considered dispassionately, we—any and all of us —are a motley, humdrum lot, unprepossessing, weak; and when considered as potential raw material for any sort of spiritual purpose or higher goal, worse than unpromising, in fact, hopeless and helpless. And that’s true! When it comes to snagging death, we’re no good one by one. But occupations jettisoned, appearances discarded, our very individuality cast aside? Herein lies the power of the secret society: Banded together, spirits summed, essences merged, we’re the bait that death can’t resist. Tempted, allured, ensnared, death squirms, struggles, lashes out, takes the blows, cringes, and submits, the captor captive, the victor victim, the predator at last the prey.
    Metaphorically so, of course, or so I’d always been told. As I understood it, for instance, initiation into Freemasonry represented the strictly symbolic enactment of a battle, an ordeal, a test that pitted life against death, a ritual trial, its outcome predetermined, endlessly repeated, death and rebirth, death and rebirth, not even a fair fight, really, just an elaborately, if credibly, staged wrestling match in which a paid-off death invariably agreed to take the fall. But not this time! What fools we’d been! What dupes! How could we have been so stupid? How could we have trusted him? Had we honestly expected Death not to cheat?
    Behind the glass door of the old-fashioned phone booth tucked away at the back of the lobby, I nervously dialed my own phone number, listened with irritation to Leah’s recorded greeting, waited for the beep, and was starting to leave a worried, angry message when I heard her groggy voice.
    “Leah, haven’t you let Kimi out yet?” I demanded.
    “An hour ago,” she said.
    “You did wait for her.”
    “Yes, yes!”
    “And you are remembering—”
    “Everything! And just in case you wondered how I am—”
    I felt a pang of remorse. “Leah, I’m sorry. Everything here is... How are you? Is everything going okay?”
    “Fine, except that last night, Jeff brought over a pizza, and Kimi stole the whole thing, and by the time I got it away from her, she’d eaten half of it and slobbered over the rest of it, and then she grabbed the carton and ran into your bedroom and hid in that little space under the headboard of your bed, next to the wall—”
    “That’s where she always takes things,” I said placidly, “because—”
    “You’re not listening! I’m not done. It gets worse. So by the time I finally got her out, she’d chewed up most of the cardboard, and then after Jeff got back with the second pizza, she went into the bathroom and—this is really disgusting—she went into the bathroom, and she came out carrying—”
    “I don’t want to hear about it,” I declared. “Are you sure she’s all right?”
    “Kimi is just fine. She’s right here. I nearly died of embarrassment.”
    “Don’t say that!” I explained about Eva Spitteler. I also gave Leah an assignment. “Check Front and Finish ,” I told her, “and the Canine Companion. They might have something. But I think our best bet is Dog News. It seems to me that they really covered Passaic—I think there’s a whole article—and also check their gossip column, okay? And anything else you think of. Just scan as much as you can.” I finished by dictating a list of names: Max McGuire, Eric Grimaldi, Don and Phyllis Abbott, Cam and John R.B. White, Ginny Garabedian, Chuck Siegel, Sara, Heather. “And Myrna,” I concluded. “How many people are there named Myrna? She’s from New York or somewhere near there. And Jennifer something. She has a Doberman—working in Open, I think. Anything about Waggin’ Tail. And anything at all about Eva Spitteler. Or her dog.” I spelled Eva’s last name and told Leah to look for ads that Eva might have run for High In Tail; for Bingo’s name— either the call name or the registered name, Benchenfield Farmer’s Dog—and also for oblique references to an unnamed yellow Lab. “The whole thing