Bloodlines

someone who should never own a dog at all.
    So I knew I had to go to Puppy Luv, but I didn’t quite trust myself. Was I afraid I’d shoot the salespeople, ransack the place, and steal the puppy? I’m not sure, but I definitely didn’t trust myself. So I called someone I do trust, Steve Delaney, who is Rowdy and Kimi’s excellent vet and my equally excellent lover, but, in this context, as one says here in Cambridge, a person who can be relied on to discourage a companion from shooting salespeople, ransacking pet shops, and shoplifting small malamutes.
    “Steve, there’s supposed to be a malamute for sale at Puppy Luv,” I said breathlessly, “and if I go there alone, at a minimum, I’ll make a scene, and I need you to make sure the puppy’s at least healthy.”
    Steve has a rumbly voice. “Good morning,” he said slowly. “Last night was great for me, too.”
    “Yes,” I said. It took me years to master this kind of seductive patter. Just imagine my pillow talk. “So meet me there when you finish for lunch, at what? Noon? Twelve-fifteen? It’s in that sort of shabby little shopping mall near the—”
    “I know where it is. Holly, you aren’t going to buy—”
    “Of course not. I’ve written about it a thousand times, okay? The puppies will be all right. It’s the breeding stock that suffers.” You know about that, don’t you? Twenty-five hundred licensed puppy mills in this country, another twenty-five hundred unlicensed, only that can’t be right, can it? Because there are four thousand just in Kansas, and Missouri is worse. I know all the stats. Ninety percent of puppy mills are filthy, close to a hundred percent of pet shop dogs come from puppy mills, pet shops sell about half a million dogs a year, and when you buy a puppy from a pet shop, all you do is perpetuate the suffering of the breeding animals. “I know!” I said. “I write about this!” I thought for a second and added feebly, “Or I try.”
    “Holly, you’re going to have a real hard time seeing that puppy and walking out. Are you sure you want to do this?”
    “That’s the point! I don’t want to do it. Steve, please come with me. I don’t want to go all alone. I need you. Please come with me. The puppy could be sick. He might need help. Please .”
    “Twelve-fifteen,” he conceded. “On the sidewalk outside.”
    “Beautiful. And Steve? Uh, don’t dress like a vet.” He laughed and asked what that was supposed to mean.
    “You remember that sweater your mother gave you for Christmas?” I said. “Did you put it in the Saint Vincent de Paul?”
    Just off Concord Avenue, a few blocks from my house, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul maintains a large collection box in which prosperous Cantabrigians deposit wearable presents they don’t like. When Steve opened his mother’s Christmas package, saw the sweater, and said, “Huh. Saint Vincent de Paul,” I suggested that he attach a stamped envelope addressed to his mother so that the true recipient could thank her for the gift, but he refused. Steve’s main objection to the sweater was the crocodile. He said that his own mother should know that he didn’t specialize in exotic pets and that whoever ended up wearing the sweater probably didn’t, either, and wouldn’t be any more grateful than he was.
     

3
     

     
    Puppy Luv occupied one of ten or twelve storefronts in a uniform strip of low, plate-glass-fronted shops erected twenty or thirty years ago and evidently intended as the acorn from which a mighty shopping oak would sprout. The vacant lots on both sides and in back had even been plowed under and left fallow. The developer must have expected to add a branch of Filene’s or Jordan’s or a Star Market, some large enterprise to attract heavy spenders whose late-model cars would fill the black-topped acre that yawned between the dull shops and the tedious street. As it was, this nameless would-be mall looked like a seedy desert motel with oversize rooms and unwashed windows left curtainless for the pleasure of exhibitionist guests and voyeurist passersby.
    Well, there was ample parking. On that zero-degree, snowless, electric-blue-skied morning in February, I could have left the Bronco right in front of Puppy Luv, but just in case a pet shop employee happened to stroll by as I got out, I cruised past the pet shop, kept going, and parked in a remote corner of the cracked blacktop lot. I intended to visit Puppy Luv as someone other than who I am,