Bloodlines

you?”
    “Yes,” I said as I scanned a display of leather leashes and a stack of overpriced Kennel Cabs. “I’m interested in dogs.” So, okay. Maybe it was a bit of an understatement, but it was no lie.
    By comparison with Diane Sweet, the sandy-haired guy had no talent for sales, or maybe he lacked training. All he did was lead me past a couple of closed doors and into the kennel area. He didn’t put a puppy in my arms or assure me that I’d recoup the purchase price of a bitch the first time I bred her. He didn’t pretend that the puppies reacted to me in some astonishingly special way. He didn’t offer a puppy at cut rate, and he didn’t suggest a buy-on-credit plan. He didn’t do a thing except leave me alone with the best sales representatives God ever created.
    Which breeds, right? Was yours there? Okay. Mini dachshund, mini schnauzer, Doberman, Dalmatian, Lhasa Apso, Shih Tzu, poodle, collie, sheltie, and Norwegian elkhound. So far so good? Westie, Yorkie, English springer spaniel, Brittany, basset, chow, German shepherd, and Rottweiler. Look, wouldn’t you rather not know? Well, okay. The cockers, of course. A Boston terrier, who looked healthier than the one at Puppy Luv. One Kees and a lone Scottie, too, a half-grown male with a twisted rear leg. A litter of Siberian huskies not a day over five weeks old. A Siberian is pretty close to a malamute, huh? When I first caught sight of those little balls of gray fluff, my heart began to race. Then I took in the high-set ears, the fox tails, and the blue eyes, and I felt a surge of sick relief. Disgusting, right? Breed doesn’t matter. Puppies aren’t fully immunized until they’re four months old, and at five weeks, any puppy needs frequent, loving social contact with people as well as protection from the diseases of other dogs. But relief was what I felt. I know. I am ashamed.
    Anyway, having finished my meditation on My Own Brucie and the fall and rise of the cocker spaniel, I made my way past the open door of an office and back to the pet supply showroom, where the plaid-shirted young guy was perched on a stool behind the checkout counter talking into the receiver of a beige wall phone.
    “Yeah,” he said. He paused, listened, and said, “Yeah.” Then he repeated the gist of his previous remarks, listened for a good half minute, and again said, “Yeah,” but added, “We breed all our dogs here.” After he’d said “Yeah” a few more times, he hung up.
    “I couldn’t help overhearing,” I said. “You breed all these puppies here?”
    “Yeah,” he said. His face was empty of expression.
    I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.
    “Do you have any, uh, Alaskan malamutes?” I asked. “There aren’t any....” I gestured toward the kennels.
    His voice was as flat as his face. “Nope.”
    “Well, do you ever?”
    “Not now,” he said.
    The door to the office I’d passed closed with a sudden bang, and a sharp female voice rang out: “Ronald, go and sweep the grooming area! And then clean the water bowls, and I mean wash them and fill them. Don’t just add water.”
    Ronald started to speak. “Mrs. Coakley—”
    My face must have registered surprise, but Ronald and the woman were glaring at one another, not looking at me. The Mrs. Coakley? But maybe not. Her standards of personal hygiene seemed perfectly ordinary. Her short, straight black hair had a clean gleam, someone had ironed her soft-red chamois shirt and tan cords, and her black Reeboks looked new. Despite her pinched mouth and close-set eyes, she had a pretty face, with delicate features and high cheekbones. At a guess, she was in her late twenties.
    “Ronald, just do it!” she commanded. Then she turned to me and extended a small, tidy hand with neat pink-buffed oval nails. “We don’t happen to have malamutes at the moment,” she said in a gracious talking-to-customers tone, “but we have some darling little huskies.”
    Dog people, of course, say Siberians.
    “I just wondered,” I said. “Uh, Ronald—”
    “Ronald is on his way out. Good help is not that hard to find. The sign goes up today.” Mrs. Coakley’s head bobbed with assurance. The big brass button earrings on her ears danced like marks of emphatic punctuation. “I can get you a malamute,” she added. “I can get you any kind of AKC puppy you want. Or if it was a rare breed you wanted, I can get that, too.”
    The temptation was great. A Karelian bear dog? I wanted to ask. A