Bloodlines

her again.
    The door to the inside stairs opened, and Steve appeared. He’d rescheduled his morning surgery to give himself time to check out the golden and Missy. “The malamute’s overweight,” he told me. “Otherwise, she’s fine. Something could turn up later, and we should check a stool sample sometime, but that’s it.”
    “The golden?”
    Steve leaned against the door. His expression turned professional. He folded his arms and avoided my gaze.
    “Steve, I know you have to make these decisions sometimes, and I know she is just... she is so weak. I couldn’t tell if... Steve, if you have to...”
    “It’s not a question of euthanasia,” Steve said, taking a seat at the table. When he grins, his eyes narrow and, honest to God, they twinkle. A wave of exhaustion nearly knocked me over. Steve got serious. “We’re going to have to watch for eclampsia. And bitches like this are prone to mastitis. They’re getting her cleaned up now. I’ll take another look at her later. She’s emaciated, probably anemic, loaded with parasites. Holly, uh, who owns this dog?”
    “I do. For now, I own both of those dogs.” I hate lying to Steve. “They don’t exactly belong to me, but they belong with me. Is that good enough?”
    “For now,” he said.
    “Honest to God, Steve, I am too tired to tell you about it. Look, I cannot stay awake. I was just waiting to... it’ll be... it’ll probably be on the news tonight. Maybe it’s on the radio now. Steve, I’m going home. I’ll call you when I wake up. Can I... will you keep the malamute here? Just for a while?”
    He reached for my hair, squeezed, and dripped water on my face. “Not a chance,” he said. “The minute you’re gone, I’ll turn her loose on the street. It’s the kind of responsible veterinary practice I always run.”
    I can remember rejecting Steve’s offer of a pair of his size twelve shoes. I have a blurry memory of driving home in my stocking feet, or rather, with my feet in a pair of Steve’s socks. He’d assured me that if I didn’t wear my boots into the house, it was okay to expose myself to the dogs. I believed him, and, of course, I’d showered and changed my clothes, but I still felt contaminated. And desperately tired. When I entered my kitchen, Kimi and Rowdy went wild, but the scent of India and Lady on the blue-green baggies distracted them, and I managed to stay on my feet. While the dogs were in the yard, I remembered that when I’d been driving home, I’d forgotten to listen to the radio. Then the dogs came tearing in. I remember feeding them.
    At four-thirty in the afternoon, I awoke to the sound of heavy breathing and the sense that four happy brown eyes were trained on me. Rowdy was stretched out on the bed with his head on my pillow, and Kimi was sitting on the floor with her face about two inches from mine. When I stirred and opened my eyes, Kimi leaped over me and landed on Rowdy, who threw her a warning stare, growled, lunged, and ended up with his snarling jaws encircling her muzzle. She squirmed, kicked, flew through the air, landed on the floor, sprang back onto the bed, nipped at Rowdy’s ears, dashed to the far edge of the bed, and crouched. I wrapped my arms around my head and braced myself. Just as the iron bulk of Kimi’s body hit my back, Rowdy twisted around and kicked me hard with his hind legs, and then the two dogs became a single roaring mass of teeth and fur that abruptly disappeared from the bedroom, sped back, crashed into a wall, veered around, and vanished. Play, of course. This is how malamutes play. I sat up in bed. Every bone in my body ached. A pile of white dust lay on the floor beneath the new dent the dogs had made in the wall. Now and then it occurs to me that instead of taking all these handling and obedience classes, most of us should study something really useful to the dog owner, for example, plastering, auto reupholstery, or invisible weaving.
    Despite the shower at Steve’s, I still felt filthy, as if I’d breathed and drunk the evil stench of the puppy mill. The taste lingered in my mouth. My body smelled like rancid fat. I started to fill the bathtub with hot water and impulsively squirted in some foaming skin conditioner left by my cousin Leah on her last visit, but the rising bubbles reminded me of Diane Sweet and Walter Simms, so I drained the tub, stood under the shower, washed my hair twice, and scoured my body with soap. I rinsed off, wrapped myself in towels,