Bride & Groom

instead of radiating the breed’s characteristic sunniness of temperament, Rowdy kept glaring at me as if summer were my fault, and Kimi was too wilted to mark utility poles and fire hydrants in the male-like fashion of self-confident female malamutes.
    “Ma femme n’aime pas la chaleur,” said Steve. Translation: My wife does not like the heat. He had supposedly been studying conversational French by listening to tapes. We were getting married on September 29 and honeymooning in Paris—and no, we did not choose our wedding day only because it was the date when we expected our dogs to have quit shedding. Anyway, instead of mastering common phrases and expressions that would be useful in ordering food and asking directions, Steve had learned to say exactly one thing in French, namely, the sentence he’d just uttered.
    “I’m not your femme yet,” I said sourly. “I’m your fiancée.”
    “When we get to France, you’ll be ma femme. ”
    I’d be Steve’s second femme. More than a year earlier, after we’d been together for ages, I’d split us up. On the rebound, Steve had married the grossly misnamed Anita Fairley, fair being the last thing she was, unless you count her appearance. In fact, she was an embezzler-lawyer who hated dogs. But Anita really was beautiful, whereas I bear what always strikes me as an unwelcome resemblance to a golden retriever, the breed that raised me. Anita was as nasty to Steve’s dogs as she was to him. The marriage was brief. Sammy, Steve’s malamute puppy, had brought us back together.
    Steve’s divorce had become final on August 2. We’d celebrated by taking all five of our dogs to Acadia National Park. The location was admittedly somewhat weird, since Bar Harbor, Maine, was where Steve and Anita had gone immediately after their city-hall wedding and where I’d learned of their marriage and first met Anita. But damned if that bitch—a term I ordinarily use in its dog-technical sense— was going to ruin Acadia for me. Besides, my stepmother, Gabrielle, owned a big house on Mount Desert Island, and I was always welcome to use Gabrielle’s guest cottage. It wouldn’t have been easy to find » motel that would’ve accepted all those dogs, nor would it have been easy to share one room with the five of them, especially because my Kimi resented the perfection of Steve’s German shepherd bitch, India, and displayed her own imperfection by frightening Steve’s timid pointer bitch, Lady, the term bitch being used in its proper and inoffensive canine sense to mean nothing more than female. Also, we drove to Maine on July 31, and I might’ve shared a room, but wouldn’t share a bed, with Steve until August 2. I’m not all that moral, but I am proud: I couldn’t see myself as an adulteress.
    So, on the Great Divorce Day, we celebrated by hiking up Sargent Mountain. The four adult dogs, Rowdy, Kimi, India, and Lady, wore dogpacks filled with bottled water, liver treats (what else?), first-aid kits, and two fat lobster rolls crammed between cold packs. When we reached the top of Sargent, Steve amazed me by producing four items he’d snuck into India’s pack. Steve was not a sneaky person. Anything but. Furthermore, although he was rigidly law-abiding and knew that alcohol was illegal in the park, his secret stash included a split of champagne and two wineglasses. Crystal. Not plastic. The fourth item was an engagement ring. In defiance of his undramatic, even self-effacing, character, he tried to drop to his knees to propose, but Sammy assumed that he was initiating play, as, in a sense, he was, and Steve ended up asking me to marry him while I was extricating him from beneath the large and joyful puppy. It was not the first time Steve had asked me to marry him. But it was the first time I’d said yes.
    As to the words Steve spoke, what he said was, “As husband material, I’m nothing special, but I’m a damned good veterinarian. And I love you. I love your dogs. I even love your ugly cat. Marry me. You’ll never pay vet bills again.”
     

CHAPTER 2
     
    A big double-sided chalkboard on the sidewalk in front of The Wordsmythe invited passersby to a launch party with Dr. Mac McCloud and Holly Winter. I am not petty enough to report that Mac’s name was printed in far larger letters than mine. Prominently displayed in the shop window were five copies of 101 Ways to Cook Liver, at least fifty copies of Ask Dr. Mac, and a poster-size glossy color photograph of a