Bride & Groom

healing trauma, while all the while, she spent her personal life inflicting it. What she was, was a stinking little hypocrite. My poor friend is waltzing on her grave. And she isn’t the only wife, either.”
    “Sounds like there’ll be a chorus line.”
    “Oh, there will. There definitely will.”
     

CHAPTER 21
     
    From Monday through Thursday of that week, I was frantically busy. I finished my column for Dog’s Life, worked on the proposal for No More Fat Dogs, double-checked the plane and hotel reservations for our honeymoon, and did my usual volunteer work for Alaskan Malamute Rescue of New England, meaning that I answered E-mail and returned phone calls about malamutes in need of new homes. I also sketched a seating plan for what Gabrielle called “the wedding breakfast,” and Steve and I drew up a list of restaurants to consider for our rehearsal dinner. The “breakfast” would follow our afternoon wedding, and I saw no need to rehearse our simple service. Steve, however, having spoken with Gabrielle, explained that the point of the rehearsal was to provide an excuse for the mandatory dinner; therefore, we had to rehearse.
    On Tuesday, Rowdy and I went to a cable television studio in Woburn to tape a show about pet care. Liver authority that I was, I was supposed to be the featured guest and was so nervous that my hands got drenched in sweat. Rowdy regarded the studio as yet one more splendid showring erected for the sole purpose of allowing him to strut his gorgeous stuff. To my relief, he stole the show by kissing the interviewer and howling for the camera. On Thursday, Steve and I took Sammy and Rowdy to dog training.
    On Friday morning, I finally had time to get Rowdy to add his autograph to fresh copies of 101 Ways to Cook Liver. Working in our usual cooperative fashion, Rowdy and I had developed a paw-printing system that limited the amount of ink tracked throughout the house and minimized the number of books spoiled by smears or dirt. Our “usual cooperative fashion” consisted of my making sure that the entire undertaking was saturated with dog treats and was therefore to the big boy’s liking. At about ten-thirty, Rowdy was hitched to a kitchen cabinet with an old, stained leash. Stacked on the table were thirty copies of my book, each with a sheet of scrap paper inserted at the title page. Also on the table, on a thick pad of newspaper, was an ink pad that I’d moistened with a little water and repeatedly inked from a bottle. Near it, within my reach and out of Rowdy’s, was a pile of my homemade liver brownies. On the counter next to the sink rested the ink bottle, a dog dish full of warm, soapy water for washing Rowdy’s right paw, and a second dish of clear water for rinsing off the soap. A mop and a bottle of spray cleanser stood ready, as did a roll of paper towels and a dog crate lined with threadbare bath towels.
    Our eccentric book signing went smoothly. I popped a treat into Rowdy’s mouth, grasped his right leg with my left hand, raised his paw, and, using my right hand, pressed the ink pad against the bottom of his foot. I repeated the process until his paw was leaving dark marks on the tile floor. Then I re-inked his paw, held his leg in my left hand, wiped off my right hand, and used that clean hand to grab a book, open it to the title page, and shake the book lightly to allow the scrap paper to fall to the table. Chatting happily to Rowdy about what a good dog he was, I then held the title page just beneath his paw, pressed hard for about three seconds, removed the book, and re-inserted the scrap paper, which absorbed excess ink that would otherwise have smeared the facing page.
    “Good job! That’s a beauty!” I shoved food into his mouth, and off we went again. The trick, by the way, is to work fast. By the time we’d done all thirty books, Rowdy stood in a shallow pool of watery ink, and my worn-out, once-white running shoes were wet with ink, as were my holes-in-the-knees jeans, my knees themselves, and the cuffs of my ancient sweatshirt. That was when the front doorbell rang. Having sworn softly, I bellowed, “JUST A MINUTE!” My friends never use the front door. Delivery people do because my address is 256 Concord Avenue, and the front of the house is on Concord. Rowdy assumes, not unreasonably, that the front bell means a package from a kennel-supply company, a box that will contain toys and goodies for him. He bounced in the inky pool. I, in contrast,