Bride & Groom

the author welcomes almost any demonstration of high regard, even if, as in this case, the demonstrative individuals don’t buy her book. Gazing into the adoring eyes of my worshipful public, I realized that I should have brought Sammy the pup along, too. Sammy, having eaten several copies of 101 Ways to Cook Liver, knew it inside out, and if he’d disliked it to begin with, he’d hardly have gone back for second helpings. The dog writer’s hymn: “You’ll Never Sign Alone.”
    Mac had warned me about the signing and had himself declined the invitation on the grounds that no one would come. He had, however, advised me to accept. According to Mac, chain bookstores in downscale strip malls were always devoid of shoppers during a signing, but the autographed books did, in fact, sell once the downcast author had gone home. He’d said that such signings could be depressing, but that he knew the events coordinator at this place and that she’d probably keep me company. He’d ended by saying that I should do as I pleased about the invitation. Pleased wasn’t exactly how I felt at the moment, but it consoled me to observe that no one else’s books were selling, either. Indeed, the warm-blooded mammals in the store consisted of a clerk, the events coordinator, Rowdy, Kimi, and me. So much for never taking both dogs!
    I felt sorrier for the events coordinator, Irene, than I did for myself. I’d written the book and had it published. The reviews had been good. In other bookstores, people were buying it. But how was Irene supposed to coordinate a non-event that, as such, required no coordination?
    As it turned out, Irene evidently had considerable experience in meeting this challenge. She did so by getting out a second folding chair and sitting with us. She was a little, fined-boned woman in her mid or late fifties. Her short white hair flowed backward and upward from her delicate face. The pitch of her voice, too, headed upward as she spoke, and she had a habit of lifting her gaze to the ceiling,
    “It’s always like this,” she said, “and these days, women are afraid to leave home after dark. Or in daylight, for that matter, some women, anyway. A lot of our customers are women. They’ll buy the signed books later.”
    “It’s fine.” It was, too. As a dog writer living in Cambridge, I was chronically plagued by the awareness that my neighbors were writing academic articles about verb forms in Aramaic, recent economic shifts in Argentina, the existence of thermonuclear something-or-others, and the role of women in the American colonies, whereas I was yet again discoursing on the methodology of the reliable recall. The publication of 101 Ways to Cook Liver had made me feel slightly less marginal than I had before. But now, all of a sudden, I was doing a book signing to which no one had come. At last, I was undeniably a real author! Hurrah!
    “It’s too bad Mac wasn’t free to come, too. You weren’t nervous about driving alone?”
    I smiled. “I’m not alone.”
    “Some of those women had dogs. That woman in Brookline had her dog in her car.”
    “Bonny Carr. Her dog was in a crate. She apparently got out of the car first. That’s what I’d normally do. But now I’ve arranged the crates so I can open Kimi’s from inside the car. She and I get out, and then we get Rowdy.”
    In a startling demonstration of his fearsome nature, Rowdy responded to the sound of his name by dropping to the floor, rolling onto his back, and imitating a giant bunny rabbit.
    Irene laughed and then bent down to stroke his tummy. “He is so cute! It’s funny that such a big dog can be so adorable.”
    Kimi, who misses nothing, decided that Rowdy was getting more than his fair share of the attention. Worse, she’d evidently taken a liking to Irene, into whose lap she suddenly tried to leap. Kimi weighed exactly seventy-five pounds. At a guess, Irene weighed a hundred and five. My first—and horrifying—thought was that the tiny Irene was at high risk for osteoporosis: a thin, fine-boned Caucasian woman in late middle age. If Kimi had to hurl herself into people’s laps, couldn’t she pick hefty, heavy-boned African-American men of twenty? I gave Kimi a full body shove. “Sit! Irene, are you all right?”
    Luckily, she was. What saved her from being crushed was, I think, her small lap; Kimi simply hadn’t had room for a solid landing. Still, I was mortified. I offered a heartfelt apology. I also put Kimi on a