Bride & Groom

square for the previous Saturday was Dinner here. Also noted in that square and in those for the other three Saturdays, including today, was 11:00 Sirius. Sirius is, of course, the dog star. The cryptic notation evidently referred to a regular Saturday morning appointment that had something to do with Uli. Opening the cabinets near the calendar and the phone, I soon found a telephone directory. In the business listings was Sirius Dog Grooming. I dialed the number.
    A woman answered. “Sirius!” In the background, dryers roared. A dog barked.
    I said that I was trying to reach Judith Esterhazy.
    “Hang on! She’s around. Let me see... she’s drying Uli. JUDITH? Can you take a phone call?”
    Judith’s voice was cool and unrevealing. “Hello? This is Judith.”
    “Judith, it’s Holly Winter. I’m at your house. You need to come home.”
    “I’m almost finished. What’s...?”
    “You need to get home now. This is something we can’t talk about on the phone. Just come home.”
    She said that it would take her fifteen minutes. I hung up. If I’d wanted to snoop, I could’ve done so before I’d placed the phone call. Far from feeling even the slightest impulse to poke through Mac’s and Judith’s possessions, I felt an urgent desire to get out of the house. My most acute sense, however, was of missing my dogs. I desperately longed for Rowdy’s strength, Kimi’s intensity, and Sammy’s contagious optimism. Cursing myself for having left them in Cambridge, I went outside, paced around, and eventually sat in my car, where I kept checking the time. Exactly eighteen minutes after I’d hung up the phone, Judith’s car appeared. When I groom my dogs, I end up damp, disheveled, and furry. When Judith got out of her car, I could see that her short hair was as sleek as ever. To take Uli to what was evidently a do-it-yourself grooming shop, she’d had the sense to wear jeans and a T-shirt, but her jeans were unfaded and unripped, and the T-shirt was bright raspberry with decorative stitching at the neckline and on the sleeves.
    She didn’t smile at me, but gave a little nod and said, “Just let me get Uli out.”
    Judith opened the rear passenger door of her car and then the door of a metal crate. Remembering the help Uli had needed with stairs, I moved next to Judith and, without asking, joined her in taking most of the dog’s weight as he climbed out. Once Uli was on the ground, he shook himself, wagged his tail, and eyed me happily. In the daylight, his old-age cataracts were plainly visible.
    “I groom Uli every Saturday morning,” Judith said. “It’s a special arrangement I have with the shop. He’s too big for me to lift onto my own grooming table, and he hasn’t been able to jump up for a long time. We need the hydraulic table at the shop. And the people there are very kind about lifting him in and out of the tub.”
    “Every week. That’s a lot.”
    “He’s beginning to lose bladder control. These old-dog drugs do wonders, but they stop short of performing outright miracles.”
    We were walking toward the house. When we reached the door, she said, “This is about Bruce, isn’t it? It is. Come in.” I’d closed the door, but left it unlocked. As if she knew exactly what I’d done, Judith didn’t insert a key, but simply opened the door. The entryway showed no sign of foot traffic; it was just as it had been when Steve and I arrived. Glancing to the left, Judith said, “Bruce isn’t here?”
    I shook my head. Then Judith and I supported Uli as he slowly climbed up the stairs. Judith’s T-shirt exposed her arms. It would’ve been easy to believe that they belonged to a weightlifter who’d overdone liposuction and been left with nothing but skin, bone, and contrastingly massive muscle. “When there’s no one here to help,” said Judith, “I use a towel. But this is much easier. Uli likes the feel of hands. Coffee? Tea?”
    “Tea would be good."
    “Endless pots of sweet tea,” she said. “The British answer to any crisis. Soothes the nerves.”
    My own nerves were beyond the powers of tea. Judith, however, was composed. As she ran water into a kettle, set it on the stove, got out a heavy blue-and-white teapot, and put cups, saucers, spoons, sugar, and cream on the kitchen table, her thin face remained calm, and her hands were steady. The only sign of strain I saw in her was the absence of body fat, sad evidence of chronic stress rather than the acute distress I was