Creature Discomforts

Fairley’s boyfriend? If looked at in the right light, by which I meant, I suppose, the black of night, it could easily be seen as a sign of recovery. Love, romance, passion? The emotions of robust life! Furthermore, it wasn’t as if my affections had fixed on some grotesque, repellent, or unsuitable object. On the contrary, Steve Delaney appeared to be altogether attractive and admirable. Women probably fell for him all the time. And it wasn’t as if he were married to Anita Fairley, either, I reminded myself soothingly. That bitch! Bitch, bitch, bitch! I fell asleep.
    The analgesic may be why I felt less horrible in the morning than I’d expected. After two cups of killer coffee, I felt almost human. Yesterday’s aching and buzzing were nearly gone. What remained was localized physical soreness centered on the lump on my scalp. My only new symptom was so ordinary that it may not even count as a symptom at all. A song was running through my head. Over and over. Neurologists probably have a technical term for the irksome phenomenon, which is probably some sort of benign synaptic event. Anyway, what ran through my head wasn’t just a tune, but a song with words, a line from an old hymn: I love to tell the story of unseen things above. Oddly enough, although I remembered the rest of the verse, melody and all, the running-through-my-head part stopped there. In the hope of ridding myself of this musical mental poltergeist, I caroled aloud:
     
I love to tell the story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory,
Of Jesus and His love:
I love to tell the story
Because I know ’tis true;
It satisfies my longings
As nothing else can do.
     
    Trivial discoveries about Holly Winter: This poor woman really, really can’t sing. She switches keys. Her tunelessness makes a yowling cat sound like Maria Callas. Important discovery about Rowdy and Kimi: They love this woman so much that in their ears, she is Maria Callas.
    After breakfast and a quick still-in-my-bathrobe out-and-in with the dogs, I felt seized by the impulse to return to Dorr Mountain. Sleep, far from alleviating fear, had sharpened it; obligation seemed to jab at my solar plexus. Unseen things above, I kept hearing. Meaning what? Forgotten things above? Things seen on Dorr and now forgotten? Things I might now remember?
    Floundering around on Dorr would accomplish nothing. I needed a plan. Hadn’t I formulated one? Yesterday? If so, it had disappeared. Before dashing off to wander aimlessly in hundreds of acres of parkland, I needed to slow down.
    Fighting the urge to do something, I made myself go over the material I’d briefly surveyed yesterday afternoon. My material possessions seemed to fall into two classes: dog gear and the printed word. I examined the contents of the large zippered bag I’d noticed yesterday: dumbbells, scent articles, a shoelace, an aerosol can of spray-on cheese, a box of liver treats. I even remembered the uses of some of this stuff. The shoelace, for example, prevented anticipation. You looped it unobtrusively around the dog’s collar in place of a leash and, if need be, held on to it to stop the dog from bolting into an exercise in advance of your command. The aerosol cheese was handy for teaching the retrieve; a bit of the gooey stuff smeared on a dumbbell was a great motivator. You could also use it for the “go-out,” as I knew the exercise was called; a cheesy daub could make a dog happy to leave you and go out to the far end of the ring. Every item in the bag was, in effect, a piece of sports equipment. The sport was dog obedience training. No clue there.
    A close examination of my wallet showed that I was a card-carrying member of the Cambridge Dog Training Club and the Dog Writers Association of America. Ah-hah! My elusive profession. My checks were in my name only. I wore no rings. My father, Gabrielle’s hero, was Buck Winter. I was Holly Winter. Single? Married and liberated? Separated? Divorced? Separation felt plausible. The idea meshed with a gnawing sense of loss.
    A few novels piled on the night table by the bed had my name handwritten in the front. Stacked on the coffee table by the fireplace were the various guides and maps I’d noticed yesterday. A few of the books about Acadia National Park belonged to me. Mr. Rockefeller’s Roads turned out to belong to my father. On the front page, he’d inscribed his name in oversize capital letters: BUCK WINTER. He had also, I discovered, defaced page after