Creature Discomforts

bridge, he regretfully announces, just as loudly, “Leaving God’s Country, the beautiful State of Maine!” By “God’s country,” he means, among other things, a place where the temperature damned well stays down where God intends it to remain. Buck assumes that he and God have identical likes and dislikes. After all, if God can’t be expected to show some common sense, who can?
    God is of little help to Buck right now. The problem is the Deity’s total lack of experience with human romance. Although it’s been decades since Buck’s last heady infatuation with a woman—Marissa, in fact, his late wife—by comparison with God, Buck is, by definition, a man of the world. Buck’s other religion, dog worship, is of disappointingly little practical help. Bending his massive frame downward to study his face in the uncracked sections of the mirror, he wishes, not for the first time, that he were the kind of creature he knows how to groom and present to best advantage. But he is not and is never going to be a golden retriever.
    Speak of the angel, at that moment, Mandy wanders into the bathroom in the hope that Buck will turn on the shower. If he does, she will exercise her prerogative of leaping into the tub, standing under the water until she is drenched, flying out of the tub, and shaking dog-scented water all over everything. Neither Buck nor Mandy realizes that the cracked mirror perfectly suits the decor of the rest of the bathroom and, indeed, the rest of the house. But today Buck does not turn on the shower. Instead, he addresses Mandy, who is a beautiful and intelligent young bitch, sound of mind and body.
    “Know thyself, Mandy!” Buck advises her. “In the Great Show Ring of Life and Love, see yourself as the judge will see you! And if you don’t like what you see, hire yourself a professional handler!”
    Buck has done so. Although his neglected house and well-kept kennels in Owls Head, Maine, are a mere hour and a half north of Freeport, home of that esteemed Maine institution, L.L. Bean, Freeport has become a shopping mecca that bewilders him. Consequently, he relies largely on Bean’s catalogs and the Bean site on the World Wide Web. An old customer, he pored over the many catalogs mailed to him within the last six months and selected a remarkably suitable gift for Gabrielle Beamon. No one could ever accuse him of stinginess. On the contrary, he gives generously, if eccentrically and often inappropriately: expensive firearms to pacifists, costly fishing tackle and elaborate hunting knives to vegetarians. In contrast, an L.L. Bean dog bed is an outright normal selection. Yes, but which dog bed? Round? With a green fleece top? Rectangular? Rectangular and therapeutic? Blue? Tan? Forest green? With or without a pattern of dog paws? Close study of the chart on page 220 of the Holiday catalog simplified matters: Rectangular dog beds were unavailable in size small. Therefore, round. Tan he rejected as bland. Faint heart never won fair maid! Bright blue. Like Gabrielle’s eyes.
    “Monogrammed,” he told the customer service representative, a competent-sounding woman with a sweet voice. “ ‘Molly,’ M-O-L-L-Y. Not I-E. Y. Twenty-five-inch round dog bed, denim blue cover, no paw prints, monogrammed ‘Molly.’ ”
    Having taken the information about the dog bed, the service representative made what she could not have known was the mistake of asking, “And your next item?”
    “Whatever you like!” Buck cheerfully bellowed. Unruffled, she replied, “And what sort of thing did you have in mind? A gift? Sporting goods? Something for the home?” After persistent questioning, she narrowed the field to men’s clothing. “Could you give me some idea of...?”
    “Whatever you like!” repeated Buck, slightly annoyed. “It’s a matter of what you want, isn’t it? What your preferences are?”
    “It says here, ‘Discover all the ways L.L. Bean makes shopping easier for you.’ That’s my preference. Now, what would you think about these chino pants?”
    Once she understood the customer’s request, the representative dealt capably with it. Skillfully inquiring about where he planned to wear the proposed wardrobe, she elicited plentiful information not only about Mount Desert Island, but about Gabrielle Beamon and the number of years that had passed since Buck had set out to court a woman.
    After a friendly discussion of the beauties of Acadia National Park and the pain of love, the Bean