Gaits of Heaven

Kimi. For rally.”
    “I got takeout from Loaves and Fishes. Roast chicken, eggplant, asparagus, some other stuff.” I didn’t mention the green bean salad, which I’d chosen out of habit and should probably have fed to the dogs once its significance dawned on me. What stopped me, I suppose, was the knowledge that greens beans really were an excellent weight-loss food. “We’ll all have to forage. Rowdy, Kimi, and Lady have been fed, and Steve can feed Sammy and India when he gets home with them. I’ll need to get ready for the service.” I have an old-fashioned streak. In Cambridge, you can wear anything to anything, but when I go to anything even remotely like a funeral, what I wear is a dark dress.
    An unsettling little event had made me suddenly eager to pay my respects. About forty-five minutes earlier, when I’d been checking my e-mail, I’d been interrupted by the delivery of a small package from a company I’d never heard of. My work for Dog’s Life sometimes included product evaluations, and now and then an enterprising company would send samples directly to me, usually with a note expressing the optimistic certainty that my dogs and I would be so enthusiastic about the items that I’d recommend them in my column. Shamelessly lacking in even the most rudimentary sense of journalistic integrity, the dogs would have had me write a rave review of every edible bribe I was offered, but I stuck to my ethics. My product reviews were fair, and when I recommended toys, equipment, and treats in my column, it was never because I’d been bought off. For example, I bought the Buster Cube myself; my fabulous Chris Christensen 27mm pin brush with the T handle was a present from my stepmother, Gabrielle; and as to the Bil-Jac treats, for which I regularly shopped, the dogs loved the liver, peanut butter, and pizza flavors, and I liked being able to break the soft morsels into little pieces when I trained. Anyway, this package was too small to contain anything for the dogs and, in fact, turned out to hold a CD titled Guided Imagery for Performance Anxiety. My dogs weren’t the ones with ring nerves; the CD was meant exclusively for me. The gift receipt in the package included this note: I will help you to do your own personal version, but this will get you started. Gratefully, Eumie. Although the notion of a message from beyond the grave was a bit gothic for me, I still found it unsettling to realize that Eumie had taken an active step to help cure me of ring nerves. When she’d said she could help, she had not been making a vague promise, on the contrary, as soon as she’d heard of my problem, she’d ordered the CD. If she’d lived, I now saw, she’d have followed through. I had no intention of thanking her aloud at the memorial service, but I did want to attend.
    That was before we got there. Once we did, I realized that Caprice had been right: Ted Green was throwing a death party. What’s more, he must have invited everyone he and Eumie had ever known. The closest parking place I found was three blocks away, and by the time I snagged it, I was wishing we’d left the car at home and gone on foot. All the lights in the big house were on, and the front door stood open. The porch was so crowded with people taking off their shoes that we had to wait to get in.
    “Your mother had so many friends,” I said softly to Caprice.
    “Most of these people weren’t her friends, and they aren’t Ted’s. Some of them are people he wants referrals from. A lot of them are people they both wanted to impress, mostly parents from Avon Hill. They’re here out of curiosity.” A second later, her cynicism vanished. “There’s my father! Monty! Monty, I’m here!”
    When I saw Monty Brainard, I realized that I’d been expecting him to have the human equivalent of the real Monty’s malamute splendor. In reality, the only obvious resemblance between the false Monty, Monty Brainard, and the real Monty, Ch. Benchmark Captain Montague, was that both were muscular. Monty Brainard was a short, balding man with straight, medium-brown hair and small brown eyes. His only outstanding physical characteristic was a deep tan, probably natural, possibly chemical. He wore a conservative gray suit. Forcing his way through the crowd, he wrapped Caprice in his arms and said, “Daddy’s here, baby girl.”
    Baby girl. Only when Monty Brainard spoke the phrase did I take a hard look at Caprice, who was swathed in a voluminous dress