Paws before dying

there was nothing memorable about it. He was wearing one of those complicated British intellectual trench coats with dozens of flaps, pockets, buttons, fasteners, and miniature epaulets, and his face, eyes, and hair were the same bland English beige. His head was disproportionately large and remarkably oval, his body long, thin, and straight. He looked quite a lot like a wooden spoon.
    Leah did not, which is why her arrival is somewhat blurred in my memory. I remember inviting Arthur in, and I’m positive that he declined the invitation. If Kimi and Rowdy had escaped from my bedroom, where they were temporarily jailed to protect them from Arthur’s hostility to their species, I’m sure I would recall the event. Arthur, I believe, stood in the rain yanking out Leah’s gear and handing it to us, and we ferried it through the downpour and into my kitchen. We must both have said good-bye to him.
    I clearly recall planting my wet feet on the muddy kitchen floor next to the pile of Leah’s sodden belongings and staring at her. As a child, it seemed to me, she had had light hair, but as sometimes happens in golden retrievers, the color had deepened to a rich red, much deeper than mine. My eyes are brown like Buck’s. Hers were blue. Her face was not oval like Arthur’s, but triangular, and in envisioning her as ugly, I had been entirely wrong. And robust? She had what my grandmother used to call an hourglass figure. I haven’t heard her use the phrase since Marissa died. The only glass object my own figure resembles is a test tube. Except for the shades of red in our hair that echo the blaze of Marissa’s, Leah and I were nothing alike. I don’t look like my mother. Leah did. The similarity was particularly amazing because it transcended the style of Leah’s times. Her long, wavy hair was pulled into a lopsided topknot, and she wore a black tank top over a blue T-shirt over a white long-sleeved shirt above a pair of knee-length metallic blue and black shorts intended for the Tour de France.
    “Is something wrong?” She sounded like Cassie, who, of course, sounds like Marissa, but her voice was higher pitched and less throaty than theirs.
    “No, nothing. I’m glad to see you. I’m just... I want you to meet my dogs.”
    “Golden retrievers, right?”
    “I used to have goldens,” I said. “But I’ve had a conversion experience.”
    When I opened the bedroom door, somewhat over a hundred and sixty pounds of Alaskan malamute barged into the kitchen and ignored me. I have owned a lot of dogs, and not one has ever been allowed to jump on people, but I hadn’t had Kimi very long, and before that, she’d had a laissez-faire puppyhood. Besides, anyone who knows anything will tell you that northern breeds are a challenge to train. Kimi wasn’t trying to knock Leah over. Her aim was simply to get close to Leah’s face, and since Leah didn’t kneel down, Kimi rose up. Rowdy knew not to jump. He dropped to the floor at Leah’s feet, rolled onto his back, and foolishly waved his great, powerful legs in the air.
    “Wow! Huskies!” At least she sounded happy about it, and although I observed her carefully for signs of what my father believes to be satanic stigmata—watery red eyes, a dripping nose, blotches, and sneezing—I saw none. She rubbed Kimi’s neck vigorously and looked down at Rowdy. “Is that one having some kind of fit?”
    “No. And they’re malamutes.” If you own a malamute, so many people tell you what a beautiful husky you have that the response becomes automatic. I didn’t mean to begin our relationship on a note of correction, especially because I was relieved to hear her say something that would never have passed through the speech center of my mother’s brain, Marissa would even have known which strain of malamute they were: Kotzebue. “Alaskan malamutes. This is Rowdy,” I said as I rubbed his belly, “and the bitch is Kimi. The female. The one with the black markings on her face. Rowdy, sit.” He did. “Give your paw.” Leah lowered Kimi, gravely waved her hand in front of Rowdy, and grasped his massive foot. He already knew the trick when I got him. I’d avoided teaching it to Kimi because pawing is dominance behavior, and no malamute needs instruction in bossing people around.
    “Kimi, sit,” Leah said. She made the same handshaking gesture that had prompted Rowdy. “Give your paw.”
    Kimi, who didn’t know the routine, sat squarely in front of Leah, flattened her