Paws before dying

still looks like a Cambridge cop. Six months earlier, when enough Nautilus establishments had folded to convince Kevin that lifting was unfashionable again, he took up free weights at the Y. The program he was following must have been designed to reshape his body so it was too broad to fit through ordinary doorways unless he turned sideways.
    He asked how I was doing. When I said that I was doing fine and heard that he was, too, he asked how my niece was doing with the dogs.
    “She isn’t my niece,” I said. “She’s my cousin.”
    “So why’s she call you aunt?”
    “Because she feels like it,” I said. “And she’s doing fine with the dogs. She isn’t allergic, and they’re crazy about her. They’re totally infatuated. I mean, the standard says that they’re not supposed to be one-man dogs, but this is ridiculous.”
    I expected some kind of response from Kevin, partly because he’s a friendly guy, but mostly because I knew he’d always had a slight crush on me. He didn’t reply at all. At opposite ends of the lead, Kimi and Leah were bouncing up Appleton Street. I’m not sure that Kevin even heard me. His glazed eyes were fixed on Leah, who was wearing what looked like a heavily elasticized black two-piece bathing suit over a yellow tank top and a pair of shiny knee-length electric-blue shorts. Freed from the topknot, her hair stood out from her head and curled down her back like the coat of an undipped apricot poodle.
    “Hi, Kevin!” she said. “How’s your mom?” She also asked about three of his relatives who’d been visiting. In the couple of days she’d been with me, I might add, she’d learned the names of a few dozen neighbors who were only faces to me, and she’d ingratiated herself with Mrs. Dennehy, a strict vegetarian and teetotaler, who does smell hamburger and beer on Kevin’s breath when he returns from my house, but only imagines that she smells perfume on his clothes.
    “Hey, Leah, come on,” I said. “We’re late.”
    To make it to Newton by seven, I’d planned to leave at six-fifteen, and it was now close to six-thirty. Newton is Shaker Heights. Scarsdale. Maybe Shawnee Mission? The suburb of suburbs, it has big trees, bigger houses, good schools, and practically no crime. Stroll down a Newton street on any weekday, and you’ll assume that it has no people except babies, their nannies, and the hundreds of work crews mowing the lawns and painting the houses of the invisible population. A national survey of places in which nothing ever happens once rated Newton the most boring community in America. Although it’s only fifteen or twenty minutes by car from Cambridge, I always allow extra time: The boundary between the city and the suburbs is so steep that even my four-wheel-drive Bronco might not make the grade. Even so, Newton has lots of people who used to live here, because it’s where politically minded pro-public-school Cambridge intellectual parents move when their kids are ready for first grade. The prospect of moving to Newton is the most powerful birth-control device in Cambridge.
    But Newton does have parks, dogs, and the Nonantum Dog Training Club.
    “I want you to know that this is not my regular club,” I told Leah as we drove west along the river. “This one is much more competitive. Some of these people are obsessed with high scores—they really compete, even at fun matches, even in class—and I don’t want it to get to you. First of all, they’ve got poodles and shelties and goldens, real obedience dogs, and you can’t expect to compete with that. But more important, that’s a sort of sick attitude. All you want to work for is getting Kimi in shape so she’ll qualify sometime, right? Not necessarily this summer. Sometime. And the class you’re in isn’t for beginners. It’s Novice for Show.”
    “Do you get grades every time?”
    “At class? No. Never. Just at matches and trials. Hey, don’t worry about it. Just have fun with her. That’s what it’s about.” Remember, Holly? Scores don’t matter. What matters is your dog, not your score. Say it often enough, and you’ll shake that high-score sickness. Scores don’t matter. “Scores don’t matter, anyway,” I said.
    As I’ve mentioned, dog training is one sport that requires no special costume, but as Leah and I walked the dogs through the wide opening in the stone and concrete wall, past a tennis court, and into Eliot Park, she drew a few stares. I guess Pre-Raphaelite