Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

-cousin?”
    “Didn’t Avram tell you?” I asked.
    “I’m a massage therapist,” Howie said, his bulldog jowls trembling as he spoke. “It’s good to know, in case you ever get a crick in your neck or anything. So wha -what were you up to, before?”
    Maybe he was a bulldog. He sure didn’t know when to let go.
    I looked into my lap and smiled. “Look,” I said after a while, “ Avi says now is all there is. Now I’m here.”
    No one spoke. Not one of them appeared to have taken a breath since Eve reached for the apple, sending the human race on its downhill slide.
    Frank would be so proud.
    “How long have you known Avi ?” Stewie finally asked, as interested as if he were a cocker spaniel and I were holding a liver snap.
    “It’s hard to say.”
    “Just what we need around here,” Janet drawled, “another bitch.”
    Stewie shot her a look.
    Avi returned and with a motion of his arm called us for rounds. Howie, Stewart, and Janet went out into the hall to change shoes. I picked up Lisa’s shoes from right behind my chair and slipped them on. We were off to an auspicious beginning, I thought as I took a place in the back so that I could watch them from behind as well as in the mirror.
    Howard Lish , a sad-looking fat man, was off to the left. He was about five-eight, flabby, and had apparently found the very potbelly my brother-in-law had just lost.
    Stewart Fleck was as small and chary as a rodent out on a raid in some street cat’s territory. He was barely my height, on the gaunt side, and pale, as if he stayed indoors too much. I could see his dark, beady little eyes watching me in the mirror. Fuck him, I thought and watched him right back.
    The only other person I knew with muscles like Janet Castle was my pit bull. She was wearing a shocking pink cutoff singlet that showed off her rocklike abs. You could see her perfect quads under the floral latex tights, and her glutes looked as if they were made of concrete. Holy steroids, Batman, what a construction site she was.
    I looked around at the sorry group. Not one of them was quite what I’d expect to find if I opened the latest edition of Who’s Who in Zen in America . Where did Avi find all these nerds?
    But who was I to talk? I still cared far too much about what my family thought about me, even though most of them were dead. The strongest substance I’d abused lately was sherry out of a jelly jar with a seventy-five-year-old rabbi. And it had been a dog’s age since I’d shared my bed with someone who wasn’t wearing a flea collar.

14

Janet Gave Me a Wink

    AFTER ROUNDS STEWIE and Howie left immediately, and Avi went into the office and closed the door. Janet gave me a wink, as if we were old buddies and we’d just pulled off another good one. While I was changing my shoes, she came up to me.
    “Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. It’s not your fault, what happened. It’s just the way things are.” She shrugged. “I mean, Avram’s great, I love him to pieces, but he does things his way. Shit, it’s his school, am I right?”
    I nodded.
    “So why don’t we go have lunch, my treat, to, you know, make it up to you for me being such a bitch?”
    “Why not?”
    “Great,” she said, slapping me on the back and nearly knocking me through the wall.
    I put Lisa’s shoes back where they belonged and, with Dash trailing along after me, met up with Janet in the hall changing to her thick-soled, multicolored cross-trainers. Was she figuring we’d run to the restaurant?
    “You like Chinese?” she asked. She’d covered her short hair with a baseball cap, worn backward.
    “Who doesn’t?” Actually, I’d had a yen for it for days now. “Great. We’ll go over to Charlie Mom’s. Did you ever try their vegetable dumplings? They’re fab ulous.”
    The waiter’s erased blackboard of a face never changed as he regarded Dashiell’s credentials and his yellow Registered Service Dog tag. I was pretty sure he had no idea what they meant, or what the law said, but he let him in anyway. We were led to a table in the back. Dash slid to the floor right behind my chair and fell immediately asleep. As usual, no one else in the restaurant seemed to notice he was there.
    Janet ordered soup and dumplings for both of us. By the time we’d unfolded our napkins, the soup was in front of us.
    “It’s so cheap here. I come every chance I get.”
    “So why the fuss over Avi teaching me t’ai chi, Janet? He must