Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

up without giving the person on the other end of the line a chance to say another word.
    It was eleven fifteen. Stewie was teaching a noon class, so Dash and I headed over to Bank Street T’ai Chi.
    Avi had just finished practicing the form. “Do you have a moment?” I asked him. “I need to ask you something, about the note Lisa left.” Show him proper respect, I thought, and he’ll be putty in my hands.
    “Are you familiar with the story of the young man who wanted to study Zen?”
    “ Oh, please .”
    “ ‘Have you had your breakfast?’ the master asked him. The young man nodded, just the way you always do. He had. ‘Then wash your bowl,’ the master told him.”
    “So, what does that mean?”
    But didn’t I know what it meant? After all, Avi had announced that I was his new apprentice, a role I’d had experience with. I had learned dog training as an apprentice to another trainer. That meant I would get lots of private lessons, a chance to assist in class, that I’d answer the phone, do the bills and mailings, lick the stamps, sweep up, dust, pinch dead leaves off the plants, run out and buy him cigarettes, and wash the coffee cups after class because he thought ceramic cups were more friendly to the environment than Styrofoam, a man clearly ahead of his time.
    “Did you want me to sweep up out here?” I asked. “Or vacuum your office?”
    Avi sighed.
    “That won’t be necessary. We have someone to do that, Rachel,” he said, as if I were a few logs shy of a full cord.
    “Then will you answer my question?”
    He merely waved his arm impatiently and headed for his office.
    “Or not?” I said after he’d already closed the door.
    “Being a de- tec - tive sounds like fun,” my nephew Zachery had said the night I’d made my official announcement to the family.
    Yeah, right.
    Thank God our mother is dead, Lili had added, because if she weren’t, this would have killed her.
    I sat down on the studio floor, against a side wall, to wait. The students began to arrive at ten of twelve for the lunch-hour class, changing shoes in the hall and then sitting in the area between the office and the studio until they were called to begin. Stewie arrived late, changed his shoes, and after nodding to his students, turned to face the mirror and began to do the form. I joined the class, taking a place in the back.
    Stewie’s eyes, which should have been half closed and half open, darted nervously from side to side, watching his students in the mirror. He was watching me, too, but when his eyes met mine, his moved away quickly.
    He spoke softly as we moved slowly through the form. The empty leg is yin, he said, but when you shift your weight into it, it becomes yang, yin and yang, dark and light, soft and strong, these are constantly changing.
    I thought about the way a bitch plays with her puppies, moving gracefully from her role of natural authority to a submissive posture so that the puppies can play at being alpha, then taking charge again when the game is over, never leaving them with a false impression of the way things are.
    I was hoping I’d end up at lunch with Stewie after class, the way I had with Janet. Clearly I wasn’t the only one of us who was curious, but before I had the chance to change my shoes, he was gone. I never did get to ask him any questions or find out how he felt about my cousin Lisa. Not wanting to waste the rest of the day, I got another idea.
    I waited until I was downstairs to use the phone, calling information first, for Howard Lish’s number, then asking to see him, for an emergency. My calf, I told him, was throbbing and cramped.
    Come right over, he said, not stuttering at all. I’ll take care of it.
    I smiled as I hung up and, Dashiell at my side, headed east, just past the HB Acting Studio, to the building where Howie Lish lived and worked.
    “The crick is in my leg,” I said when Howie, wearing a white jacket as if he were a dentist rather than a masseur, opened the door. “Instead of my neck.”
    “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” he said, turning and walking toward an open door just down the hall and on the right. “You’re trying to learn t’ai chi too fast, working too many hours.”
    I heard the sound of a television set from somewhere else in the apartment. Howie closed the door to his office.
    “Hop up on the table,” he said. “Let me have a look at it.” I signaled Dash to lie down in a comer of the room. Then I panicked. Had I told