Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

then, there was always the possibility of someone unsavory lurking behind a bush ready to pop out and do you in if you took the wrong path or strayed from where there were other people.”
    A nanny with two young charges, a boy and a girl, stopped to let the children watch the dogs play. The dogs stopped to watch a skater glide by. And two young lovers, both female, kept stopping to kiss as they headed out of the park, hand in hand.
    “I guess human nature never changes.”
    She frowned. “Unfortunately not. But still,” she said, looking down the path after the nanny, “the little ones keep us going, don’t they?”
    I looked at my watch, still reluctant to go.
    “You and Cecilia are lucky to live so near the park,” I said, thinking of how much fun Dashiell had had in the lake.
    “Oh, I don’t live here now ," she said. “When I lost my husband, the baby and I went home, to England.”
    I looked at the little terrier, then back at her doting owner, the way Dashiell looks at something and then at me in order to let me know what he’s thinking.
    “But—”
    “Oh, I see what you mean, dear,” she said. “You’re worried Cecilia will have to stay in quarantine for six months when I go home. But she’s going to be an American dog from now on. She’s a gift for my grandchild, you see.”
    “So your daughter lives here?”
    She nodded.
    “And we live in a little cottage in Chipping Camden, in the
    Cotswolds. Well, Cecilia did. Now she’ll have an American apartment, won’t you, pudding?”
    “Well, I expect I’ll see you at dinner,” I said, turning to go.
    “What was that, dear?”
    “You’re here to teach, aren’t you? At the symposium at the Ritz?” I said a little louder.
    “Yes, dear.You, too?”
    I nodded.
    “It was nice chatting.”
    “It was indeed. Americans are so terribly friendly. I’ve always found that to be so. Especially here, in New York.”
    Waiting for an endless stream of serious bikers to pass, the kind who wear those skintight shorts and hunch over the handlebars, I turned back to watch Beryl heading into the park, and stood there watching as she pulled a glove from her jacket pocket and dropped it behind her. Were she someone else, I would have sent Dashiell to fetch it for her. But I didn’t have to. Cecilia turned back, snagged the glove, and raced around in front of her mistress to sit and deliver. I watched Beryl bend over, take the glove, and pat her dog. I could just imagine her saying, “What a clever girl,” as she did.
    Outside the park, I saw the priest again, talking to a young man whose hair was dyed die color of corn. A harried-looking woman was headed our w ay, her fox terrier pulling so hard on the leash he was gagging. On the benches along the stone wall, a familiar-looking man sat eating a hot dog. He had another next to him on the bench, sitting on a napkin, and next to that, a giant-sized soda and a passel of greasy fries. He had just a fringe of dark hair slicked down with library paste and black as shoe polish circling a bald pate, huge eyebrows, a great, red cabbage of a nose, a heavy mustache, and a short, chunky body. I knew I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place him, like when you run into your dry cleaner at the movies.
    I decided not to walk over and introduce myself in order to find out who he was and crossed the street instead; his Rottweiler was under the bench chewing on a bone so large it could only have been a human femur.
    Back in my room, drying Dashiell after his bath, I realized that the man on the park bench had not been my greengrocer or druggist. In fact, I’d never actually met him. I’d only seen his face on the jackets of his books. As with Beryl, whom I’d recognized because of her distinctive voice, I had a much younger version in mind, in this case, one in which the gentleman in question had considerably less girth and tons more hair. He was Boris Dashevski, the old-fashioned yank ’em, spank ’em trainer whose books, no matter how “positive” training got, remained perennial best-sellers. It seemed that whatever dog owners did or professed to do when they were in public, they were still closet correctors at home.
    When I got out of the shower, Dashiell was in the middle of the bed, fast asleep. Two wrapped packages had been left on the bureau next to a cellophane-covered basket of fruit, cheese, crackers, chocolates, and wine, all evidently delivered while I was out in the park, despite the Do Not