Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

Bucky’s tan changed colors. I wasn’t looking. I heard him putting his dogs on a down-stay. When I did look, he was taking his place at the table, next to a flustered Tracy.
    “Too heavy.” It was Alan’s subtle-as-a-sledgehammer-dropped-on-your-bare-toe stage whisper. I assumed he meant Bucky. Until he added insult to injury. “Not enough brisket.” My grandmother Sonya would have thought he was referring to her pot roast. But it was one of the borzoi he was bad-mouthing, a deadly sin if ever there was one. In this circle, you might get away with ranking out the owner, but never the pet.
    “The brand of dog food you each requested is being delivered to your rooms as we dine,” Sam said, “along with some special goodies for our hardworking demo dogs. If there’s anything else you need, please, people, speak up.”
    Three of the dogs barked when Sam said “speak,” which set the proper mood for finishing dinner. Sam had cued the dogs by accident, but there’s nothing dog trainers love more than signaling each other’s dogs on purpose, just for a goof. Giving a hand signal from behind another trainer’s back so that a dog on a perfect sit-stay lies down or comes instead of staying put is irresistible to the lot of us, even those few of us who might consider ourselves mature adults. Of course, if there’s another trainer within ten miles, you’d never correct your dog. You’d turn around smiling to show you can take a joke, then plan your revenge. Go big or stay home is the motto, especially when it comes to getting even.
    I hoped that’s all that would happen this week. And why not? If we could goof on one another, humiliate a fellow professional by getting his dog to appear to be breaking a command during a lecture or demo, let’s say, wouldn’t that be enough?
    Chip, to my left, his back to me, was deeply engrossed in a conversation with Boris, to his left. And Woody, to my right, was chatting up Sam, clever man. I sawed my steak and looked across the table, thinking of all those people in all those singles bars who had to try to look as if they were having fun, sitting all alone nursing a drink, figuring that this was it for the rest of their lives. Rather than feel pitifully ignored, I decided to test my theory.
    I turned slightly and clicked my tongue to get Betty’s attention, and secure in the knowledge that I would not be heard above Boris’s bombastic pronouncements, I gave Chip’s shepherd her signal to search for drugs. Betty rose up without moving a paw, slowly, the way Dracula rose from his coffin in Nosferatu, and remaining still, nose in the air, she trolled for a scent. Then quietly, the stealth shepherd began to make her way around the table, air-scenting, occasionally stopping to poke at a purse or a briefcase to release the scents inside.
    I took a peek at the program while I waited for Chip to notice. Audrey was speaking in the afternoon. I wondered how she’d feel following Beryl, but when I looked up, she didn’t seem to be thinking about her talk at all, not the way she was locked in conversation with Marty Eliot.
    There were thirteen of us around the table. I hoped it wasn’t an omen. Nearly everyone, well, everyone except me, was engrossed in dinner and conversation with the person to his left or right. The real tension wouldn’t start to build, I figured, until people started lecturing, at which point everyone but the speaker would think he’d just heard a tale told by an idiot. Watching Betty make her way around the table, I was hoping no one had a video or slide show. God knows what might happen in die dark.
    Bucky was regaling Tracy with a great story, how he trained Meryl’s dog, went on safari with Sly, or prepared the Laddie Boy Bulldog for his latest commercial. Rick Shelbert and Alan Cooper were arguing across Cathy Powers’s dinner. Looking from one to the other, she seemed to be at a tennis match. Rick looked pretty angry, but he kept his voice down, and I wasn’t able to catch a word. Then Betty made her find. She was standing behind Audrey, pulling the world in through her nose. Suddenly she sat, her nose pointing to Audrey’s purse. She barked once.
    Chip stood so quickly his chair tipped over. He started around the table and then stopped cold. As he turned, everyone else did too. Now they were all looking at me. I stabbed a piece of potato with my fork, shrugging as I lifted it to my mouth and began to devour it whole. Surely no one would