Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

way I hoped it would be. Boris? Bucky? Everyone?”
    There was grumbling, but there was nodding, too. There were two sides here for each of us—the fierce belief that whatever each of us did was the only effective, humane way to train, and the insatiable hunger for talking about dogs and working them with a group of people who knew what they were all about and who loved them as excessively as we ourselves did.
    “In fact,” Sam said, “let me see if we can have coffee and dessert afterward instead of now. Maybe they can leave us something in the tea room. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
    For a while, we ate quietly, no one shouting across the table or pointing at someone else with their knife or fork. Sam had gotten up to talk to the waiter. When she came back, she merely put her napkin back over her short skirt and continued eating her dinner. When everyone was finished, she called over the waiter who had been standing attentively in the doorway in case anyone needed more water or wine.
    “Kevin will have everything we’ll want when we return set up in the tea room. You’re a darling,” she told him.
    The smile she gave him was so glowing, for an instant I wondered if Kevin was going to be Mr. Tonight.
    “Why don’t we meet right out front in twenty minutes. Bucky, will you bring the whole family?” she asked. ‘That way Martyn and I can join in, too.” Bucky nodded. “Excellent. Twenty minutes, then, people. Don’t keep the rest of us waiting.” I waited with Sam until everyone else had left. “Do you think this will turn things around?” I asked her.
    “It better.” She dropped her napkin onto her plate and stood. “I’m running out of speakers.”



HOW ABOUT HIDE-AND-SEEK? CHIP SAID

    L ying on the damp grass, looking up at the stars, I heard Tracy’s voice loud and strong, sending Jeff. A moment later I could hear him thundering across the grass toward me, the sound coming closer and closer, and then there was only the sound of my own breathing as he sailed over the three prone bodies lined up side by side on the ground, landing clear of us on the other side. With Woody pressed against me to my right and Audrey to my left, for the moment I felt completely happy, the way you do when you’re a child and now is the only thing there is.
    “Shall we try four?” Tracy shouted out in the darkness of the Sheep Meadow.
    “It depends who’s on the end,” Woody said, and we began to laugh so hard I thought we’d never be able to stop.
    “I’ll do it,” I said, and before I could get up and go around him, he’d rolled me over his body and dumped me on his other side. Audrey scrunched over, and Cathy lay down next to her on the damp grass.
    Tracy called Jeff back to her. I thought he’d go back over us, making me first and Cathy last, but he went around us instead. I could hear him thudding along on the grass, and then Tracy sent him again. Something danced in my stomach as I heard Jeff coming our way. He sailed over us, but low enough this time to make me wonder if trying five would be a sane idea, knowing in my heart we would, and that once again I’d be on the end because I found the fear intoxicating.
    I was only half right. Suddenly Chip was lying next to me, so close that if we’d stayed that way for weeks, the grass couldn’t have grown up between us. Playing in the dark, not one of us seemed to have a serious thought in his head, as if two of our colleagues had not just died.
    Sometime between Central Park West and getting to the Sheep Meadow, a miraculous transformation had begun to take place. Instead of pointing at one another with accusations and recriminations, instead of hostility and rage, there was cooperation, there was camaraderie, there was even joy. Under the moon and stars we cavorted with each other and our dogs as if there had never been any conflict, as if nothing at all were wrong, as if we were children and best friends at that. I, for one, intended to enjoy it as long as I could, all night if it lasted.
    “Ready for five?”Tracy called out.
    “Oh, no,” Cathy said. “At least send Magic instead of Jeff.” And once again, we were giggling like kids.
    “No five,” Boris said.
    We all groaned.
    “Six. Boris on end.”
    And with that, Chip Pressman did something I would have thought was impossible. As if to make room for Boris, he moved closer.
    “There’s a whole park out here,” I whispered, looking not at him but up at the stars.
    “I know.”
    I