Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

the tops and washing them, too, to chop and add to the dogs’ portion. I tried to remember if carrots were yin or yang. I’d have to ask Dr. Chen when I saw him the next week.
    Bianca had come in and was sitting and watching me prepare her dinner, her head cocked to one side, her legs straight out in front of her, a comical way for a dog to sit. I looked beyond her and saw Blanche and Dashiell, sleeping side by side on the Persian rug, that little black smudge at the corner of Blanche’s closed right eye. And then I looked back at Bianca again, at how sad she seemed, even watching me make her dinner, the black spot looking like a tear now, thinking that one day soon, both dogs would forget Sophie, but those little black tears would be there forever.
    She was such a swell pup, healthy looking, full of beans, friendly. Why were people so freaked out by cloning? Why was I?
    I shut off the Cuisinart and pulled out my cell phone, dialing a number I hadn’t called in months.
    “It’s me, Rachel,” I said, startled that he’d answered because he hardly ever did, thinking I’d have to leave a message and wait for him to call me back, a call that might not ever come. I told him about the case. He listened without interrupting.
    “About the cloning,” I started to say. But then I stopped. What exactly did I want to ask him? “Do you think any good will come of it?”
    “Yes. And no.”
    “You mean it’ll be good and bad? Oh, I see what you mean, that the cloning of animals, that’s okay, or at least sometimes it’s okay, depending upon the reason, the motive, for the cloning, right? That if the cloning is meant to provide medication, or more food, or organs for transplantation, that would be okay, a positive use of knowledge, but if someone was spending millions of dollars to get a duplicate of their pet, then that’s just some ridiculous paean to narcissism.”
    “You think too much,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “No use spinning your wheels, Rachel. Good or bad, it’s inevitable.”
    I waited for more, but there was no more.
    I meant to tell him I’d try to get over and see him soon, an empty promise that made me hesitate, and as I did, I heard the click, and then the dial tone.
    I looked up Ruth’s home number and dialed it next. “It’s me, Rachel,” I said. Again. “Can I meet you tomorrow, after school? I’d like to see if any of Sophie’s students—”
    “I thought you were going to wait a few days.”
    “I thought so, too,” I told her. “I’m at the apartment now. At Sophie’s. And I see her rent was paid on the twentieth of the month, not the first. So I don’t have as much time as I thought I did. Unless I want to pay the rent, these animals, and all Sophie’s stuff, are going to have to be out of here in a week. I don’t know that I could do that legally even if I wanted to.”
    “Do what?”
    “Pay her rent.”
    “How come?”
    “I’m not a relative. And once this place becomes vacant, the rent will go up. So why would they want to delay that? Anyway, can you meet me? I’m hoping that she talked to the kids about her family. So far, I haven’t found anything here that would lead me in that direction.”
    “They get out at three. I can meet you out front.”
    “I’ll be there. And Ruth, I’m bringing Bianca.”
    “Why Bianca and not Blanche?”
    “Because I want to attract them over to us with a dog that looks like the one they saw every day, but I don’t want to shock them. I think bringing Blanche might do that.”
    “I don’t know. Whatever you think.”
    “And one more thing . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “There’s a photograph on the refrigerator door, a picture of a nice-looking young man, thirtyish, curly hair, nice eyes.” Holding the phone in place by hiking up one shoulder, I used both hands to slide the snapshot out from under the little magnetized bone that held it to the fridge.
    “It must be Herbie.”
    I turned it over, then turned it back, waiting for Ruth to continue.
    “We were talking on the phone one time while she was seeing him and she said she liked to look at him while she got the dogs’ food ready. That’s so sad, isn’t it?”
    “That she liked to look at his picture while she made the dogs’ dinner?”
    His name was printed neatly on the back of the snapshot Herbie. That’s all. No last name.
    “No. That she kept it there, even after they broke up. I guess you can’t stay mad forever.”
    “Was Sophie mad at