Ruffly Speaking

For that matter, if experience continues beyond the great abduction, he’s still wacky about dogs, and if Morris’s heaven is truly his, he sits in perpetuity at the great eternal dog show in the sky. I see him there as clearly as I see the cream and terra-cotta of my own kitchen and the dark wolf gray of my own dogs, and I hear the raucous glee in Morris’s laugh as Bedlington terrier after Bedlington terrier goes Best in Show, as is perpetually the case in any paradise inhabited by Morris Lamb, who was an avid fancier of the breed and such a show fanatic that, regardless of even the most radical postmortem transformations of his soul, he undoubtedly continues to remember to bring his own thermos of coffee and his own folding chair.
    In my own heaven, I won’t be marooned outside the baby gates, and I won’t be showing in conformation, either. Nerves or no nerves, I’ll be striding briskly along over the mats of the Utility B obedience ring with a celestial Obedience Trial Champion at my side, an Alaskan malamute who eternally goes High in Trial or, on alternate days, the best obedience dog who ever cleared the high jump and never ticked it once. My last golden retriever, Vinnie, won’t just meet me at the pearly gates, but will soar over them, Velcro herself to my left thigh, and precision-heel me through the portals and onto the streets of heaven, which are, of course, paved in... Well, let’s just say that they are not paved in honor of the terrestrial obedience of the Alaskan malamute.
    So there’s Morris, content in the knowledge that his breed always wins. Also, if Morris’s heaven is anything like Morris’s earthly vision of paradise, you can bet that half the other men there are gay, too, or at least were when it still counted. Or, on second thought... I can’t speak for Morris. Or God, either, for that matter. In fact,
    I know only two things about Morris Lamb’s spiritual life. First, he was an Episcopalian. Second, as I’ve mentioned, he believed in Bedlington terriers. Otherwise? I have no idea. And my knowledge of God? Well, God and I have never actually discussed Morris Lamb—or sex either. Come to think of it, my conversations with God bear a striking resemblance to my conversations with everyone else, which is to say that we talk almost exclusively about dogs.
    So if I’d gone to Morris’s funeral, the Deity and I would probably have had an informative exchange about Rowdy and Kimi, but, as it was, I had the perfect excuse for missing Morris’s funeral: I didn’t know he was dead. I’d spent the weekend in Bethel, Maine, at the eightieth-birthday party of my grandmother, Lydia. She’d celebrated the occasion by getting an Irish wolfhound puppy and summoning the rest of us to come and admire him. We had. Early in the afternoon of Monday, May 11, I’d just arrived back in Cambridge and was puttering in the kitchen when Rita, my second-floor tenant, rapped sharply on the door.
    Instead of applying the knuckles of her manicured right hand to the alligatored paint, Rita taps out a rhythmic beat with whatever collection of rings she happens to be wearing. Manicured? Yes, polish and all. Here in Cambridge, the typical educated woman gets her nails professionally painted only if she happens to be an anthropologist researching a book on female self-mutilation. But if you think about what Rita does for a living, it’s easy to overlook almost any oddity she exhibits. Day after day, hour after fifty-minute hour, this poor woman has to sit in her office getting paid to hear stuff that’s so awful that no sane person would listen to it free: trauma, misery, despair, terror, grotesque twists of fate—the whole catalog of human suffering, and all of it inflicted on Rita. So in addition to having her fingernails filed and polished by a presumably unconfiding and uncomplaining manicurist, Rita wears clothes that not only match but coordinate with her shoes, which often have high heels. Even so, with the exception of Rowdy, Kimi, and their vet, Steve Delaney, Rita is the best friend I have. So if I’m defending her, what else are friends for?
    When Rita’s rings played her signature tune, her Scottie, Willie, must have recognized it from upstairs; one of his fits of owner-absent barking finally ended. Simultaneously, Rowdy and Kimi, who’d been sprawled on the fake-tile linoleum, quit gnawing their new Nylabones, leaped to their feet, and dashed to offer her the same joyous welcome they’d