Ruffly Speaking

it to get her goat. So some of her complaints probably are justified, in a way. I think the kids probably do torment her.”
    “Course they do,” Kevin said. “Same as this dog of yours probably does run over and pee on her flowers, but, like they keep telling her at the station, there’s no law against it. It’s just human nature. But one thing about Alice is, she’s always right. Won’t listen to a word you say.”
    “Which dog of mine? Did Alice Savery actually call-And it is not human nature to—”
    “This deaf lady’s dog. That’s her latest.” Kevin sounded like a happy owner describing a naughty puppy’s newest trick. I’d finished soaping the Bronco and was hosing it off. While I let the water run over the rear, I glanced at Kevin. The pride in his voice and on his face was both personal and civic. Alice Savery, I realized, was a condescending, arrogant nuisance, but she was Kevin’s nuisance and probably the pet eccentric of the rest of the Cambridge police force as well.
    “She complains about... Kevin, I don’t know what she says, but that is possibly the best-behaved dog in Cambridge, and if Alice Savery starts trying to make trouble— Well, you know, really she can’t. That dog does not run loose, and, also, the laws about guide dogs for the blind apply to hearing dogs, so—”
    “It defecates on her lawn,” Kevin said, “or so I’m told. Alice isn’t my personal responsibility anymore. It’s one of the prices you pay for promotion around here. They take away your uniform, and you don’t get Alice anymore, either, so all’s I know these days is what I’m told, but what I’m told is that it defecates on her lawn, and it does a lot else, too.” Kevin gave a sly smile and narrowed his eyes. “But I can’t swear to the else, because that’s not what she showed up at the station with.” He studied me.
    “You’re joking,” I said.
    He solemnly raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor. In a Ziploc bag.”
     

16
     
     “A pot of Earl Grey, please,” I told the waiter, whose name, I remembered, was Fy-odor. Harvard Square abounds in my-name-is-and-I’ll-be-your establishments, but Winer &. Lamb wasn’t one of them. Fyodor’s name stuck in my memory because Morris Lamb, who always added Homeric epithets to the names of his waiters, invariably referred to this one as Fyodor with the mad Russian eyes. Morris liked to dramatize. The waiter’s bright blue eyes looked perfectly sane to me, and the only thing Russian I’d ever noticed about Fyodor was his name. “Leah?”
    It was four o’clock on that same Sunday afternoon, and Leah and I were seated indoors at a pink-draped table for two. Taking tea in the Square had been Leah’s idea. Sometime during the preceding week, Doug Winer had shown up at Stephanie’s while Leah was visiting. He’d come to repair a light switch, unstop the garbage disposal, and perform a few other landlordly tasks, I gathered. He’d also used the occasion to announce that henceforth
    Winer & Lamb would be doing Sunday teas. Leah had arrived home with a large and rather formal invitation to the gala tea that would launch this entrepreneurial ship, and I’d agreed to accompany her.
    When we tried to make a little party of the event, everyone we invited made excuses. Kevin didn’t actually say no; all he did was make a show of crooking the gigantic little finger of his right hand and raising an imaginary china cup to his lips. Steve said bluntly that tea wasn’t his cup of. Rita begged off, too. Her aids amplified the clatter of dishes and the background noise, so restaurants drove her crazy. I said we’d sit outdoors. She still said no. Another time? Stephanie had an obligation at St. Margaret’s, and Matthew was attending a conference at MIT with his father, Phillip, who was in town for the weekend. I’d counted on the dogs, who would’ve been allowed under one of the sidewalk tables, but in the midafternoon, a heavy cover of gray-black clouds blew in, and by the time Leah and I were ready to leave, big drops of rain were pelting down, so Leah and I got dressed up and went alone. I wore a white jersey dress and carried a black umbrella. Leah bound her hair back from her face with a wide black band that matched the rest of her existentialist funereal chic. We felt grand.
    “An espresso, please,” Leah told Fyodor, who scribbled down the order, removed the invitation card that entitled us to a free platter of goodies, muttered