Ruffly Speaking

foolishly advertised as chew-proof and puncture-resistant. Hah! I wouldn’t guarantee a steel girder safe in the jaws or claws of an Alaskan malamute.
    When I’d ended my preliminary survey, I packed a small box with paraphernalia to return to Beryl, and a few products to forget entirely: old gadgets with new names, dangerous toys, and, believe it or not, a square of indoor-outdoor carpeting patterned with the head of a rabid-looking Doberman and the words Goahead. Make his day. I stowed that box in the cellar, put everything else in the two big boxes, and dragged them to my study so they wouldn’t get splattered with paint when I freshened up the guest room for my cousin Leah, who was arriving in a month or so to spend the summer with me.
    Then I took the dogs for a short walk, answered a phone call from a pleasant-sounding woman interested in adopting a dog from Malamute Rescue, added a couple of paragraphs to an article about rabies, and dialed Winer & Lamb. I didn’t expect Doug Winer to be back in the store on the day of Morris’s funeral, but I didn’t have any idea where Doug lived, and phoning Winer & Lamb seemed like the easiest way to get in touch.
    The guy who answered had that lilting speech pattern that sounds so much like a regional accent that you’d swear that half the gay men in America came from the same hometown. Wherever it is, Morris originated else-where—New Jersey, in fact, as I’ve mentioned—but Doug obviously grew up there, as did several of the waiters at Winer & Lamb.
    “I was a friend of Morris’s,” I explained. “I just heard, and I wanted to talk to Doug.” To my amazement, the guy said that Doug was out back and that he’d get him for me.
    When Doug got on the phone, I told him that I’d just heard about Morris and was very sorry. In case my mannerly mother happened to be wasting her celestial time by listening in, I refrained from mentioning that Doug was working and that Winer &. Lamb was open on the day of Morris Lamb’s funeral. I didn’t make even the most oblique inquiry about the cause of Morris’s death, either. When on earth, my mother, Marissa, directed her attention principally to golden retrievers, and when she wasn’t training, grooming, showing, or tending to dogs, she was weeding her perennial garden, transplanting seedlings, laying tile in the house, or plastering walls. It’s possible that the perfection of heaven has left Marissa with more free time than she used to have. If so, leisure could have turned her maternal and hovery, I guess.
    Doug, though, eventually rewarded my virtue by answering my unasked questions. “You must think it’s terrible for me to be here! We stayed closed until one.” Doug’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But none of them knows a thing about books, except Fyodor, and the silly boy has gone to Barbados! I was petrified someone important would have to pick today to drop in, and this is a dreadful thing to say, but we have been flooded with customers.” I could almost see Doug cup his hand around the phone in case one of the employees read his lips. “Saturday afternoon, you just could not walk through here without stepping on someone’s toes. To get to the register, I literally had to insinuate myself between bodies and slither through! And since we opened today, it’s been almost as bad up here, and the café is worse. They need me here! They just can’t cope. You never realize how many incompetent people there are in the world until you run a business. It’s very disenchanting.”
    “Maybe it’s better for you to keep busy,” I said. Doug evidently didn’t need my support. “What choice do I have?” he exclaimed wildly. “They do terrible things! On Saturday, the afternoon of Morris’s death, I found Victor seating, actually seating, two very desirable clients at a table with soiled linen! It was disgusting—big spots of grease and coffee all over the tablecloth—and I had to step in and say, ‘Pardon me, ladies, but this table is very definitely not ready.’ There’s no excuse for that; you should just see our laundry bills. I sent Victor flying for fresh linens, and that’s absolutely typical.”
    “Doug, every time I’ve ever been there, everything has been perfect.” The tables in the café that occupied the front of the store and, in good weather, spilled onto the sidewalk, had pale-pink tablecloths and napkins— cloth, not paper, and heavily starched. Even at the outdoor tables,