Ruffly Speaking

”
    “Oh, God,” Rita said.
    “After that, what could I do? And Morris would not take it seriously. He kept making up letters for me to write. ‘Dear Mr. Winer, Your son is gay. Love, Douglas S. Winer, A.B.’ I was always half terrified that Morris would get carried away and let something slip when they were around.”
    “And now?” Rita asked gently.
    “And now,” Doug told her, “I’m half-terrified that I will. It would almost be better if Morris had gone ahead and done it for me.” His voice had dropped to a whisper that would never have reached Rita’s unaided ears.
    “Seconds, anyone?” Stephanie asked briskly. “Thirds?”
    Her human guests made noises about not having room for another thing, but as soon as we began to clear the table, Rowdy leaped to his big white paws and started to whine and ah-roo. Stephanie was all sympathy. Stephanie did not own a malamute. Give Rowdy an inch, and he’ll take 196,950,000 square miles, which, I should explain, in case you don’t happen to live with a malamute and thus haven’t been driven to find out exactly how far your dog will push you, is the surface area of the planet Earth.
    “After Rowdy has settled down and behaved himself,” I told Stephanie, “then he can have a treat, but not now.”
    “Well, then, Ruffly can wait, too,” she said. “After we have his cake, the dogs can share the leftovers.”
    Rowdy was as likely to share food as he was to burst forth in fluent Mandarin. The doling out of treats, I decided, would be one situation that Stephanie would not control. With one of those aren’t-you-a-stingy-mean-owner, poor-darling-sweet-big-doggie looks, Stephanie settled for depositing bits of steak and bone-free salmon in a little dish that she put in the refrigerator. Ruffly eyed her and danced expectantly around, but to my surprise she held firm. “Later! I promise. Later.”
    When the table had been cleared and reset for dessert, we resumed our places, but instead of resting quietly at Stephanie’s feet, Ruffly now perched on her lap, his head winningly cocked to one side, ears akimbo. The sky had darkened to the color of pale smoke, and someone had turned on the outside lights to make the deck a bright stage. The indistinguishable mounds and lumps of the backyard shrubs became our invisible audience. One of the third-floor windows of Alice Savery’s house glowed. I wondered whether she’d taken a loge seat. Stolid and expressionless, Matthew emerged from the kitchen, followed by Leah, who carried the cake, a white-iced rectangle heavily decorated with tiny American flags. The candle flames made hollows of Leah’s bright eyes. Doug led the singing. His strong, true baritone miraculously kept everyone, even me, more or less on key.
    By the time we were eating our cake, the floodlights had attracted a mass of hideous brown moths that kept hurtling themselves against the hot bulbs, and I was concentrating on not scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles. Although my rural childhood should have inured me to bugs, I still hate blackflies, but urban insects don’t really bother me, and the temperature had finally dropped low enough to let me feel human again. From the way Stephanie and Rita acted, however, I concluded that Manhattan did not experience a black fly season. With Leah serving as his cheerful research assistant, Matthew took advantage of the opportunity to collect specimens for his flora and fauna unit, but the rest of us moved inside.
    Stephanie had ended up with the kitchen in food-free order, so after carefully reassessing Rowdy’s on-leash response to Ruffly, I gave in and let the big boy loose. As if to confirm Stephanie’s obvious conviction that I was ridiculously mistrustful of my giant pussycat of a dog, Rowdy gave Ruffly a perfunctory sniff, ambled around, and then dashed to the living room, where people were gathering around the coffee table. Rowdy shook himself all over, fell to the floor at Stephanie’s feet, and trained one almond-shaped eye on her and the other on the table, which held a sugar bowl, a pitcher of cream, and a plate of cookies, as well as a coffeepot and our cups. Rowdy prefers his with cream and sugar, but he’d happily have lapped up the cream, and he was a master sugar-bowl thief, too. Stephanie reached down to stroke him. “What a good boy Rowdy is. Why does she say such terrible things about you?” Without even a glance in my direction, Stephanie suddenly took a cookie from the