Ruffly Speaking

where, he’d reasoned, a little fresh air would seep in through the crack. It had. He looked horrible, though. So did I. In one of the most politically correct cities in the world, I wore blackface—and black arm and black leg, too. Rowdy still looked like the malamute from hell, but the pads of his feet were fine, and, although he’d taken more smoke than I had, he wasn’t wheezing. I stood up, smacked my lips to him, then led him down the illuminated path next to Morris’s house, through the shrub border, and across a little stretch of lawn to Alice Savery’s back door.
    Light was no problem anymore. The smoldering carriage house was now a bonfire that had attracted a crowd of neighbors. The cautious clustered in a group at the end of the drive; the bold formed a scraggly line near Matthew and Doug, who were soaking the area around the building with their hoses. The smoke was steamy now-Everyone faced the fire. No one watched Rowdy and me-
    The back door had glass panes. After I’d tried ringing the bell, I tapped on one of them. Then I took off one shoe, placed the sole against the pane, rested my left elbow on the upper, and used the flat of my right hand to deliver a hard whack to my left fist. I’m not an experienced housebreaker; what I am is a landlady who does her own repairs, including glazing. In almost no time, I’d removed enough glass to let me reach in, locate the knob, and open the door. Most houses in that neighborhood had expensive security systems. I’d half expected to hear an alarm like the one Ivan had triggered by pounding on the front door. Nothing happened. My fingers found a light switch.
    Careful not to let Rowdy step on the broken glass, I led him through a little mud room, where we paused. I inserted Rita’s aid in my left ear. Then I removed the wide jersey belt from my waist, wrapped it around and around Rowdy’s head, and tied it on top. He looked ridiculous, of course, a large charcoal-colored dog wearing a hair ornament, but I didn’t happen to be carrying any canine ear plugs, and the belt effectively pinned down his ears and added a few layers of muffling.
    Beyond the mud room was a shabby, ugly kitchen with yellow-speckled green linoleum, greenish-yellow walls, and restaurant-size cabinet space. Everywhere, and I mean everywhere, were brown paper grocery bags packed with junk mail, newspapers, and bright-colored, neatly folded boxes that had once contained such diverse items as graham crackers, cornflakes, radon detectors, and at-home kits to test water purity. The sour air certainly smelled as if it could use testing, and the layer of grease that clung to every surface was so thick that if you’d scraped it into cans, you could’ve supplied the shortening needs of a bad diner for six months. Perched on the edge of a counter, ready to fall off and break someone’s foot, was a great big red fire extinguisher.
    “Miss Savery!” I called.
    My left ear felt as if someone had jammed a full-size radio into it. When my fingers explored the aid, they felt huge and clumsy, and when they finally located the minuscule volume control, one touch in the wrong direction cut off all sound to the ear. In an effort to turn the damned thing back on, I made what I intended as a fine adjustment. The air came to buzzing, crackling lif e Rowdy’s tags clanged like cymbals. Almost in the ear itself, a fully inflated five-wad bubble of Bazooka in the mouth of an infant Dizzie Gillespie burst with a weirdly metallic POP! The origin of the deafening explosion proved to be my own mouth; I’d lightly clicked my tongue. But I left the volume set high. If an ultrasonic blast cut off the aid, I’d definitely notice.
    With every step Rowdy and I took, the floor creaked like a rickety bridge about to drop out from under us. We made our cacophonous way through a butler’s pantry. When I pushed a swinging door, it shrieked on its hinges, and Rowdy shoved ahead of me. I flipped a switch on the wall, but the brass chandelier over the mile-long table had fake-candle-flame bulbs that gave only dim light. Propped on the mantelpiece over the fireplace at one end of the dining room were two tarnished candlesticks with no candles, a china shepherdess, a beautifully framed watercolor of a flower garden in bloom, and two plastic boxes that turned out to house little gadgets with warning lights. One gadget would indicate gas leaks; the other would warn of the presence of carbon monoxide.
    “Miss