Stud Rites

forgetting that my baby boy Greggie’s allergic to everything, especially you!’ And—”
    ”Crystal, she did not!” shrieked one of the friends. ”She didn’t say ’especially you.’ ” After a pause, the friend added, ”Did she?”
    ”No,” admitted Crystal, ”but that’s what she meant. You should see how she looks at me! She gives me the evil eye. She must spend half her life watching Rosemary’s Baby, for God’s sake. Wait’ll she finds out it’s twins! She’s gonna go totally ballistic. The first thing that’s gonna come out of her mouth is, ’What! You mean, my Gregory did it twice!’ ”
    Crystal and friends burst into screams that abated only when one of the stall doors opened. Handing her glass to one of the friends, Crystal said, ”Hold this for me?”
    The friend took the glass, sniffed it, and said, ”Crystal, really! You know, you aren’t supposed to—” Crystal’s voice came from behind the closed door.
    ”Oh, yeah? Well, no doctor’s telling me I can’t celebrate my own wedding, okay? And don’t you dare tell—” The other two stalls freed up simultaneously. Crystal’s friends abandoned the three drinks on one of the counters and took their turns. I considered upending Crystal’s glass over one of the sinks and substituting tap water. Before I could act, however, she emerged from the stall. I entered. While I was inside, she told her friends about the husky in the lobby and all the other beautiful huskies, except that they weren’t really huskies, but malamutes, and what she really, really wanted for her most special wedding present was a beautiful little malamute puppy. Her friends told her that she was out of her mind. Besides, they said, she’d never talk Greg into it.
    ”Oh, yeah?” Crystal replied. ”How much you wanna bet?”
    The smug note in her voice made me uneasy. Leaving the stall, I took a place at the sink next to the one where Crystal was, of all things, brushing her teeth. Unable to keep my own mouth shut, I said, ”You know, I couldn’t help overhearing. I thought you should know that there aren’t any puppies for sale here. You aren’t allowed to sell puppies at a show.”
    Crystal’s self-satisfied expression made me wonder whether she’d already written someone a check. ”That’s show grounds ”, she informed me. ”Otherwise, it’s nobody’s business but your own.”
    Show grounds? Crystal, who couldn’t tell a malamute from a Siberian, seemed a strange source of the dog person’s phrase. Odder yet was her understanding of the American Kennel Club’s sharp distinction between secular terrain and the hallowed precincts of a show site. As I fluffed up my hair in front of a stretch of mirror, I pondered the matter. While I was touching up my lipstick, Crystal flounced out, drink in hand, and her friends followed. I’d just zipped my cosmetics bag when the door to the ladies’ room opened to admit Cubby’s adopter, Jeanine, who wasn’t just weeping, as she’d been when her dog was in the ring, but sobbing hard. With her was a woman who just had to be her sister. Both were tall and lean, with long, straight black hair, fine features, extraordinarily large hands, and long fingers tipped by nails tinted a shade of rose-brown that picked up the color of Jeanine’s rather drab suit and the flower print of her companion’s silk scarf. Catching sight of me, Jeanine covered her face with those immense, elegant hands. I immediately asked what on earth was wrong.
    Her companion answered for her. ”We had an unfortunate little experience. I’m Jeanine’s sister. Arlette.”
    We shook hands. ”Holly Winter. I placed Cubby with Jeanine. Jeanine, can you tell me what happened?”
    ”Jeanine,” Arlette said firmly, ”you know, this does not have to be a big huge deal. Get it through your head: This was not an attack. It was just some ignorant people who didn’t even know who we were, okay? So would you go and wash your face in cold water? And blow your nose and pull yourself together.”
    As Jeanine moved obediently toward a washbasin, I again asked what had happened.
    ”It’s nothing,” Arlette answered. ”We were on our way back to the car. With Cubby. We’re parked at the opposite end of the hotel, because when we drove in this afternoon, we noticed there was a field there, and it seemed like a good place to let Cubby do his thing. So we left the car there. Anyway, just now, when we’d almost got to the car, there were