Stud Rites

some people talking and—”
    Jeanine lifted her wet face from the sink to wail: ”Men.”
    ”Deep voices,” her sister explained. ”It was very dark. The lighting out there really isn’t adequate. Anyway, all that happened was that we overheard a couple of phrases that got Jeanine all upset. And for no good reason! Have you got that, Jeanine? For no good reason!”
    Jeanine took a seat on one of the dainty little white chairs arrayed along the counter in front of the long mirror. The ladies’ room didn’t supply paper towels, just machines for drying your hands, so she was blotting her face with tissues from her purse. I caught her eye in the mirror. ”Jeanine,” I said gently, ”could you tell me what they said? Obviously, it was something painful. I want to know what it was.”
    ”It was about B-B-Betty’s mongrels,” she stammered.
    ”The killer phrase,” Arlette added, ”was ’trash dogs.’ But they were not referring—”
    Jeanine abandoned repairs on her face to snarl: ”Oh, yes they were! And we did not just overhear them, Arlette! They saw us, they saw Cubby, and they said that deliberately! And they did it just to be mean.”
    I said, ”I hate to tell you, Arlette, but it’s possible that Jeanine is right. Look, in any group of people, there are a few stinkers. And the ones we’ve got here tend to be supercompetitive show people who don’t actually know anything about dogs. To cover up their own ignorance, most of what they do is go around saying other people’s dogs are trash. They say it about show dogs all the time. Especially the ones that beat theirs. But the rescue dogs make easy targets.”
    One of the toilets flushed loudly. As the stall door opened, Jeanine startled the poor woman who emerged by exclaiming, ”Cubby is not trash!” Belatedly, she lowered her voice. ”I know he’s not a show dog. You told me that when you gave him to me, that he’s a pet, that he’s no show dog. But he is not trash!”
    ”Of course he’s not.” To my mind, no dog is trash, but it seemed an inopportune moment to say so.
    ”What trash means,” Arlette added, ”is assholes like those guys out in the parking lot, okay? That’s trash for you, Jeanine. So just forget it. Hey, Cubby’s all alone in the car out there, and we’ve got a long drive ahead. Let’s just forget it and go home.”
    Jeanine looked a lot better now. With her own spirits improved, she turned her thoughts to someone else.
    Rising from her seat, she said, ”You know, Holly, when we were out there, Betty was out there, too. She was walking with some people to a car. I hope she didn’t hear what they said. I hope the other people didn’t hear either.”
    ”I hope not,” I agreed. ”But please don’t worry about Betty. She’s a lot tougher than she looks.” I paused. ”But if she didn’t hear, I think we won’t tell her, okay? I’ll tell her eventually, but if it’s all right with you, I think for now we just won’t mention it.”
    Jeanine concurred. As it turned out, she and Arlette didn’t see Betty again that night, anyway. We took a shortcut through the Lagoon, which rang with the raucous laughter of young men gathered around the outrigger bar, where Greg’s bachelor party was in progress. I tried to get a description of the voices Jeanine and Arlette had heard in the darkness. Jeanine was positive that both speakers were men. Arlette said that at least one could have been a woman with a deep voice. Neither speaker had had a foreign accent or a regional drawl. One voice might have been hoarse. There had been nothing to see except shapes in the dark. When we reached the lobby, Betty wasn’t in sight. Jeanine, Arlette, and I shared a big hug.
    ”Thank you, Holly,” Jeanine said. ”You know, what really got to me wasn’t what they said. It was the pointless cruelty of saying it at all.”
    ”I know,” I told her. ”That’s what got to me, too.” Although the Liliu Grill was located just off the lobby, I stood perfectly still for a few seconds to try to steel myself for whatever Betty’s reaction might be if she’d overheard the voices or somehow learned of the incident. She’d be enraged, of course. But whether she’d be in a hot mood of hell-bent revenge or a cold state of murder-on-ice, I couldn’t predict. It was also possible that like me, she’d keep the matter to herself.
    In fact, when I entered the grill and located Betty, I couldn’t tell whether she knew or not. She was