Stud Rites

they’re not the only ones who think they’re God. As Steve injected lidocaine and waited for the anesthetic to numb Rowdy’s paw, he kept explaining why it was impossible instantly to undo the damage and rush Rowdy into the ring before it was too late. The jagged glass had sliced like the blade of a knife; the injury was far too deep for Nexaband, a sort of sterile Super Glue that’s a miracle cure for superficial abrasions, but has to be used with care: Nexaband bonds skin to skin. Yes, imagine! My dogs and I are already as one. We don’t really want to be Siamese triplets.
    Watching Steve remove supplies from his emergency kit—it’s actually a fishing bag from Sears— Rowdy’s fan club had downcast eyes and sour mouths. Prominent among the sourpusses was Lieutenant Kevin Dennehy of the Cambridge police, my next-door neighbor, who’d arrived with Steve. Not being a malamute Person, Steve, who has a shepherd and a pointer, had planned to come to the national only for Best of Breed.
    Bringing Kevin with him had been more my plan than Steve’s, in fact, entirely mine, not that there’s any enmity or ambiguity—Steve is my lover, Kevin’s my friend —but if you kennel two alpha males in adjoining pens, you’re bound to hear a few rumbles. Although you’d never guess it to look at Kevin, who has an Irish-cop face and the build of a mastiff, he feels intimidated in situations he can’t control by the familiar expedient of putting everyone under arrest. In other words, he’s more at home at a bank heist than at a social gathering where he doesn’t speak the language and no one is likely to pull a gun. A dog show isn’t exactly one of those Cambridge high-brow dinner parties where the host and hostess prepare dessert at the table by flambeing the peeled and diced remains of underpublished guests who didn’t go to Harvard, but despite his affection for dogs, Kevin just isn’t a real dog person, and if I hadn’t intervened, he’d have stayed home. So in gratitude for the time he’d spent helping me run the dogs around Fresh Pond while listening to me blather about the national, I’d arranged to have him ride with Steve, who agreed to the plan only after, in a stroke of desperate mendacity, I promised him that Kevin would fix the hundreds of dollars’ worth of Cambridge parking tickets that stood between Steve’s and the renewal of its registration. But only, I cautioned, if Steve didn’t mention anything whatsoever about the matter to Kevin, who, in his own way, was really very shy and would be deeply embarrassed by even a hint of thanks.
    Anyway, I’d arranged to meet Steve and Kevin somewhere near the gate to the ring at a little after one o’clock, but before they’d entered the hall, Leah had flown out of the grooming tent, intercepted them, demanded Steve’s keys, and dashed to his van for the kit that he always keeps there. And a good thing he does, too. The official show veterinarian for the national was on call, not at the site. Besides, I trust Steve. So, of course, does Rowdy.
    When Steve had finished suturing and bandaging him, I eyed the morose faces around me. ”Hey, would all of you please quit it? Rowdy thinks he’s done something wrong, okay? In a few weeks or a month or whenever, he’ll be fine. That’s all that matters. So I would appreciate it if you would stop dumping your disappointment on my dog.” Oddly enough, in speaking out for Rowdy, I experienced a feeling of liberation. It was as if the glass that sliced Rowdy’s pad had cut through my knotted ties to him and severed the show dog from the dog.
    Even the Buddha did not dwell in ceaseless epiphany. To my credit, everyone had to gang up to convince me to leave Rowdy in my hotel room, with Kimi crated next to him for company. He’d been stitched, bandaged, and started on antibiotics. Everyone would check on him. I’d been saving up for the national for the past year, hadn’t I? There was no need for me to miss Best of Breed.
    So only half an hour after my transcendent moment of spiritual reunion with Rowdy as just plain my dog, there I was in the aisle outside the ring with my mind’s eye still on Rowdy and the other two on one of the top contenders, Williwaw’s Kodiak Cub—Casey—and when I spotted Casey, I quit feeling guilty about leaving Rowdy back in my room. The solar system revolves around a single orb. Stuck outside the ring nursing his numb, gauze-wrapped paw, Rowdy would have hated playing