Stud Rites

in back, in a zigzagged double row across the narrow end of the ring, near Leah, Steve, and Finn. Facing the dogs, studying Ironman, narrowing her eyes to peer at Casey, taking long, slow strides, tilting her head as if to get a fresh look at Daphne, Mikki Muldoon wore the grave expression universally seen on the faces of judges who, as the entire gallery realizes, have finished picking their winners, but aren’t quite ready to bring the drama to its conclusion by ending the delicious tension of uncertainty. What makes the ploy work is that there’s nothing sham about the absolute power of a judge: At the last second, Mikki Muldoon really could change her mind.
    As we worked our way toward Steve and Leah, Kevin caught sight of Finn Adams. Respectful of the hush that had fallen, he poked one of the wooden kitchen implements toward Finn and Steve and whispered salaciously in my ear, ”The two of them caught on yet?”
    ”There’s nothing to catch on to,” I whispered indignantly, ”and, no, they haven’t, and please do not—”
    With as much dignity as can be summoned by a gorilla-built cop in mufti carrying a set of malamute-embellished spatulas, spoons, and pancake-turners, Kevin gave his head a perish-the-thought shake that drove from my consciousness the lesson that most women learn by the age of eighteen, if not earlier, and that I’d certainly gleaned from my experience with Finn Adams: Never, ever under any circumstances trust a man who, by word or deed, says, ”Trust me!”
    As it turned out, however, in Kevin Dennehy’s ears, the most alarming words in the male vocabulary were not ”Trust me!” The particular expression that drove Kevin wild is, in fact, still uncertain. It could have been any one of a number of those being innocently pitched sotto voce by Finn Adams to Steve Delaney when Kevin, considerately positioning himself where he wouldn’t block someone’s view, found a place between two other tall men and thus accidentally overheard my ex-lover utter to my present lover such phrases as ”always ready” and ”last forever,” and refer in passing to proven studs and ripe bitches... meaning dogs, of course, and not me.
    Alas, as Kevin—in his role of defender of fair maidens—drove the handle of a wooden spoon into Finn’s solar plexus, Leah compounded my humiliation. Nimbly stepping between Pam and Tiny, bending far into the ring, Leah called out to Duke Sylvia, demanding to know who had owned Comet when his sperm had been collected for freezing. Fortunately, since my father is possibly the most embarrassing person I have ever met, I grew up being disgraced at dog shows. Leah’s inappropriate behavior, which could have been taken as a deliberate attempt to distract Ironman, didn’t faze the big steely dog at all. Maybe Ironman’s sire was as mortifying as mine. Duke, however, jerked his own head around. Despite his obvious and justified anger, he wisely shut Leah up by loudly answering her question: ”James Hunnewell,” he said. ”And Timmy Oliver.”
    ”And who owned the sperm?” Leah demanded in that ringing voice of hers.
    ”James Hunnewell,” Duke told her. ”No one else.”
    An unusual arrangement. As unusual as the co-ownership agreement itself.
    On the videotape, you can’t hear Duke. He just turns his head for a few seconds. You can see Timmy Oliver’s pasty face. Timmy’s closer to the gate than I am. He takes a step toward it. In the background, Steve flourishes the wooden spoon that he’s managed to wrest from Kevin’s enraged grip. Then the camera zooms in on Casey, who, with consummate self-possession, goes to the far end of the ring and comes back one last time. You can see on tape that the beautiful sable dog expects to win. As the camera zooms back and pans the dogs, you can see that Ironman does, too.
    So does Daphne, who is used to beating the boys and considers her sex no disadvantage at all. Mikki Muldoon makes a show of considering Daphne. Perhaps this is one judge who notices, as I do and often have, that Daphne’s ear set is slightly incorrect. No one, however, has informed Daphne of her minor faults. Here in the ring at the national, Daphne is at her showiest, and she’s very showy, indeed. Duke draws joy from the solemn Ironman. Way in the background, if you look closely, you can follow Leah as she snags first Kevin Dennehy, then Detective Kariotis, and succeeds, she tells me, only in embarrassing both of them by talking about bitches and