Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

you feel about it?”
    “Well … they’ve got a huge house in Hillsborough … with a staff, I think … so she’d probably be more comfortable there.”
    Ben hesitated. “But?”
    “Well … frankly, I think she’d rather be with us.”
    “Has she told you that?”
    “Well, I haven’t spoken to her yet, just DeDe, but—”
    “Why don’t you ask her, then?”
    “If I do, she’ll think we’re trying to unload her. I know how she is. And she’ll agree to it whether she wants to or not.”
    “Do you think maybe she asked DeDe to ask you because she’s afraid of hurting your feelings?”
    “No … I don’t … honestly.”
    “Then … we’ll make her comfortable in the cottage. We’ve already told her she can do it, so we’ll do it.”
    Ben wondered what was going on here. Was Michael jealous of DeDe’s attention to Mary Ann? Did he think he would somehow fail Mary Ann if he didn’t insist upon taking care of her? Or maybe—and this was where it got murkier—he was trying to prove that he wouldn’t desert her in her hour of need as she had once deserted him?
    The truth, whatever it was, lay beneath the sediment of their shared history, and Ben had not known either one of them long enough to dig it out.
    He wrestled with business for several hours, calling it quits around four o’clock. It was awful how the Zen calm achieved from making something beautiful with his hands could be so quickly erased by the demands of taxes and billing statements. But, over the years, he had learned to face the fact that art could not be practiced without the eventual use of numbers—not if you wanted to keep on doing it. His business had been successful for that very reason. At least it had been, before the recession.
    He swung away from the computer, rubbing his eyes. Roman was watching him intently from his doughnut bed across the room, sensing even now, from the creak of Ben’s Aeron chair and the slow, gray death of the skylight, that it was time to hit the road. The dog was already at the door, his tail thrashing like a flag in a red-state parade, when Ben removed the leash from the filing cabinet. Then, as an afterthought, he snatched the Chuckit! from his desk drawer, causing Roman to begin crooning with joy. That blue plastic ball launcher could mean only one thing: a trip to the beach or the park.
    The beach would have been nice, given the clear skies, but Ben figured it would be chilly at Crissy Field and downright cold at Fort Funston, so he took Roman to the Collingwood dog park. When they came through the gate, he counted only three other humans on the field, though there were at least a dozen dogs. Dogwalkers, he concluded, with a shiver of disdain, since dogs being led around en masse brought a weird energy to the park. They just stood around looking bored and displaced, like schoolchildren on a field trip, refusing to play with each other when they weren’t ganging up on the rest.
    Today, however, Roman had found a familiar face: Blossom.
    While the terrier and the doodle wrestled, Ben spotted Blossom’s doting dad sitting alone on a bench at the far end of the park. He had no choice but to acknowledge Cliff with a wave, but he was relieved when the old man seemed not to have noticed. After their exchange at the Y, he’d had enough Cliff for the day. He wasn’t sure what they’d talk about this soon. For all his implied tragedy, Cliff just wasn’t that interesting.
    He looked back at the roughhousing dogs, grateful for a reason to turn away from the old man, but Roman quickly lost interest in Blossom and ran off to harvest a tennis ball. Blossom looked crestfallen for a moment, then left to join the listless dogs on the chain gang. When Roman returned to deposit the slobbery ball at Ben’s feet, Ben obeyed the implied command and flung it across the compound. Roman was already halfway there when the ball hit the cyclone fence. He caught it in midair on the second bounce and pranced back to Ben, ridiculous and beautiful, his whole body shouting triumph.
    Ben wondered sometimes what would happen if the capricious electricity in Roman’s brain fired at a time like this. How would the other dogs react to a grand mal seizure in their midst? Or the people, for that matter, who might get the wrong idea about the foam on Roman’s lips. Would he be able to stay by Roman’s side, comforting him until the seizure stopped, or would he have to cope with a larger madness? And what about the