The Barker Street Regulars

mean, unless you spend a terrible amount of time with a forced-air dryer and a brush, your dog doesn’t stand a chance in the ring, so I assume that all this fluffiness the judges like must be absolutely crucial to the breed’s ability to haul heavy freight. But then I thought of Gus, Nancy, and the others, Althea of course, and Helen, and I made my apologies to Kimi and took Rowdy to the Gateway.
    The drive there was dismal. Everything, including the sky, was the color of dirt. Mats of leaves rotted in the gutters. Nature and artifice had cooperated to litter people’s yards with broken tree branches and with scraps of sodden paper and torn plastic. The streets were thick with ice-melting chemicals and sand. Loose black sticky nuggets of asphalt lay everywhere except in the potholes they were supposed to fill. At the edges of parking lots, icy mountains of filth lingered: the unsettled graves of dead snow.
    The Gateway was in Cambridge near the Belmont line, only a short drive from my house, which is the three-story red wooden one at the comer of Appleton and Concord. The Gateway was a new facility constructed of brick, concrete, and plate glass, and surrounded by foundation plantings of evergreens and rhododendrons in beds mulched with wood chips. For the previous week, we’d had mild, rainy weather, a sort of winter mud season, but last night the temperature had dropped thirty degrees, and the Gateway’s parking lot was thick with fresh sand and chemicals that I tried to brush off Rowdy’s feet and underbelly before we entered the lobby, which was the brightest and most cheerful place I’d seen that day.
    Only one of our lobby regulars was there. In the adjoining dining hall, a man in green work clothes was running a floor-polisher over the linoleum, and the ten-thirty exercise group hadn’t begun yet. At the Gateway, the day always started late. I’d been asked never to arrive before ten-thirty, when the last breakfast trays were cleared and when most people would have been bathed and dressed. When I signed in and pinned on my badge, I realized that my sweater was a depressingly colorless gray. I wished I’d worn red and tied a bright bandanna around Rowdy’s neck. A staff member bustled by and, in passing, confirmed my impression that everything was running behind schedule today.
    “Where are your friends today?” I asked the lone woman in the lobby.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
    “Not dressed yet, I guess,” I answered. “I’m glad you’re here. Rowdy would be disappointed if he didn’t get to visit.”
    Even after we’d spent some time with her, the morning activities in the dining hall still hadn’t begun, so I decided to move up to the third floor and catch our first-floor people later. When we stepped off the elevator, I had to lead Rowdy around a man who was washing the floor. Someone was stacking trays of dirty dishes on a big cart. The TV room was empty except for a woman I’d never met before. Although she smiled pleasantly at Rowdy, when I asked whether she liked dogs, she said no, not big dogs, just little ones. Back in the corridor, Rowdy headed for 319, Nancy’s room. We found the door shut. Rowdy whined softly, and I had to remind him not to paw at it and scratch the paint. A closed door, I’d learned, meant that one or both occupants were being bathed, dressed, or given some kind of medical treatment. I’d been told that it was all right to knock and wait for a reply, but I didn’t want to bother anyone who might be attending to Nancy or her roommate, and I didn’t want to violate anyone’s privacy.
    “We’ll come find Nancy later,” I told Rowdy. “She’ll tell you how beautiful you are, won’t she? And you’ll give her a big kiss.” She’d also moan and call out his name, and she’d have to be prevented from encouraging him to jump on her bed, where, I feared, he might accidentally crush her tiny frame, but neither her wailing nor her frailty would bother Rowdy. “I promise,” I said. “She won’t want to miss you, either. We’ll come back later.”
    Having visited hardly anyone, we took the elevator to the fifth floor. There I was relieved to find Helen and Althea dressed for the day and eager to see Rowdy. Helen Musgrave interrupted her ritual sorting of the contents of her bulletin board to shake hands with Rowdy and then departed to attend some activity or event. Despite the darkness of the day, the morning light that