The Barker Street Regulars

long, curly ruby-gold hair, which is in a red-headed league all its own. So we were seated opposite each other innocently eating lunch. On the way to the show, I’d told Leah about the cat, which, by the way, I’d last seen at dawn when I’d awakened to find it asleep on Steve’s pillow, purring in his ear.
    “I tried to pat it,” I now told Leah. “But all it did was hiss at me.”
    “It associates you with a traumatic experience.” Leah was, need I say, taking introductory psychology. Rita, who is a Ph.D. psychologist, agreed with me that the rate of Leah’s mastery of the subject was astounding. After two weeks of lectures and readings, there was absolutely nothing about psychology that Leah didn’t know. Rita also informed me that freshman obnoxiousness was an understudied trait, less because it spontaneously disappeared than because no researcher Wanted to have to put up with the know-it-all subjects who displayed it.
    “If it weren’t for me, that cat would be dead,” I pointed out. “If it were a dog, it would be grateful .” After pausing to pull my chair forward to make room for someone taking a seat directly behind me, I added, “we’ll, at least it’s a female. I won’t have it spraying all over my bedroom until I find it a home.”
    “Some female cats spray,” Leah informed me.
    “Is that true?”
    “Yes. And if it’s ugly and sickly and unfriendly who’s going to—?”
    Before she finished, a loud, raspy, penetrating, and all-too-familiar voice bellowed almost in my ear, “Crooks, all of them! Out to do nothing but empty your wallet. And the worst of them is that Delaney. You heard about our Gigi?”
    Leaning across my tuna casserole, I whispered to Leah, who knew all about the trouble poor Steve was enduring. “Say nothing!” I ordered. “Not a word!” She mouthed silently, “Gloria?”
    I nodded.
    Behind me, Gloria continued. “Spayed her! Ruined my bitch! Spayed her! What am I supposed to do with her? She’s no good to me now.”
    In Cambridge, no one remarks on Leah’s clear voice or perfect articulation. Althea Battlefield spoke with the same precision and in the same ringing tone. For reasons I’ve never quite fathomed, it’s highly educated women who always sound as if they want to make sure that hearing-impaired foreigners seated across the room won’t miss a single word. The men, in contrast, sometimes murmur so softly that I have to lean forward and strain to understand them. Oh, yeah. Maybe that’s the idea. Anyway, ever since I’d first started taking Leah to dog shows, I’d been trying to convince her that if she simply couldn’t help projecting her voice to the most distant reaches of the show precincts, she should either keep her mouth shut or watch what she said. In particular, not until we were safely back in the car headed home was she permitted to utter an even mildly derogatory comment about anyone’s dog. Indeed, the word she now enunciated had nothing to do with anyone’s precious female show dog. “Bitch!” Leah sang out. At a dog show, thank heaven, bitch is utterly unobjectionable; it’s practically every other word you hear.
    Oblivious to Leah’s assessment, Gloria switched from slandering Steve to extolling the powers of Irene Wheeler. “She could of fixed up Gigi, only by the time we got to her, it was too late. An animal communicator’s what she is. Better than all of those vets combined. Ought to be stuck with their own needles, if you ask me.”
    Over my left shoulder, I heard loud male guffawing. “You tell ’em, Gloria,” said Scott.
    Egged on, Gloria added, “If you ask me, all that Delaney cares about is what he can rip you off for.”
    I’d heard all I could take. So, I suspected, had Leah. Her freckles had disappeared into the crimson that suffused her cheeks.
    “All done, cousin?” I asked brightly.
    In disgust, Leah balled up her paper napkin and pitched it into the remains of her lunch.
    “Nothing,” I reminded her in a whisper. "Do nothing.”
    As we rose and carried our trays away, I was careful to avoid looking in Gloria and Scott’s direction. The sight of the pair would undoubtedly shatter my control over the impulse to upend my plate and deposit the remains of my casserole on Gloria’s head. Also, I didn’t need a refresher on what the vile couple looked like. They were in their mid thirties, I suppose. Somewhere on Gloria, something always glittered where no glitter belonged: fake rubies on a