The Barker Street Regulars

second such anorak I’d owned. The first had been a present from Steve. After I’d worn it for a few years, the hood had started to come loose, and a tailor had informed me that the anorak couldn’t be repaired. The tailor was new to this country and still learning English. What he actually said was that the garment had defected. On reflection, I decided that the tailor was right: In going to pieces, the anorak had committed treason against a great American institution. Consequently, I bundled it up and shipped it to Freeport, Maine, where, after what I assume were grueling hours under harsh lights, it evidently confessed its guilt, because L.L. Bean replaced it with the new and presumably loyal anorak I now wore. I hadn’t asked for a replacement; I’d just wanted to snitch. But L.L. Bean is the real thing. Satisfaction guaranteed. Anyway, I’d worn the brand-new anorak in the hope of presenting myself to Irene Wheeler as the sort of prosperous person who can pay to raise the dead as easily as she can fill her closet with polyester fleece. Rita, I might mention, insists that in choosing to wear the anorak, I elected to garb myself in a personal symbol of reincarnation. As to the remainder of Rita’s interpretation, well, it’s true that Vinnie was the last gift my mother gave me before she died, the pick puppy from the last litter she bred, and I did, admittedly, grow up in Maine, but L.L. Bean as a mother figure ? Therapists! Let me also point out that since polyester fleece is warm, soft, and cuddly, it has to feel like a baby blanket against your skin. What else could it feel like? It has no choice in the matter. I said that to Rita. She said, “Neither do you.”
    But back to Irene Wheeler. “A model of perfection,” she said. “We do keep coming back to ideal images. The gray cat?”
    I decided to keep quiet about the mystical transformation Tracker had undergone the second I’d named her after a breed champion malamute. “Vinnie was real,” I said. “Besides, she was my dog.” It didn’t require a psychic to see our bond in the picture I’d offered Irene Wheeler. It was a color snapshot I’d had blown up. Vinnie and I are standing on the pier in Port Clyde, Maine, on a hazy summer day. The diffused light that radiates downward and bounces back from the ocean creates the illusion that her coat and my hair are exactly the same color. I am kneeling with my arm around her. We are smiling at each other. We are both young. Vinnie is obviously going to live forever.
    “She was beautiful,” Irene said tritely.
    I stopped short of saying that I would pay anything to see Vinnie again. I settled for saying that I’d give anything. As I spoke the words, as I’d certainly done before, I suddenly felt as if I’d been blasted with loud noise. Sometimes when Rowdy shrieked in the bathtub or when Kimi roared in my ear as I bent down to put her food dish on the floor, my head would rock as if I’d been whacked hard on the skull. Whenever it happened, I wondered whether I might actually have sustained a mild concussion. Irene Wheeler’s office, however, was quiet. What rocked my head were my own words.
    “Your great dog is still available to you,” said Irene Wheeler. “Is she not?”
    I hesitated. “In a sense, she is.” My head was still reeling. The office seemed like an echo chamber that distorted my own voice. In a sense, I heard myself say. The phrase ricocheted: Innocence.
    “In a sense,” Irene Wheeler repeated.
    “Not in material form,” I said carefully.
    Irene eyed me with what looked like suspicion. “Perhaps your Vinnie is as close as she is ready or able to be.”
    “Vinnie was always ready for anything ,” I snapped. “Her life was full? It was complete?”
    “Absolutely,” I said truthfully. I couldn’t control my tears. “I gave her everything I had. She gave everything back a millionfold.”
    “Everything,” said Irene Wheeler. “She gave you everything. She was more than willing to try anything you asked.”
    “Yes,” I agreed.
    “A cycle is complete. She gave you everything. She continues to sustain you. And you want morel"
    I said nothing.
    “The dogs you have now?” Irene Wheeler asked. “Rowdy and Kimi.”
    “Would you trade them?”
    “Not for anything.”
    “Not for Vinnie? Their lives for hers?”
    My head rocked again. “Of course not.” The prospect felt sick and grotesque: a bargain with the devil.
    “You ask too much of everyone,” Irene