The Barker Street Regulars

memory. The sundial, Simon’s grave, and the scene of Jonathan’s murder must be to my left and four or five yards uphill. Directly ahead of me, I remembered, a long bluestone walk led to a flight of steps that gave access to the terrace at the rear of Ceci’s house. Like the edge of a stage, the patio was dark. Center stage glowed hazily. Then a breeze stirred, and the fog briefly cleared. The French doors that formed the big alcove were transparent curtains. Flanked by tall fronds of potted palms, two chairs had been drawn close to the edge of the stage, almost as if their occupants were acting in the sort of so-called experimental play that forces actors and audience to reverse roles. So-called: If the result of an experiment has been replicated zillions of times, the experiment isn’t exactly experimental anymore, is it? I mean, if theatergoers wanted to be actors, they’d audition, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t buy tickets. And that, of course, is the zillion-times-replicated result. Tonight, for example, the entire audience consisted of a woman and a dog who’d sneaked in without paying and occupied standing room near the rear exit of an otherwise empty theater.
    On another night, another gate-crasher had made it all the way to the edge of the stage. Crushing flowers and foliage beneath his feet, the man with the bulbous forehead had stood in the wings, where he had eavesdropped on the action. But which side of the footlights had he really stood on? Was he a sort of stagehand or animal assistant’ who awaited Irene Wheeler’s cue to send the dog onstage? Or perhaps he was a vigilant and mistrustful director who wanted assurance that Irene was speaking her lines correctly. What was she saying now? What was Ceci saying?
    To approach unobserved, I couldn’t stride up the bluestone path with a big, flashy dog. No, I’d need to take a circuitous route. I wished I’d seen the yard in daylight. Looking uphill, I could see the bright alcove, of course, and the silhouettes of the house and, to its left, the low roof of the garage. The sundial was to my left. Near it was the semi-excavated resting place of Simon’s ashes. Jonathan Hubbell had not, of course, caught a foot in the grave and taken a mortal fall onto the sundial. If I tripped or bumped myself, I’d survive. But not necessarily in silence. I moved to my right. With Rowdy’s leash in my left hand, I stretched out my right and inched along until my fingers brushed the hedge. Ceci had said that the yard was fully fenced. We’d follow the perimeter. Any hazardous pieces of garden sculpture would be on display in prime locations, not tucked in the boundary shrubs. I’d let Rowdy move ahead of me. Dogs have excellent night vision and, of course, that uncanny sense of smell. I’d keep an eye on Rowdy’s white tail. If he moved to avoid an object, I’d avoid it, too. And if we needed to vanish, the shrubbery would offer hiding places. If we needed to bolt, we could run like mad for the stretch of fence to the right of the house, and in seconds we’d be through the gate and on the sidewalk of Upper Norwood Road.
    The plan worked perfectly for about thirty seconds. We followed our course to the right, turned left, and were starting uphill when the bright lights in the alcove suddenly went out. In the blackness, I heard the simultaneous sound of a door and the wail of Ceci’s voice in the open air. “Simon, come!” she screamed. Her voice had the high-pitched musical quiver that you hear when elderly women sing hymns. “Simon, come! Here, Simon! Here! Simon, come!” Caroling to her dead dog, she was heartbreakingly eager and desperate. “Simon, please! Please come back!” Then impatience crept in, as if the long-gone Newfoundland bounced and pranced just out of reach, happily engaged in some infuriating game of catch-me-if-you-can. “Simon!” Ceci scolded. “Simon, come! Come here right now!"
    Although Ceci’s behavior now strikes me as ludicrous and pitiful, its immediate effect was bizarrely convincing. On visits to the Gateway, I often took part in present-tense conversations about dogs who had left this world decades earlier, but lived on in the lives of their owners. There was a woman named Gladys who always perked up at the sight of Rowdy and announced to me in the familiar tones of canine fellowship, “I have two French bulldogs!” The first few times Rowdy and I visited Gladys, I assumed that her dogs lived nearby with a