The Barker Street Regulars

relative and that she got a chance to see them every week or so. I started to catch on when she happened to mention that she drove a Studebaker. I also learned that Gladys was an enthusiastic gardener. She complained about how hard it was to get the soil out from under her nails. To prove her point, she held out a clean hand. Gladys and I nonetheless continued to discuss her French bulldogs. I couldn’t bring myself to ask a brittle, cheerful, “And how are your dogs?” Rather, on each visit, I let Gladys reestablish the present-day reality of the two French bulldogs and all the rest. Once she did, I always felt perfectly comfortable. Relativity didn’t freak out Einstein, did it? On the contrary, he enjoyed it. So did I.
    Gladys’s Frenchies lived where she did, in an internally consistent past made present by physiological change, which is to say by a merciful act of God. Her relationship with them was thus as harmonious as mine with Rowdy and Kimi. Gladys and I had been blessed by coincidence: Temporal relativity had granted us the comforting good fortune of coinciding with our dogs. Furthermore, as surely as I could have driven Kimi to the Gateway to introduce her to Gladys, Gladys could not have presented her dogs to me, because they existed with her in her time, not with me in mine except during brief visits when Gladys, Rowdy, and I coincided in space. Is this getting too cosmic? The point is that in listening to Ceci’s expectant, melodious calls to a dog whose ashes lay buried nearby, I entertained the fleeting fantasy that there were two spectral dogs: one the unwitting impostor, the other the true Simon, who might triumph over time, space, death, and human fakery to leap over the heavenly and earthly gates to sail past me and into Ceci’s arms.
    Rowdy stirred. From the house, I heard soothing murmurs: Irene. The French door closed; the lights came back on. Rowdy and I resumed our uphill course, reached the level of the terrace, and inched our way from the shrubbery to the comer of the house, and from there toward the spot where Hugh and Robert had found the crashed flowers. Light spilled onto the terrace from the French doors at the center of the alcove, but the immense pot and lush foliage of the tropical plant at this corner of the little conservatory created an ideal post for eavesdropping. I could already hear soft voices. As I’ve mentioned, dogs have good night vision, and the long down had always been one obedience exercise that Rowdy performed quite reliably, if rather more noisily than the AKC obedience regulations allowed. Even if he hadn’t been able to see the downward sweep of my right hand, he’d have sensed the familiar signal to drop to the ground and stay put. Mindful that malamutes are malamutes, I repeated the signal to stay. I knew he wouldn’t get up. And in the absence of an AKC judge and a crowd of entertainment-hungry spectators, he probably wouldn’t howl.
    An obedience dog knows that when you start with your left foot, you expect him to move with you: Heel! Consequently, when you leave a dog on a long down, you start off on your right foot. I took three small steps in front of Rowdy, squatted, and peered into the alcove. A plant entirely blocked my view, but I could hear everything. Irene was, however, speaking about a topic so unexpected that I was tempted to put my ear to the glass to make sure I was hearing correctly. I’d assumed that Ceci and her psychic would be discussing Simon, of course, and Ceci’s impatience for his return. I’d hoped to overhear talk of Jonathan and his murder. Or evidence of blackmail? What I got instead was, of all things, a damned travelogue. Irene Wheeler was discussing California.
    “The climate,” she said with emphasis, “in all senses of the word, is naturally appealing. The atmosphere is wonderfully receptive.”
    “According to the papers,” Ceci replied, “the smog is absolutely terrible, you can hardly breathe, and police brutality, and the cost of real estate is simply sky-high, you pay millions for a dismal little hovel of a place, and the people! Thinking of nothing but making movies and riding on surfboards and sending some harmless man to jail for life because he forgot to pay for a slice of pizza pie. And what do you call it? Silicon! Everywhere! It’s terrible! I can’t imagine why anyone, certainly not you, would want to live in such a place.”
    After softly clearing her throat, Irene confessed that finances