The Wicked Flea

she’d practically hurled herself at Sylvia.
    “Dear God, Pia, what’s the matter now?” Sylvia said. “Pia panics at everything. She always has.”
    The runner looked genuinely distressed. Her hair contributed to her startling and startled appearance. It was short and dark, and stood up in locks and tufts, almost as if it were standing on end. She probably just hadn’t brushed it before going for a morning run. Exercise could have reddened her face. But her expression was anxious and aggrieved. “Mother, really! A lot of help you are! Where’s Wilson?”
    A couple of people started to tell the young woman that Wilson had left a while ago. Ceci, however, responded to her obvious disquiet. “Something happened to you,” she said. “What is it? It wasn’t that foolish man again, was it?”
    “Yes, it was! Miracle of miracles, someone finally noticed. Thank you! Yes, it was the same one.”
    “In the ski mask?” someone asked.
    “Yes. And the trench coat. Corny, huh? But let me tell you, when it happens to you, it’s not very funny.”
    “No one said it was,” Noah told her.
    “My mother did.”
    “She didn’t mean that,” Noah assured Pia. “Did you, Sylvia?”
    “Pia, grow up!” Sylvia ordered. “These things happen. There are a lot of sick people in the world. This exhibitionist is one of them.”
    “If you’d had a dog with you—” Noah began.
    “It’d still have happened,” a woman finished. “It happened to me three weeks ago, and Pasquale was with me”—she pointed to yet another black Lab—“and he didn’t deter this guy one bit.”
    “Did you report it to the police?” someone asked her.
    “Yes, and all they did was put it in the Crime Beat column in the paper. Big help that was. At least they didn’t print my name.”
    “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ceci said, “since after all, you were the victim of this deviant person, and it isn’t as if you had done anything except just take Pasquale for a walk, speaking of which, my sister will wonder where on earth Quest and I have gone to, we’re usually not this late. Holly?”
    As I drove Ceci and Quest home, she lamented Douglas’s absence, but said how glad she was that I’d solved all the problems with Zsa Zsa and had a chance to meet all of Quest’s friends at the park. “And their mommies and daddies, too, of course,” she added.
    When Rowdy and I were finally alone in the car driving home, I said to him, “Rowdy, I’m your best friend, and I’m Kimi’s, too. I’m your owner, your hired help, your trainer, your handler, your groomer, nutritionist, nursemaid, and partner. I am all things to you. Except one. I am not your goddamned mommy.”
     

Chapter 10
     
    Subj: Re: Your Rowdy
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
     
[email protected] writes:
< 
My males are too young or too old or too closely related to Emma. She is CH Jazzland's Embraceable You. Emma's claim to fame is that she went R.W.B. at the National. 1 I'll send you her pedigree. She is the product of an outcross. Sire is AM/CAN CH Braemal's Alyeska Tuaq, and dam is Jazzland's Fly Me to the Moon. 2 I want to go back into the dogs on the mother's side of the pedigree, and those are the dogs that are in Rowdy's pedigree. Any chance you could send a video of him?
 
I want a standard size stud, no bigger than 26", good coat, good bone, dark, obliquely set eyes, little ears, a PERFECT tail set, and EFFORTLESS movement. Emma and Howie (her brother, CH Jazzland's How High the Moon) regularly run through the woods on our property. They cruise at top speed over fallen trees, rocks, and shrubs, and their top-lines barely move. They look like they are flat out on a ROAD. They absolutely float. I love to watch them.
 
Cindy
Jazzland Alaskan Malamutes
WAMAL—WA Alaskan Malamute Adoption League—
President
AMAL—Alaskan Malamute Assistance League—WA
     

Chapter 11
     
    Rowdy and I next accompanied Ceci to the park about two weeks later. It was early on a Thursday morning. Very early. Too early. So far, Dr. Foote had provided no cure for my predawn insomnia, and since dogs don’t suffer from the symptom, I had no idea how to rid myself of it. The only remotely applicable home remedy I could think of was the ridiculous notion that babies who sleep all day and stay awake all night can be made to reverse the cycle by being held by