The Wicked Flea

once, Molly was on the ground instead of in Gabrielle’s arms. Gabrielle held the little white dog’s leash in one hand. Her other hand supported one of those green and white L. L. Bean tote bags touted in the catalog as useful for everything, including, presumably, the transportation of human remains. “Not that it matters,” she added. “What I had in mind was Widener. There’s something religious about it, don’t you think? More than Mem. Church, really.”
    Widener Library is a temple to academe, with tremendously long stone steps all across the front that lead up to the main entrance. The steps are reminiscent of those you see in pictures of pre-Columbian ruins, not that ascending them is any sort of prelude to human sacrifice, even in the case of undergraduates with failing grades, but Gabrielle was nonetheless right about Widener’s religious quality. “Yes,” I agreed, “there’s something wonderfully eternal about it. But there are people sitting on the steps.”
    “There’s no wind,” Gabrielle observed, “so it’s not as if...” She broke off. “Did you know,” she asked, “that Harvard is the second-wealthiest nonprofit organization in the world? Second only to the Roman Catholic Church.”
    “No, I didn’t know that,” I said.
    “Well, it is,” Gabrielle said, as if Harvard’s endowment somehow entitled her to deposit her first husband’s remains on university property. “Even so,” she said, “the earth is probably better. Mother of us all, and so forth. Right over there would do nicely, I think.”
    She pointed to a clump of young trees with Molly’s leash and then strode toward the chosen spot. Kimi and I followed. Reaching her destination, Gabrielle stopped, put the tote bag down, and bent over to remove its contents, which consisted of a flashlight, a sheet of paper, a pair of eyeglasses, and a square cardboard box. Before I could stop her, she turned on the flashlight.
    “Gabrielle, that’s not a good idea,” I warned. “And we really don’t need any extra light.”
    “We do,” she said. “Or I do, because I have a little something I want to read. You didn’t think we were just going to dump him on the ground and run off, did you?”
    “People are going to wonder what’s up.”
    “Let them!” she exclaimed. At the same time, however, having apparently thought the matter over, she turned off the light. “Oh, well, I know it by heart, I think.” Replacing the flashlight and eyeglasses in the tote bag, she opened the cardboard box. “Molly, sit!” Copying Gabrielle, I said, “Kimi, sit!” Onlookers, I hoped, might imagine that we were training our dogs.
    “The plastic bag is already open,” Gabrielle informed me. “I haven’t come totally unprepared. Well, I suppose we’re ready.”
    All on its own, my body adopted a prayerful posture; I could feel my shoulders straighten, my head bow, and my eyes close. Like Molly and Kimi, I waited silently.
    Gabrielle lightly cleared her throat and, in that resonant voice of hers, said with great solemnity, “Goodbye, Walter. ‘Strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices.’ Good-bye, good-bye.”
    The quoted words were familiar. No, more than merely familiar. I, too, knew them by heart. Had I chosen to do so, I could have continued where Gabrielle had left off:
     
This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory
of Boatswain, a Dog
     
    Boatswain had belonged to Lord Byron, who had written the inscription for the Newfoundland’s monument.
    Gabrielle still maintains that it was my inexplicable coughing fit that alerted the Harvard University Police to our presence. In my defense, let me say that the fit was uncontrollable. But something certainly drew the attention of the young man in the Harvard University Police uniform, who came striding up to us and said in a what’s-this-all-about tone of voice, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”
    “Bracing,” Gabrielle replied.
    “Something I can help you with here?” he asked. Under the circumstances, there was one right answer to that question: no. Even polite elaboration would have done nicely: Thank you so much for asking, but we’re just out for a stroll with our dogs.
    Gabrielle, however, always assumes that the entire world is on her side and that every stranger is about to become her best friend. She blabbed the entire story. The late