The Wicked Flea

as well come in, too.”
    Toting the cake, which I now felt like tossing into Ceci’s face, I followed Oona inside. The front hall was the size of my living room. There ended the resemblance. My living room has bare floors. Also, it’s clean and neat. Underfoot here was an oriental rug that probably had one of those fancy names I never understand— Kashan, Kerman, Sarab, or some other foreign word meaning that a poor dog writer can’t afford more than bare floors, so why bother mastering carpet terminology in Persian? It was a red rug with a pretty pattern obscured by dog hair, crumbs, and other, less readily identifiable, debris, some of which looked as if it could have been pulverized potato chips. An empty chip bag lay at the bottom of a carpeted staircase. Cuddled up to it to keep it from getting lonely were a couple of empty wine bottles and two stemmed glasses with red dregs. Jackets, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, an umbrella, running shoes, and a set of yellow oilskins also littered the floor. Leaning against a wall were a pair of cross-country skis and bamboo poles. The stale air bore a hint of what my educated nose identified as dog urine.
    “I’m sorry about your mother,” I told Oona.
    “The place is bedlam. The kitchen is worse than this. It’s disgusting.” Oona sounded as if I’d offered condolences because her maid had quit. “You want some coffee? We’re down to instant. There’s no sugar. And the milk smells funny.”
    “No thanks,” I said. “We can’t stay long. Ceci just wanted to drop off this cake.” Oona didn’t reach out for it or show me a place to put it. The only table in the hallway held a phone, phone books, and a stack of papers, so I just stood there like a dope, still holding the cake.
    “Come on in the living room,” Oona offered, leading the way into a long room with wood trim and a high ceiling. Two big red couches on either side of a massive stone fireplace faced each other across a low table buried under pizza cartons and newspapers. Although quite a few standing lamps and table lamps were placed here and there, not one was on. The room seemed somehow filled with a dank and palpable darkness. Lying face down on one couch, apparently asleep, was a petite woman in a purple terrycloth bathrobe. Her short, dark hair identified her as Pia. Seated on the other couch were her husband, Wilson, and her brother, Eric, both of whom were dressed in rumpled khaki pants and polo shirts. Wilson looked, as usual, as if he hadn’t bathed for a week. His hair was greasy, and his skin had a shiny look, as if he’d applied cold cream to it. Eric looked more awake than he had when I’d returned Zsa Zsa, and when I entered the room, he made an apparently token effort to rise to his feet. He did not, however, offer me a seat, and seemed content to leave the elderly Ceci standing. He’d have done better to remain seated altogether, because his gesture toward courtesy revealed that his fly was open. Neither Zsa Zsa nor Llio, Wilson’s corgi, was in sight.
    Ceci was talking nonstop about everything and nothing. “How nice that you have taken time off from work, Wilson, and Pia, too, prostrate with grief, how could she possibly have gone in and tried to concentrate? Neither of you would have gotten a thing done, and have the police been able to cast any light?” When no one responded, she barreled on. “Have you set a date for the memorial service?”
    “Sylvia hated funerals,” Oona said.
    The whole scene was so depressing that I felt immobilized. No wonder Pia had fallen asleep. My own eyes were heavy. The cake plate might as well have been glued to my hands. I felt like a character in a surrealist drama, an absurd woman inexplicably trapped in a dark, smelly room, doomed forever to clutch a lemon cake that no one wants.
    Wilson startled me out of my daze by addressing me in my native language. “You entered tomorrow?”
    I shook myself. “No. But I’m going.”
    Like everyone else who shows regularly, I keep my own little heavily annotated book in which I rate judges. Sam Usher, who was judging malamutes at tomorrow’s Micmac Kennel Club show, had earned his prominent place in my Absolutely Never Enter Under This Jerk class on the shameful—for him—occasion when he’d dumped both Rowdy and Kimi in favor of the most cow-hocked, swaybacked, snipey-muzzled, light-eyed, and otherwise pitifully unsound, incorrect, and just plain plug-ugly collection of supposed