The Wicked Flea

malamute owner or a shelter worker who tells me that a sweet, friendly malamute is going to be put down immediately unless someone helps. Since I couldn’t hear this caller at all, I shouted a plea to call me back in a few minutes. Then I hung up and fed the dogs. In the twenty seconds it took them to clean their bowls, I checked the caller-ID box. Its display read Private Call Number Blocked. He’d been ringing me quite often, probably to invite me to dinner at a trendy restaurant. My most ardent suitor, however, was Out of Area, who was always trying to reach me in the hope, no doubt, of seducing me into spending a romantic weekend with him in some charming out-of-area country inn. Data Error called occasionally, but I didn’t like the sound of him one single bit (Date Error?) and was happy to miss his calls.
    Not that I needed to feel like Miss Popularity. After all, even though it was Saturday evening, I had plenty of things to occupy me and was a few years beyond the absolute need for a date. Reminding myself of my age didn’t help a lot. To boost my spirits, I decided to walk the dogs. They, at least, wanted to go out with me, even if no one else did. And when they’re with me, I draw a whole lot of admiring glances. The dogs and I had barely descended my back stairs when we ran into Rita. By now, night had fallen, and the temperature with it, and Rita was hurrying to get indoors to warm up and get ready to go out with Artie Spicer, who was her birding mentor and the man in her life. Approximately two seconds after the back door had shut itself behind Rita, the dogs and I reached the sidewalk, and Kevin Dennehy’s great bulk loomed out of a shadow and startled me. He was leaving to pick up Jennifer Pasquarelli and didn’t have time to talk.
    I should mention that my neighborhood is interesting and diverse. It has single-family and multifamily dwellings, the Hi-Rise bakery, the Fishmonger, gourmet take-out shops, a branch of the Cambridge Public Library, a fabulous restaurant—Aspasia, on Walden Street—and an extraordinary number of renovated three-deckers cut up into psychotherapy offices. So why had Rita sent me all the way out to Newton? If I was too crazy for Cambridge, I was in terrible trouble. Anyway, my heterogeneous neighborhood borders the homogeneous magnificence of the area around Brattle Street, and the dogs and I often take advantage of our proximity to the grand colonials and Victorians and the splendid gardens of Off Brattle. I gawk and fantasize. Rowdy and Kimi snuffle with special enthusiasm, as if the privileged dogs who inhabit the twenty-room houses anoint their shrubs and trees with posh-smelling urine that simply begs for overmarking by tough-guy malamutes.
    Tonight, instead of choosing the opulent route, I made the mistake of heading up Concord Avenue in the direction of the Square, turning right onto Huron, and following it, thus passing shops where couples had bought wine, cheese, and other delicacies that they were now sharing, a pizzeria where couples were placing orders and nibbling slices, and, worst of all, cou-pies themselves. Cambridge being Cambridge, the couples were old, young, academic, townie, heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and ethnically everything. It should, but perhaps does not, go without saying that all these people had one thing in common: each member of every couple was paired off. Kevin Dennehy was with Jennifer Pasquarelli. Rita was going out with Artie Spicer. Grubby Wilson was married to athletic Pia. My father was married to Gabrielle. Tim and Brianna Trask had each another. Sylvia and Ian Metzner had been united as S & I. In front of a toy store on Huron Avenue, an expectant mother pointed out something in the window to a man whose arm rested on her shoulders. Rowdy would, I hoped, be bred to Emma. Still, he and Kimi were a pair. Ahead of me, they made a handsome brace.
    Steve Delaney would have married me. He’d asked. Often. I’d refused. Often. It had never crossed my mind that he’d marry someone else.
    Cutting our walk short, I headed home. When I reached the back door, the phone was ringing, but by the time I answered it, Private Call Number Blocked had hung up. The answering machine showed no messages.
    Sitting on the kitchen counter near the machine was a terrific book that Gabrielle had given me, Urban Foxes by Stephen Harris. I tried to read it, but it depressed me. Foxes live in family groups. My third-floor tenants, a couple, naturally,