The Wicked Flea

out to the store for cream.” Althea paused. “I want you to know that you should feel entirely free to keep whatever previous engagement you may have made that will prevent you from accepting her suggestion.”
    I was tempted to seize on Althea’s tactful offer of an easy way out, but the elderly sisters were my adopted aunts. I succumbed to a sense of family obligation. Also, Ceci knew how crazy I am about raspberries. I owed her one. I told Althea that I’d pick up Ceci and Quest at two o’clock.
    And I did. To my surprise, when Ceci, Quest, Rowdy, and I arrived at the park, I felt happy to be there. The freakishly warm weather had returned. A few white clouds decorated the sky, and the grass remained unseasonably green. Better yet, the field had been claimed by a few dozen people who were engaged in an energetic game of baseball, and not a single member of the dog group was in sight, so I wouldn’t be expected to accomplish the paradoxical task of walking Rowdy while both of us stood still.
    “No one’s here,” remarked Ceci, meaning no one who counted, in other words, no one with a dog. People who show their dogs cling to the erroneous belief that pet owners can’t be real dog people. Hah! Ceci was proof to the contrary.
    I pointed out the self-evident: “We are.”
    To my relief, Ceci made no effort to linger around the parking area or the field, but eagerly strode toward the woods. Thriving under her care, Quest ambled at a pace that was slow for Rowdy and me, but decent for him. Taking the same trail we’d used the day Ulysses and Douglas had found Sylvia’s body, we talked dog talk: Quest’s positive response to his new drug regimen, the pros and cons of various brands of senior dog foods. We encountered remarkably few other people, with or without dogs: two or three runners, a grimfaced woman with a merry golden retriever, a young man who looked too exhausted to bear the weight of the yellow-haired baby in his backpack. The golden was on leash, and for once, no loose dogs were in sight. I heard not a single blast of an air horn; maybe the horrible fad I’d foolishly introduced had peaked and was declining. The footpath we’d followed to the scene of Sylvia’s murder was now behind us, and we’d gone beyond the place where Douglas had turned back to search for Ulysses on the day the improbable hound had discovered her body.
    Just ahead of us, the trail forked, and noticing the split, Ceci switched from the topic of dogs. “Like the Robert Frost poem! Except that they’re paths, not roads, are they? And the woods are more brown than yellow, and those pines or spruces or whatever they are are still green, well, not still, since they’re evergreens...”
    Knowing Ceci, I expected her to add that the nonroads in the non-yellow wood hadn’t actually diverged. She didn’t. For once, she fell suddenly silent. Turning to her to see what was wrong, I found that she’d stopped to stare into the deep woods to our right. I felt no alarm, and neither of the dogs gave any indication of anything amiss. Quest was his usual bearlike, giant self. Rowdy’s tail was sailing back and forth over his back, but malamutes carry their tails over their backs, and even for a malamute, Rowdy is an exceptionally happy boy. For a second, I panicked at the possibility that Ceci was having a heart attack. Quest had been setting the pace, which was a near creep for Rowdy and me, but perhaps a near sprint for Ceci. Her expression, however, didn’t suggest pain, and she wasn’t clutching her chest or showing any other alarming signs. She didn’t look sick. What she looked was stunned. My eyes followed the direction of her gaze. A stranger watching my face would probably have worried that I was having a heart attack. Like Ceci, though, I was simply astounded.
    In the woods, perhaps, forty feet from us, framed by a pair of six-foot hemlocks, stood a tall man wearing a long trench coat and a black ski mask. The knitted hood covered his head and face. It had small slits for his eyes and a smallish mouth opening to permit breathing. He needed it. For heavy breathing. The trench coat was buttoned from his neck down to his waist. Below, it was open. As was his fly.
    Weirdly enough, it took a moment for the reality of the exhibitionism to register on me. I’d certainly heard about the exhibitionist in the park. Being an adult speaker of English, I knew the right words. Still, they did not immediately occur to me, probably