This Dog for Hire

the rotties being stacked.
    “You mean, at training ?”
    “Among other things. A woman’s got to know how to take care of herself these days. What with all the divorce going around.”
    “I noticed your ad is no longer in the Yellow Pages.”
    I sat back up and looked at him, but said nothing. He had those little flecks of reddish brown in the green of his eyes.
    “Have you finally found an occupation more in keeping with the delicacy of your gender?” he asked, draining the drink and letting an ice cube fall into his mouth. “No. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve opened a yarn shoppe.”
    I smiled. Inscrutable as a chow chow.
    “Did I ever tell you—” Then he began to laugh. “Same old Kaminsky.”
    “It’s a family thing,” I said. “It’s genetic. None of us ever change. You might say I’m just a chip off the old block.”
    I thought he was going to put an ice cube down my shirt or something equally immature, but he didn’t. He just sat there looking down at the rings. The rottie people were going wild. One of the pillowcases had won.
    “I woke up too late to save the marriage,” he said, still watching the dogs. “I hope to hell it’s not too late to save fatherhood. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to accept the fact that you’re not the kid anymore. You’re the parent.”
    I exhaled for the first time since Lincoln was shot and waited.
    “We’re doing joint custody. Ellen says I spend more time with the kids now than I ever did when we were married.”
    I nodded.
    He nodded back.
    We both looked down at the rottie ring and watched the winning dog getting his picture taken.
    “How’d you know I was here?”
    “Saw you walking up the stands. I’d know your— walk anywhere.”
    “Horse shit, Pressman.”
    “No, it’s true. You have one of the great walks. I’ve always thought so.”
    “Be that as it may,” I said, but then I shut up. I could feel my face getting hot.
    The thing is, if you’ve been attracted to someone when he wasn’t available, that fact could have made him more attractive then he really was. And because you knew you wouldn’t let anything hap pen, because who wants to always celebrate holidays on the wrong day and just sit by the telephone with nothing to keep you company but your low self-esteem, you never looked at him as a viable mate. So you just have this tantalizing impression. Which has zero to do with reality.
    “Just when it’s getting interesting, I have to meet a client,” he said. “But I—”
    “Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got to get back to work myself.”
    “I tried to call you, Rachel. You’re not in the book anymore? Not even in the white pages?”
    “Not listed.”
    He raised his eyebrows in unison and waited.
    “Jesus! What do you need to find an old friend, a fucking private detective?”
    I thought from there I could cleverly segue into the story of my life but I didn’t. Instead, I took out a pen, slid his catalog off his lap, and on the inside back cover wrote my name and my unlisted phone number. He leaned toward me just as I was looking down to put away my pen. His lips landed on my nose.
    “Was that as good for you as it was for me?” He was grinning.
    “I never knew it could be like this,” I told him. His eyes were the color of moss.
    “Same old Kaminsky,” he said, pulling out his wallet, fiddling with its contents, and finally extracting his business card.
    “We’re not at the same number either.”
    “We?”
    He handed me a photo of a shepherd.
    “Betty,” he said.
    “Davis?”
    “Boop.”
    She had a dark saddle, a red chest, piercing, intelligent eyes.
    Okay, so I only trust people who carry a picture of their dog in their wallet. But the photo alone wasn’t enough reason to run out to Condomania and stock up. Was it?
    The good part of sleeping with your dog is that he
    never, ever gets out of bed, looks back at you, and says, “You, know, babe, you’d have a great body if only you’d lose ten pounds.”
    And he never goes back to his wife.
    I thought I should tell Chip that my new career required Zenlike concentration and that I couldn’t afford the distraction of a sexual liaison at this time, or just make some childish, offputting, hostile remark to cover up how nervous he had made me, but before I got the chance to do either, he left.
    I watched him making his way down the crowded stands, then crossing the Garden floor. His gait was strong and smooth, with no sideways movement or wasted