This Dog for Hire

effort, as if he were a beautifully made, well-oiled machine.
    The river of dogs was still moving in circles in ring six. The crowd near ring two cheered. I watched, waiting for my heart to start beating at its normal pace again. When it did, I felt so drained I could have curled up among the empty soda containers on the sticky floor and taken a nap.
    I’ve always had trouble dealing with more than one thing at a time. And right now, I reminded myself, my time was bought and paid for.
    The day’s breed judging was over, and they were starting to tear down the rings and sweep in preparation for the group judging that came in the evening: the working, terrier, nonsporting, and herding groups on Monday night, the sporting, hounds, and toy groups, then Best in Show, on Tuesday night. People were clearing out now to go for dinner and many to change to formal clothes for the evening judging. I stayed. I loved the Garden when it was empty.
    I had once come with Art Haggerty to interview the three families who had dog acts in Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus. We had come in the morning, interviewed and watched the acts all day and all evening, and then were invited to stay late, after midnight, to watch a new dog act being trained for the next season. We waited in the stands, whispering to each other. It would have seemed disrespectful somehow to speak out loud. After a while a young boy, his hair wet and slicked neatly back, came out and walked to the center of the center ring. The only light in the whole place shone down on him as he played the trumpet, which in this cavernous, empty space sounded so mournful and moving we could barely breathe. When he finished and left, a very tall blond woman came out, bowed to the empty stands, and then blew a whistle. With that the dogs appeared, one by one, running into the ring and jumping onto small, high stools, then turning around to face her with rapt attention. These were the Daring Dobermans. As we watched her put the six male dogs through their paces, we figured out and whispered to each other the separate commands that, when seamed together, made up each routine.
    The circus families trained dogs the same way they trained wild animals, not the way dog trainers trained, and so Letitia swung a kind of small fake whip over her head as she cued the dogs to work, a reminder of the fruits of disobedience.
    We had watched the acts during the day and evening from the floor, but from close up we could see things we would not have been able to see even from the first row. We could see the size and strength of the flat metal collars used to contain the chimps, the pain and anger in their eyes too. We could see the sharp hooks on the rods that seemed to merely tap tap at the elephants to keep them moving, and we could see the scars all over their bodies. Backstage, chained in a long line, they rocked and rocked, the way people in mental institutions sometimes do. We could see something so frightening in the eyes of the big cats, it defied description. We could see the scars they had left on their trainer, too.
    From the floor, we had seen everything. I hadn't been to a circus since.
    The Garden was quiet now. I opened my bag and took out the list I had made at the AKC library. Chat least that’s what I thought I was taking out. Instead, it was the list of names Sabotini had given me. I began to read it. James T. McEllroy, Michael Smith, John W. Doe.
    I shoved everything back into my bag and ran like hell for the pay phones.

20
    You Can’t Play This

    HERBIE SUSSMAN AND two of his cousins were lined up at the curb on the other side of the street with their penises out. One at a time, they urinated into the street to see whose stream could reach the farthest.
    Lili and I wanted to play, too.
    You can’t play this, Herbie said. You’re girls.
    Can, too, my sister Lillian sang, chin up, eyes defiant.
    She pushed me up to the curb, told me not to move, and came back a minute later pulling the garden hose behind her. She put the nozzle between my legs.
    Hold tight, she ordered. Then she turned the nozzle.
    The hose sputtered. Then the arc of water sprayed far into the street, almost to where the boys were standing.
    We win, Lili shouted, head cocked, hands on her hips.
    The cold water dripped into my sandals.
    No fair, Herbie yelled.
    He stood alone now, his pinkie of a penis pale and flaccid at the opening in his pants. His cousins had already turned around, shaken their members