All Shots Read Free

Palm Springs, in other words, for a tax-deductible ten-day vacation. The conference itself didn’t actually start until tomorrow, Friday, and it ended on Sunday, but Rita had decided to treat herself to a week at a spa after the meetings were over. Cambridge psychotherapists are big on the idea that self-indulgence enhances mental hygiene. For all I know, Rita deducts the cost of manicures, pedicures, and hair coloring as if they were psychiatric treatments needed to maintain her emotional well-being.
    “Rita knows how to make phone calls, but you’re right. She’d have been seeing patients, and it’s probably a good thing she wasn’t here because I’d have had to listen to her interpretation of the Harley.”
    “The Harley was cool.”
    “What did I just say? Rita would’ve been interested in its symbolic value.”
    “Come on. You thought it was cool, too.”
    “Okay, it was cool. And the guy, Adam, wasn’t all that scary, but you still shouldn’t have left him here. Leah, I am not a nervous type, but at the moment, I’m aware that Steve and Rita are away, okay?”
    “I’m staying there tonight. And tomorrow night. We can’t move in until Saturday.”
    This was Thursday, September 7. Leah had spent the summer working at Steve’s clinic and living with us. She was beginning her senior year, and the prospect of having her leave Greater Boston was breaking my heart. And all because damned Harvard didn’t have a school of veterinary medicine! But she was applying to Tufts, which is in North Grafton and only an hour or so away, and everyone thought that she had a good chance of getting in.
    “I haven’t heard an apology yet,” I said.
    “According to you, what you’re supposed to do about undesired behavior is ignore it. If you don’t reinforce it, it goes away.”
    “The principle doesn’t apply to egregious violations. And it doesn’t apply to self-reinforcing—” I broke off when the phone rang indoors. “The other phone,” I told Leah. “It might be Steve. Bye.”
    Feminism being the force that it is in Cambridge, I feel the need to explain that I did not habitually hang up on women on the off chance that the incoming call on another line was from a man. While Steve was in the wilds of northern Minnesota, he did, however, have priority. Cell phone coverage in the Boundary Waters was unreliable. I hate call-waiting and had disabled it on my cell, so he might have gotten a busy signal and dialed our regular number.
    “Rowdy, with me! This way, buddy.” Leaving Kimi in the yard with our third malamute, Sammy, the adult-sized baby of the family, I hustled Rowdy into the house with me. The answering machine had picked up. My own voice was asking the caller to leave a message. The tone sounded, and Betty Burley began to speak. I grabbed the phone. Betty, who is top dog in our local Alaskan malamute rescue group, is practically a member of my family, not only because we do rescue together but because Betty is a second manifestation of my own Kimi. Let me explain that all three of my malamutes are dark gray and white, as is Betty’s hair. Betty lacks the “full mask,” as it’s called, that distinguishes Kimi from Rowdy and Sammy, who have “open faces,” all white, in contrast to Kimi’s combination of black goggles around the eyes, a black cap, and a bar down the muzzle. But Betty’s oneness with Kimi is not a matter of appearance; rather, Betty and Kimi represent a rare instance of two bodies simultaneously inhabited by the same spirit. Identical twins are two separate individuals who have genetically identical bodies. With Betty and Kimi, it’s the reverse: inside, they’re the same individual; the difference between them is strictly corporeal. Strong and intelligent, they value their own opinions above everyone else’s and have exactly the same air of quiet authority. Also, they snatch food. My strongest evidence for their spiritual unity is the oneness of my response to them. For