Bloodlines Read Free

I said. “Did you put it in the Saint Vincent de Paul?”
    Just off Concord Avenue, a few blocks from my house, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul maintains a large collection box in which prosperous Cantabrigians deposit wearable presents they don’t like. When Steve opened his mother’s Christmas package, saw the sweater, and said, “Huh. Saint Vincent de Paul,” I suggested that he attach a stamped envelope addressed to his mother so that the true recipient could thank her for the gift, but he refused. Steve’s main objection to the sweater was the crocodile. He said that his own mother should know that he didn’t specialize in exotic pets and that whoever ended up wearing the sweater probably didn’t, either, and wouldn’t be any more grateful than he was.

3

    Puppy Luv occupied one of ten or twelve storefronts in a uniform strip of low, plate-glass-fronted shops erected twenty or thirty years ago and evidently intended as the acorn from which a mighty shopping oak would sprout. The vacant lots on both sides and in back had even been plowed under and left fallow. The developer must have expected to add a branch of Filene’s or Jordan’s or a Star Market, some large enterprise to attract heavy spenders whose late-model cars would fill the blacktopped acre that yawned between the dull shops and the tedious street. As it was, this nameless would-be mall looked like a seedy desert motel with oversize rooms and unwashed windows left curtainless for the pleasure of exhibitionist guests and voyeurist passersby.
    Well, there
was
ample parking. On that zero-degree, snowless, electric-blue-skied morning in February, I could have left the Bronco right in front of Puppy Luv, but just in case a pet shop employee happened to stroll by as I got out, I cruised past the pet shop, kept going, and parked in a remote corner of the cracked blacktop lot. I intended to visit Puppy Luv as someone other than who I am, and the Bronco might as well have had DOG PERSON painted in big professional red letters on its old blue doors. A new Euro-style wagon barrierfenced off Rowdy and Kimi’s area, which also held two large metal-mesh crates and two old blankets originally made of wool but now richly interwoven with soft, pale malamute undercoat and long dark guard hairs. The new seat cushions and floor mats, Christmas presents from Steve, were the ones you may have noticed in the Orvis catalog—gray background with handsome black paw prints? The bumpers didn’t proclaim that I heart Alaskan malamutes or urge “Caution: Show Dogs,” but a bumper sticker on the front read “My dog is smarter than your dog or your brother,” which is true except that they both are … and probably smarter than the average sister, too.
    I could’ve stripped off the brag and removed the barrier, crates, blankets, cushions, and mats, of course, but I’d had barely enough time to transform myself from a malamute-owned dog writer—furry jeans and T-shirt—to a semblance of my image of the ideal pet shop client, which is to say, as people actually
do
say here in Cambridge, the Significant Other of the kind of husband who knows that the little lady needs something to love and senses that in spite of his MasterCard, Visa, and American Express Platinum, he isn’t it. I’d washed and moussed my hair and blown it dry, rather skillfully, I might add, thanks to my experience in readying golden retrievers for the show ring and what my father flatteringly considers to be the uncanny resemblance of my own mop to their glowing coats. Marissa, my mother, disapproved of the AKC-banned practice of cosmetically eradicating pink spots on otherwise dark noses, and none of my show dogs has ever had pigmentation problems, anyway. Nonetheless, I own mascara, as well as foundation makeup, blush, and lipstick, all of which I’d applied rather heavily. I’d put on good knee boots and a suburban-looking green corduroy dress, and I hadn’t removed the dry cleaner’s