Animal Appetite by Susan Conant Read Free Book Online Page B

“Jack.”

    I didn’t know what to make of the second note and was unwilling to share with Kevin Dennehy what even I recognized as an eccentric interpretation of the first. I’ll admit to you, though, that from my admittedly dog-obsessed perspective, it seemed to convey the decision to quit trying to finish a championship on a dog that no judge had looked at twice.

    Kevin didn’t bring me the original notes, of course. What lay on my kitchen table at five o’clock on Friday afternoon were photocopies. Kevin had just finished eating a lobster salad sandwich made from yesterday’s leftovers. To try to brighten what had been shaping up as a gloomy Thanksgiving, Steve and I had decided on lobster in lieu of turkey. He bought double portions for each of us: four lobsters. When we got them out of the bag, I noticed that two were dead. If you, like Steve, happen to be from Minneapolis, I should inform you that the regional specialty here is boiled live lobster, okay? Not boiled dead lobster. And a veterinarian, of all people, should be able to see the difference. Unfortunately, I said so. We ended up overcooking all four lobsters. Steve pretended that his tasted fine. I accused him of lying. Mine, I insisted, was tough and flavorless. While we were arguing, Kimi filched one of the two remaining lobsters and dashed into my bedroom to devour her catch of the day in the long, narrow, inaccessible recess under the headboard of my platform bed. Naturally, I took it for granted that while I was luring Kimi from her den, Steve would have the sense to restrain Rowdy. But just as I’d almost wrested Kimi’s prey from her jaws, Rowdy zoomed into the room, and still in possession of the lobster, Kimi zipped back under the bed. By the time I’d locked Rowdy in the guest room, once again enticed Kimi out of her hidey-hole, and successfully traded a half stick of butter for the lobster, my Thanksgiving dinner was cold, and Steve had finished eating. We exchanged words about obedience training, malamutes, and food. Then the inevitable happened. The phone rang. One of Steve’s clients was on his way to the clinic with a beagle who’d been allowed to eat two turkey legs, splintery bones and all, and was suffering from what might turn out to be a perforated intestine. I hadn’t seen Steve since.

    So Kevin had enjoyed the salad I’d made from the fourth lobster and was now drinking Bud out of the can. I’d drafted my Dog’s Life column on Wednesday. Today, in an effort to finish it and get it in the mail, as I’d done an hour earlier, I’d consumed so much coffee that my system was suffering from what may have been genuine caffeine poisoning. Now I was drinking milk. Although Kevin had finished eating, Rowdy and Kimi, who had studied his habits, were still stationed eagerly at his elbows. The dogs are wolf gray and white, with almond-shaped brown eyes and beautiful stand-off coats. Kimi has the dark facial markings that constitute what’s called a “full mask.” Rowdy has an “open face,” meaning that it’s white and very definitely not meaning that it in any way resembles a Scandinavian sandwich. Kevin’s hair is red. His eyes are blue. His face, like Rowdy’s, is white, but covered with freckles, and his tongue wasn’t hanging out of his mouth. Rowdy is a bit over the twenty-five inches at the withers and eighty-five pounds that the American Kennel Club standard calls for—let me just report flatly that he’s gorgeous—and Kimi is almost precisely twenty-three inches and seventy-five pounds. Kevin, in contrast, is far beefier than what’s probably called for in the official standard of the Cambridge Police Department. For as long as I’d known him, he’d dealt with the stress of being a cop by near-daily long-distance running, but instead of becoming gazellelike, he increasingly reminded me of some impossible cross between a gorilla and a mastiff.

    “Kevin, do not even think about giving them beer,” I warned.