Step-Ball-Change by Jeanne Ray Read Free Book Online Page A

subtle plastic surgeon of whom she did not speak. Because we had grown up in the same house, I knew that in a couple of weeks she would be turning sixty (she would swear to fifty-eight if anyone could get that much out of her), but time seemed to leave her alone. If she had been crying half the night, there would be no telling it. She looked like she was on her way to lunch at the polo club. She was wearing soft camel pants that matched her camel sweater set in silk, which matched the small brown ring around her dog’s left eye. I leaned over to give her a hug, but her dog flashed his teeth at me and made a quick lunge in the general direction of my throat, which made me jump back.
    “What’s Stamp’s problem?” I’d never particularly liked Stamp, but it wasn’t as if we were strangers. He had no reason to want to take a piece out of me.
    She put one hand over the dog’s eyes to make a temporary blindfold and then she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Stamp is very protective of me if anyone gets too close. It’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. I don’t know how well he sees. He bites Neddy all the time now.”
    “Good boy, Stamp.” I was glad to think that something in this life had bitten Neddy. It made me wish I had a box of biscuits.
    “Everybody needs something that loves them best.” Taffy gave Stamp a kiss on his forehead, leaving a little lipstick stain on his wiry white fur. “At twenty I was hoping for more than a dog, but at this point in my life a dog doesn’t seem so bad.”
    I thought about Tom. I needed to call him. I leaned over and picked up the suitcase, which the dog didn’t seem to mind at all.I guess he didn’t feel protective about the luggage. Taffy put Stamp down and he immediately raced off into the house. A second later we heard a round of unrepentantly vicious barking. When I got to the kitchen, Kay was yelling at Stamp, who had stopped about six inches from Woodrow’s shoes. Every bark was a small explosion that momentarily forced all four of the dog’s feet off the floor. The bark was so high, so nerve-shattering, that I felt as if it was reprogramming the regular beating of my heart. Woodrow, on the other hand, never flinched, even though he was the one who was about to be swallowed whole by a twenty-pound fox terrier. He simply sat at the kitchen table and continued to drink his coffee, which in turn drove the dog to new levels of hysteria. Kay scooped Stamp up and, without thinking, tossed him out the back door, at which point he immediately charged at the four men who were unloading cement from a truck. In one balletic gesture the four leapt up and into the flatbed while the dog jumped up and up and up, every time almost reaching the back of the truck and every time crashing back into the driveway undeterred. The very hound from hell.
    “Jesus,” Kay said. “Why don’t you keep that thing on a leash?”
    Taffy seemed to be completely unaffected by the display and I had to wonder if it was a constant event at her house, if all across Atlanta the UPS men were drawing straws to see who would take the heinous job of delivering her packages. “No one keeps a dog on a leash inside. Besides, he’s never bitten anyone except my husband. He looks like he’s going to bite, but he never actually does.”
    “You should tell that to the men in the truck,” Woodrow said.
    “Is that yard completely fenced in?” Taffy asked. “I don’t think I could take Stamp running off right now.”
    The chances of Stamp leaving that truck were about as great as the earth disengaging from its orbit, but it was true, he needed to be relocated. Kay opened up the back door again. “Sorry,” she said to the four grown men who were inching back toward the cab of the truck. “My aunt says it doesn’t bite.”
    “Everyone says that,” one of the men in the truck said. “And then after that they say, ‘Look at that. You’re the first person that dog’s ever bitten.’ ”
    Kay