Gaits of Heaven

the door open with someone’s leather clog so that I wouldn’t lock myself out. From my vantage point, I saw no sign of a roving dog or of anyone or anything else near Steve’s van, but my view was blocked by the gigantic Lexus and the BMW in Ted’s cobblestoned parking area.
    “Hey, guys!” I called out as I rushed down the stairs. “Enough! I’m coming.” I wasn’t worried. My only concern was that the dogs were annoying people; I want my dogs to be a source of pleasure to everyone or, failing that, to refrain from being a source of even the slightest displeasure. By the time I was in back of the van, the dogs were silent. I stopped for a second to get the keys out of my pocket and heard what sounded like a woman’s voice coming from inside the van. The radio? The van was old, but the radio worked. It had certainly never turned itself on.
    And it hadn’t this time. When I reached the side of the van, I saw that the sliding door was open about three inches and that the interior lights were on. I had locked that door. I knew I had. Could Steve have inexplicably left his veterinary meeting and for some unknown reason decided to come here to Ted’s and...? The explanation made no sense. And a set of keys dangled from the lock in the van’s door. Steve never left his keys in the lock. I slid open the door to discover the last person I expected to see, namely, Steve’s horrible ex-wife, Anita the Fiend, who was kneeling on the floor in front of Lady’s crate. Anita, who hated this van, despised dogs, and really had it in for helpless little Lady!
    “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
    She turned to face me, and even before she spoke, I realized that there was something wrong with her. Well, there had to be. She hated dogs, yet here she was in Steve’s van with two of our dogs. But she looked peculiar, too. Her eyes had that brightness I’d noticed when I’d seen her in the afternoon, and her long blond hair was wild and tangled. She was dressed entirely in white: white silk shell, white canvas pants, white shoes with three-inch heels. Even I, with my limited fashion sense, saw that the dressy sleeveless top and the high heels didn’t go with the casual pants. Furthermore, although the evening was cool, the silk shell had sweat stains at the armpits. It’s said of tall, slim, beautiful, fashionable women like Anita that they look like models. Anita really did; she always looked ready to be photographed for Vogue. Or she always had.
    When she spoke, her speech was so rapid that I had to listen closely to understand her. “I’m thinking about getting a dog. A dog! I’m seeing them with new eyes. The eyes have it! The ayes! Ai-ai-ai! With green eyes, like Steve’s. How lucky that I kept his keys! On key and off key. Tequila. Steve doesn’t like it. But he loves me. He lusts after me. I’m beautiful, you see. I have the face that launched a thousand ships. Helen! Why the hell didn’t my parents name me Helen? From now on, I am Helen of Troy. No! A hair dryer! It’s a brand of hair dryer. I don’t need it. My hair is beautiful as it is. It reaches out to catch the vibrations of the universe.”
    To my horror, Anita turned back to face Lady’s crate and fiddled with the latch. Lady, I should explain, was in the kind of solid plastic crate you see at airports. It’s common for dogs to show marked preferences for one kind of crate or another. Lady liked the security of an opaque crate. Sammy tolerated plastic crates, but he greatly preferred the kind of open metal crate he was in now. His crate latch was a simple horizontal bar that slid back and forth, but Lady’s crate had a more complicated vertical latch that I hoped would defeat Anita. It did not. She had, after all, been married to a veterinarian. She opened the crate, reached in, grabbed Lady by the collar, and dragged her out. Lady’s eyes were huge with fear, and she was trembling all over.
    “Hey, Lady,” I said gently. “It’s okay.” To Anita, I said, in the same soft tone, “Now, maybe you could explain what you’re doing here.”
    “Everything!” Anita cried. “There’s so much to be done! And I have the strength and talent for all of it!” She bestowed a big smile on me. “Where’s Steve? Need to see Steve. Gorgeous Steve!”
    Sammy, who’d been standing in his crate, chose that moment to bang the door with one of his big snowshoe paws.
    “What a beautiful one this is!” Anita exclaimed.