Gaits of Heaven

could block the door and force Sammy to leave slowly, Anita stood up. In her hand were perhaps four sheets of paper. I’d been wrong. She hadn’t been after Sammy’s feet; her object had been the papers on which he’d been standing.
    In her glee at having retrieved the papers, she shook them rapidly back and forth. “No one cheats Anita Fairley!” she crowed.
    Sammy was fascinated; he was tantalized; he was impelled to respond. Bouncing with happy excitement, he bit into the papers Anita was waving right in front of his face.
    “Goddamned dog!” she shrieked.
    Lady was huddled next to me, but Sammy was still close to Anita, who moved her right foot backward and eyed Sammy in a way that terrified me. I’d once seen Anita kick Lady, and I could see exactly what was coming now.
    No one cheats Anita Fairley, huh? Well, no one but no one under any circumstances kicks Holly Winter’s dog!
    Taking a lesson from Rowdy and now from his son, I barged forward and wedged myself between Anita and Sammy. With Lady’s leash still in one hand, I filled my other hand with liver treats from my pocket. “Sammy, trade! Trade, buddy! Oh what a good boy! Good dog!” Giving Anita no time to think and no time to act, I hurled treats into Sammy’s crate. He went after them, and I latched the door.
    “Step to the back of this van, Anita, or I tear up these papers,” I said.
    She obeyed. I’d had a little practice in getting creatures to do that, of course. Losing no time, I crated Lady and stationed myself in front of the two occupied crates. Now that the dogs were safe, I’d have been happy to hand over the papers that Anita had determined to keep safe, but she’d taken yet another abrupt shift and was now raging at Ted Green. “Big phony! Cheat! CHIRP, CHIRP, CHIRP!”
    For a second, I thought that she’d switched to birds. Then I made the connection.
    “You’ve been there,” I said. “To CHIRP. The Center for—”
    Before I could even remember the name of the place, Anita, still clutching her precious papers, flew past me, slid open the door, and ran off.
    I removed the keys that she’d left in the door and locked us in.
    “Good riddance to her!” I told the dogs. “Both of you handled yourselves with admirable grace. Lady, you were frightened, but you didn’t panic. Sammy, you are your father’s son in every way.” I gave each dog a frozen Kong. “Now, I have to check on things, but you are going to be fine. I’ll be back as soon as humanly possible. Then we’ll go home. Anita isn’t going to bother us anymore.”
     

CHAPTER 48
     
    I never lie to dogs. I believed, which is to say hoped, that Anita had gone flying off far away. She had not. While I was still on the sidewalk on my way back to the house, I heard banging and looked up to see her on Ted’s porch. I’d had more than enough of her and intended to avoid the front door by using the gate to the yard and then the entrance to the family room. That was before I saw what she was doing. Her action was so bizarre that it froze me in place: having removed one of her spike-heeled shoes, she was vigorously whacking at the door frame with a three-inch heel. Approaching, I saw that she was pounding on the mezuzah mounted by the door. A mezuzah is a sacred object. I couldn’t stand by and watch her commit desecration.
    “Stop that!” I yelled as I ran up the steps.
    As I reached the porch, Anita succeeded in removing the mezuzah. At the same time, the door opened, and there stood Kevin Dennehy, who’d undoubtedly been attracted by the hammering. Without hesitation and without apparent effort, the willowy Anita rammed him aside—and that’s saying something. It was like watching a gazelle slam a full-grown male gorilla out of its path.
    “Kevin,” I said, “that’s Anita Fairley, Steve’s ex-wife. There’s something radically wrong with her.”
    He rolled his eyes. “So you’ve said once or twice.”
    “No, not... I’m serious. She’s having some kind of episode.”
    Anita spared me the need to elaborate. Having charged into the living room, she began to berate Ted Green. “You’re going to lose your license, you son of a bitch! Kickbacks! You got kickbacks for sending me and a lot of other people to that goddamned CHIRP, and that’s unethical!” This from Anita, who was a disbarred lawyer? I had to suppress nervous laughter. Kevin and I had followed Anita, but we were lingering near the door, whereas she had positioned herself