Stud Rites

we got the rehearsal dinner, and then we got the wedding breakfast, and then we got the wedding and the reception, and NOW! Five minutes ago! Now, we pull in, and what do we find? This place booked ten months ahead of time, and you, you sneaky little son of a bitch, did not see fit to inform us that Crystal and Greg’s dream wedding was gonna happen in the middle of a fucking dog show!”
    I found the sentiment as shocking as the language. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part? You’ll never convince a real dog person that those words were written about a human relationship.
    ”Daddy, please! Mummy, make him stop!” The bride-to-be, Crystal, wore numerous layers of loose-waisted, flowing garments. Even so, it was obvious that at any moment, her father might have reason to regret his present loud display of temper: In terms of experience at whelping boxes, our national specialty was as good as a convention of midwives, and when it came to familiarity with multiple births, far, far, better.
    Daddy did not stop. And Mummy, a midforties, nonpregnant Crystal, with the same pert features and the same long blond hair, didn’t make him.
    The manager was heroic. ”Now, Mr. Jenkinson, let me assure you that there will be no conflict whatsoever. The two, er, events are scheduled for entirely separate and distinct facilities; and dogs are never under any circumstance permitted in the undesignated areas of this hotel.” As he spoke, he must have been employing some nonverbal technique he’d mastered in the Milestone’s management-trainee program, which, I became convinced, was staffed by Scottish shepherds, because, as effectively as a Border collie, the manager cut the bridal party out of the crowd in the lobby and herded together in a far corner the six members of the nuptial flock: Crystal, her parents, another couple about their age? and a young man who looked so frighteningly like a Ken doll that if Crystal’s condition had not suggested otherwise, I’d have wondered whether anatomy would permit him to consummate the marriage.
    As if preparing to flee the pen, Crystal lurked on the periphery of the group with her back toward the others. Catching sight of the only genuinely four-legged creature in the lobby, she stamped a foot and announced to everyone and no one that she, for one, didn’t mind at all, because she, for one, liked dogs.
    ”Greg? Greg! Greg, look!” She tapped life-size bridegroom Ken on the shoulder. ”That’s what I want!” Pointing to a malamute bitch so dirty that I’d have been ashamed to take her to the local park, the bride-and-mother-to-be announced, ”I want a husky! Greg? Greg, that’s what we should’ve asked for! We should’ve asked for a baby puppy!”
    Greg began to move his lips, but before sound emerged, his mother, as she obviously was (Ken in drag), intervened. ”Crystal, dear, you’re forgetting that Gregory is allergic to dogs.” As if pausing to permit a thought to travel across Crystal’s mind, she let five or ten seconds elapse before adding, ”And cats.”
    Folding his arms across his chest, Greg mumbled. I caught only one word. The syllables were distinct and prolonged: Mommmmmeeeee.
    Had the celebrants at my own rites been united not by a passion for dogs but by a mania for vipers, for instance, or stamps, coins, antiques, first editions, the French language, or the topic of alien abduction, the crowd in the lobby might have thinned. As it was, what held me held the other dog people. Crystal’s adamant I want! Mr. Jenkinson’s raised hackles? The challenge to another male, the dominant individual’s swift restoration of order, the maternal protectiveness, the whine of the young male... Oh, and the unplanned breeding, too. Dog people all, we’d seen and heard it before.
    Some of those in the lobby, of course, had business there: People waited in line to check in. The man with the dirty malamute wasn’t in line and didn’t have a suitcase. His name came to me: Tim Oliver. And his reputation: sleazy. I couldn’t remember whether we’d met or whether he’d just been pointed out to me. Perhaps in the hope of being mistaken for an American Kennel Club judge, Tim Oliver wore a navy blazer, but judges are usually tidy, and they don’t go around shedding dandruff flakes all over our nice clean dogs.
    As I was wondering whether to say