“What now?”
Einstein put one paw on the door.
“You want to go out?”
The dog whined, but the sound was muffled by the directory in his mouth.
“What’re you going to do with the phone book out there? Bury it like a bone?
What’s up?”
Although he received answers to none of his questions, Travis opened the door
and let the retriever out into the golden, late-afternoon sunshine. Einstein
dashed straight to the pickup parked in the driveway. He stood at the passenger
door, looking back with what might have been impatience.
Travis walked to the truck and looked down at the retriever. He sighed. “I
suspect you want to go somewhere, and I suspect you don’t have in mind the
offices of the telephone company.”
Dropping the directory, Einstein jumped up, put his forepaws against the door of
the truck and stood there, looking over his shoulder at Travis. He barked.
“You want me to look up Miss Devon’s address in the phone book and go there. Is
that it?”
One woof.
“Sorry,” Travis said. “I know you liked her, but I’m not in the market for a
woman. Besides, she’s not my type. I already told you that. And I’m not her
type, either. Fact is, I have a hunch that nobody’s her type.
The dog barked.
‘‘NO
The dog dropped to the ground, rushed at Travis, and took hold of one leg of his
jeans again.
“No,” he said, reaching down and grabbing Einstein by the collar. “There’s no
point chewing up my wardrobe, because I’m not going.”
Einstein let go, twisted out of his grasp, and sprinted to the long bed of
brightly blooming impatiens, where he started to dig furiously, tossing mangled
flowers onto the lawn behind him.
“What’re you doing now, for God’s sake?”
The dog kept digging industriously, working his way through the bed, back and
forth, apparently bent on totally destroying it.
“Hey, stop that!” Travis hurried toward the retriever.
Einstein fled to the other end of the front yard and commenced digging a hole in
the grass.
Travis went after him.
Einstein escaped once more to another corner of the lawn, where he began ripping
out more grass, then to the birdbath, which he tried to undermine, then back to
what was left of the impatiens.
Unable to catch the retriever, Travis finally halted, gasped for breath, and
shouted, “Enough!”
Einstein stopped digging in the flowers and raised his head, snaky trailers of
coral-red impatiens dangling from his mouth.
“We’ll go,” Travis said.
Einstein dropped the flowers and came out of the ruins, onto the lawn— warily.
“No tricks,” Travis promised. “If it means that much to you, then we’ll go see
the woman. But God knows what I’m going to say to her.”
8
With her dinner platter in one hand and a bottle of Evian in the other, Nora
went along the downstairs hallway, comforted by the sight of lights blazing in
every room. On the upstairs landing, she used her elbow to flick the switch for
the second-floor hall lights. She would need to include a lot of light bulbs in
her next grocery order because she intended to leave all the lights burning day
and night for the foreseeable future. It was an expense she did not in the least
begrudge.
Still buoyed by the brandy, she began to sing softly to herself as she headed
for her room: “Moon River, wider than a mile . .
She stepped through the door. Streck was lying on the bed.
He grinned and said, “Hi, babe.”
For an instant she thought he was a hallucination, but when he spoke she knew he
was real, and she cried out, and the platter fell from her hand, Scattering
fruit and cheese across the floor.
“Oh my, what an awful mess you’ve made,” he said, sitting up and swinging his
legs over the edge of the bed. He was still wearing his running shorts, athletic
socks, and running shoes; nothing else. “But there’s no need to clean it up now.
There’s other business to take care of first. I been waiting a long time for you
to come upstairs. Waiting and thinking about you . . . getting Primed for you. .