The phone rings. A woman wants to know the size of the refrigerator that I have advertised. I tell her.
“Is it white?” she says.
The ad said it was white.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“This is your refrigerator?” she says.
“One of them,” I say. “I’m moving.”
“Oh,” she says. “You shouldn’t tell people that. People read these ads to figure out who’s moving and might not be around, so they can rob them. There were a lot of robberies in your neighborhood last summer.”
The refrigerator is too small for her. We hang up.
The phone rings again, and I let it ring. I sit down and look at the corner cupboard. I put a piece of cheese on top of a cracker and eat it. I get up and go into the living room and offer a piece of cheese to Hugo. He sniffs and takes it lightly from my fingers. Earlier today, in the morning, I ran him in Putnam Park. I could hardly keep up with him, as usual. Thirteen isn’t so old, for a dog. He scared the ducks and sent them running into the water. He growled at a beagle a man was walking, and tugged on his leash until he choked. He pulled almost as hard as he could a few summers ago. The air made his fur fluffy. Now he is happy, slowly licking his mouth, getting ready to take his afternoon nap.
John wanted to take Hugo across country, but in the end we decided that, as much as Hugo would enjoy terrorizing so many dogs along the way, it was going to be a hot July and it was better if he stayed home. We discussed this reasonably. No frenzy — nothing like the way we had been swept in at some auctions to bid on things that we didn’t want, just because so many other people were mad for them. A reasonable discussion about Hugo, even if it was at the last minute: Hugo, in the car, already sticking his head out the window to bark goodbye. “It’s too hot for him,” I said. I was standing outside in my nightgown. “It’s almost July. He’ll be a hassle for you if campgrounds won’t take him or if you have to park in the sun.” So Hugo stood beside me, barking his high-pitched goodbye, as John backed out of the driveway. He forgot: his big battery lantern and his can opener. He remembered: his tent, the cooler filled with ice (he couldn’t decide when he left whether he was going to stock up on beer or Coke), a camera, a suitcase, a fiddle, and a banjo. He forgot his driver’s license, too. I never understood why he didn’t keep it in his wallet, but it always seemed to get taken out for some reason and then be lost. Yesterday I found it leaning up against a bottle in the medicine cabinet.
Bobby calls. He fools me with his imitation of a man with an English accent who wants to know if I also have an avocado-colored refrigerator for sale. When I say I don’t, he asks if I know somebody who paints refrigerators.
“Of course not,” I tell him.
“That’s the most decisive thing I’ve heard you say in five years,” Bobby says in his real voice. “How’s it going, Sally?”
“Jesus,” I say. “If you’d answered this phone all morning, you wouldn’t think that was funny. Where are you?”
“New York. Where do you think I am? It’s my lunch hour. Going to Le Relais to get tanked up. A little le pain et le beurre, put down a few Scotches.”
“Le Relais,” I say. “Hmm.”
“Don’t make a bad eye on me,” he says, going into his Muhammad Ali imitation. “Step on my foot and I kick you to the moon. Glad-hand me and I shake you like a loon.” Bobby clears his throat. “I got the company twenty big ones today,” he says. “Twenty Gs.”
“Congratulations. Have a good lunch. Come out for dinner, if you feel like the drive.”
“I don’t have any gas and I can’t face the train.” He coughs again. “I gave up cigarettes,” he says. “Why am I coughing?” He moves away from the phone to cough loudly.
“Are you smoking grass in the office?” I say.
“Not this time,” he gasps. “I’m goddam dying of something.” A pause. “What did you do yesterday?”
“I was in town. You’d laugh at what I did.”
“You went to the fireworks.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you that part.”
“What’d you do?” he says.
“I met Andy and Tom at the Plaza and drank champagne. They didn’t. I did. Then we went to the fireworks.”
“Sally at the Plaza?” He laughs. “What were they doing in town?”
“Tom was there on business. Andy came to see the fireworks.”
“It rained, didn’t it?”
“Only a little. It was O.K. They were pretty.”
“The fireworks,” Bobby says. “I didn’t make the fireworks.”
“You’re going to miss lunch, Bobby,” I say.
“God,” he says. “I am. Bye.”
I pull a record out from under the big library table, where they’re kept on the wide maghogany board that connects the legs. By coincidence, the record I pull out is the Miles Davis Sextet’s Jazz at the Plaza. At the Palm Court on the Fourth of July, a violinist played “Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies” and “Oklahoma!” I try to remember what else and can’t.
“What do you say, Hugo?” I say to the dog. “Another piece of cheese, or would you rather go on with your siesta?”
He knows the word “cheese.” He knows it as well as his name. I love the way his eyes light up and he perks his ears for certain words. Bobby tells me that you can speak gibberish to people, ninety per cent of the people, as long as you throw in a little catchword now and then, and it’s the same when I talk to Hugo: “Cheese.” “Tag.” “Out.”
No reaction. Hugo is lying where he always does, on his right side, near the stereo. His nose is only a fraction of an inch away from the plant in a basket beneath the window. The branches of the plant sweep the floor. He seems very still.
“Cheese?” I whisper. “Hugo?” It is as loud as I can speak.
No reaction. I start to take a step closer, but stop myself. I put down the record and stare at him. Nothing changes. I walk out into the back yard. The sun is shining directly down from overhead, striking the dark-blue doors of the garage, washing out the color to the palest tint of blue. The peach tree by the garage, with one dead branch. The wind chimes tinkling in the peach tree. A bird hopping by the iris underneath the tree. Mosquitoes or gnats, a puff of them in the air, clustered in front of me. I sink down into the grass. I pick a blade, split it slowly with my fingernail. I count the times I breathe in and out. When I open my eyes, the sun is shining hard on the blue doors.
After a while — maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty — a truck pulls into the driveway. The man who usually delivers packages to the house hops out of the United Parcel truck. He is a nice man, about twenty-five, with long hair tucked behind his ears, and kind eyes.
Hugo did not bark when the truck pulled into the drive.
“Hi,” he says. “What a beautiful day. Here you go.”
He holds out a clipboard and a pen.
“Forty-two,” he says, pointing to the tiny numbered block in which I am to sign my name. A mailing envelope is under his arm.
“Another book,” he says. He hands me the package.
I reach up for it. There is a blue label with my name and address typed on it.
He locks his hands behind his back and raises his arms, bowing. “Did you notice that?” he says, straightening out of the yoga stretch, pointing to the envelope. “What’s the joke?” he says.
The return address says “John F. Kennedy.”
“Oh,” I say. “A friend in publishing.” I look up at him. I realize that that hasn’t explained it. “We were talking on the phone last week. He was — People are still talking about where they were when he was shot, and I’ve known my friend for almost ten years and we’d never talked about it before.”