"Ruby, no!" Vicki said over the beeping, shaking her toe to get the dog off. She punched her mother's birthday into the white keypad, but the alarm went off, erupting into earsplitting sound. She shook her foot but the corgi hung on, a nasty blur of tan and white. Her startled parents rushed in from the kitchen.
"Mom! Dad! Did you change the alarm code?" Vicki yelled over the din.
"Yes, it's my birthday now!" her father shouted, wincing. Vicki was trying to remember her father's birthday but it was too noisy to think. Her father hurried past her to the keypad and punched in the new code, mercifully silencing the alarm, if not the corgi.
"Ruby, no!" her mother said, but the dog growled and shook her head, with Vicki's toe still in her teeth. "Ruby, no!"
"Why does she do this?" Vicki couldn't help but laugh, finally freeing her pump. She had no idea what had possessed her parents to buy this dog. Every time she came home, the dog attacked her toe, heels, and ankles. Either the animal had no long-term memory or her name was Ruby, no! "Mom, doesn't she know me yet?"
"She's a herding dog."
"So?"
"Ruby, no! Ruby, no!" Her mother bent over in her white silk blouse and full navy skirt, tugging the determined dog by her red leather collar.
"Why does she bite me? I'm family."
"That's why she's herding you."
"She's insane," Vicki said, reaching down to pet the puppy, who only scampered away, barking and play-bowing on her short legs. She had eyes like brown marbles, legs like stumps, and a body like a Tater Tot. She kept nipping, trying to bite Vicki's toe. Adorable, for an attack dwarf.
"Why didn't you call first, Victoria?" her father asked. He was still dressed from work in suit pants and a starched white shirt, but his Brioni tie was loose, which qualified for him as casual dress. His straight, dark hair, growing sparse on top, matched dark eyebrows that capped small brown eyes. His nose curved like a hawk and his lips were thin, with a small scar on the top lip that appeared when he frowned, as now. "We didn't know you were coming."
"I have only the four lamb chops, honey," her mother added, with plain regret. Her greenish eyes softened in spite of the surgically enhanced lift at their corners, and her hair, chin-length, curved gently under her chin and shone like jet in the light of the entrance hall's chandelier. "We're on the South Beach Diet, so we have to watch. I would have bought more if you'd called ahead."
"Sorry, I didn't get a chance." Vicki wouldn't tell them she'd been stalking crack addicts. She had long ago stopped telling her parents anything. In fact, she was hoping she'd get to eat a full dinner before her father brought up what happened last night. "I was close by and figured I'd stop in. If there's no dinner, that's okay."
"Nonsense, you can have one of my chops," her mother offered, putting a silk-swathed arm around Vicki and giving her a brief hug. "Come in, we were just about to sit down." She smelled like Chanel and felt just as elegant, but it freed the dog to bite Vicki's foot.
"Mom, your dog hates me," she said as they walked into the dining room, which had an oval walnut table as its polished center, surrounded by Chippendale chairs and red wallpaper blooming with etched Chinese poppies. Against the far wall sat a mahogany sideboard, and the rug was a silk Oriental, a red-and-white pattern that complemented the Mandarin-hued borders of her parents' china, now set with cooling food in two place settings.
"Ruby just wants you to stay with the group."
"She bites!"
"Herds," her mother corrected, and they fell into step, with the dog herding Vicki's heel.
"Why doesn't she just lick my face like a normal dog?" Vicki remembered the neurotic poodle from her childhood, which looked like a saint next to this one. "Peppy never did that."
"Ruby has different instincts. She bites you only so you'll do what she wants."
"The control freak of dogs."
"Oh, hush." Her mother released Vicki with a smile and turned to the swinging door to the kitchen, in the back of the house. Ruby let go of Vicki's heel and scooted after her. "Sit down while I get you a plate. I'll be right back."
"Can I help?"
"No, thanks. Keep your father company," she called back airily, her navy silk skirt billowing gracefully behind her, her waist still svelte. Vicki became aware that her father was watching her mother with similar admiration. They stood in the large dining room, saying nothing, and she wondered if there would ever come a time when she felt completely comfortable alone with her father, without her mother to fill in the silences. There was only one subject that she and her father ever agreed on:
"Mom looks great, doesn't she?" Vicki asked, but it wasn't a question.
"Absolutely. She goes to Curves now."
"There's a Curves here? Where?"
"On Lancaster Avenue, near the tile place. And Eadeh, the rug place."
"I see those Curves commercials all the time." Vicki was putting herself to sleep with her own conversation. She was filling up the air with words until her mother got back and rescued them from each other. What was taking her so long?
"Eadeh has very nice rugs. Very nice Oriental rugs."
"I heard that."
"She loves Curves. She goes three times a week. Here. Let's sit. Dinner's getting cold." Her father pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down behind his plate, which held two medium-rare chops of New Zealand lamb, three florets of barely steamed broccoli, and a portion-controlled tossed salad, sparingly dressed with vinaigrette. Vicki sat down, and he gestured at his plate. "Your mother put us on South Beach, and she's right. We eat twenty grams of carbs a day, no more. It's much healthier than Atkins."
"I'm sure," Vicki said, but she hungrily wished she belonged to one of those Italian families in the Olive Garden commercials, who ate piles of spaghetti with hearty red tomato sauce. Her parents wouldn't be caught dead in an Olive Garden and now they were the only Italians in the world who didn't eat pasta.
"Our cholesterol was too high, and so was our blood sugar."
"Really."
"Now our levels are a lot better."
"Good." Vicki hid her smile. Her parents spent every minute together; driving to the office, working across the hallway from each other, then driving home in the same car. They had met at Villanova Law School, married upon graduation, and gone into practice together. Their marriage was all the more solid for their togetherness, although now that they were sharing the same blood sugar, Vicki suspected that they were physically fusing and soon would become conjoined twins.
"We use only Splenda now. It's a sugar substitute." "Splenda. It sounds so cheery." "Make fun, but I lost five pounds the first two weeks." Vicki blinked. "I wasn't making fun, Dad. That's great, that you lost five pounds." "No, it isn't. The book says you should lose seven. I listened to it in the car, on CD. Your mother lost seven."
"Five isn't much less than seven. It's only two." Math genius.
"Fewer."
"Huh?"
"You said less. You meant fewer."
"Oh. Sorry." English genius, too. "In any event, two fewer pounds doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
"Oh." Vicki sighed inwardly. It was almost impossible to agree with her father, even when you were faking it. He was a man who never took yes for an answer. She suddenly regretted coming home. She should have gone to Olive Garden.
"Sugar is poison," her father added. He unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap, then rested his arms on the side of the table. The strains of The Marriage of Figaro lilted from a CD player in the kitchen, followed by her mother, humming along. Her father tapped his index finger in time, though he would never sing, as much as he loved opera. He seemed preoccupied, and Vicki knew he had to be thinking about Morty and Jackson's murders.