“Funny.”
“What?”
“What we’re told as children. It may be damaging, on the one hand, but it’s the truth. Our parents, family, older friends tell us what the world is like.”
“They tell us what the world was like for them. They don’t know what it will be like for us because we will change the world.”
He put down his fork.“Sister, no wonder you take your fences as you do.”
She laughed.“Every generation changes the world. You hear what went before you: your parents’ victories, miseries, and fears as well as hopes for you. They tell you their truth. You’ve got to find your own.”
“But remember the past.”
“I do.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you. I’m sure I haven’t.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you. Maybe we’ve reached a point in our lives when we molt. We shed our feathers. But this time, instead of growing the same feathers, we grow different ones: the feathers we’ve always wanted.”
“Your metaphors come from nature.”
“Nature is what I know. Now if you speak in metaphors, do I have to get a law library? Do I have to studyMarbury versus Madisonor theDred Scottcase?” She knew her history, those being landmark American cases.
He laughed.“No.”
“Tell me about those Manhattans you mentioned. I thought a Manhattan was some blended whiskey and a bit of sweet vermouth.”
“The basic Manhattan.” He leaned back in the chair. “Well, a dry Manhattan is the same, only you use one-fourth ounce of dry vermouth instead of sweet. Easy. A perfect Manhattan is one and one-fourth ounces of blended whiskey, one-eighth ounce of dry vermouth, and one-eighth ounce of sweet vermouth, and you garnish it with a twist of lemon. The dry Manhattan you garnish with an olive, the standard Manhattan, use a cherry.”
“What about a Manhattan South. Such mysteries.”
“One ounce dry gin, half ounce dry vermouth, half ounce Southern Comfort, and a dash of Angostura bitters, no garnish, and it’s not served on the rocks as the others can be. You always mix it in a glass filled with ice, stir, then pour it into a chilled cocktail glass.”
“You know, the first party I gave after Ray died, a year and a half after he died, I never even thought about mixing drinks. When one of my guests asked for a vodka stinger, I had no idea what to do. My throat went dry, my heart pounded. I missed Ray and I had learned once more how dependentI was on him for so many things, the small courtesies, the minutiae of masculinity, for lack of a better term. I no more know how to make a vodka stinger than how to fly. Thank God, Xavier was there. I asked him if he would mind, and he graciously tended bar. Ever since, if I give a party or ifthe hunt club has a real do, I hire a bartender.”
“For me, it was fabric. Theresa knew all this stuff about fabrics, for shirtings, for sheets, for towels. She wasn’t dead, of course, but that was my first big clue that there was another side to the moon that I needed to explore.”
“Well said. You know, earlier we were talking about sports, about how the way a person foxhunts or plays a game shows who they are. I don’t know, it crossed my mind, do you think the pressures of high-level competition drove Sam toward more drinking?”
“Yes, but he had it in him already. He could just as easily have become a drunk without that career. I learned a lot about alcoholism, thanks to my brother. I thought for the first years that Sam drank a lot, but he wasn’t an alcoholic. The bums at the railway station were alcoholics. Well,they represent about five percent of alcoholics. Most alcoholics sit next to you in church, stand next to you at the supermarket, work next to you at the office. They function quite well for years and years, and then one day, it’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. All those years of hiding, lying, performing even while hung over, just collapse. I think Sam would have become a drunk no matter what. He’s full of fear. Drunks, basically, are afraid of life. I learned that much.”
“Then it is possible that Mitch and Anthony wanted to end it all?”
Gray thought about this for a long time.“Yes.”
“Do you think they committed suicide?”
“No.”
“I don’t either, and I wish I could stop thinking about them, especially. All three of them were part of our community. To see familiar faces year in and year out is a great comfort; ties that bind, even if you don’t know someone well.”
“Some people realize that quite early, but for most of us, it doesn’t come until middle age.”
“We’re pack animals. We need a community. Giant cities, where are the communities? Maybe the neighborhood, maybe not. It might be a shared interest like dancing or professional associations. We need to be part of one another.”
“Hard to imagine Anthony Tolliver and Mitch Banachek being part of a community. I guess the drunks at the station are their own little world. Sam doesn’t talk about it. Winding up there is really the bottom of the barrel.”
“We couldn’t reach those men. But we saw them. They saw us. And maybe, in the darker corners of our souls, they made us feel better about ourselves. At least I’m not as useless as Mitch Banachek. I’ve still got my teeth unlike Anthony Tolliver. They allowed us the secret thrill of superiority.”
He watched her mobile features, listened to her, and found himself completely engaged by this forthright woman.“You don’t flinch, do you?”
“Oh, I do. I don’t like knowing those things about myself.”
“It’s human. I think the entire media industry is built on just that emotion.”
They both laughed so hard that Golly returned from her post in the library to see if she’d missed anything.
“What’s doing?”
“High-tone talk,”Raleigh replied.
“Why don’t they just go to bed and get it over with?” Golly rubbed her face against Raleigh’s long nose while Rooster wrinkled his.
“Because they’re human,”Raleigh said.
“They complicate everything,”Rooster said without rancor, a simple observation.
“She was reading this book on sex in ancient Greece andRome. When you guys were asleep. She woke up, startedreading this book. I can’t sleep when she turns the light on,so I watched over her shoulder. And you know what shesaid? She said,‘Life must have been heaven before guilt.’And then she went on one of her tears.‘How clever ofJudeo-Christians to put the cop inside instead of outside.’You know, that’s guilt. In Rome, you tried not to getcaught if you were fooling around. In America, you catchyourself. She has these odd insights. I wish, for her sake,she weren’t human. She’d be so much happier.”Golly truly loved Sister.
“She’s happy enough for a human.”Raleigh, too, loved her.
As the animals discussed their weighty issues, Sister and Gray cleared the table, did the dishes, talked some more. Eventually, Gray got up to leave. He put on his coat, walked with Sister to the door, and kissed her good night. This kiss led to another then another. Finally he took his coat off, and they went upstairs.
They removed their clothes. Considering their ages, they looked pretty good.
Gray in a soft voice said,“Sister …”
Laughing, she interrupted him,“Under the circumstances, I think you’d better call me Jane.”
CHAPTER 31
Sound travels approximately one mile every five seconds. Sister believed it traveled faster in a hunt club. Not that she was ashamed of bedding Gray, far from it, but neither of them was quite ready for public proclamations. Nor did either know if this was the beginning of a relationship or simply a matter of physical comfort.
When she walked out to the kennels at four fortyfive, she noticed Lorraine’s car parked in Shaker’s driveway. Maybe the moon, sun, and stars had been aligned for romance. She smiled and walked in the office. The hounds slept, though a few raised their heads. Most humans need clocks. The hounds knew it wasn’t time yet to be called into the draw yard, so they continued to snore, curled up with one another, dreaming of large red foxes. She dropped her amended draw list on the desk, a neon orange line drawn across the top of it, indicating this was the final draw. She’d discovered neon gel ink pens and gone wild with them months ago. Every color now had a special meaning.