Barbara Fazzone casually, almost accidentally fell into step beside Brian on his way to second-period class.
"I saw your name in the paper."
"Yuh."
There had been a preseason roundup article in the sports section the night before, and Coach had listed Brian as one of his starting five.
"Do you think we'll be good this year?"
"We'll be okay."
He knew Barbara a little, they had been in the same catechism Confirmation class.
"I can't wait till the season starts. I like it a lot better than football. You get to see everybody's face and it's not so hard to follow the ball."
"Yeah. I suppose it is."
"And then cheerleading is much better inside. You're much closer to the people."
"Uh-huh."
"Listen," she said, smiling and letting her arm brush his, teasing a little, "can I ask you a personal question?"
Brian shrugged. "I guess so," he said, then tried to think how he should answer it.
"What do you think of Ditty Stack?"
There were several things he thought of her, but he didn't know which one was right to say.
"I don't know her very well."
Barbara nodded seriously, filing it away. "I wonder if we'll win the league," she said.
"But," said Brian, "I'd probably like to get to know her better."
Barbara smiled. "Listen, don't tell anybody I said this, she'd kill me if she found out, but I think Ditty really likes you a lot."
"Oh."
"It's hard on her because she's so shy," said Barbara, "but she's really very friendly."
Brian had never thought of her as being shy. She did an awful good job covering it up.
"Uh-huh."
"And you know, if I were you, I wouldn't be afraid to just go right up to her and say that you'd like to get to know her."
Brian considered this.
"I bet that's all she's waiting for," said Barbara Fazzone. "And she's such a friendly girl.".
When they were ten weeks old the. Doberman puppies had their ears cropped. Mr. Pettit did it himself, examining each dog's head and then cutting a pair of cardboard patterns for each.
"You got to have an artistic sense," he told them. "You don't fit the right ears to the right dog they look like hell."
Brian held the puppies while Lovell gave them a shot of Nembutal in the abdomen. They wobbled around for ten or fifteen minutes, bumping into each other, while Brian prepared a strychnine solution as an antidote in case any didn't come up from the dose. When they fell out Mr. Pettit started cutting. He'd lay the cardboard pattern next to a floppy ear and clamp it on so the major blood vessels were shut off. He used a pair of serrated scissors for the cropping, drawing surprisingly little blood, and Lovell followed him up sewing the tips with catgut and a curved needle. Then Brian would take the clamps off and rig the ears up with tape and cardboard so they were held erect. Mr. Pettit had him do the cutting on the last one.
"What you got to be is definite," said Mr. Pettit. "You don't want to worry the blades through and leave the tip all mangled. Just straight and clean and definite. Snip-snip, same as with anything else."
If the clamp hadn't slipped on the left one it would have gone fine.
Brian had the phone cord twisted around his free hand till the knuckles throbbed white.
"So anyways," he said, "I don't think we should see each other anymore."
She didn't live far away but the connection was lousy. Brian had to unwrap his hand and plug a finger in his ear to hear her.
"I don't understand," she said.
"It wouldn't be fair."
"What wouldn't be fair? Is something wrong?"
"I uhm — I'm going to be spending so much time with basketball, it wouldn't be fair to you."
"That doesn't bother me. Is that all?"
"I'd feel — uhm — I'd feel like I was losing you."
"What? I can't hear, there's something wrong with the phone — "
"I'd just be using you."
"I don't understand."
"I need more privacy."
"I won't call you up anymore if that's what you mean."
"Look, I really can't explain it, I just don't think we should see each other anymore."
"I don't understand."
"I'm sorry. It's my fault."
"Why? What's wrong, Brian?"
"It's just how I am. You know."
"I don't know. I never know what you're thinking."
It was as bad as he thought it would be. It was true though, he really didn't want to see her anymore. He didn't feel guilty either, which surprised him.
He spoke to her then in a firm, controlled voice, a voice that left no doubts or questions. And she did what she wanted, she said good-bye and hung up.
Lately he had noticed it — one of those things you overlook time after time, but the minute you see it you can't see anything else. Like the picture of Christ Russ Palumbo had that if you looked at it a certain way what you saw was a naked girl. Once you saw the girl it was hard to make out Christ in the picture again. Serena was mousy.
She was so small and skinny and she had mouse-brown hair and even her face reminded him a little of a mouse. And she burrowed. Whenever he looked at her undressing under the blankets in the watch shack he thought of a mouse burrowing. She was so timid with other people, so quiet and squeaky. He wondered why he hadn't noticed before they got together.
And she really didn't understand much of anything.
Brian was amazed at how easily it was to talk with Ditty Stack. It seemed like all you had to do was listen.
"Are you going to the dance after the game?" she'd say, and he would know she'd say yes if he asked her.
"I hate coming to school alone in the morning," she'd say, and he'd ask her where she lived, then offer to walk with her.
"I think that math homework is going to kill me," she would say, and he would suggest she copy his at lunch hour. He copied Barry Feingold's during first period, careful always to make a few mistakes.
"Where'd you get so smooth with girls?" she'd say, and he didn't know if he should laugh or not.
At times he had a hard time believing he was with her. He'd look over at her, sometimes touch her hair if she was in the mood where she wanted or would let him touch her in public. He liked to walk her past the huge trophy case by the gym, liked to see himself next to her in the reflection off the glass. Even then, at times, he would look and wonder, "What's she doing with him?"
"Hear you traded in for a new model," said Lovell at work. "You gettin the hang of it, McNeil. Got to change the menu if you gonna keep an appetite. Like m'man Thor."
Mr. Pettit made the dates but Lovell was in total control of Thor's mating. Once or twice a week he'd work over somebody's brood bitch to prepare her, checking for fleas and lice, checking that her discharge was clear enough and her parts soft enough to make it all worthwhile.
"M'man Thor is got the life," he would say. "Eat an fuck, eat an fuck, even got his own personal nigger waitin on him."
Lovell put together two extrarich meals a day for Thor, supplementing them with wheat germ oil for vitamin E, and egg whites "to give his spritz a little body."
Lovell didn't think much of the stock that was offered to Thor, but Mr. Pettit wanted the cash. When another cowhocked, fish-mouthed, pig-eyed bitch would be brought in Lovell would sigh and drag Brian over to look at what they'd sunk to.
"What kind of litter you spect him to pump through that?" he would say, and dig out his favorite passage in the breeding book Mr. Pettit had given him.
"'It is difficult enough, with all one's skill,"' he would read, " 'to breed superior puppies from even a first-rate bitch. But to clutter the world with inferior animals out of just any old bitch is inexcusable.' " He would look to Pettit's office and call, knowing he couldn't hear, "In-ex-cusable."