Chow Down (20 page)

“Last chance to say no,” he said, spritzing away.

I shook my head, letting my hair slap back and forth across my shoulders for the last time. “I trust you.”

Terry leaned toward me, his voice lowering intimately. “That's a dangerous thing to say, doll.”

“Haven't you heard? Danger is my middle name.”

Terry laughed. Then he picked up his scissors and went to work.

T
he first cut sent a long skein of hair slithering down my shoulder. I shifted on the stool and hoped my trust hadn't been misplaced. There was no turning back now.

“Stop fidgeting.” Terry poked me with the tip of the scissors. “If you want me to get this right, you have to sit still.”

“Yes sir.”

I couldn't see him but I knew he was grinning. That made me feel better and I began to relax.

“Talk to me,” Terry said as he worked. “How's your summer going? Tell me what you've been up to.”

“You know perfectly well what I've been up to. Faith and I are engaged in an epic battle to become the new face of Chow Down dog food. Whether we want to be or not.”

“Of course I know that, but I want details, the newest scoop. What's going on behind the scenes?”

The scissors continued to flash open and shut, nicking off bits and pieces of hair. I watched them go without regret.

“For one thing, Lisa Kim has disappeared—”

“Wow.” He uttered the word with no inflection at all. I'd led with my biggest news and Terry sounded almost bored.

I turned my head slightly to look at him. Firmly but gently, Terry turned it back. I sighed and faced the far wall.

“That doesn't surprise you?” I asked.

“Should it?”

“Yes.” I might have sounded a little huffy. “Every time someone disappears it surprises me. I like people to stay where they're supposed to be.”

“Well then,” said Terry, “there's your problem. What makes you think that
you
know where people are supposed to be?”

I didn't answer. I imagined that was my way of acknowledging that he might have a point. Hair continued to fall to the floor around the legs of the stool. My head began to feel lighter.

“Lisa left a whole bunch of dogs behind,” I mentioned after a minute. “Ten Yorkies, to be precise. Don't you think she would have cared about what happened to them? If she'd left of her own volition, wouldn't she have made provisions for their care?”

“Larumph mookie,” Terry mumbled.

I swiveled in my seat. He was holding a comb between his lips. Considering all the time he spent doing exactly that at dog shows, you'd think he would be better at talking around an obstacle. I reached up and took the comb from him.

Terry wet his lips and pursed his mouth. “Sit still,” he said. “I'm trying to work here.”

“You always talk when you work. Why should today be any different?”

“It isn't.” Less gentle than he'd been the time before, Terry repositioned me. “I can talk to your back perfectly well.”

“Fine,” I said. “Where were we? Oh, I remember, you were muttering something about Lisa.”

Terry reached around and retrieved the comb. He used it to feather through the hair over my ears. “No, I was muttering about Larry. The dogs were his passion, not hers. Didn't you ever notice that? He was the one who babied them, fussed over them, took them in the ring. Lisa was just along for the ride. You know, the good wife supporting her hubby's hobby and trying to make it look like she wanted to be involved, when she really couldn't have cared less.”

“Interesting,” I said. Terry's observation expanded on what Bertie had told me. Not only that, but his assessments were usually pretty astute. “I never saw either of the Kims at any shows. The first time I met the two of them was at the opening reception in Norwalk.”

“Then you're probably assuming Lisa's a dog person.”

I nodded.

Terry growled a correction. My twitching and fidgeting was definitely trying his patience. “I wouldn't jump to that conclusion if I were you. Maybe Lisa met up with some sort of foul play, maybe she didn't. But I could see her taking off and leaving those dogs behind. I don't think she would have worried about it the way you or I would have. Did Yoda get dumped too?”

“No.” I was careful not to shake my head. “Wherever Lisa's gone, Yoda seems to have disappeared right along with her.”

“There you go, then.”

“There I go . . . what?”

“She took the potential moneymaker with her. I rest my case.”

“I didn't know we were making cases. Since you know so much about it, where did Lisa go?”

“Oh please. I haven't the slightest idea. I never said I knew
everything
.”

Maybe not, but he'd been guilty of implying it a time or two. I decided to switch tacks. “How's it coming? Can I look in a mirror?”

“Your hair looks faboo. And no, you can't look yet. Not until I'm finished.”

“But—”

“Think of your head as a soufflé. If you open the oven door too soon the whole thing falls flat.”

“That's a really terrible analogy,” I said. At least I was hoping it was.

“Tell me something else.” As hair continued to fall to the floor, Terry was determined to distract me from the matter at hand. “How are the other contestants doing? Who seems to be winning?”

I spent the next fifteen minutes regaling him with the story of our trip to Central Park. Terry listened with rapt attention, humming softly under his breath as he worked.

“So?” he asked at the end. “You still didn't answer my second question. Now that you're most of the way through the process, who's going to win?”

“I wish I knew,” I said fervently. “I really hope it isn't me.”

“You mean Faith.”

“Yes, but I also mean me. Because much as it's supposed to be our dogs that are competing to represent Chow Down, it's been obvious that the owners are part of the selection process. When we participate in these events, it feels like we're on trial, too.”

“Maybe you're overidentifying.”

I couldn't entirely rule that out. Certainly I'd seen it happen at dog shows often enough: owners who treated their dogs like their children or siblings. Who took every loss personally and celebrated each win as if their own merits had been on the line. But I was pretty sure that wasn't the case here.

“I don't think so,” I said. “The judges seem to spend as much time interviewing the owners as they do observing the dogs. Doug Allen even admitted as much the other day. I guess they need to make sure that whoever they pick will be up to the task.”

Terry nodded absently. His hands were moving through my hair more slowly now. The bulk of the work had already been done. Now he was adding the finishing touches. I hoped he liked what he was seeing.

“If you wanted to win I'd be in your corner all the way,” he said. “But since you don't, I'm rooting for the Reddings and Ginger.”

I pondered that for a minute and decided that the couple and their Brittany would probably be my choice, too. Nevertheless, I was curious to hear his reasoning. “How come?”

“Process of elimination, I guess. Dorothy's only in it to gratify her own ego—”

I laughed. “We all seem to be in it for that.”

Terry kept going without missing a beat. “MacDuff's getting older. He needs a rest more than he needs a new job. Lisa doesn't have the right temperament. Being named spokesdog is going to be a lot of work, and she'd never be able to offer Yoda the support she'd need. Ben? He wants the win badly, but if he doesn't get it, he'll find something else. Trust me, he's the kind of guy who always lands on his feet.”

“So by default that leaves you with Bill and Allison.”

“Plus, of course . . . They really need the money.”

“They do?”

I spun around. Luckily Terry had seen that coming and he held his hand away from my head, scissors angled outward. Otherwise I might have lost an ear.

“How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows that, doll.”

“I don't.”

“Okay, make that everyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention. It's not cheap to put championships on a dog in three different disciplines. Think about it.”

He was right, of course. Up until now, I'd considered only how the Brittany's varied accomplishments would affect her standing in the contest. I hadn't stopped to think about the amount of time and effort, not to mention the financial commitment, that had gone into producing a record like hers.

I was mostly conversant with the cost of showing a dog in conformation. Depending on the breed, the quality of the dog, and whether the owners handled themselves or hired a professional to do the job for them, the cost of procuring a championship could easily run into the thousands. Exhibiting week after week wasn't cheap, no matter how you looked at it.

“Who showed Ginger in breed?” I asked.

“I think Allison started her, but the two of them didn't get very far.”

I remembered the conversation I'd had earlier with the couple. “I'll bet she got too nervous taking her in the ring.”

“Something like that. Anyway, Ginger went to Todd to get finished.”

Todd was Todd Wickham, a top professional handler so well known among dog show aficionados that he went by just one name, like Madonna or Bono or Sting.

“That must have cost plenty.”

“Even more so because Ginger, for all her glowing attributes, doesn't happen to be a particularly good Brittany. She was originally bought as a family pet, and for Bill to play around with in obedience. But once the Reddings started going to shows, Allison was seduced by the glamour of the conformation ring and decided that she wanted Ginger to finish there, too.

“You know Todd. He could walk a pot-bellied pig in the ring and convince the judge it was a French Bulldog. And even he had a hard time getting that last major on her.”

I supposed that showed what little I knew about Brittanys. I'd always thought that Ginger was a perfectly fine specimen of the breed. Certainly she was a pretty dog to look at. Then again, I'd learned enough from Aunt Peg to know that the fact that a dog was attractive didn't necessarily mean that it had correct structure or breed type.

“It all adds up,” Terry was saying. “Even when you do part of it yourself, there are entries, gas, and hotels. Not to mention time off from work. Which, by the way, neither Bill nor Allison is doing at the moment. Right now their idea of gainful employment seems to consist of promoting Ginger.”

“Are you sure? First time we met over at Champions, Bill was wearing a suit and tie. I thought he looked like he'd left work to come to the reception.”

Terry shook his head. “The way I heard it, Bill was in the habit of cutting out on work whenever something that looked like more fun came up. He got laid off about six weeks ago. Maybe he had an interview the morning you saw him. Or could be he was thinking of the contest as his potential new job. One hundred thousand bucks would take care of a lot of bills.”

It would indeed.

While we'd been speaking, Terry had finally stopped working. He'd laid the comb and scissors down on the counter. He studied me carefully, then reached up to nudge a few errant strands of hair into place with his fingers.

My hair had been damp when he'd started cutting it. Usually Terry would blow it dry when he was done. But now it was so much shorter, it felt as though it had dried already. I slid off the stool and lifted a tentative hand to touch the results.

“No touching.” Terry slapped my hand away. “Look first.”

He led the way to a powder room off the kitchen, flipped the light switch, then stood back so I could slip past him and see the mirror.

I was almost afraid to look. What if I hated it? I'd seen the mound of hair on the floor beneath the stool. I'd never done anything this drastic before. If it was awful, it would take years to grow back. Sam had married a woman with long hair. What if he hated it . . . ?

“Would you stop agonizing and look already!”

So I did.

Slowly I turned to face the mirror. My eyes widened. For a moment, I didn't even recognize the face I saw there. Now framed by a cap of loose, tousled curls, it looked like it belonged to a totally different person.

“It turns out your hair has a lot of body when it's not weighted down by all that length,” Terry said.

I was still staring at my reflection. I'd had long hair all my life. Long
straight
hair. I would never have imagined that lopping off seven or eight inches would make this big a difference.

“Wow.” I exhaled.

That didn't seem to be the response Terry was hoping for. He squeezed into the small room next to me. Our faces swam side by side in the mirror. Mine still looked like I'd been poleaxed. His looked unsure.

“Is that wow good, or wow bad?”

“I think I love you,” I said.

Terry grinned. “I'll take that as a compliment.”

I shook my head, gently at first, and then harder. The curls bobbed and spun, then settled back into place. “Upkeep?”

“Wash, finger comb, maybe add a little gel if you feel like it. That's all there is to it.”

After years of hassling with a blow dryer and hot rollers, that routine sounded like heaven. “Will you marry me?”

“You're already married.”

“Damn.”

“But I'll do your hair forever.”

“Will you?” I turned to face him. An image of Crawford flashed before my eyes. Suddenly the moment felt serious. So many things were perfect in my life right now; I didn't want any of it to change. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Terry affirmed. “Scout's honor.”

Neither of us could control the future. He knew that as well as I did. But just for that moment, I wanted to believe.