The Feast of Love Read Online Free PDF

gazed at the dogs in their pens. I would look at all the dogs that Kathryn had named. Also I was looking for the Labrador-retriever-collie mix she had named Bradley. After me. Finally I went in and said I wanted him, and they turned him over to me, but only after they neutered him and gave him his shots. I persuaded my sister, Agatha, and her husband, Harold, to keep him for a while until I had convinced Kathryn about the wisdom of having a dog. I just knew I could talk her into it. I took Bradley up north, wagging and slobbering in the backseat, and left him with Agatha.
    Back at the Humane Society week by week the other dogs were gone, one by one they disappeared, replaced by new dogs. The old dogs — the dogs that Kathryn had named — had found homes, I liked to think, where they were fed and housed and taken care of, but where they were occasionally unhappy about one thing, which was that they had the wrong name. The name they were supposed to have had been lost, and their owners had given them bogus names, childish names, lousy standard-issue dog names like Buster and Rover and Rex. The only dog who had the right name was Bradley, a name that he and I had to share.
    Once in a while I would see a dog out on the street, and I would recognize it from the Humane Society, and I knew that it had seen us, Kathryn and me, two people in love, walking up and down between the cages, holding each other. It had seen that but didn’t or couldn’t remember. I was the person who remembered.
    Now there’s Bradley the person, me, and Bradley the dog, him.
    You know, that day was perfect. A breath of sweetness. That’s a phrase I would never use in real life, but I just used it. You can laugh at my wording if you want to, you can laugh at the names I have for things, I know you do that, but I’ll think of that day from now on as a perfect day. A breath of sweetness.
    What I’m saying is: that day was here and then it was gone, but I remember it, so it exists here somewhere, and somewhere all those events are still happening and still going on forever. I believe that.
     
     
     

THREE
     
     
    “DID HE TELL YOU about the dogs?”
    “Well, yes. He did.”
    “And he said that I was afraid of dogs and that he drove me to the Humane Society?”
    “That was the gist of it.”
    “Did he make fun of me?”
    “Oh no, Kathryn, he didn’t. Certainly not. No — he didn’t do anything like that at all.”
    “Well, you wouldn’t tell me if he had. Anything else? Did he tell you anything else about us?”
    “He said you two were broke in those days. You worked in a library part-time. He said that you gave names to the dogs, the ones at the Humane Society. You named the dogs one by one, he said. The way he described it, what you did sounded like a blessing.”
    “He told you that? I don’t remember naming anybody or anything. I believe that he may have imagined the entire episode. We did go to the Humane Society once. I do remember all those animals. The barking. But I think we just walked in and then walked out without anything like an event, any sort of story, happening there. We had both been at the Botanical Gardens and we heard the dogs making a ruckus nearby, and we went over to investigate. The rest is probably imaginary. I’m certain he made it up.”
    “I suppose he might have,” I tell her.
    “This is all so weird,” she says. “Your calling me out of the blue and asking me about some encounter that Bradley and I had years ago. Aren’t those matters personal? I think maybe they should be. I realize that nothing stays hidden anymore but I’d still like to keep a few domestic particulars private. Especially when it comes to my love life. Such as it is. I can’t imagine why anybody else would be interested in who I love or how I loved them.”
    “Oh, everyone’s interested in that. Besides, I’d change your name. You could retain your privacy.”
    “That’s not quite what I’m getting at,” she says. “My