This Dog for Hire Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lillian, after the divorce.
    “Well,” she said, meaning “bullshit,” meaning she thought I had fucked up again, “what are you going to do now?” meaning now that I had ruined my life, just as she always knew I would.
    “Move back to the city,” I said. “I never should have left. And get a dog!”
    “You’re not going back to dog training, are you? Why don’t you get a normal job, Rachel?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of how much I hated going backward.
    I had closed the school and moved to Westchester so Jack and I could have a “normal life,” whatever that was. What had I been thinking! But it was done, and now I’d have to go forward. But to what?
    “Look, maybe until you think of something else, Ted could—”
    Oh, God. I was filled with panic at the thought of working in the garment industry.
    “Well,” I said, wanting to make her as miserable as she had just made me, “I’ve always wanted to be a detective.”
    It was simply the most annoying thing I could think of on such short notice.
    “Rachel, have you completely lost your mind!”
    I had a strong suspicion it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother to answer her.
    “You know, I can really see myself doing investigation work. Jack always said I was the nosiest bitch he ever met, or maybe that was just during the financial disclosure part of the divorce. Anyway, the hours would suit me, and I wouldn’t have to wear panty hose.”
    “A detective ,” she bellowed, “so now that you’re finished being Clyde Beatty you’re going to become Dickless Tracy?”
    Just like that, for the first time in eight months I started to feel like myself again.
    “Oh my God, Rachel, tell me you’re not serious.”
    “I can’t. I am.”
    Of course I wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. I was just having some fun for a change.
    “Rachel!” She was fairly hysterical by now. “Rachel—you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t dare!” That’s when I knew it was bashert, meant to be. I never could resist a dare from Lillian.
    I looked at Dennis’s ink and watercolor wash drawing of Eliot, realizing as I did that the black stains on his pants and shoes had probably been made by india ink. I mean, was I a born detective, or what?
    And what was Lillian carrying on about? This was only my second stab at what she calls the dirt bag professions. She needn’t worry about the other three. Selling insurance has never appealed to me. I’m more interested in who than how much. And on my worst day I’d never consider real estate or the used-car business. Sure, I follow people, eavesdrop, go through people’s garbage and read their mail, snoop, distort, deceive, and misrepresent. I even do a little B & E if it’s absolutely necessary. But, hey, I have my pride.
    I looked at Eliot again, a mountain of a dog, big, square head, thick and stolid, uncropped flying-buttress ears, large, meaty mouth, closed and serious for now. I studied every part of him, the massive chest, the strong, straight legs, the neat, large, rounded feet, so like Dashiell in every way except for coloring. Eliot was a brindle. Dashiell, except for the black patch on his right eye, is white.
    “Please may I keep him, Mommy, may I, Mommy, please?”
    “He’s too big for you to walk,” Antonia’s mother said, as sensible as my big sister, Lillian.
    “He’s too big for us to feed.”
    “And where will he sleep? He’s much too big to sleep in your bed.”
    But there they are, on the last page, in Antonia’s bed, and, see, they lit just line.
    Bashert, my grandmother Sonya used to say.
    I closed Dennis’s book and dropped it onto the floor.
    “You don’t know me,” he had said when he called me.
    Was that just this afternoon?
    “I got your name from someone in the neighborhood, but you don’t know her. You did some work for her cousin about a year ago. Ellen Engel? And now I need your help. I need it badly.”
    Jack had said it, too, the first time he’d called.
    “You don’t