The Black Marble (15 page)

Philo had been one of the first in line during those brisk predawn hours. But within ten minutes of his arrival, the campers, vans, and motor homes were backed up in a queue of headlights which extended from the west side of the arena to Santa Barbara Avenue. Some of those dog handlers in the trucks chatted breezily on C.B.'s, some sat in the back of their vehicles and drank coffee, read the Sunday
Times
, readied themselves for what would be a long long day for hundreds of people and well over two thousand beasts.

When those vans, campers, and motor homes began roaring onto the floor of the vast arena, Philo Skinner was operating on instinct alone. By rote, he turned off the headlights and drove slowly to his favorite spot on the side of the arena where they showed the terriers. His hands were so slithery he dropped the steel-mesh exercise pens on the concrete floor. A handler next to him offered to help but Philo waved him away, lit a cigarette, sat down in a green canvas director's chair and watched the throngs arriving. There were squads of sleepy janitors who would be kept busy scooping up mountains of dog crap. But where the hell were the food concessionaires? Philo desperately needed some coffee. He was cold. Some judges were arriving already. He'd never been able to figure out why they got there so early. The free-lance photographers who would be snapping pictures all day for the dog magazines were here. The dog owners
paid
to have their pictures taken and
paid
to have them put in the magazines.

The handlers and kennel workers were everywhere. All around him tables and cages were clanging against concrete. Then came the roar of engines as the trucks drove outside after delivering their animals.

Something was different today: a smattering of television sets for Super Bowl XI Something Philo was counting on if his plan would work to its optimum.

Perhaps the exhibitors were present for something resembling a religious ritual, but the handlers weren't. Many were not about to miss the
other
ceremony taking place across town. In any event, there was not one healthy young giant from Minnesota or Oakland who was as tense, excited and prayerful as the long-legged asthmatic with dyed black hair who was trying to look dog show respectable in a three-button herringbone coat, gray woolen slacks and a paisley tie. Except for white patent-leather shoes, the real Philo Skinner clothing was underneath: the red silk underwear.

Oh, God,
why
didn't he bring another shirt? Philo Skinner, eyes dilated from it all, lungs rattling and creaking, was giving off an odor a whole can of aerosol spray couldn't hide. Philo Skinner had smelled his sweat and the sweat of other men, but the smell he was exuding was something else again: the smell of
fear.

Somehow, sitting there in his director's chair, mildly paralyzed, Philo seemed more sensitive to the roar of action than he'd ever been. He was detached, drifting, numb, yet his mind was darting about like his dilated gaze. The handler two stations down had a Yorkshire with a touch-up. What would the handler say if Philo were to stroll down there and whisper in his ear, “Okay, dogmeat, lay fifty bucks on me or I'll tell the judge to suck his finger and run it across that bitch's withers. You little shitbag! Think you can pass off that dyed Yorkie? Maybe you can out there, but nothing gets past Philo Skinner! Not today! Philo Skinner's been in this racket thirty years. Philo Skinner's b
een
there, baby!”

Better yet, let the Yorkie handler get in the ring,
then
whisper in his ear, “How would you like a suspension for that little dye job? Fuck the fifty bucks. Give me a
hundred
, you stinking little heap of dog shit! Think I don't know? I've b
een
there. I'm Philo Skinner, Terrier King.”

An exhibitor was sitting with his handler three stations down, frantically ripping through the show catalogue with a pencil, handicapping dog, handler, and judges with as much desperation as any horse player Philo had ever seen at Santa Anita. And here there was no money to be won by the dog owners, only great amounts to be
spent.

“Hi, Mr. Skinner!” Pattie Mae yelled, clunking across the arena floor in a dead run, lucky she didn't break her dumb neck. Jesus Christ! She was wearing a worn-out cotton blouse, no bra, and a faded, wraparound skirt which barely wrapped around her terrific round ass, pantyless, no doubt. And platform clogs with ankle thongs! Seven goddamn inches high! He had told her not to wear jeans to her first show, to dress
conservatively.
Jesus Christ, she had a
daisy
in her lint-covered hair!

“Gosh, this is exciting, Mr. Skinner!” she said.

“Pattie Mae, take the van out to the parking lot and then come back. It's all unloaded.”

“Where do I take it, Mr….”

“Just drive the fucking thing out there and park it anywhere! Lock it up and come back here as soon as you can.”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner,” she said cautiously, looking at his dilated eyes, perhaps smelling him already.

He was still debilitated by the fear and tension. He lit another cigarette. Every handler around him was already set up. The handlers and their kennel employees were hard at work at the grooming tables. The dogs were being creamed with cholesterol, and the breeds with white coats were being cornstarched. The legs and beards and furnishings were being combed and brushed and trimmed. All around him was the whir of hair dryers, the buzz of electric clippers, the hiss of hair spray. (A no-no but everyone used it with impunity.) The incessant click of scissors and shears. The eleventh-hour show grooming being accomplished.

Then he began to smell the dog shit. The animals were nervous too, and the excrement was runny. Wonder what his own would smell like now? Lucky he hadn't eaten for a day and a half.

This was his
last
dog show, could that be part of it? The last contact with a way of life that hadn't been bad to him. If the truth be known, he loved dogs. Had always loved them, even as an urchin in a Tucson foster home where they ate pinto beans three times a day in the Depression. Even the stray dogs he secretly fed would eat the beans.

From dog shit to the fragrance of roses: white and red and yellow as buttercups. He loved the Santa Barbara Dog Show best. The flowers and grass and gentle loveliness. It reminded him of movies he'd seen. Like the Ascot Races in
My Fair Lady.
He used to dream of marrying a rich exhibitor and showing her terriers at the Santa Barbara show. Wearing a powder-blue blazer and white pants. Sipping from demitasse china. “Mr. Skinner.”

“Huh?”

“Uh, Mr. Skinner, shouldn't we be setting up? I mean, we don't have that much time, do we?”

Jesus Christ, she at least could have washed the fucking lint out of her hair!

“Okay,” he said, stepping on the cigarette. “Let's go to work and win a few points, Pattie Mae.”

Madeline Whitfield glanced at the gangling dog handler with the crazed eyes who babbled ceaselessly to a nervous young girl grooming a Kerry blue. But her eyes passed over them as she strolled around the arena floor, trying to walk off the tension. Many dog exhibitors never saw their animals except at dog shows likethese. They spent perhaps thousands of dollars on them and never saw them, because it was infinitely easier to win if the dogs stayed in the kennel with the handlers.

Madeline Whitfield of course was not that kind of dog owner. Not that she wanted to win less—in fact, she was searching for her favorite photographer, prepared to pay anything to get Vickie's photograph in one of a hundred dog magazines—she just didn't like to think of dogs living in a kennel like foster children.

Vickie had the love and care of a real child, and so far it hadn't harmed her chances to win. Madeline was proving that love and maternal care could compensate for the discipline of a kennel-reared champion.

Pattie Mae now had the cowering little whippet on the grooming table. His tail, curled between his legs against his stomach, looked from the side like a second penis. He was so delicate his legs were like fingers. The noose around the trembling animal's neck, attached to the metal arm on the grooming post, was perhaps the only thing keeping him from leaping off the steel table and running through the arena and out the open door. Which of course was what Philo Skinner felt like doing. His voice, almost drowned out by the noises around him, was pitched higher by the fear that possessed him.

“Squirrelly dog, Pattie Mae, that's a squirrelly goddamn dog.”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner, I'll just starch his forelegs and …”

“Squirrelly! Just like his goddamn owner. I never shoulda said I'd bring him today. I should stick to terriers. He's six months away, training-wise. Look at him cringe. Jesus Christ! Put that dog back in the crate. He's got head trouble. Trouble in his goddamn head. Look at his eyes, Pattie Mae! Look at his eyes!”

But the girl couldn't help looking at Philo Skinner's eyes. They were the same as the whippet's: round, dilated, darting. Shit! The old fart was as scared as the poor little dog. And he smelled. Oh, gross! He
smelled!

By 8:00 a.m. they'd already started judging the basset hounds in ring number one. The handlers and the low-slung little dogs were queued up tensely as Philo Skinner blundered past in a rush for the men's room. He had suddenly felt as though he'd been given an enema. He wasn't sure he'd make it. He realized he was going the wrong way, turned, and began a lanky loping dash toward the west rest room. He barely made the toilet in time to pass a pathetic little bubble which was all he had in him.

“Get me through the day!” Philo whispered to the god of gamblers and dog handlers. I've been decent to animals all my life! It's got to count for something! Jesus, no one could care for as many helpless unloved dogs as I have and not get
one
break in life. Gimme a break! Philo prayed in that canine cathedral that Sunday morning.

He was so frazzled and numb that when he left the rest room he actually bumped right into a grooming table and was staring eye to eye with an oversized standard poodle done in a continental clip. The enormous lion-colored mane and clipped hindquarters made him resemble a baboon. Philo Skinner was disoriented and giddy and felt for an insane moment that he
was
face to face with a yawning baboon. He tried to get hold of himself when the looming poodle roared in his face, but it was too late. He barely made it back to the toilet to squeeze yet another bubble past his inflamed and screaming hemorrhoids.

By the time Philo Skinner had returned to his grooming area, Pattie Mae had things pretty much under control. She had lost the daisy from her hair and the front of her see-through cotton blouse was covered with dog hair. But she was flush and beaming from the thrill of working her first show.

“Mr. Skinner!” she said when he arrived, looking wan and bleary eyed.

“Yeah, what's wrong?”

“Nothing!” she said, dabbing a little chalk on the beard of the drooling Dandie Dinmont. “It's just that I heard some handlers talking, and did you know that terriers have won three out of the last five Beverly Hills Winter Shows?”

“So what,” Philo said, staring at the Dandie like he'd never seen him before.

“Well, jeez, it just shows how popular terriers are with the judges and everybody. I'm so glad I came to work for a kennel that mostly handles terriers and …”

“Got a lot a time, Pattie Mae,” he said. “Dandies don't show for a while.”

“Which ring?”

“Number eight.”

It was amazing, he thought, how even now he could rattle off the data of his trade. He could hardly remember his telephone number at the moment, but he knew which ring each terrier breed would appear in and at what time. He was a dog man, for sure. He wondered absently if he'd miss this work just a little bit. He saw the whippet cowering in the corner of the exercise pen. He felt the obsessive need to talk.

“Got to match that dog, Pattie Mae. Match him if I decide to show him.”

“Huh?”

“Stick a match up his ass!” he said testily.

“Oh, what for?”

“Jesus Christ, Pattie Mae, look at him! Do you want him to take a shit while I'm showing him in the goddamn ring?”

“How does a match make him …”

“Wouldn't
you
want to get rid of a match in
your
ass? Goddamnit, Pattie Mae, sometimes I think you're an idiot!”

But Philo's chastisement of his groomer was interrupted by a panting dog owner from Palo Alto, who was scurrying from one grooming table to the next, eyes more wild and demented than Philo Skinner's. She was over sixty years old, weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, had a sable fur slung around her red splotchy neck, and wore a flowered hat which was tilted over her nose as she ran. Her voice had risen to a screech when she stopped before Pattie Mae and grabbed the girl desperately by the arm. She held a bichon frisé in her arms. Philo Skinner's expert eye spotted the tiny red spot of menstrual flow under the plumy white tail of the little bitch but Pattie Mae hadn't the faintest idea what was wrong when the puffing woman cried: “Honey, I need help desperately! Do you have a Tampax! Anybody! DOES ANYBODY HAVE A TAMPAX!”

Even before the astonished girl had a chance to reply, the mistress of the bichon frisé was off and running again.

“My gosh,” Pattie Mae said to Philo Skinner. “A lady her age? Does she still …”

“Never mind, Pattie Mae, never mind. Let's move on to the Kerry blue,” Philo said, shaking his head.

And so, with her plumy bottom pointed to the dome of the cathedral-arena, the bichon frisé went bobbing through the crowd in the arms of the owner she hardly knew and whom she was thinking of biting this very minute. A little animal, originally from the island of Tenerife, a darling of the courts, a breed that had led quite a happy life chasing little wooden balls and standing on front paws to the delight of royalty, only to be thrown rudely into the streets and sent rolling along the blood-drenched gutters with the heads of the courtesans. But the bichon frisé had endured. Three hundred years of grit and determination had come down to a search for a Tampax.