Read Online Stud Rites by Susan Conant - Free Book Online Page B

floor.” With that, he made what was evidently a repeat attempt to force the coin into a narrow ventilation slot. The quarter, of course, dropped to the carpet.
    Bending to retrieve the coin, I failed to think of a tactful way to break the news that ice was free. As I straightened, the man gestured to the soft-drink machine. ”And that one,” he reported, ”doesn’t work a damned bit better.” To demonstrate, he snatched the quarter from my hand, inserted it in the correct slot, and pressed the big button for Coca-Cola. I wondered how many years it had been since a Coke cost twenty-five cents. He probably expected a green bottle.
    Dog people, I might point out, are unusually experienced in providing for the needs of elders, both human and canine. Many people stay active in dogs into their eighties and beyond. Even if they feel like vegetating, they can’t, because their dogs won’t let them, and neither will we. At advanced ages, dogless people suffer from luxury: There’s nothing they have to do; no one relies on them; and the future consists of one final certainty. At a minimum, however, a dog has to be walked, and if there’s one thing that a dog does even more reliably than go out, come back in, eat, sleep, and love, it’s need, need, need. As to the future, when your almost-champion needs only one major win to finish, now is not the time to quit. That now coincides with your ninetieth birthday is incidental. And when our senior human citizens are no longer able to participate in the sport, instead of leaving them in peace, we insist on driving them to shows and training classes, and dragging them out to club dinners. Elder abuse! And the entire dog fancy is guilty.
    In a tone too loud and bright, I said, ”I’m afraid you have to add a few more quarters.” After a fit of liquid coughing, the stranger fished through his pockets, produced another coin, and inserted that one, too. I stepped neatly in front of him, opened my change purse, poured quarters into the slot, and pressed the button. With a grinding, metallic shriek, the machine delivered itself of a pop-top can. ”There you go!” I announced. ”Do you have an ice bucket?”
    Like the horny toad, he blinked.
    ”That’s okay. I have one,” I said, as if I always toted a spare. Zipping around, I shoved our ice bucket into the compartment of the machine and pushed the button. When I turned around, the man was examining the side of the soft-drink machine.
    ”You wouldn’t happen to know”—he paused to produce another deep, wet cough—”whether there’s an opener here somewhere?”
    ”You pull on the top. It’s a, uh, new thing. I’ll show you.”
    As I opened the can of Coke, the man ground the remains of his cigarette on the ice machine and dropped the butt in a plastic-lined trash barrel. Then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and the kind of gold flip-top lighter I hadn’t seen for years. He offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He lit up. I looked around in search of a smoke detector and located one on the ceiling near what looked like the nozzle of a sprinkler system. By now, I thought, the alarm should have been sounding, and the man and I should have been sharing a cold shower. What I could smell was, of course, just smoke and more smoke, but I could almost see the discarded cigarette butt begin to smolder in the trash barrel. Deciding that the alarm and sprinkler system might actually be defective, I told the man that he was all set now. And I bolted.
    Unless I doused that barrel, I’d lie awake worrying. The plan was to return with a bottle of water I’d brought from home in case the change from Cambridge to Danville water bothered the dogs. I could sacrifice the water; neither dog had a sensitive gut. At the door to my room, however, I discovered that I’d left the key inside. It wasn’t one of those plastic slabs, but a metal key attached to a big tab. I could almost see it lying next to my shoulder bag. As I was