I tell her I don’t, of course, tell her that I only have a healthy amount of respect for all those who have stood in there and taken one for the team like a good lead-off man should. While I’m at it, I ask her if she knew that Eddie Cochran wrote For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son: Eddie Cochran on the inside upper left-hand corner of his King James Bible.

"Who’s Eddie Cochran?" she says.

I stop my lip-walk down her stomach and raise a single eyelid; squint down between her breasts at her head resting on the pillow. Both of her eyes are wide open and staring at the ceiling.

"He sang ‘Something Else,’" I say. "‘C’mon Everybody.’ ‘40-Flight Rock.’ ‘Summertime Blues.’"

"How come I’ve never heard of him?"

"He helped invent rock and roll," I say. "Without him there wouldn’t be rock and roll as we know it."

"He sounds pretty conceited to me."

I pluck a single hair from my mouth and flick it aside on the third attempt. The hair could be either hers, Mary’s, or Barry’s, our dog’s. The room is dark except for a couple of candles and the red and green glow of the stereo, Booker T. and the MGs deep in the groove and doing their best to get and keep us in the mood, but the hair seems coarsely black more than finely brown and therefore one more reason why a 95-pound black Labrador retriever shouldn’t be allowed to sleep in the same bed as his human companions and why we’re one of those couples whose house has what guests kindly refer to on their way home as "that funny smell."

"Why are you stopping?" she says.

I wait a moment before answering, not knowing I am going to stop until she said I was. I rest my head on the mattress, between her legs. Into her thigh, "You’re not into it," I say.

"Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?" she says. Lift-ing a leg, rubbing a big toe back and forth over one of my nipples, "C’mon, baby," she says, "I was enjoying myself. C’mon, come back."

"Your eyes were open."

"So?"

"You were bored. If you weren’t, your eyes wouldn’t have been open."

"So my eyes were open. It doesn’t mean I didn’t like what you were doing."

"It means you were bored."

She lifts her head and leans back on her elbows.

"How do you know my eyes were open?" she says.

"I saw you."

"So how do I know you weren’t the one who was bored?"

• • •

But that’s not right, that’s not Mary, that’s not what Mary is like. Mary always roots for the home team. Mary really wants to believe everything the shiny magazines at the checkout counter at Loblaws have to tell her about all the models who are secretly intelligent, the actors who have integrity, the endangered species making a last-minute comeback. Mary calls the Humane Society whenever she sees an animal that’s lost its way.

Once, out taking Barry for his after-dinner walk in the park near our house, Mary spotted a dog enjoying a leisurely piss in the empty soccer field, no impatient master in sight. Recognizing him from the neighbourhood, first she attempted to gently corner and corral him so she could clip Barry’s leash onto his collar and at least keep him from running into traffic, but this only led to the dog, a small, scruffy, older mutt, scrambling away to another part of the park to continue his sniffing and pissing every time they came too close. Figuring that if he got there by himself he probably knew his way back, Plan B was to just keep him moving, right out of the park and safely across the street and all the way home.

They herded the dog across the road and down several streets and even through a couple of alleyways, Mary all the while calmly assuring him that it was all right and not to worry but to go home now, you go home now, the dog every hundred feet or so stopping his trot and risking a quick peek over his shoulder at the two mad bastards on his tail. Fifteen minutes later the dog turned into the half-opened black iron gate of a white brick house, barked once at the aluminum door, and disappeared inside.

The elderly Portuguese woman who appeared on the front step holding a wicker broom in both hands listened in silence to Mary’s tale of shepherding her dog home from the park and how she might want to be careful about keeping her gate closed all the way because no one would want to see him get run over by a car and how the OSPCA came by the park all the time now and carted away dogs whether they had a collar and tag or not.

The old woman seemed to consider all this for a moment. Finally: "Shame, shame. You crazy? You crazy lady, hey?" She jabbed a forefinger at her own head several times. "Crazy. Crazy lady, hey? Go now, you go. Shame you, shame." Just to be sure Mary knew how she really felt, she thrust the broom a couple times in Mary’s direction. "Shame, shame."

"Christ," I said, when she got back. I was lying on the couch, the sports section already a mess across my legs in six different pieces. "Did you tell her to go fuck herself?"

"Of course I didn’t," Mary said, hanging Barry’s leash on the peg behind the door. "She probably didn’t even know what I was saying. She was probably just worried about her dog."

"If she was so worried about her dog, she wouldn’t let it run all over the neigbourhood just because she’s too lazy to walk it."

Mary eased into the big reading chair opposite and undid her bun; slowly combed out a flood of chestnut hair with both hands, brown streams of it flowing through all ten fingers.

"You can’t get mad at people for not knowing any better, Hank," she said. Barry was lying at her feet licking his paws and washing his ears and face like a cat. Barry always followed Mary around, was always sitting at her feet. She leaned over and rubbed him underneath his chin. "And we’re just glad her poor dog got home all right safe and sound, aren’t we, Barry Boy?"

Barry shut his eyes and lifted his chin higher.

• • •