Sam was a train and a bellows huffing in the dark. Lust caught in his throat and he hummed and throbbed while Merilee, the cat now with the lutebright eyes, meowed and meowed.

With book in hand, under her careful tutelage he had learned GANGOLA METHOD OF HINDOO CONTINENCE and could, especially very late on nights of Turkish excursion in the bathtub, stay awake and hard as grain inside Merilee for an hour or more. Sam claimed to be much taken with the Method, but Merilee sensed her Sam was a drummer and banger and welder and breaker and she admitted to herself Gangola Method was not ever going to become the Sole Trick in her Sam's Bag. That was OK too. Love makes us love in our lovers what we don't love in anybody else or even in ourselves.

"You make me sixteen," she said mysteriously-maybe happily, maybe resentfully. It was not yet decided how Merilec would finally feel about Sam's dragging her back toward her former self.

She got up and tied a swatch of lace around her belly, a big bow in back, and went to play in her sandbox.

11. More about dogs as people

The keeds came home exhausted and sandy and wet and hungry. Plangent Merilee to have a house full of food after all the months of mendicancy and feeding Girl scraps gleaned from the bins behind supermarkets.

Though she had been willing to go anywhere and do anything Merilee asked of her, converting to Vegetarianism had been an uphill struggle for Girl. To learn to love withered zukini fried in soybean oil, Girl had to fight against the whole history and heritage of the German Shepherd race. But like her mistress, Girl was not long of memory and as soon as Merilee turned her back Girl would turn up her wet nose at the detestable goop. Then Merilee would have to go next door and borrow pig fat to pour over Girl's veggies. Alfred of course was a lifelong and committed cannibal.

Tonight she fed them many cans of dog food, all mixed with garlic to grow their for lush. Alfred would not eat from his own bowl no matter how hungry he was and Girl stood aside while the little mongrel ate from hers. He was citybred like his dad and Sam, who had been born poor in South Philadelphia or someplace with no background of his own, had given his dog the classiest of names: ALFRED WARBURG FRICK BOLLO III, a heavy weight for such a little rattle-rear to carry around.

But Merilee loved Alfred and prayed daily to Saint Francis for Alfred to find peace on earth-before his bad habits and antsy ways were picked up by dear docile Girl. Love makes us love in our lovers' dogs what we cannot love in other's and would not like to see become habits in our own.

12. Caught in the act

Sometime in the dark of that night a huge meal was partially consumed. Steak was there and eaten, and yogurt with kumquats and plum wine from Japan was drunk and coconuts were cracked with hammers and given to dogs. But the piece of resistance of the engagement feast was a vast baked pumpkin, so large it had barely squeezed in and out of Merilee's oven, and filled with breadcrumbs and a surprise, with comfrey and tomatoes, with currants and dill and with a delicious white powder from the cabinet which not even Merilee could identify; and when the love of her twenty-three summers, Sam Sam the sculptor man and manager of motor hotels and graduate of the world's second most prestigious business school, when Sam Bollo, sitting at the head of the table nude but for a medallion on his furry breast and a feather in his black hair, when Sam Bollo had lifted the lid from the pumpkin and steam had escaped, he ladled up first off, with the other pungent insides already named, a whole soggy box of Crackerjacks.

"And what might this be?" he asked.

And his helpmeet-to-be told him of a little epiphany she had at the Alpha B: all those Crackerjacks boxes sitting there in their rows. Unwanted for themselves. Desirable only for the prize inside. And what if one box could just for once be the goody, the prize inside itself? hence the baked pumpkin and the whole thing, Marilee explained.

"You," said Sam, "are the most beautiful, the most tripped-out person in the world and my love for you runs deeper than-" Tears were dripping down Sam's checks and his voice had grown thick like he was trying to suppress an orgasm.

While Sam was searching for words, another Presence filtered into the dark room and stood pulsing behind Merilee in saffron robes. Exquisite hands, the bones as light as the bones of birds, descended on her head. "Grace," said the Presence, and lifted its hands from her.

"Grace, Alyosha."

Sam lowered his head and Alyosha floated to him and repeated the blessing.