426
MAUREEN HOWARD
Across the street at the Coliseum the Northeastern Gifts and
Greeting Card Show was announced on the marquee: clusters of
what Jim Cogan now saw to be disgusting people were trailing
in
through the big glass doors. Old ladies mostly in pale spring coats
and foolish hats, a few hopeless slopeshouldered men with their wives.
He was filled with a loathing as much for their bodies as for their
purposeless day. He marched through them swiftly, when suddenly
he came to a woman laughing uncontrollably, her cheeks like with–
ered dumplings, her weak eyes ringed hideously with bright jeweled
glasses. Her hand was full of dollar bills which she pressed upon her
friend in some private dispute, and turning she slapped her hand
into Jim's face and the bills fluttered away. "Cunt," he said to her
in the moment before she chased her money across the broad side–
walk and into the gutter.
It
was a triumph that died by the time
he got to the next corner: he would soon be at work and there lay
his betrayal. At the
Chateau de Chien
he clipped, combed, per–
fumed and polished the nails of quivering pedigreed poodles. He
had been quick to learn. The money was good. His boss, Mimi
Devereux, large bones, deep voice,
wrists
and hips of a
tennis
champ,
had wanted a boy. Jimmy Cogan was a sweetheart, tall, slim, po–
lite - crewneck sweater and sport coat. Ah, where had they gone,
these college-type boys. Mimi, thirty-five and unmarriageable, fell
in love with him at once. Her customers were ecstatic.
If
they had
a son - instead of a poodle, presumably - he would
be
like
this.
The dogs were handed to him with confidence. Jim Cogan was
gentle, calm - such a boy. He remembered Belinda, Arnie, Serge
and Watteau - and hated them all. Hated
his
job, and above
all
hated his part in the sham love of these idle, neurotic women for
their pets. Their admiration showered on him like slime, a
per–
version of the elements.
He did it for money, for money, he said, because there was no
money to educate him and he would have to do that himself. Be–
cause he had listened to the pleadings of his mother for the last
time: in some way the
Chateau de Chien
touched upon a world
she had seen once - an Irish secretary's view of the parlor. The
job was
nice,
the big world and one step up from being a camp
counselor. It was wacky. It was experience. Couldn't he look at it
that way,
his
mother asked. For three weeks he had - grist for the
mill-
a fund of funny stories. And when he handed a dog back,
