John Gardner: The Art of Living: And Other Stories

The three daughters edged over to the sink where Ellis was washing pots and pans and stood watching as if it were fascinating work or he was unusually good at it. They still hadn’t said a word to anyone, even to ask what was happening. They put down their wineglasses and began stacking dishes from the dryer. The way they worked — smoothly, silently — you’d’ve thought they’d been there for hours. They were nice girls, it suddenly struck me. It was funny no one ever noticed them. Maybe the same thought occurred to Angelina. She went over and joined them. She looked the way she had in my father’s garage. Small and tired. I was reminded, watching her, that I was going to have to help eat that dog.

“Hey, Arnold,” I said, “how much you figure on charging for that dog?”

He looked at Joe, then me. “Two-fifty sound fair?”

“Hey,” Lenny the Shadow said, “I just had supper.” He put his hand on his stomach. The oldest of the daughters smiled, then looked puzzled.

“Me too,” Benny the Butcher said, and grinned.

Crazy Tony said, “How much for the child’s plate, Arnold?”

Angelina turned her face a little to glance at me.

“Child’s plate! That might change the picture,” Lenny said. He wrapped his hand around his jaw, thinking.

“Dollar-fifty?” Arnold asked.

So we did it.

We ate by candlelight, out in the restaurant, old man Dellapicallo at the end of the table leaning on his elbows, no plate in front of him. Joe had gone home. When he went out the door he looked smaller than Angelina. I was sorry for him. He was the one who’d been right — sane and civilized from the beginning. But also his walk was oddly mechanical, and the way he shook his head when he looked back at us from the door, it was as if under his hair he had springs and gears.

Angelina sat by me, the others spread around us, close enough to come to the rescue just in case, in this strange world where anything could happen, the dog should wake up. There was no sign of the thousands and thousands of dead Asians, or of Rinehart either, but it felt like they were there — maybe even more there if there’s no such thing in the world as ghosts, no life after death, no one there at the candlelit table but the few of us able to throw shadows on the wall. Say that being alive was the dinner candles, and say they burned forever over this everlasting meal of Imperial Dog. Then we were the diners there now, this instant, sent as distinguished representatives of all who couldn’t make it this evening, the dead and the unborn. Everybody was feeling it, the importance of what we were doing — though it wasn’t what we were doing that was important. We could’ve been, I don’t know, planting a tree. The dog was terrific, by the way, once you talked your stomach past the idea. The wine was also terrific. Angelina, as if by accident, put her hand on mine.

“To the future of Ancient China!” Benny the Butcher said, raising his wineglass.

“To the Kings of the Road,” Arnold said, and raised his.

“Hear, hear,” the three daughters said softly, smiling and blushing as if they understood.

Tony Petrillo said thoughtfully, almost so no one could hear him, “To grasshoppers and mice.”

“To Angelina!” Angelina cried, eyes sparkling.

We were all, even Arnold, a little shocked, but in the darkness beyond where the candles reached, Rinehart nodded, and a thousand thousand Asians bowed from the waist.