Today Tomas has to deliver a dog to a celebrity in Brentwood Park. I have not been to a celebrity’s house before, and this morning I woke early and waited for him to get up so I could help. He walks into the kitchen and fixes a bowl of cereal without saying a word. Though yesterday he told me I could come, he does not normally take me on these trips, and I wonder if I should ask him again to make sure. But he looks too touchy to be bothered. Finally he finishes eating. There is still sleep in his face as we go out back and as he swings the wire door off the cage. I reach in and retrieve Johan, the best of the pups, who pants with an energy that comes from being young, though he is large already and fully trained. Tomas goes in and grabs Buster—Johan’s mother—and drags her onto the grass. She stays close by him, making anxious circles.

Cut it out, Buster, he says, looking down on her. What you so worked up about?

She must sense we’re gonna sell her son.

No shit.

No shit, I say. If it’s so no shit then why’d you ask her why she’s so excited.

I’m just making talk with her, Junior.

He turns away to rub her under her chin reassuringly, pressing his cheek down against the back of her neck. She whimpers and rubs her side against him like a cat, then sits down on her haunches again.

Are you gonna sell Buster, too? I say.

What do you think?

No.

Without a word for me, he rubs her fur to shake off bits of dirt and dried-up leaves. Then why’d you bring her out? I say.

He pats Buster’s side seriously and lets his hand rest there. It’s the last time she’ll get to see her son. I want her to see him to the last.

We take the dogs through the house—Johan for the last time—and it seems to me a shame that our mother is not home to see him off. They seem to sense something is wrong, and they quicken their pant. Johan breaks free and scrapes across the kitchen linoleum towards the far end where, when he was a pup and allowed to live inside, we used to put out his dog dish. He sniffs in the corner, confused, and even shoves his nose up against the wall at the memory of where he used to push the dish against it.

Tomas hollers. Johan looks up, ears perked, and comes dutifully back.

In the meantime, Buster has wandered into and out of our mother’s room, where she still sleeps, as if today might be the last time she would smell it.