All morning our mother has been cleaning up the kitchen so she can look out the window as Tomas prepares Heinrich for the client’s arrival. I know it is hard for our mother to imagine the quiet boy he used to be. Right now Tomas is playing around with a false canvas arm. The dog leaps on it viciously, shaking it like a white shark thrashing a tenderloin on a harpoon, and on each impact she flinches. The client finally arrives around noon. He is a screenwriter or a producer or something. Mom studies this man who wears ratty black jeans meant to make him look casual, polished wing-tip shoes, and a maroon silk shirt. He nervously eyes the dog that will soon go home with him.

Who’s this man, Gabe? she says to me without turning from the window. Her finger touches the glass.

I don’t know. Some producer or something.

Hmmm, she says suspiciously. Does he own a nice mansion?

I wouldn’t know.

She wipes the countertop she has already cleaned three times, her finger still bearing her wedding ring even though my father left us a few years ago and Tomas and the relatives think she should not wear it. She touches her earlobe and sighs. Well, I don’t see why such a man needs a dog to guard his house. He’s not such a big celebrity. Who does he think he is?

Maybe he’s married to one.

Of course not. You tell your brother to come in before your aunt arrives and sees this dog attacking him.

The first time the client arrived he asked why my brother named the dog Heinrich. Tomas always gives the dogs German names and trains them with foreign words. He tells the celebrities and rich people he sells them to that they have pedigrees that go back to Germany, and that they descend from dogs the Nazis used. He likes to tell them Nazi scientists did experiments in dog breeding just as they did in genetics and rocketry. He tells them this is a Teutonic art that goes back to the Prussian war states. All this is a lie, of course. But the clients seem to like the explanation, even this movie producer who has a Jewish name. He paid six thousand dollars for the one dog and it was not even the best in the litter.