“Only a dog show,” she echoed. She’d spent her morning literally dragging Wheezy across the city, facing down a grumpy dog-show judge, and promising to reform an unreformable animal, and Mrs. Orson wanted to quit? Already?

“I thought it would be a fun project for you, that’s all. It doesn’t seem like you spend much time with people your own age. You’re always hanging around here after work when you should be off enjoying your youth.” She nodded once. “I’ll tell you what… Forget I ever mentioned wanting Wheezy to enter the dog show. You can go to a movie or something instead.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” Ruby said. “You’re not doing this to me.”

“Doing what, dear?”

“Ending things before I even have a chance to get started. You already paid the fee, and I already negotiated the terms of Wheezy’s admission. There’s no way we can back out now.”

“One can always back out of an unpleasant duty.”

That wasn’t even a little bit true. Ninety percent of Ruby’s life was an unpleasant duty. She worked and she took care of her mother and she ran errands for a pack of residents who obviously didn’t appreciate the lengths to which she went for them.

“Besides, you said yourself that the dog-show judge insulted you and Wheezy,” Mrs. Orson added. “I understand if you’d rather not face him again.”

Ruby got the impression that she was once again being played. This felt like reverse psychology or Stockholm syndrome or some weird combination of the two where she was trapped into doing Mrs. Orson’s bidding and not-bidding depending on the hour of day. Unfortunately, even equipped with that knowledge—aware that Mrs. Orson was manipulating her—Ruby couldn’t stop what came next.

“I’m not afraid of the dog-show judge,” she said.

“If you say so.”

“He has no idea what I’m capable of.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“I’ll follow his stupid rules. I’ll get his stupid deportment lessons. And then I’ll win.”

“You mean Wheezy will win,” Mrs. Orson pointed out.

“Of course that’s what I mean,” Ruby said quickly, but she wasn’t fooling either of them. She’d no more back out of this plan now than she’d rummage underneath the sink and steal Mrs. Orson’s real medication. All she had to do was conjure up an image of Spencer Wilson, his eyelashes fluttering as he tried to bar her from his precious dog show, and she felt the kind of burning passion she thought she’d buried when she left the pageant circuit. It was a more dangerous sensation than Mrs. Orson could know.