Its steel door was open wide, and she saw what was inside. A man in a dark suit and a black cowboy hat and a woman in a long gray frock coat had their backs to her, their voices muffled by loud blowing air. Shrew saw what they were doing, and she wanted to get out as fast as she could, but her feet seemed stuck to the concrete floor. She stared in horror, and then the woman saw her and Shrew turned around and ran.

“Hold on!” a deep voice yelled after her. “Whoa now!”

Heavy footsteps sounded after her, and she missed a step on the stairs and whacked her shin hard. A hand grabbed her elbow, and the man in the cowboy hat was escorting her back into the bright lights of the store. Then the lady in the gray frock coat was there, too. She glared disapprovingly at her but looked too worn-out to do anything about Shrew’s transgression.

The man in the cowboy hat demanded, “What the hell do you think you’re doing sneaking around in here like that?”

His eyes were dark and bloodshot in his dissipated face, and he had big white sideburns and plenty of flashy gold jewelry.

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Shrew said. “I was looking for the manager.”

Her heart pounded like a kettledrum.

“We’re closed,” the man said.

“I came in to buy a puppy,” she said, and she started to cry.

“There’s a closed sign in the door,” he said while the woman mutely stood by.

“Your door’s unlocked. I came downstairs to tell you. Anybody could walk right in.” Shrew couldn’t stop crying.

She couldn’t stop envisioning what she’d seen in the freezer.

The man looked at the woman, as if demanding an explanation. He walked over to the front door and checked, then muttered something. It probably dawned on him that Shrew had to be telling the truth. How else would she have gotten in?

“Well, we’re closed. It’s a holiday,” he said, and she guessed him to be about sixty-five years old, maybe seventy. He had a Midwest drawl that seemed to crawl off his tongue.

She had a feeling he’d been doing the same thing she was a little earlier, drinking, and she noticed that the big gold ring he wore was shaped like a dog’s head.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I saw the lights on and came in, thinking you were open. I really am sorry. I thought I might buy a puppy, and some food and toys and things. Sort of a New Year’s present to myself.”

She picked up a can of food off a shelf.

Before she could stop herself, she said, “Wasn’t this banned in that Chinese-import melamine scare?”