Emily had warned me that the association could be particular about appearances. She liked orderly places and had no problem with rules designed to keep hallways clear, prevent fires, or make sure neighbors did not leave broken furniture beside the dumpsters. Her concerns were not philosophical. She spent long days working with children whose families had enough serious problems, and she wanted to come home to a place where nobody argued over a barbecue.
"You have a military voice and a civilian voice," she told me during our first month living together. "Use the civilian one here."
"Which one is that?"
"The one that asks politely before you start drawing diagrams."
I promised I would try. Usually I succeeded. The sentence I used most often in Cedar Landing was, "Good morning. Could you show me where that's written?" It was a question I considered courteous, but as I would discover, not everyone heard it that way.
At the time, I volunteered with an organization that helped raise future service dogs. Our temporary assignment was a black Labrador puppy named Odin, six months old, with ears that had not yet settled into the right arrangement and an appetite for anything he could fit into his mouth. Emily adored him. I pretended not to notice how often she slipped a hand beneath the kitchen table to touch the top of his head.
Odin was not a fully trained service dog and we never represented him as one. He was a puppy learning ordinary skills: walking without pulling, ignoring dropped food, remaining calm around strangers, and resting quietly when his people asked him to. On Saturdays we took him to crowded parks and outdoor shopping areas, always on a leash, because those were places where he could practice attention without getting overwhelmed. Every outing required patience and a pocket full of tiny treats.
The first confrontation with Linda happened on a Saturday morning while Emily and I were loading the car to visit her parents. Odin had just finished a bathroom break near the rear parking lot. I handed Emily the leash, picked up the bag, and walked to the dumpster enclosure about thirty feet away. The dog stood beside Emily, attached to a standard six-foot lead, looking very pleased with himself.
I was halfway back when a voice cut across the lot. "You with the dog!"
I turned. A woman in a navy cardigan and expensive running shoes had stopped at the end of the sidewalk and was pointing at Odin as though he had just knocked over a child. I did not recognize her, and at first I assumed she wanted to ask whether she could pet him.
"That animal needs to be on a leash," she said.
I looked at Odin, then at the dark lead connecting his collar to Emily's hand. "He is," I said.