H, the guy who organized our house, was an older man who had gotten David a high paying job as a set decorator for As The World Turns . . . he didn't believe in writing down rules but enforced his as mercilessly as an alpha girl . . . there was hell to pay if we ran out of lemon curd for the scones he made every Sunday . . . H had invited one of his "haircut boys" to be his weekend guest (one of our cute housemates, whose hair H also cut free of charge, had explained their relationship) . . . for some reason, everyone predicted that he and David would hit it off . . . and they did . . . while i was still at the beach, they left the house to go for a walk . . . when they returned for cocktails--was it stingers or sidecars that summer?--i asked where's Smokey? . . . she started to follow us but we sent her back said David . . . what do u mean u sent her back? i demanded . . . she's around somewhere David said lackadaisically . . . his thoughts were more focussed on finding a place where he and haircut boy could have some privacy, not on finding his/our dog . . . but when Smokey didn't turn up after a thorough search of the house and the surrounding area, even David realized the situation was serious . . . we filed a missing dog report with the Pines Animal Welfare Society . . . haircut boy couldn't have been more solicitous (or ineffectual) but the tension between David and i was so intense that he fled to tea along with the rest of the house . . . within an hour the phone rang . . . a dog fitting Smokey's description had been reported . . . we really thought she must have wandered over from the Grove because nobody would be caught wearing pearls after 6 in the Pines joked the woman, a former Miss America contestant, who gave us a nearby address where we could pick up Smokey and a line that helped everybody forget the late afternoon's unpleasantness . . . Smokey and i even drove David's future lover home the next evening . . . funny, how we share the same name.