"No ma'am," he said. "I think there's something wrong with there being a best dog in this building. But that ain't her fault."
So that was Friday. The Mercedes in the drive, and the forty-five dollars cashed, and the five thousand sitting in the bank, and the contract on the front counter with a pen beside it, waiting. Toomer met them at the door. Adelaide Prioleau was wearing a navy cardigan over a white blouse and she had brought a leash, a new one, red leather, still with the store tag on it, and a collar to match. She held them in both hands in front of her like a girl holding a corsage box.
"I hope he likes red," she said. "I didn't know what he'd like. Pinckney said it doesn't matter to a dog, but I thought it might."
"He'll like whatever you put on him," Toomer said. "He's that kind."
"Yes," said Adelaide Prioleau. "I know."
Her husband signed the contract. Then she signed it, under him, in a small upright hand, and Toomer signed it as witness and stamped it with the shelter's stamp, and tore off the pink carbon and gave it to them, and kept the white and the yellow. She had done it ten thousand times. She did it this time slowly, because she found she wanted to.
"Bring him up, Cassius," she said.
He brought Sunny up the hall on a slip lead. The dog walked at his knee the way he always walked, loose and easy, his big tail going in a slow wag, and when he came through the door into the lobby and saw Adelaide Prioleau he did not jump and he did not bark. He went to her and leaned on her legs, the whole weight of him, and she put her hand flat on top of his head, and closed her eyes.
Toomer looked away. She looked at the cage cards pinned to the corkboard behind the counter and at the box fan in the window pushing hot air around and at the clock over the door, which said four-oh-nine, and that is how she happened to be looking at the door when it opened and the Gadsden girl came in.