Who Are You?

Who Are You?

Linda and I slowly approached the red carpet stretched out before us like a tongue the entertainment industry uses to taste-test who belongs and who does not. Betty White was just ahead. Other A- and B-level celebrities, Carson Kressley, Christie Brinkley, and a rotating cast of people I recognized but could not immediately name, surrounded us, walking in front and behind. I wore my black suit and tie. Linda looked stunning in her new, glamorous, sparkly black gown.

I leaned toward her and whispered, "What will you say if the paparazzi yells out, 'Who are you wearing?'"

Linda smiled, gently looked into my eyes, and whispered, "Kohl's."

As we waited our turn to walk the carpet, I glanced over at Linda once more and thought back to when it all began.

I remember the exact moment I knew Linda and I would one day get married, or at the very least, hold hands. It was the early 1980s, probably 1981. I was at a writer's conference in Atlanta, quietly sitting in a book discussion class. Linda was the instructor leading it. The class was fairly large, maybe 20 people, and I didn't say much, if anything at all. I was painfully shy and absolutely convinced I was the only struggling amateur in a roomful of literary giants, people who had probably already published something, had agents, and owned at least one turtleneck they wore ironically.

Then there was Linda: amazing, loving, and, let's just say it, absolutely beautiful. Her two young children, quiet and well-behaved, were content on the floor near the back of the room, coloring peacefully while the discussion unfolded around them.

I was mesmerized. Every word she spoke, every smile, every thoughtful literary insight lit me up inside. Yes, she was married at the time and already had two adopted kids, Mun and Jung. And yes, I understood boundaries. I wasn't creepy, intrusive, or weird. Just a quiet guy who had the sneaking suspicion that fate might one day have our names together somewhere in its literary planner, possibly under the heading "improbable but charming."

Not long after I was sworn in as an Atlanta cop, I learned, completely by surprise, that Linda had divorced. Once I knew she was single and available, I activated what you might generously call a romantic action plan: flowers, wooing, best behavior, and carefully planned outings. I even became a kind of big brother to the kids, fast food stops, mini-adventures, movies, the works. It was either deeply endearing or a logistical masterpiece. Possibly both.

Eventually, I asked Linda to marry me. She hesitated, a completely reasonable reaction, but finally said yes. I married her, adopted the kids, and if life has ever gotten something right, this was it. We became a family of four, plus a cat named Mugsie and, soon after, a dog named Prana, for good measure.

Much later, I told Linda about that special book discussion class, the one where I sat quietly in the back, completely smitten.

She tilted her head, squinted a little, and said, "I remember the class... but I don't remember you."

I reminded her I was the guy in the back row who barely said a word except maybe a shy "hi."

Still nothing. I added that I had attended every month.

"Nope," she said. "Don't remember you there. Or in any class. Or any conference event. Nope."

So much for love at first sight. Apparently it was one-sided. But it all worked out in the end, which is the kind of thing you can only say after the wedding and not before, when you are sitting invisible in the back row of a literary discussion, hoping fate is paying closer attention than the woman leading the class.

And then my attention moved back to our Red-Carpet Moment.

Of all the improbable chapters in our lives, this one defied any reasonable explanation. There we were, a couple from Minnesota whose most recent adventures had involved grocery lists, yard care, and a lengthy debate over whether the dog needed a bath, standing on a Hollywood red carpet, blinking into a wall of camera flashes at the Beverly Hilton, with the Hallmark Channel filming the whole thing.

Absurd is not a strong enough word. We were a gentle collision between the ordinary and the spectacular, two worlds that had no business sharing the same evening. Somewhere back in Eden Prairie, our mail was piling up and the recycling bin needed to go to the curb. Nobody here needed to know that.

As we reached the edge of the carpet, a serious-looking young woman with a very short haircut and a pink clipboard appeared and delivered her instructions with the clipped authority of someone managing a moon landing. "Walk slowly," she said. "Stop in the center, where the small yellow star is. Look at the press and the paparazzi. Smile. Pose. Then continue walking." She looked down, made a large checkmark on her clipboard, and moved on.

I noticed that nobody else on her list had been checked. Only us. I also noticed she had not given these directions to anyone else in the procession, just the two Minnesotans who looked faintly like they had taken a wrong turn on the way to a very nice church supper. Which, when I thought about it, was not entirely inaccurate.

We walked without stumbling, which I considered a personal triumph worthy of its own brief ceremony. We paused in the center of the carpet, searching unsuccessfully for the small yellow star, and turned to face the blinding and relentless sea of camera flashes. We smiled.

Then, from somewhere in the crowd, someone yelled, "Who are you?"

Still smiling, we picked up the pace and exited the spotlight. We both exhaled. Deeply.

Next came Christie Brinkley and a man I was fairly certain appeared on television regularly. The cameras exploded. The clicking tripled. Someone shouted, "Who are you wearing?"

We had, apparently, answered a slightly different question. Our five minutes of fame had clocked in closer to forty-five seconds, which, honestly, felt about right.

The Beverly Hilton ballroom that evening was everything you imagine when someone says "celebrity gala" and you have never actually attended one. The room dripped with the kind of careful, expensive glamour that makes you afraid to lean on anything. Enormous floral arrangements, birds of paradise, white orchids, and cascading greenery, anchored the tables in a way that suggested they had been placed by someone with both an artistic degree and a very strong opinion. Chandeliers hung low and warm above the crowd, scattering soft gold light across the sequined gowns and silk lapels of several hundred people who all seemed to know exactly where they were supposed to stand.

Centerpieces featured framed photos of the Hero Dog Award nominees, and small printed programs at each place setting listed the evening's festivities in elegant script. The chairs were gold. Of course they were gold. A live band warmed up near the stage, running through a sound check that briefly competed with the escalating din of cocktail-hour conversation. Roving Hallmark Channel camera crews moved through the crowd like friendly sharks, pausing at anything or anyone worth pointing a lens at.

We were seated close to the stage, close enough that we made a silent mutual agreement not to do anything that would remind the cameras we existed, which required very little effort on our part because the cameras had already forgotten.

We snapped photos, pointed out celebrities to our friends at the table, and did our absolute best to look like people who regularly attended events where the chairs were gold and the flowers cost more than our first car.

Afterward, those of us staying at the Hilton were bused to Fox Studios for the Animal Stars book launch celebration, which, in terms of settings I never expected to find myself in, ranked extremely high on the list, somewhere between "backstage at a Broadway show" and "accidentally invited to someone else's very fancy wedding." Music played. Announcements were made. Linda and I were introduced. Speeches flowed, full of warm thanks to every contributor and trainer featured in the book. The animal trainers who had welcomed us into their world, people who had shared their remarkable stories through long interviews, late-night follow-up calls, and hours of transcription, were all there, and seeing them gathered in one place made every difficult moment of the project feel completely worth it.

And then came the PR guy.

His PR stage name was T.D. Karma. Probably not his birth name. He was heavy-set and dressed in a black suit with no tie, because that is how PR people signal importance without saying a word, walked up to us smiling with the enthusiasm of someone who had just mistaken us for someone else. This was impressive, given that he had been hired by American Humane specifically to promote the book, the authors, and the party we were currently standing in the middle of. He was talking to us, but only in the way a person might address a potted plant if the real VIPs were temporarily out of reach.

Linda and I felt it immediately. We did not look at each other, because we both knew that if we did, we would start laughing, and we did not want to hurt TD's feelings. He was, after all, a perfect fit for the world of Hollywood PR, a man who had clearly found his calling, even if his calling did not presently include us.

His eyes flitted everywhere, scanning, darting, and searching the room with the restless urgency of a man who has misplaced something very important and suspects it might be standing just beyond our left shoulders. Every few seconds his gaze locked onto a new target across the room. We resisted the urge to turn and follow his line of sight, partly because we knew his eyes would have moved again before we could track them, and partly because we were fairly certain we already knew what he was looking at. It was everyone who was not us.

For a brief and charitable moment, he pretended to be interested. He nodded. He murmured, "Fabulous!" He said "Amazing work!" in a voice slightly too quiet to indicate he fully meant it, while his body slowly, almost imperceptibly, began rotating toward the nearest cluster of more recognizable people, like a compass needle finding north.

And then he was gone, absorbed back into the room like a man returning to his natural habitat.

We exhaled again. It was becoming something of a theme for the evening.

"You know," Linda said, watching him disappear into the crowd, "I think he genuinely forgot we wrote the book."

"I think," I said, "he forgot we were people."

We hoped T.D. Karma found the beautiful Los Angeles people he was looking for. We did not track where he ended up, partly out of grace, and partly because we had stopped being visible to anyone in the room who was not already at our table.

One of the true highlights of the evening was finally meeting, in person, our longtime favorite animal advocate and television host, Dr. Marty Becker. We had come to know him through emails, phone calls, and the generous endorsements he had offered for our previous books, but sharing the same room brought it all to life in a way that digital communication never quite can.

He was everything we had hoped for: warm, gracious, and deeply passionate about animals. He expressed genuine appreciation for the heart and effort we had poured into Animal Stars, and particularly for our commitment to featuring only the most compassionate and professional trainers. Our conversation felt like reconnecting with an old friend, which, in the best sense of the word, he already was.

It was the perfect exclamation point to a magical, absurd, and deeply unforgettable weekend, one where stories, stars, and the love of animals all came together under gold chandeliers in a ballroom we had absolutely no business being in.

And we were there anyway.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much how the whole love story started.