by Maggie Estep
“How come your back’s not bothering you now?”
“It only acts up when I gotta work,” I say, laughing. “Besides, I slipped it to the wife pretty good this morning. Loosened me up some.”
Attila looks a little grossed out and I can’t blame him. I’m not sure what possessed me to say that when it’s not even true.
We drive in silence the rest of the way.
I park the truck and walk with the jockey over to Robert Cardinal’s barn. Attila’s riding a couple for him this morning before doing some of Henry and Violet’s horses. I hang around as Attila talks to the trainer, getting his instructions. I walk next to one of the grooms as Attila and another exercise rider head over to the track. I’m just thinking about how, between Attila’s mood and Ruby’s not being here, this is gonna be a pretty lousy day when something weird happens.
A guy with stringy long hair suddenly starts talking to Attila. The guy’s asking the jockey about some horse named Darwin. Attila is frowning at him and doesn’t seem to know who the guy is. I walk a little closer, not liking the feel of the whole thing.
“What’s up, Attila?” I ask him as I fall in stride with him and the weird-looking guy.
“Nothing,” Attila says.
The weird-looking guy scowls at me then suddenly skulks off in the other direction.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask.
“I don’t know who the hell that guy was. You know who that is, Larry?” Attila asks the groom.
“Works for that crazy broad Carla Friedman. You know, the one works her horses in a western saddle.”
“So what’s he want with me? Who’s that horse he’s asking about?”
“Three-year-old Robert got in last month. Robert told you about him. I think he wants you riding him. We got him running maiden special weight in a coupla days. That guy’s like obsessed with the horse. I guess he’s a little soft in the head.”
Attila is frowning, looking confused. I have a funny feeling in my stomach but am not sure what to do about it. We reach the track and Attila gets on his first horse. I take out Karen’s binoculars and focus them on my charge. Nothing happens though. He works the colt then gets on another one. The sun starts to come up, burning away the fog lingering at the edges of the track. Horses gallop and flow, the sound of it like pretty thunder. Once in a while, I think about my wife and the way she shoved me away. When this gets me feeling too fucked up, I think about Layla and my mood improves.
By nine, Attila’s talking to Henry Meyer, getting instructions about a filly Henry’s going to put Attila on for the first time. Just as I’m thinking it’s gonna be pretty fucking dull keeping my binoculars on the jockey for another half hour or so, something very nice happens.
Layla comes over to huddle with Attila and Henry.
I actually find myself looking up at the sky to thank God or the gods or whatever the hell is up there.
She looks adorable in her bright orange safety vest just like Attila’s. She has her blond hair tucked up in her crash helmet. Actually, she could pass for a boy the way she’s dressed. A cute boy, but a boy. I find myself getting excited just looking at her. I’d like to pick her up and carry her over to the nearest bale of hay and peel off every single layer of her protective clothing. Henry Meyer’s got other plans for her though. He decides at the last minute he wants her riding the filly he was going to try Attila on. This worries me since I’ve been hearing about what a head case the filly is. But it’s not like I’ve got any say in the matter. Attila stays at the rail with Henry as Layla gets up on the filly’s back and steers her onto the track. Since Attila’s right here where I can see him, I allow myself the pleasure of focusing my binoculars on Layla as she trots her mount along the rail. I savor an extreme close-up of the girl’s face, watching her mouth become a pink button as she concentrates.
A few moments later, Layla’s got the filly going full steam, working alone close to the rail. As they breeze along the backstretch of the track, my eyes play tricks on me. I see the filly suddenly crumble and go down sideways.
“What the fuck!” I hear Henry say nearby and I realize my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. The filly is down.
Chaos breaks out as riders pull their horses up and both the equine and human ambulances speed over to the site of the accident. I follow Henry as he goes running onto the track.
It’s not a sight anyone should have to see. The filly is on her side, the whites of her eyes are showing and she’s panting horribly. Layla’s entire body is pinned under the horse.
Someone standing near me throws up. I feel my knees get weak and I slowly sit down in the dirt.
I suppose I’ve gone into some sort of blackout and lost track of time because suddenly Attila is sitting next to me, saying something.
“Huh?” I say to him.
“Never mind,” he says somberly.
I look over to where the disaster was but now the filly has been moved into the horse ambulance and there’s no sign of Layla.
“Where’s Layla?” I ask Attila.
“She’s gone, Sal. Her skull was crushed. You saw.”
“I did?”
“That’s what happened to me first time I saw a rider down like that. I can’t remember it to this day. But Layla’s dead, Sal. The filly might make it though.”
“What?”
“Someone shot the filly. Missed her heart though. She’s alive. But she crushed Layla and killed her.”
“Oh my God.”
“We gotta get up, Sal. Gotta get off the track.”
Attila is standing now and he reaches down and takes my hand. He pulls me to my feet and puts a hand on my back, forcing me to walk forward.
THE NEXT HOUR goes by in a blur of cops and officials. I make my statement to the cops, telling them that no, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. They ask me what I’m doing here at the track and I tell them I’m thinking of buying a horse. One cop scoffs, the other looks interested. They finish with me and I start walking. Not even sure where I’m going. Eventually, I find myself back at Henry’s barn. I don’t know where Henry is, but I find Attila there. He looks terrible. I probably do, too.
“We have to talk,” he tells me.
“Talk,” I say.
Attila looks around nervously. “Let’s take a little walk,” he says.
We walk away from Henry’s barn, veering down a muddy path near a manure pile. Attila starts talking, telling me he’s sure it was him the shooter was after. Of course I knew this on a subconscious level but didn’t want to think it. The guy is responsible for that lovely young woman’s death.
“We were wearing the same thing, Sal,” he tells me, “she was on the filly I was supposed to ride. It was me they were after.” He’s not looking me in the eyes. Probably knows what he’ll see there.
“You tell the cops this?” I ask the jockey.
“Course not.”
“Why the fuck not, Attila? An innocent girl is dead. I’m gonna tell them,” I say, restraining an urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.
“You don’t have to, Sal. I’m quitting.”
“Quitting what? Being a target?”
“I’m not gonna ride anymore. It’s too fucked up. I’m gonna ride Jack Valentine in the fifth race today and that’s it. I’m out.”
“Good,” I say, feeling disgust for the man, “but I’m still telling the cops.”
“Just let me ride this race, Sal. Then you tell anything to anyone. But I promised Violet I was gonna win this race for her. You gotta give me that.”
I stare at the small man. I still feel contempt for him but, for some reason, I feel like I have to grant him this. I don’t know why. Truth is, I should fucking kill him.
I don’t say anything else to the guy. I just walk toward the parking lot to get my truck. I don’t know where I’m gonna go. Doesn’t matter.
I slip a CD of Bach concertos into the machine and turn the volume to its highest level. I stare ahead.
&
nbsp; RUBY MURPHY
24.
Half Naked
A terrible ripping sound wakes me. I sit up in bed and see that it’s just Lulu, annoying me by ripping a brown paper bag she’s pulled out of the trash. The minute I lay eyes on her, she stops and looks at me guiltily. I throw back the covers and put my robe on, which is exactly what Lulu was hoping for. I have a pounding headache and my mouth is dry, like I was on a drinking binge in my dreams. I walk into the kitchen and start preparing the cats’ meat. It’s not until I’m scooping vitamin powder into the bowls of food that I start to remember last night. Attila running through the parking lot half naked, just to save me a few steps.
I look at my kitchen clock and see that it’s already close to nine and Attila’s day has long started. He’s probably on a horse. Probably thinking about his wife. I’m not sure when or how I started getting the idea that he’s still hung up on his wife but now that this notion has come to me, it won’t leave.
After drinking two cups of very strong coffee, I push Attila out of my mind and mull over last night’s phone conversation with Ed. I think I detected longing in his tone as he detailed the progress of his three modest racehorses and prodded me here and there about my whereabouts, probably having sensed I had something going with another man. As of last night, I really don’t know if I have something going with another man, so I didn’t volunteer anything. Ed and I talked amicably for about fifteen minutes and then hung up, vowing to stay in closer touch. I’m tempted to call him right now. To pour out the story of Attila. To tell Ed exactly how badly I miss him. Instead, I decide to shower, get dressed, and show up early for work.
As I leave the house, I light my first cigarette of the day. I blow smoke rings up to the pale sun as I walk.
I GET TO WORK and find that my boss, Bob, has gone on a cleaning spree and the little museum is a mess. Display cases have been pulled away from the walls, pictures have been taken down and my boss is on all fours, polishing the floor.
“Bob, what are you doing?” I ask.
He pauses, looks up at me from behind his pink-hued glasses, and grins ruefully.
“Place was filthy.”
True enough but that’s never bothered him before.
“I thought we were going to open early today,” I say. “What if people come up here? The place is a mess.”
“It’s okay, we’ll stay closed.”
“And you’re going to make me clean?” I ask, horrified.
“No no, wouldn’t dream of it, dear girl. Unless you want to volunteer.”
“Not particularly,” I say. Bob knows that, as a teenager, I worked as a maid at a hooker hotel in Sunset Park. There were a lot of unpleasant surprises while cleaning sheets and toilets used by prostitutes and their clientele. The experience forever soured me on heavy-duty cleaning.
“You want to go home and shack up with your jockey, huh?”
“His name is Attila and no, actually, I don’t. He’s at work. At the track. And I’m not sure how much more shacking I’ll be doing with him.”
“Oh?” My boss pauses and looks up. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug.
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“No, I’m just not really sure what’s going on. It seems like it’s ending.”
“All right. I’m here if you need an ear. But you don’t have to hang around. Go home. Play the piano. Do something useful. I’ll give you a half day’s pay since I did tell you to come in.”
“You will?” I’m astonished since our humble museum doesn’t generate a lot of cash and I’ve never known Bob to be unabashedly generous.
“Yeah. Go on,” he says.
I do as I’m told.
I walk down the creaky old stairs and out onto Surf Avenue. I look around, suddenly not sure what to do with myself. The sky is low and the streets are bleeding slush.
I know I should tend to myself. Shop for food, get some exercise, and call Mark Baxter to schedule a piano lesson, anything. One of the things I miss about being an active drunk is that life was simpler then. All I ever had to worry about was the next drink. If I ran out of food, I drank. If my laundry was dirty, I drank. If I broke a leg, a heart, a fingernail, I drank. If I felt personal turmoil and discontent over the way of the world, I drank. Now, I don’t drink. And it’s the endless and banal self-maintenance that sometimes gets me down more than anything.
I start walking to the water. I park myself on a boardwalk bench and fish a cigarette from my pocket. A man suddenly appears to my right and says hello. He’s not carrying his boom box and it takes me a few moments to realize it’s Rite of Spring Man.
“Hello,” I say, smiling at him.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks.
“Not at all,” I say, though in truth I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I’ve never exchanged more than a few words with the man and I’ve liked it that way. He’s a romantic figure to me and I don’t want to ruin that. But I don’t want to be rude either.
“Your man friend is okay?” he asks me. “No more people tryin’ to drown him?”
“No, no one else has tried to drown him,” I say. “But I’m not sure he’s okay.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A lot,” I sigh.
“Tell me about it,” he says. He sees my hesitation. “I’m not gonna go repeating your troubles to anyone. I barely ever talk to people. You know me, I got my music. Most of the time, that’s enough.”
I look him in the eye. It’s hard to tell how old he is. Maybe forty-five. He’s got an in-between black man’s complexion. Neither dark nor light. Though he’s over six feet and has some meat on him, his face is small, the features delicate and almost pretty. He has enormous eyes and a mouth that curls up at the edges. His hair is cropped short and he’s wearing a nice dark wool overcoat.
I don’t know if it’s his good taste in overcoats or the fact that it’s unlikely he’ll repeat what I say to anyone, but I find myself spilling the whole story to him.
“I knew your man friend had to be a jockey,” Rite of Spring Man says when I reach the end of the tale.
I feel deflated. I’ve told him the whole story, from meeting Attila to finding out he probably has a price tag on his head, to the debacle last night. And all he has to say is that he knew Attila was a jockey?
“My name is Lionel, by the way,” he adds.
“Ruby,” I say, still feeling a bit upset with him.
“That’s quite a story, Ruby. But I knew you were a girl with a story. Never mind this jockey business. That’s bad enough. But you’re carrying a lot of other things around too.”
“I am?”
“We all are. Some more than others. You, you’ve got sad eyes. You got joy in you too. I’m not saying you walk around moping and spreading misery all over but you got some serious sad. And I don’t think you and that jockey gonna make it fly.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way you talk about him. You admire him. But you know it ain’t long for this world.”
“I do?”
“Maybe not,” Lionel backtracks. “Listen, I know next to nothing about what makes people stick together. I’m just telling you my hunch.”
“Oh,” I say. “And what should I do? Call the cops just to try and protect him from himself? The only thing he really loves is horses. I don’t want to put his riding career in jeopardy.”
“No, I don’t guess anyone would want to do that.” Lionel shakes his head. “I don’t know what you should do, girl. That’s why I got out of the world.”
“What?”
“That’s why I live like I do. In that shitty SRO over there on Seventeenth Street,” he says, motioning in the distance. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The decisions and the maintenance and the difficulty. I never found my way in the world but I love music. I work a little here and there, but mostly, I just listen to music.”
“Where’s your boom box?” I ask since it’s the
first time I’ve seen him without it.
“Somebody stole it.”
“That’s awful.”
“Don’t go offering to buy me a new one.”
“Oh,” I say, “I don’t think I was going to.”
“That’s good. I don’t want it to be like that with you and me. Chances are, we ain’t gonna talk again much. I’ll wave at you when I see you and maybe you’ll give me that pretty smile of yours but we ain’t gonna hang out much ’cause I don’t do much hanging. I wouldn’t want that nice distant acquaintanceship ruined by your having bought me a new boom box. I can work. I’ll get a new one.”
“Okay,” I shrug.
“You’re gonna be all right, Ruby,” Lionel says as he stands up. He pulls his overcoat tighter around himself, smiles, and then walks off.
I stare after him for a moment. Eventually, the wind kicks up and throws sand in my face.
I walk down the beach all the way to Brighton where I go into a diner and order pancakes. The waitress is tall and fair. The skin is pulled tightly over her broad face and her eyes are tiny and light blue. She seems to dislike me. She violently scratches my order into her pad then turns away. There aren’t too many other customers in here right now. Two old guys in hats picking at a plate of fries. A teenaged girl eating an omelet. The surly waitress brings my pancakes and slams the check down in front of me, as if daring me to order anything else. I douse the pancakes in syrup and dig in. The comfort food isn’t particularly comforting though. I finish my meal, leave an excessive tip because the waitress was mean to me, and get up and walk. I go to the water again. The sky looks like it’s aching. I don’t know if it’s from being in proximity to where Attila was nearly drowned but I’m suddenly having a bad feeling. Sal’s out at Aqueduct with Attila but that’s not reassuring me much. I turn my phone on to try reaching Sal, but before I dial his number, I find that there’s a message. It’s Sal telling me to call him, that it’s urgent. My stomach seizes up. I dial Sal’s number but it goes straight to voice mail. I then try Attila’s cell phone with the same result. Although I have bad knees and can’t do much running, I break into a fast jog, heading for home.