by Maggie Estep
“Okay,” Ruby said tentatively.
“Would you consider coming with me to Tobias’s apartment to look through his things? I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.”
Ruby frowned, confused.
Jody clarified: “We’ve been separated for a while. He has a studio apartment in the East Fifties.”
“Oh,” Ruby said. It was getting really weird. But of course Ruby liked that. “I guess so,” she said.
Jody was still staring right through Ruby and didn’t seem to have heard her.
“So do you want to go now?” Ruby asked.
“Oh,” Jody snapped out of it, “yes.”
“How long will it take?”
“Take? I don’t know.”
“An hour? Two?”
“I don’t know.” Jody seemed frustrated. “I guess this is a bad idea.”
“No,” Ruby protested, “I was just wondering how long it would take. I have to go tend to my horse.”
“Oh, the horse, right,” Jody said. “Yes. Well, two hours tops.”
Ruby had never heard Jody say anything as colloquial as tops.
“All right, that’s fine,” Ruby said.
Jody was staring off into the distance. At what, Ruby didn’t know.
“Should we go then?” Ruby prodded her.
“Oh,” Jody’s eyes focused, “yes, let’s.”
She turned and started walking very quickly toward the parking lot. Ruby, who was a few inches shorter, had to trot to keep up with her.
Jody’s car was an exquisite cream-colored Mercedes sedan from the 1980s. Ruby got in the passenger side, settling into the red leather seat. Jody slammed her door shut and kicked off her shoes.
“I like to feel the pedals,” she said.
This struck Ruby as an overly intimate revelation—that Jody’s liking to feel the car’s acceleration shooting up through her feet somehow meant she was sexually voracious, which wasn’t something Ruby really wanted to think about. Speculating about other people’s sex lives was sometimes entertaining, but when that person was your psychiatrist, the whole thing took on unpleasant overtones.
“Oh” was all Ruby said.
Jody focused on driving, and Ruby was left to her own thoughts. She felt particularly alive at the prospect of helping her psychiatrist look through her husband’s things. She had actively decided to do something unusual and that was making her tingle. Ruby had always been slightly purposeless. She liked life, but she’d let it shove her wherever it wanted and she never pushed back.
“Are you okay?” Jody asked after a ten-minute silence.
Ruby was startled.
“I’m feeling mediocre,” she heard herself say. Yet another thing popping out uncensored. She glanced over at Jody. The Psychiatrist was frowning.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know. How I do so many things but don’t excel at any of them.” The woman was her shrink, after all.
“What brought this on?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I was under the impression you excelled at many things.”
“At what?” Ruby asked, “I don’t have a stressful but stimulating job the way most New Yorkers do. I don’t train racehorses or even do something noble like teach yoga to mental defectives the way my best friend does.”
“You’re not supposed to say ‘mental defectives.’”
“Half the crazy people I know would refer to themselves that way.”
“What about the other half?”
“I wouldn’t use the phrase in front of them.”
Jody arched an eyebrow.
“My husband is a mental defective.”
“What?”
“He was my patient. Initially a suicide attempt.”
“The husband whose leg was …?”
“Only one I’ve got.”
Ruby stared at The Psychiatrist.
“You’re going to need years of therapy just to get over having been a patient of mine,” Jody said then. She let out a small laugh. Ruby didn’t laugh back.
“Does your husband’s condition have anything to do with his having been kidnapped?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“You have to call the authorities, Jody.”
“Don’t start with that again. I have a plan.”
“This is crazy.”
“I’ll grant you that. And I’d like to reiterate that you don’t have to do this, Ruby. I never intended to involve you in anyway.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re a kind and lovely woman.”
“That and two bucks will get me on the subway. But thank you. I appreciate the sentiment.”
“Don’t be flip.”
“I’m not.”
They fell silent.
The traffic wasn’t too bad, and Jody had to circle Tobias’s block only three times to find a parking spot.
Tobias’s street was a pleasant, mostly residential block. There were nice brownstones. A dry cleaner. People walking designer dogs.
The building was a three-story brownstone that had been sectioned off into small apartments. The husband’s apartment was on the second floor in the back. As Jody fumbled with the keys, Ruby stared at her psychiatrist’s chewed-down fingernails. She understood their provenance now: psychiatrist parents and a mental defective husband.
After getting the door open, Jody hesitated. Ruby stood behind her, waiting. She was on the verge of saying something when Jody walked forward.
The apartment was a large, L-shaped studio with two floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a dense green garden. A massive sleigh bed was pushed against one wall, a desk and computer against another. A TV roosted on a stand near the bed. There was no sofa.
Jody walked over to the desk, sat down, and touched the computer keyboard. The screen woke up, and Ruby saw that the desktop pattern was a win photo of a racehorse.
Ruby came closer and stood looking over The Psychiatrist’s shoulder as Jody opened the husband’s e-mail program. Ruby and Ed shared a computer, but Ruby didn’t think she’d ever be able to breach his privacy and read his e-mail. Even if Ed’s leg had been cut off.
Jody suddenly got up and walked away from the computer. “I can’t go through his mail like this. Would you do it?” Her face was pinched.
“What should I look for?”
“I don’t know,” Jody shrugged, “anything suspicious.”
Ruby had no idea what might be construed as suspicious, but she sat down anyway and started reading through the man’s saved mail. There was some correspondence between Tobias and a woman named Bess who he seemed to play Scrabble with frequently. There were several notes from Violet detailing billing for the three horses she trained for Tobias. Nothing of consequence.
Ruby started looking through the outgoing mail and found something more interesting. Right there for anyone to see. Or at least anyone who happened to go through his e-mail. Ruby felt her stomach tighten.
6. UNFIT
The note was addressed to [email protected], but there wasn’t any salutation in the e-mail itself: “She will be in her office at that time. You can call her there. It will all go smoothly.”
It could have been a note about almost anything, but Ruby knew this was it. She glanced over at her psychiatrist, who was on her hands and knees, looking through a shoebox in the closet. It will all go smoothly. Had Tobias had himself kidnapped? And who would be idiot enough to arrange that kind of thing and then leave evidence of it on his computer? It didn’t make any sense.
“Jody?”
Jody was startled and dropped something. A pair of scissors. Why was she holding a pair of scissors? Ruby had a brief image of her psychiatrist stabbing her with the scissors. Then she thought tangentially of Edward Scissorhands and, for the thousandth time, wished he actually existed. She got like that sometimes. Insanely whimsical. A girl had to get through the day.
The Psychiatrist arched an eyebrow at Ruby.
Jody got up, smoothed her dress over her legs, and came to look over Ruby’s shoulder. She was still holding the scissors.
“Oh,” Jody said after reading the note a few times.
“Did he have himself kidnapped?” Ruby asked.
“Evidently, yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, very possibly,” Jody said in a weak voice.
“And had a leg cut off?”
“It seems rash. But Tobias can be rash. He’s been known to do very sick things.” Jody was completely cavalier, as though loss of limb and kidnapping were commonplace occurrences in her life.
“Why on earth would your husband have himself kidnapped?”
“Because he knew I’d pay. Without asking questions or involving the authorities. And then he would keep the money. He has none.”
“I thought he was well off.” Ruby remembered Violet telling her about Tobias’s small fortune.
“He lost most of it. He gambles, of course. And buys bad stocks. What little is left I control. I had him declared unfit.”
“Oh.” Ruby thought about the Fireball in her front pocket. She knew this wasn’t the time or the place for it. Which made her want it all the more. “Couldn’t he just ask you for some money?”
“He could. But wouldn’t. A fierce and bordering-on-perverse pride,” Jody said, staring out the tall window. “What I don’t understand is his failure to think this through in the slightest,” she added.
Ruby waited. She stared at the greenery outside the windows. She imagined jumping out the window, stripping off all her clothing, running naked through the garden. She thought of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and how she had run naked there on a dare as a teenager. It had felt delicious and raw. Why she was having a sudden urge to run through a garden naked right now, she didn’t know.
“The only valuable thing Tobias has left is the colt. Fearless Jones.” Jody continued, “And he knows I’ll have to sell the horse to get the money.” Jody walked over to the bed and sat down very slowly, as though she suddenly weighed hundreds of pounds. She smoothed her dress across her lap. Ruby wondered if the dress-smoothing was a nervous tic. The way Lance Armstrong pulled at the seams of his bike shorts during particularly taxing moments in a race.
“But this is all just a prank,” Ruby said. “You’re not actually going to sell the horse, are you? You’ll find Tobias and talk him down.”
“Two can play this game,” said Jody. “And anyway, we still don’t know,” she added. “This may not be what it seems.” She motioned at the computer screen. “There is a chance he has genuinely been kidnapped.”
Sun was pouring in through the tall windows, shining right into Ruby’s eyes. She got up from the chair, realized there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, then unceremoniously lay down on the floor and closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for it all to go away,” Ruby said.
“Which brings me to my point.”
“What point?” Ruby asked, eyes still closed.
“I’ve fucked up again.”
“How so?”
“I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“Don’t tell me, I should go now?” Ruby asked, keeping her eyes glued shut.
“Right.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Very.”
Ruby had finally had enough. She got up off the floor, walked to the door, and didn’t look back. Ruby half expected Jody to call out after her, but she didn’t.
Ruby was fuming. She hated being jerked around. In the past, if a boyfriend had exhibited the slightest trace of jerking behavior, she’d left without a second thought. Women friends were supposed to be above that kind of thing, and one’s psychiatrist really didn’t have any business pulling that kind of stunt. But, as Ruby was discovering, her psychiatrist was no ordinary psychiatrist. Nor an ordinary woman. No. Jody Ray didn’t have an ordinary bone in her body. Which didn’t make Ruby any less furious about the jerking.
Ruby had a moment of disorientation when she reached the street. The day was too bright, the kind to make people feel guilty for even a slightly dark thought. And Ruby was having thousands of dark thoughts.
Heading for the subway, Ruby passed Jody’s cream-colored Mercedes. She had an urge to kick it.
Ruby caught the 6 train to the L, riding it nearly the entire length of Brooklyn before switching at Broadway Junction for the A train. On the A there was a gaggle of kids, not more than thirteen years old but loud and completely foul-mouthed. Motherfucker this, suck my dick that, I’m gonna fuck you up the ass, etc. Ruby and the few other passengers on the car stared down at their laps. Ruby had been a wild kid. She’d run with a pack who vandalized phone booths and jumped the train-yard fences to graffiti the trains. She’d even had her own tag: Fatal Pop. She’d been wild, irreverent, but never rude to individuals. Even at the height of teen angst she’d hated rudeness.
At Grant Avenue, Ruby emerged from the subway, crossed North Conduit, and walked over to Linden Boulevard. The day was even brighter here where the buildings were low and the trees never grew enough to afford much shade. Ruby passed the incongruous flower shop that occupied space near a muffler shop and a gas station. The flower shop owner, a fiftyish white woman with a very tan hide, nodded at Ruby. For no reason other than Ruby was another white person. Tribal allegiances, Ruby reflected, were a weird thing.
Ruby walked, dizzy from the loud traffic, looking forward to the solace of The Hole, where all the city’s noise came to die.
Coleman was standing in front of the barn with his bay gelding Captain, surrounded by half a dozen kids. Ruby had completely forgotten it was a kid day. The men and women who kept horses at The Hole volunteered teaching horsemanship to neighborhood kids. Lately, Coleman had started asking Ruby to help him out, and the whole thing made her nervous. Unlike some of her girlfriends, Ruby didn’t have any pressing need to have kids. She figured one day a stray kid would find his or her way into her life and that would be fine. But she wasn’t the type who went out of her way to spend time with kids. These kids were all right though. Degenerate little savages whose lives had already been filled with so much hell that nothing scared them. They were mischievous, mouthy and fearless. Ruby liked that.
“Hi,” Ruby greeted Coleman.
“Finally,” Coleman said. “You were supposed to be here at noon.”
“I was?” Ruby squinted.
Coleman squinted back. “What, you forgot? What the hell is wrong with you?”
The kids started giggling. There were six of them. Five boys and one girl. Ruby recognized one of them, Joey, a gangly dark-skinned kid who lived ten blocks away.
“I got a lot on my mind, Coleman,” Ruby said.
The cowboy shrugged and handed her Captain’s reins.
“Get this girl up on the horse and lead her around some.” Coleman indicated a girl of about ten. She had close-set black eyes and cheekbones that could have sliced a salami. She was giving Ruby the evil eye.
“I’m Ruby,” Ruby said.
“Alicia,” the girl said.
“You been on a horse before?”
“Yeah,” Alicia said, sticking her bottom lip out.
“So, you wanna get on or what?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah,” Alicia said, jutting her bottom lip out further.
The little girl walked to the left side of the horse then stared up at the stirrup forlornly.
Ruby hoisted her into the saddle. Captain shook his head once, a homage to some distant past when he actually had the energy to make a fuss over a rider getting on his back.
As Ruby led the gelding forward, she could feel Alicia’s eyes boring holes in the back of her head. They walked in silence, just the soft sound of Captain’s hooves against dirt. Ruby didn’t really know what to say to the girl. She hated the way most people talked down to kids, as if they were morons. Alicia had probably seen more inexplica
bly painful stuff in her ten years than Ruby had in thirty-four.
“You got that big black horse?” the girl suddenly asked Ruby’s back.
“What?” Ruby turned to look at Alicia.
“That big black horse in the barn. That’s yours?”
“Yup,” Ruby said. “That’s Jack Valentine.”
“How come you got a horse?”
“Someone gave him to me. He used to be a racehorse, but he hurt himself and can’t race anymore.”
“How come he hurt himself?”
“Running fast,” Ruby said.
“Oh. You don’t want him to run fast when you ride him?”
“Not that fast,” Ruby smiled.
“I wanna ride your horse,” Alicia said then. “This one’s too slow.”
“Captain’s just taking care of you. He knows what’s what.”
“He can go fast?” Alicia was frowning at Ruby.
“Sure can,” Ruby said, “but you’re not ready for that yet.”
“Yes I am!” Alicia protested.
“Oh yeah?
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Ruby said.
She led Captain over to the paddock behind Coleman’s barn.
Alicia’s face clouded. “I can’t go fast in here!”
“Trust me,” Ruby said. Ruby let go of Captain, and the gelding dutifully walked ahead. Alicia looked happier.
“How do I get him to go?” she asked.
“Sit up straight and just think about trotting,” Ruby said.
“Just think about it?”
“Yup.”
“I’m thinking about it,” the girl said.
“Now very gently squeeze his sides with your legs,” Ruby said. “Gently.”
The girl’s legs didn’t even reach halfway down the horse’s sides, but Captain knew what Alicia wanted and obliged with a short choppy trot. The girl bounced all over the place and let out a little squeal. Captain took that as his cue to stop trotting.
“That’s it?” the girl said.
“He knew you were nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Okay, so do it again. Try to relax. Make your body part of his.”
This time Captain trotted around the entire periphery of the paddock before pulling himself up and looking at Ruby with that Can I go home now? expression.