Flamethrower

by Maggie Estep

  “She is. But she wasn’t yesterday.”

  “Ah.” The guy paused. “Tobias owes me money,” he said then, as if Ruby could do anything about it.

  “Well I don’t know where he is. Please stop pointing the gun at me.”

  “This bothers you?” He looked down at his gun.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged and tucked the gun into the back of his pants. “Tobias and I had a business arrangement, but it went a little sour,” he said conversationally. “I fulfilled my end of the deal, but Tobias didn’t uphold his end. And that doesn’t make me happy.”

  Ruby wanted to tell the guy that if he expected to get paid, he shouldn’t have cut Tobias’s leg off. She wanted to ask him why he’d done it. But she didn’t.

  “So you’re going to find Tobias and shoot him?” Ruby regretted saying it the moment it was out of her mouth. The man had a gun after all.

  “Just threaten.” The guy smiled, unperturbed, showing off his crooked teeth. “Until he pays me. Providing I ever find the fucker.”

  “Oh,” Ruby said.

  “What are you going to do when you leave here, Ruby Murphy?”

  His mentioning her leaving here implied he wasn’t going to kill her.

  “I don’t know,” Ruby said honestly.

  “No use reporting me to the cops,” the guy said. “I mean, you can if you want to, but I’d be long gone by the time they got here.

  “You’re pretty unflappable, huh?” The guy added. He seemed to be admiring Ruby, was looking her up and down as if he’d decided she was a tasty morsel.

  “I flap as easy as the next girl,” Ruby said. “I’m just containing myself right now.”

  “Wise girl. Anyway, I wouldn’t shoot you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. You might as well go. I’m going to get going myself.” The guy stood up and pulled his button-down shirt over the back of his pants where he’d tucked his gun.

  Ruby hesitated.

  “Go ahead. Get your bike and go,” the kidnapper said.

  She didn’t wait to be asked twice. She rolled her bike out to the Mustang, took off the wheels, and stuffed everything into the Mustang’s small backseat area. She glanced at the house, saw the kidnapper standing in the doorway. He waved. Ruby smiled weakly, got in her car, and drove.

  She found the nearest store, double-parked the car, and ran in to buy a pack of Marlboro Red. She got back in the Mustang and smoked two cigarettes in a row before she could stop shaking.

  Then she headed for Belmont.

  RUBY PULLED IN the main stable gate and drove over to Ed’s shed row. She still felt awful. Belmont wasn’t working its magic. Even the sight of the horse laundry drying over the railing in front of Ed’s barn didn’t make her feel much better. Usually, just having a reason to think the phrase horse laundry made her happy. Not today.

  Ed was sitting in his office with his back to the door. He was shuffling papers. The army cot in the corner was unmade, and dirty clothes were strewn over it. His hair hadn’t been combed in days.

  “Ed,” Ruby called out softly.

  He flipped around as though he’d just heard a ghost. Looked at her the same way.

  “What’s wrong?” Ruby asked.

  He said nothing. She could see him taking in her bandaged forehead. But still, nothing.

  “Ed?”

  “Why?” he said, “Why’d you do it?” His face was drawn down, sinking toward the earth.

  “Do what?”

  “You know exactly what.”

  “You mean Tobias?”

  “Tobias? Who’s Tobias?”

  “Tobias,” Ruby protested, “Jody Ray’s husband, that Tobias.”

  “You’re fucking him too?”

  “What?”

  “I’m too upset to talk,” Ed said. His green eyes looked colorless.

  “Upset? Why? What happened?”

  “I can’t talk about it yet.”

  “You have to, or we’re headed for a major disaster.”

  “We’re already there.” He was looking right through her.

  “Tell me what the hell this is about.” Ruby’s chest was constricting. She’d never seen Ed like this. They’d been through some things before, but he’d never seemed this distant.

  “Ruby …” He looked down at his feet.

  “What?”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “Find out what?”

  “This,” Ed said. He reached for a manila envelope and extracted two 8-by-10 photographs. “These were mailed to me here. And they don’t make me feel great about our future.” He thrust the prints at her.

  Ruby glanced at the photographs. There was something familiar in them. Then she realized she was in the photographs. With Triple Harrison. Appearing, in fact, to be making out with Triple.

  “What the hell is that?” Ruby asked. She felt her mouth fall open. She didn’t have the strength to close it.

  “Looks like Triple Harrison to me.” Ed wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “This is some sort of really bad joke.” Ruby felt cold all over.

  “It’s not very funny,” Ed said. “Did Triple do this?”

  “Of course not,” Ruby protested. “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s always been after you.”

  “Not seriously. He’s just a flirt.”

  “If it wasn’t him, then who? And why?”

  “I have no idea,” Ruby said. “You don’t really think I was making out with Triple, do you?” Ruby was searching his face, looking for the man she trusted and who trusted her.

  “I don’t know what to think. There was that whole thing last year.”

  “What whole thing?”

  “The jockey.”

  “Attila?” Ruby was incredulous, “but he’s dead”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean it happened. You were with him.”

  “And you, as I recall, were fucking some exercise rider in Florida. We hadn’t had the monogamy talk yet. Remember?”

  “The exercise rider wasn’t serious. She was a distraction while I waited for you to come around.”

  “Come around? Where did I go? You’re the one—you moved to Florida. That put a damper on things, remember?”

  “It was my job. I was sent there.”

  “Fine, but don’t blame me for sleeping with the jockey when you were in another part of the country and we hadn’t had any kind of talk about what was between us.”

  “Okay. I guess that wasn’t entirely fair,” Ed said. He finally looked a little sheepish. “But this has rattled me.” He motioned at the pictures.

  Ruby was still holding the photos but now dropped them onto Ed’s desk as if they were burning her fingers.

  “I’d be rattled too. But you believe me, right? I didn’t do anything with Triple?”

  “No matter what I believe, I need some space,” Ed said then.

  Ruby was aghast. She couldn’t believe anyone still said things like I need space, and she really couldn’t believe Ed was saying it to her. It was grotesque, clichéd, abominable.

  And he hadn’t even asked about her head.

  “You need what?” Ruby gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’d misheard.

  “Space,” Ed said.

  “Why?”

  “Just do. I’m sorry.”

  “But aren’t you going to help me?”

  “Help you what?”

  “Find out why someone wants you to think I’m doing something with Triple?”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s probably got something to do with what’s been going on over the last few days,” Ruby said. “Aren’t you even going to ask what happened to my forehead? I had to go to the emergency room. I lost consciousness.”

  Ed narrowed his eyes to slits. “What?”

  “I got bashed in the head by Tobias. Jody’s husband.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought I was someo
ne else.” She launched into the story. Tobias’s leg in the fish tank. Jody Ray’s selling off Fearless Jones to come up with money for what proved to be a fake ransom. The trip to Rockaway. The kidnapper pointing a gun at her.

  “Oh, Ruby.” Ed sounded more sad than angry. “Why would you keep that from me?” He actually looked close to tears.

  “And I have no job. I got fired,” she added, figuring she might as well tell him everything.

  “What?”

  Ruby told him what had happened with Bob.

  “That’s bizarre,” Ed said.

  “I know.”

  “What have you done, Ruby?” Ed said it softly, standing just a few inches from her.

  “Done?”

  “It sounds like someone is really pissed off at you.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruby, shaking her head, then stopping since even the slight movement of her head made her dizzy.

  “Call me if you’re in danger. If anything else happens,” Ed said.

  Ruby squinted at him. “Call you?”

  “I need to take some time away. From you. From us.”

  Ruby felt her mouth fall open. “Because of those pictures?”

  “Those were a catalyst maybe, but no. I need to think through some things, and I can’t do that while we’re together.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Don’t get angry.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a good thing.”

  “How is your leaving me a good thing? Especially when my whole life has been turned upside down?”

  “I’m sorry” Ed said. “I am.”

  Ruby wanted to kick him. Stab him. Run him over with heavy machinery. But more than anything, Ruby wanted to die. She didn’t remember ever actively wanting to die before, but in that moment, she wanted to die. Very much.

  Ruby turned and started walking away, expecting Ed to call her back, same way she’d expected Bob to call her back. Bob hadn’t. Ed didn’t either.

  She found herself standing by her car. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell Ed she’d actually driven. He’d bought her that car. Back when it had seemed that they had a long and lovely future before them.

  Ruby got into her car, popped a Fireball, and stared blankly ahead. She thought about selling the car. Taking the money and moving to France. Starting over in some little town the Tour de France passed through. But she didn’t speak French.

  Her head started hurting. She rolled down the window, spat the Fireball out, then took a bottle of Advil from her backpack, popped two pills dry, then put the car in drive, and headed for The Hole.

  11. FALLING

  Lorna, a tiny woman who boarded her palomino at the barn next to Coleman’s, was trotting her horse in figure eights on the dirt road ahead. Ruby drove slowly so as not to spook horse or rider. She parked in front of Coleman’s stable gate and got out, nodding at Lorna. The small woman nodded back. Ruby had never said more than two words to Lorna. Not that she disliked her. There’d never been a reason for conversation. Ruby wondered about that now. About all the missed interactions and conversations in a lifetime. For all she knew, Lorna was the most engaging and brilliant woman on the face of the earth. And Ruby would go through life without finding this out all because she didn’t have the energy to talk to the woman.

  Ruby unlocked the stable gate and greeted Honey and Pokey, who were camped out there, sunning themselves. Both pits lifted their large heads, stared at Ruby, then put their heads back down. Ruby would hate to be an intruder coming face to face with those two. They were wonderful dogs to the humans they knew but would kill anyone with bad intentions.

  Ruby stopped in the tack room to get peppermints from her trunk. Feeding candy to a horse was a cheerful, optimistic thing to do. But Ruby still felt like dying.

  Locksley, the barn cat, jumped down from the shelf he’d been sleeping on. He was covered in dust and had cobwebs in his whiskers. He violently bumped his head against Ruby’s calves until she got out one of the cans of emergency tuna she kept in her trunk and fed him.

  As she walked toward Jack Valentine, the horse shook his head and made faces at Ruby. She gave him his peppermint and watched the effects take hold. His ears were in neutral and his eyes went to half-mast as he rolled the candy over his tongue. He was ecstatic. After he’d crunched the mint and swallowed it all, Ruby buried her face against his neck. The horse stood perfectly still as she relaxed enough to let tears come to her eyes. She’d needed a good cry for months. It wasn’t quite the soul-purifying wail she could have used, but it helped. Something shook loose.

  Ruby put Jack’s halter on and brought him into the aisle. She put him on the cross-ties and contemplated him for a few moments. He was big. And she was going to ride him.

  As she started putting tack on him, Jack’s ears flicked back and forth, searching out information. By the time Ruby led him out of the barn, he was on his toes, prancing toward a nonexistent starting gate.

  Jack shook his head once when Ruby tightened the girth. She lowered the left stirrup and took a deep breath. She had no idea what Jack would do when she got up on his back. Horses were funny that way. You could have an excellent relationship on the ground, but it was a different story once you climbed aboard.

  Ruby put her foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself up. Jack darted to the right a little, but Ruby had expected this. She quickly shortened the reins and took hold of him. She asked him to walk forward. They circled the paddock with Jack looking at everything intently, as though he’d never seen any of it before. Ruby was brittle with tension and it was transmitting to Jack, flowing through him, then coming back at her amplified tenfold. After a few minutes of walking, both horse and rider were stiff with anxiety. Ruby asked him to come to a halt so she could dismount. This was definitely enough for one day.

  At this exact moment, one of the neighborhood cats came out of nowhere and darted through the paddock, spooking Jack. Ruby’s feet were out of the stirrups, and she was holding the reins loosely. Jack crow-hopped to one side, and Ruby went off the other side. It was a long way down. She landed on her side, coiled in a ball. At least she hadn’t landed on her head.

  “You okay?”

  She sat up and saw Triple Harrison walking toward her.

  “I’m fine. Can you get the horse?”

  Jack was standing a few feet away, reins dangling, gazing at Ruby with what looked like concern.

  Triple took him by the bridle.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Triple asked as Ruby brushed herself off.

  “Yeah,” Ruby said. She had never been worse. And her hand hurt. There was blood on her palm where she’d scraped against a small rock.

  “Hey, you’re bleeding,” Triple said.

  “It’s fine,” Ruby said.

  She walked over to her horse, lowered the stirrup, and got back on.

  Triple went to stand just outside the paddock and wisely kept his mouth shut even though Ruby knew he probably had a whole lot to say.

  Ruby and Jack circled the paddock. She was more relaxed now, and the horse responded by lengthening his strides and dropping his head. They went around three times before Ruby dismounted.

  “What possessed you to do that?” Triple couldn’t contain himself anymore.

  “My life is a wreck,” Ruby shrugged. She turned her back to Triple and started leading Jack to the barn.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Triple was tagging along at Ruby’s side.

  “I had to do something drastic. So I rode my horse.”

  “What happened to your head?” he asked after a few beats.

  “Fell off my bike,” Ruby said.

  “Bike and horse both, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Ruby, what’s wrong?” Triple asked. They were inside the barn now. Ruby’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dimness yet so she couldn’t see Triple very well.

  “Wrong?” she asked, as she started untacking the horse.

&
nbsp; “You’re being distant,” Triple said.

  “What’s with the pictures, Triple?” She didn’t really think he’d had anything to do with said pictures, but she was taking a stab in the dark.

  “Pictures?” Triple tilted his head. “What pictures?”

  “Of you,” Ruby said. “And me,” she added, dropping her voice.

  “You and me?” Triple looked intrigued but baffled.

  “Never mind,” Ruby said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh no you don’t. What are you talking about?”

  “Incriminating pictures. Of me. With you.” Ruby refused to look at Triple. She had gotten her curry comb out and was vigorously working on Jack Valentine.

  “But we haven’t done anything incriminating,” Triple pointed out.

  “I realize that. But someone took photos that look incriminating.”

  “Why?”

  “To piss off my boyfriend, for one.”

  “They showed them to your boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, man.” Triple scratched his head. “Why?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “You got enemies?”

  “Apparently.”

  Triple shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I’d never do something like that to you.”

  “I didn’t really think you were behind this.”

  “You must have. Why ask me?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruby shrugged. “Just checking I guess.”

  Triple looked offended, and Ruby felt like an idiot. They fell silent. Triple watched Ruby groom her horse. Then, feeling sorry for Ruby, Triple helped her out with her barn chores. They worked in amiable silence, with the barn radio tuned to some off-the-wall program on WKCR that alternated New Music with obscure, stripped-down hip-hop.

  Now and then, Locksley wove between Ruby’s legs or meowed at her. In their stalls, the horses munched hay and napped.

  It was peaceful, but Ruby didn’t feel that way.

  When she drove away from the barn two hours later, Ruby knew what she had to do.

  12. GAME

  “I’ve watched you guys all my life. I know what to do,” Ruby told Glenda, the heavily tattooed, chain-smoking woman who managed the Kentucky Derby horse-racing game at Astroland.