She takes my two dollars. I drink the rest of my beer and set the cup on the concrete where the wind snatches it and rolls it around with all its buddies. A few early moths are cartwheeling around the spotlights.
An old man, with shrunken-in cheeks and a funny-looking chin jutting in front of his face, sits down next to me with a program and a green sheet in his hand. The green sheets are for sale in the front and predict which dogs are going to win.
"You want a tip?” he says.
"Sure,” I say.
"Marry that girl."
I laugh. “I hardly know her."
"Don't matter. She's the one for you."
"How's your luck on the dogs?” I ask him.
"Could be better, but it's been worse. I got a feeling about the eighth. It's a maiden race, so that's about all you can go on. A feeling.” He kind of chews around with his jaw while he's thinking.
The old man's got on a Goodwill kind of tweed coat, too heavy despite the wind. He smells like an old man, a hint of piss and tobacco and dry rot. I wonder if I should follow Iris to ditch him but decide he's harmless. This track's probably the codger's whole life.
"What's your feeling tell you?” I say.
"That three dog's a winner."
I flip through the program and read the eighth-race lineup. Texmex Tornado, Peekaboo, Dark Iris, Macy's Minefield, Snappy Heels, Dapper Danny, Bodhisattva, and Sleepytime Gal. I smile because number three is called Dark Iris. It's a neat coincidence.
"What would you bet for the quiniela?"
"Don't mess with ‘em,” he says. “I wheel a trifecta. Put me down for three, seven and eight. But, if you like them quinielas, you could box that instead."
"What's that?” I say. “This is about the first time I've done this."
"You put your money on any of three dogs to finish first and second, see. You box it. Three, seven, and eight. Any combination. Six bucks."
"Well, I just might do that, sir,” I tell him. “Thanks for the tip. Both of them."
Iris comes back with another couple of beers and pours the last drink into her new cup. The man must've skedaddled when he saw her coming because he's gone, and there's a young couple beside us juggling popcorn containers and spilling beer on themselves.
"Thanks, Iris."
"You're welcome, Ute,” she says.
She uses my name like Callie says “perspective,” careful to get it right. She gives me a big smile when I try to sneak an arm around her shoulders by first stretching my arm out along the metal bleacher. The lights go up. Iris drops our tickets on the program in my lap. She does it so quick, I jump a little bit. Spooked by foil paper. I'm one smooth operator.
I finally get my arm around her solid and say, “Next time I'm going to bet on the rabbit. Seems like it's the one that always wins.” The night wind is stealing what's left of the day's heat, and her arm is cool to the touch.
She laughs at my bad jokes even.
Make Me An Offer and Cornflakesandmilk come in first and second so between us we picked out the winners, but we didn't have them both on the same ticket.
"I think I'll sit a couple of races out. I got a plan,” I say. Actually, it's the old man's plan. “But I'll take your bets up if you like."
She smiles and does this pretty thing with her eyes, looking away, then looking back at me. I feel something akin to the dogs tearing loose from post position, like I got to get somewhere fast.
"Think I'll just wait a few out, too,” Iris says. “I'm bad luck for the dogs I pick."
"No way,” I tell her. “If you didn't bet on them, they'd come in last instead of third and fourth."
Iris rests her beer on my knee that's propped up, and I play with a bracelet.
"You were real nice to let Callie see your belt,” I say. “She's always been so curious. Sometimes she doesn't know when to quit."
"No, no. It was fun. I like her. She was being so sweet about it."
"You got any kids?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
"No husbands, either, I hope?"
She shakes her head fast and giggles. “I'm thirty-two, though. Mom thinks I'm over the hill. She doesn't even ask me anymore if I'm seeing anybody."
"Well, I will. Are you?"
She puts her face close to mine, nose almost touching my nose, and nods solemnly. She reminds me of Callie when Callie's putting me on about something.
"Who?” I ask, knowing it's a setup.
"You."
She's too close not to take a chance. I kiss her mouth lightly, and she kisses me back. We take a drink of beer just to have something to do.
Four minutes till post time in the eighth, I go up and stumble my way around asking the lady for a quiniela box on Dark Iris, Bodhisattva and Sleepytime Gal. I come back and Iris hands me my beer.
I show her the program. “Look, I put a bet on you. Dark Iris."
She examines the dog's previous race times. “Comes in sixth place a lot,” she says. “You'll be lucky if she doesn't fall down in the first stretch and take a nap."
"I've got a feeling,” I say. Might as well steal somebody else's lines.
We go to the fence and look down the track where the handlers are jogging toward us. People are getting louder as the night wears on. Several people yell when the rabbit swings around the loop and rattles past where the dogs are whining and scratching the gate. Number four gets an early lead and three is in the back. I holler some much needed encouragement to Dark Iris.
Several dogs collide in the first turn, and there's Dark Iris, near the front on the back stretch.
I'm jumping up and down, sloshing beer on my shoes. “Come on Iris, you can do it. Come on three. Come on."
Dark Iris hauls ass. She's running so fast I don't see her feet touch dirt. She tears by the finishing post and zooms on past. I was so intent on her that I forgot to see who came in second or third.
The numbers appear on the board. Three, eight, and five. Snappy Heels beat out Bodhisattva. The old man who gave me the tip probably lost this one. I look down at my ticket. Three, seven, and eight boxed quiniela.
"What did you bet?” Iris asks.
"I think I might have won,” I say.
She looks at my ticket and then back at the board and squeals. “You sure did. You won. Wait, there's the figures—quiniela—sixty-eight dollars. You won sixty-eight dollars."
We go up to turn my ticket in and watch a couple of races on the monitors. People brush by us to get to the windows. Iris hooks her right index finger in my back belt loop. I like the way it feels. Like I'm anchored.
Before the last races are run, we get a head start out of the parking lot. Bright yellow work horses are turned on their sides for barricades. They look like the A's on Callie's report cards out for a night on the town.
The Woodmen Tower's a lit up marker for downtown Omaha, a totem of steel and electricity. Long as you're getting closer to it, you know you're heading the right way. Iris turns on the radio and a singer is saying he understands about indecision. The beat seems to time the white dashes as they slip past Iris's gold LTD. I've always noticed that when you've got the radio on when you're on the road, the world starts acting like it's a movie for the music you're playing. People drive by you, pedestrians cross in front of you, cows graze and horses run, all moving in time to a song they can't hear.
Iris taps her fingers on the wheel.
I reach over and lightly caress the back of her hand. “I'd like to share my big winnings with you. Cheeseburger, fries, sound good to you?"
We pull up at the Thrill Grill, an all-night hangout full of college kids poking at the lava lamps on the tables. It's a ‘60s theme, I guess. There's wallpaper that looks like tie-dyed T-shirts and incense burners and psychedelic music playing. Can't smell the incense for the greasy burgers, but it all adds up to an atmosphere the twenty-something and under set feel right at home with.
One kid with a half-shaved head has a chicken wire and leather jacket with a chain ha
nging down his hip that's got to be rated heavy duty enough to swing a wrecking ball. A real pretty girl's wearing a flimsy blouse with one button buttoned right in front of her breasts. She's maybe seventeen. I know she didn't walk out of the house tonight like that. I stick it in the back of my mind what can be done to an outfit after it's passed parental inspection. As Callie gets older, I got to get smarter about those things.
I go through the cafeteria-style line while Iris scopes for a table. She finds one by the front window that's got about a hundred spider plants hanging in it. I forget the plastic pillows of ketchup and mustard. I pick up straws and napkins on my way back to the table. This date thing's got me rattled. But it sure has its good parts, too. Iris's got her hand up examining a spider plant baby, a fat little rush of leaves tiptoeing through the air on a dozen white legs. By the deadening blanch of red and yellow track lights above the table, I see these wide puckered scars, not across her wrist but down, following the blue veins. I scuff my feet and throw the condiment packets on the table like I just got back. She drops her hand. Her bracelets settle evenly as slats on a venetian blind. I don't know if she noticed that the scars showed.
I salt the fries and start eating my cheeseburger to keep from talking. I keep seeing those scars, thinking weird shit, like what they'd feel like to the tip of a tongue. I get this picture of Iris holding a butcher knife up B-movie slasher style. It makes me feel the same way I felt seeing Jenny in the morgue, only not nearly as strong, or my hamburger would have been moving in another direction. But I can't concentrate on eating and keep up a conversation at the moment. I just hope Iris thinks I'm not much of one to talk when I eat. She's quiet, too. Acts like she's checking out the nightlife around us.
I look around. The chicken wire boy and his one-button girlfriend are next to us. In one of them strange switches Generation X has pulled, he's wearing strappy sandals, she's got on combat boots. Behind Iris is a balding guy. I can't see his face, but I can tell he's the oldest guy in the place. What's more, if he wasn't, me and Iris would be in dead heat for the part. I feel my heart harden toward her. She's getting old in spite of herself. She wanted to quit. Tried to. She doesn't look so good to me all of a sudden.
I finally realize Iris is repeating my name. “What?” I say.
"Asked if you liked, if you and Callie liked, going to the movies. Is there something wrong?"
"No, why?” I lie, letting the right amount of confusion and injury mix in my tone.
"Oh, I just thought, oh it's nothing.” She puts down her half-eaten hamburger. “I'll be right back. Pit stop."
I sit there for ten or fifteen minutes watching the old man turn pages of a newspaper before my knee gets to jerking up and down. Some idiot's been pumping the jukebox with his pocket change to keep the same damn song playing over and over. I get up to stretch, wondering if Iris climbed out the bathroom window.
The old man folds his newspaper and looks around at me. The geezer from the dog track. What the hell was he doing here? We'd left early. I'd taken him for a die-hard who'd stick around till the sweep-up crew shooed him out.
"Sit down, Ute,” he said, waving a palsied hand at a chair.
Had he overheard Iris talking to me? I glance back at the curtain of beads that leads to the bathrooms, don't see Iris coming, and sit down. If she ducked out on me, maybe I won't look like such a rube if I'm sitting with the old man for a while. He rolls up the newspaper and stares down the tube he's made at the table. Whips it around on me like a gun scope. Then again, I think, if he's apeshit as a sock puppet, I'm going to look stupid after all.
"Ute,” he says. “I've been reading about you."
"What?” I say. “My girl's got a problem or something in the ladies, I got to go see—"
"And you didn't make the front page,” the old fart says, “hell, you didn't even make the front section."
His eyes are bloodshot, a nasty color of dull green, unblinking like a frog. He's shaking the paper in front of my nose. I can see dirt under his thick, yellow fingernails that looks like it's been there for years.
I get this numb feeling at the nape of my neck that spreads like a souped up version of gangrene.
"Best they could do to report on your little shattered world was page three of the Metro section,” he says and curls that bottom lip over his top.
I grab the paper he's jabbing in my face and slap it down, check the date. That rotten sensation grips my whole body, nowhere tighter than in the groin. The date across the top is the day after Jenny was killed. There'd been a photo of a state official indicted for embezzlement on the front of the paper that day. I'm looking at a picture of the same fucker now. Everything had pointed to him siphoning off close to a hundred thou of tax dollars, but he never saw a day behind bars. In the dark months after Jenny was gone that seemed to sum up what I felt about the world. The bad don't necessarily pay for what they do, the good pay and pay and some bastard robs the war chest when the money's bloody enough.
The old man's sitting there nodding his head. My mouth is open, but I can't get words to come out of it.
"It's all in your perspective,” he says and holds up thumb and forefinger of each hand and looks at me through the frame.
Just like Callie had done.
I'm shaking with fear or anger or, more like it, both. Is he some old pervert who's been following Callie around, finding out everything about her he could? Is Callie okay with Shawna or had he killed the girls early on in the evening then come to torment me before I found out? I'm halfway out of my chair when his left arm snakes out and he grips my sleeve, that bottom jaw sawing back and forth.
"Sure, it's a risk, Ute. Win, lose, or die,” he says, biting each word in a mean way, “it's a chance you take. You might be throwing your money away. Or your heart. You might get buried yourself. But sometimes you get lucky for a few years. You get to live with your woman, raise a baby, spend them long nights fucking each other until your knees can hardly get you to the john. This Iris girl, you're going to write her off without knowing a damned thing about what she's been through. You think maybe there's been women who looked in your eyes and saw hurt and death and decided they wanted nothing to do with you?"
I sit back down. So he was hanging around because of Iris. He could be her father for all I know. The whole family could be psycho. He'd just been snooping around the track to see how Iris's date was going, then he followed us here. For the sixth or seventh time, the Doors are whining about riders in the storm, and I'm about to take apart the music machine or the asswipe operating it.
I glare over my shoulder. The chicken wire guy is laughing like a hyena, chomping into his hamburger, and yelling at a guy across the room with his mouth full. I feel grim as a sonofabitch, but I'll play along with Iris and this old dude's game for a few more minutes. Then I'm going to forget tonight ever happened.
"You know, Ute,” the old man says, “you haven't got many more chances. Jenny wouldn't want you to pass up one good as this."
"You don't know fuck about my dead wife,” I say. Playing along's not the same as buying it.
"I can't guarantee you a happy ending, you know. I don't see into the future too far,” he says. “But I got a gut feeling you won't get a better opportunity to make one happen."
Chicken wire boy throws a fry at his buddy giving him the finger from over by the cash register. It hits one of those cheap bank calendars with just one scenic picture for every blessed month. Lands to the right of a ketch sailing past a sun bigger than life on the horizon.
"She was raped by her stepdaddy,” he says. “Right before she did that surgery on herself."
"I don't want to know,” I say.
"And it'll be a long time before she'll tell you her reasons. Don't have to read tea leaves or innards to predict that."
"You're one messed up old fucker,” I say.
"But I'm telling you now. You got to trust the world again, Ute. Callie's trying to help you. She wants more out of life than you hiding like a he
rmit crab in that dingy, half-buried so-called garden apartment."
My heart jackknifes—he knows where I live, he's been there—but he keeps on talking.
"I know I should mind my own business, and I do, day after day. But I get worn down now and then and have to point a few things out. Things that might get missed and when they're such little things and might mean so much....” The old geezer coughs.
I haven't got a clue what he's going on about and I don't give a shit. I've got that tired feeling I get sometimes, like I just want to lie down and sleep forever or until the world blows up, whichever comes first. The jukebox stops for the count of nine, then the lizard king is retelling the sob story about people dumb enough to pick up hitchhikers. My heart's beating like murder. I yank around to see if I can spot the asshole monopolizing the airwaves. Nobody's standing by the jukebox. Chicken-wire boy is still spewing out his hamburger—he'll end up amusing himself to death when he chokes on it.
The one-button girl shifts her head and runs shiny red fingernails along her collarbone. The gesture reminds me of something. A strange feeling gets in the pit of my stomach. They don't look around at me even though I've been staring at them for longer than's socially acceptable. I'm breathing kind of heavy, watching them, ignoring the old man, waiting for something to happen but not knowing what the hell it could be.
When chicken-wire boy kicks back his chair to aim a fry, I look over at the cash register, at the guy holding his wallet in one hand, middle finger thrust up on the other. The fry flaps against paper, inch and a half from the ketch.
Not giving a shit what anybody thinks, I run to the calendar and see the oily smudge where the fry hit. I touch it and feel the grease between my fingers. Nobody's looking at me. I walk around the tables like an idiot, and nobody looks up at me. I go to the table chicken-wire boy is sitting at and eat one of his fries. He's rocking his chair on its back legs. I'm right in front of him, pawing in his fries for one salted just the way I like, and he's staring through me.
I lift the basket of fries and dump them on the floor. The white paper lining the basket flutters after the scattered fries. Chicken-wire boy doesn't notice. One-button girl brushes her hair back and looks bored.
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