by Jane Smiley
What she learned about love was that it was impossible. What she learned about life was that it took more strength to survive the more you knew. What she learned about horses was that anything could happen, even after you cared. Before she had cared, she found this rather interesting. Now she found it frightening, and there was no remedy for it.
All of these thoughts crossed her mind in an instant when Dick entered her with a groan and she felt the usual surprise of his foreskin slipping back and all inside her turning to warm taffy. All of these thoughts intervened between his groan and her cry a moment later. Then all of these thoughts let her go, and she lost herself once again in the blackness of this illness, this love, this torment, this presence, this terror, this detonation. Oh my God, she said, Oh my God. Oh, my God.
Eileen came out from under the bed and stood alert, staring at Rosalind and vibrating her little stump of a tail back and forth. The cries on the bed increased, an awkward harmony to Eileen’s ears. And then they stopped. Eileen turned and went over to the radiator and lifted her leg. She was a female. On the other hand, she was a female Jack Russell. So she lifted her leg.
Dick did what he often did when he was pretty sure Rosalind had fallen asleep. He turned his head and quietly looked at her. Maybe the thing was that she was the first blonde he had ever slept with. She had beautiful hair, thick, streaked honey and champagne, straight. Usually she wore it up. When it dropped, which always seemed like something that it did of itself rather than something she or he did to it, it fell down her back in a thick curtain. Her skin was of the same smoothness and paleness as her hair, and her eyes were pure blue. She generally wore pale colors, too, tawny buffs and beiges and taupes, down to her lace underwear. She did not show wear and tear of any sort. Had he not known how old she was (five years older than he was), he would never have been able to guess. Over the last weeks, perhaps because of this all-over blondeness and smoothness, he had found her an extremely restful person to be with. Everything she did, every gesture she made was measured, not, he thought, as a result of cerebration, but as a natural physical deliberateness. Even her smile was slow, even her sexual response was slow. Her sexual response had fascinated him in its contrast to Louisa’s. All their life together, it had seemed that Louisa needed holding back. Making love to her was an act of splendid self-restraint—their charm was “not yet; not yet, not yet.” Making it last until neither could bear it any longer was the challenge and the game. Making love to Rosalind was quite different. More often than not, he never knew exactly when the lovemaking started, where it was going, whether either one of them was aroused or not. Arousal slipped in unannounced and took them by surprise, or, rather, took him by surprise. Nothing seemed to take Rosalind by surprise. At first he had wondered when this slowness would turn into work, but it never had. Making love to Rosalind was like a long contemplation of something, as restful as she was. He had not thought this affair would last as long as it had, given the pummeling he got from his conscience, but he had been unable to give up this contemplation, though what he told himself was that she would get tired of him sooner or later, since he didn’t give her much time or attention and the only thing he seemed able to do was complain about his job. And he had stopped going to his therapist.
Lately he often wondered whether he was getting through to Rosalind at all. Her natural calm seemed to have enlarged, and he figured that this was a sign she was getting bored with him. Perhaps, he sometimes thought, that would be a relief, though the things it would be a relief from, like secrecy and lies, he had fully incorporated into his daily routine. Certainly it would be a relief from the betrayal of Louisa, though, on the one hand, he had accustomed himself to betraying her, and on the other, the betrayal would still have taken place even after it ceased until some unknown date and mode of confession and penance, to which he did not look forward. He and Rosalind had never had an argument or even a conflict. Dick did not know what this meant, since it was a first in his life. Was the source of this her innate composure? Was it the sign of true love or the sign of true indifference? Was it the result of the infrequency of their meetings? Was it because he wanted to please her or she him? Life with Louisa and with horses had taught him that it was in conflict that you saw into the other. Without conflict, he felt he was seeing only a surface. At one point in the fall, he had been sitting with another owner and his wife, and Al and Rosalind had come up in conversation. The husband said, “I always think wheels within wheels when I see those two.”
“Hardly one wheel,” said the wife dismissively. “That woman has the least to say of anyone I ever met. All she is is good manners.”
Dick found himself smarting on Rosalind’s behalf remembering this remark, though he hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but also wondering if what he saw in her was only something he himself made up. These were all issues he could discuss with his therapist, if he got up the guts to go back to him.
She opened her eyes. He rose up onto his elbow, eased the hair out of her face with his right hand, and said, “How are you?”
“Lovely, thanks.” Only then did she turn to look at him. She regarded him for a moment, and he saw that she was beautiful, but there was something about her face that did not invite you to respond to her as a beauty. He thought, I am not man enough for this. Maybe that was why Rosalind was married to Al. Al was such an insensitive lout that he wouldn’t be able to see Rosalind for what she was.
Al. Of course, Dick had feelings about Al, too, and they were not a credit to himself. Once he had seen Al as just another owner—a pushy know-it-all, like most owners, who had to be prevented from getting a copy of the condition book, but basically human. Now he saw Al as a brutish schlemiel who never did anything right. The way he stood offended Dick. The way he spoke offended Dick. The way he walked offended Dick. Even the way he always paid his bills on time offended Dick. And Dick gloried in being offended on Rosalind’s behalf. In this, Dick felt his only kinship with Eileen. Dick knew enough to know that it was his own offense against Al that was offending him, but he let it wash over him anyway, raising his hackles. He said, “When do you have to go?”
“I have a while. Are you running anything tomorrow?”
“Two. One in the second and one in the sixth.”
“I have to fly back to New York tomorrow. I have a dinner party to give Saturday night.”
“Then I won’t see you for a while.”
“When is one of our horses running again?”
“There’s a good race for Laurita a week from Saturday.”
“We’ll see, then.”
It was these sorts of simple exchanges that Dick found so pleasant. Their voices were relaxed and accepting. The certainty of the future was a comfort. Horses might die between now and then, but this space would be here to return to, Rosalind would be radiating assurance, this room, like the other rooms in the condo she and Al had bought in Florida, would remain cool, bare, and cleanly Japanese in style.
Now Dick closed his eyes. He felt her put her hand on this shoulder and begin to stroke him there, from the shoulder along the side of his neck, up into his hair and down, around to his trapezius muscles, then down his biceps, back up his neck to his cheek, along his chin, down his throat, her whole palm slipping over him. He fell asleep.
Eileen jumped on the bed, walked up to the pillow, snaked her little nose under the covers, and squirreled down next to his belly, her rough coat against the hair on his chest.
After stroking Dick to sleep, Rosalind put her hand over her own face for a moment, then got up. She went into the bathroom and did her hair, then went into the closet and chose a wheat-colored linen dress, sand-colored shoes, and a coral necklace. She put off leaving the bathroom for as long as possible, because she was afraid of her last look at his face. Almost two weeks without seeing him was a vacuum that could well suck her right out of herself. But that was what she always thought, and somehow the time had passed before. She changed her shoes, to a darker color, th
en stepped across the bedroom and sat down on the bed. His eyes opened. They were hazel, almost green. She touched his lips with her thumb, then, as he watched, touched her thumb to her own lips. She said, because she dared not say anything more, “Thank you, darling.” He nodded sleepily, and said, “I thought you had a while.”
“I have to stop a couple of places on my way to dinner.”
“Oh.” She noted the disappointment in his voice. “Rosalind—”
But he paused. She hated that, when he paused. She knew he had something important to say to her. Part of the reason she was leaving was to avoid that, because she was so sure it would be that this couldn’t go on. She put her hand to his lips to shush him, and he shushed. She held his glance for a minute or two. That was enough to fix his face in her mind. She nodded slightly then, telling herself to go, and she stood up. Next to his chest, Eileen roused, pressed herself against his skin, and then emerged. The last thing he heard Rosalind say was “Come on, Eileen. Come on, sweetie.” The door closed behind her. Dick licked his lips and said what he hadn’t had the courage to say in her presence, “I love you.”
Out in the hall, waiting for the elevator with Eileen sitting at her feet, Rosalind remembered something she had been meaning to tell him, that she had come up with a name for that two-year-old. What it was, was a label for her love for him, Dick, though she would have been too reserved to tell him that part. It was “Limitless.” Then she closed her eyes and wondered if she would have to do something dramatic and messy in the end.
16 / EPIC STEAM
WHEN HIS CELLULAR RANG and Dagoberto Gomez answered it, standing on the trainers’ stand at Gulfstream and enjoying the sight of the palm trees swaying in the infield, it was Gordon Lane, the owner of Epic Steam, calling. He was a considerate man—he always called at 7:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, no matter what time it was where he was. Dagoberto had met him in person only once, about two and a half years ago, at the Keeneland September sale. The person Dagoberto usually dealt with concerning the man’s yearling purchases was a bloodstock agent from England, Sir Michael Ordway. Dagoberto, as an exile from Castro’s Cuba and a resident of Queens, felt that he had earned a dispensation in regard to sorting out the relative social positions of Mr. Gordon Lane and Sir Michael Ordway, toady extraordinaire. Once, his wife showed him a picture, in Vanity Fair, of Mrs. Gordon Lane, a princess of some sort, but Dagoberto had never seen her or the two daughters, also princesses. However, when contemplating the sirs and the princesses, Dagoberto sometimes felt the smallest ghost of a shadow of a momentary mote of sympathy with that shit of the twentieth century, Fidel Castro, and wondered if his chosen career of training racehorses wasn’t just the littlest bit corrupt after all. He said, “Good morning, Mr. Lane. How are you this morning?”
Crackling from China, the purring silken Middle Eastern and Irish voice of Gordon Lane said, “Dagoberto, son, I hear this Epic Steam horse got his gate card.”
“Yes, sir, he did. He’s a tough, smart horse, I think.”
“Good lad. What are your plans, son?” Although Mr. Gordon Lane always called Dagoberto “son,” Dagoberto was probably some ten years older than the man. But, then, Gordon Lane, even on one meeting, exuded that air of mysterious and ancient corruption that necessarily came from a life of habitual secrecy.
Dagoberto looked across the track, where Epic Steam was working four furlongs with an A.P. Indy colt, and said, “He should be ready to run when he actually turns two, sir. That’s in about two weeks. He’s a monster.”
“How much did we pay for him, Dagoberto?”
“Four hundred twenty-five thousand, sir.”
“Worth that?”
“He’s a forward animal, sir, but he’s hard to handle. A bit treacherous.”
“How does he like to run?”
“The boy has a hard time rating him, sir. But we don’t know quite yet how he likes to run. I put my strongest boy on him.” Sure enough, at the turn, Dagoberto could see Epic Steam pull away from the A.P. Indy colt, though the boy had been given strict instructions to keep even with the other colt. Then Epic Steam moved precipitously to the left, in front of the other colt, causing him to pull up all of a sudden and throw his head. Dagoberto frowned. You didn’t like to see one colt hand a distressing moment to another colt like that. And then the boy, who had been instructed to gallop them out easily, was standing in his stirrups and raring back, and Epic Steam had his head down, trying to pull his rider out of the saddle. Other horses on the track scattered out of his way. This was the work of a moment. It was also the work of a moment that Dagoberto said to Mr. Gordon Lane, “Sir?”
“Yes, son.”
“My, uh, instinct right now is to sell him.”
“Barretts’ two-year-olds-in-training sale?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re the boss, Dagoberto. Call Sir Michael, would you?”
“Yes, sir.”
They hung up.
Dagoberto couldn’t quite believe that he had just gotten rid of his most promising runner and maturest two-year-old. Ten minutes ago he had been watching the horse and planning his first race, thinking idly about the animal’s whole two-year-old season, which seemed to lay upon a table before him, six or seven wins, plums to be picked one by one out of a bowl and put into a basket he was carrying. The horse was as classy and talented and healthy as any horse Dagoberto had ever seen.
Epic Steam came around in front of him and he called down from the trainers’ stand, “What was that, Jonas?”
“He nearly pulled my arms out of the sockets.”
Jonas, who rode in tank tops here in Florida because of the heat, had the biggest shoulders on the track. The muscles fanned down from his neck over his back, and his shoulders and biceps bulged like grapefruits in a sack. But the muscles in the horse’s neck and shoulders were smoother and stronger. And he was not a horse who seemed to feel pain.
Dagoberto put his cellular back in his pocket. The A.P. Indy colt and his rider trotted below them. Dagoberto called out, “I saw that. Your colt okay?”
“He din like it, boss. I tell you, he ain no pussy, this boy, but that black one makes him nervous. When we was standin’ in the gate, this boy, he wan to push himself over away from that one, and he watchin’ him the whole time.”
“We won’t train them together again, then.”
Epic Steam was a hot walker’s nightmare. While he was being bathed, he tried to bite at the streams of water running down his chest. He pawed and struck out with his hooves, he jumped around. You had to run the chain of the shank under his lip, over his gum, and hold it tight, and you also had to have your elbow at the ready to pop him in the face if he tried to bite you. Only Rosalba was strong enough and calm enough and tall enough to handle him. As for Epic Steam, he respected Rosalba just a little bit, because once in a while, when he was pursuing his own agenda with special fervor, she would grab his ear and twist it hard until he had to put his head down. She was tricky about it. She didn’t do it very often, and always when he wasn’t expecting it. Her hand shot out quick as a snake and grabbed it. It was for this reason that he wasn’t really headshy, and so no one, least of all Dagoberto, realized that he was being treated in this way. As for Rosalba, she thought the horse needed more of the same. When a horse came to the track, it was already bigger and often faster than you were, but it didn’t know that yet. You had about a month to get in there and confirm the horse’s opinion of your power and his weakness. This Epic Steam was a very good example. He didn’t give Rosalba one bit of trouble. He had a healthy fear of her, even though he didn’t like her. But there was too much talk about that kind of stuff in Rosalba’s opinion anyway. The world didn’t run on liking and disliking. It ran on everybody knowing who was the boss. With Epic Steam, she was the boss. It was as simple as that.
But Epic Steam did not live in a world of liking. Since no one had ever liked him, he didn’t know what liking was. He was rarely, perhaps never, stroked. His groom, the on
e who would normally stroke him, talk to him, and give him carrots, was afraid of him. He kept Epic Steam’s stall scrupulously clean, wrapped him with care in his night bandages, and did everything by the book. Lots of the time, if he was going to have his back to the horse for more than a moment, he got Rosalba to hold the animal for him. But in the end, he felt guilty about how he treated Epic Steam, and so he stayed away from him even more, hardly even looked at him or said anything to him in the course of the day. From the way the horse looked, that was fine with him. He never offered himself to you the way most horses did, and he was studdish, to boot, which was an annoyance on its way to being a problem. He whinnied at fillies all day and pounded around his stall if a filly in heat passed by. Most colts got used to coeducation if quarters weren’t too close and a trainer took some precautions, but Epic Steam did not. When Dagoberto told everyone the colt was leaving in a few weeks for California, there was prospective relief at the end of all the noise.
Rosalba was personally of the opinion that they ought to geld the animal and get it over with.
Epic Steam’s groom was of the personal opinion that they ought to geld the animal and get it over with.
Jonas was of the personal opinion that the horse was already so strong in the neck and shoulders that if they didn’t geld him he would become unridable.
Dagoberto thought he might have suggested to the world-traveling and unreachable owner that the horse be gelded, but now he was going to be sold. A horse with his breeding and talent would get tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands less at a sale as a gelding than as a colt.