by Jane Smiley
“Ach, Buddy,” said Callaghan.
“Hey, baby,” said Buddy. “We’ve done some business over the years, haven’t we, old man?” All of it dirty, too.
“Business, indeed.” Dermot grinned cheerfully. There were people in the world who, walking down the street, might see a hundred-dollar bill lying on the curb. Rather than bend down and pick it up, these men would bet a saw-buck on whether the next guy along would pick it up, or the guy after that, or the guy after that. And if they won the twenty and lost the hundred, they would consider themselves well repaid. Dermot Callaghan was one of those. Buddy knew for sure he was coming at this deal in some cockeyed way that might well lose him his quarter interest, but that wasn’t Buddy’s problem.
“Thanks for taking us to that restaurant last night, Dermot. We just didn’t know where to go.” She turned to Buddy. “And he took us to the garden at this library around here?”
“The Huntington Library,” said Callaghan.
“What did you say he made his money in?” said Jason.
“Railroads,” said Callaghan.
“And his name was Huntington?”
“Just like the library,” said Callaghan.
Buddy strolled away, just for a moment.
The horse was brought out as the first couple of two-year-olds were going under the gavel. His handlers led him around the paddock area, but kept him slightly apart. Buddy let Callaghan point him out to the Kingstons. They were suitably impressed, because he was suitably impressive. You didn’t have to be a horseman to see that he was bigger, blacker, and more full of himself than any horse in the paddock. Buddy and Callaghan let the couple’s round eyes fill to the brim with the animal, and then they led them into the amphitheater. As they took their seats, Buddy saw Farouk taking his seat over in another section. Andrea Melanie said, “This is like a theater in the round, with that little stage down there. I was an acting major in college, you know.”
Soon enough, the sales board flashed the colt’s hip number and they led him in. He came in easily enough, four or five steps, then he stopped dead, lifted his head and his tail, and stared at the assembled bidders. The lights in the room lit up his blackness in brilliant circles that slid over his shoulders and back and haunches. His nostrils flared and he whinnied a challenge. “My goodness,” said Andrea Melanie.
At the signal from the auctioneer, Farouk started the bidding at three hundred thousand. Andrea Melanie sat up in her chair and craned her neck. The other underbidder, whom Buddy didn’t recognize, came in at three fifty, and Callaghan raised his hand for four. Someone else came in, then someone else. They dropped out at a million. Farouk and the other underbidder and Callaghan pushed it up to two million. Buddy stole a glance at Jason, who was sitting next to Callaghan. He looked calm and interested, but neither daunted nor nervous. Every time another bidder spoke, Andrea Melanie, next to Buddy, said, “Oh my God!” At three million, Farouk glanced in their direction. This was the most sensitive moment. Farouk had pushed the bidding as high as he thought he could. Probably Sir Michael had estimated what he thought the Kingstons would pay, and this was about it. Now it was up to Buddy and Callaghan to bail Farouk out, bail all of them out. If you had a couple, Buddy knew, this was where you had to try and understand the marriage. It was no coincidence that one of them had the man and one of them had the woman. But Buddy wasn’t sure that they had divvied up their responsibilities properly. Callaghan was a hand with the women, and Buddy most assuredly was not. Buddy heard Callaghan say to Jason, “Well, what do you think?”
Jason didn’t say anything.
Buddy looked at him. He looked like he was having second thoughts. At this point, he always wondered if there wasn’t some way that they could work a scam that was more guaranteed, but of course there wasn’t. There had to be a gamble, didn’t there? Every racing man preferred good odds to a sure thing.
Andrea Melanie was looking at Jason now. She looked like she was wondering whether to push him.
When you thought about it, Jason did seem to be the sort of guy not all that susceptible to pressure.
Jason looked at his wife, then he looked at Buddy. Since Buddy did not at this point have a guilty conscience, he didn’t think that was showing in his face, but perhaps, he thought, a lifetime of dishonesty was showing in his face. Was Jason astute enough to see it there?
The auctioneer said, “I have three million. Dermot?”
Buddy didn’t dare look at Farouk.
He saw Dermot give the auctioneer a little cock of the eyebrow, asking for a moment more.
Jason Kingston withdrew his gaze from Buddy’s face, and made no sign. Buddy licked his lips and whispered to Andrea Melanie, “I think this horse can win the Kentucky Derby.” And that was true, too. As true as the sun in the sky. So why did it feel like a lie?
She turned instantly to Jason and said, “Please, honey?”
Jason poked Callaghan, and nodded.
Callaghan raised his finger.
The auctioneer said, “Three million one hundred thousand?”
Callaghan and Jason nodded simultaneously.
Now Buddy looked at Farouk. He shook his head, feigning disappointment.
The auctioneer said, “Sold to Dermot Callaghan for three million one hundred thousand.”
Andrea Melanie let out a scream, “Oh, God, I want more!”
And so they got more. By the end of the auction, the Kingstons had spent ten million dollars on two-year-olds, and Buddy had to find stalls for six more horses. He had to find room in his bank account for the $625,000, give or take a commission or two, that Sir Michael had sent his way. He had to make room in his future for a return favor (Jesus probably knew what that would be already, some sort of test, which maybe was the long-term point of all of this to begin with), and he had to make room in his already busy day for the endless stroking of Andrea Melanie Kingston, which he saw, now that he had the return on his investment, could turn into a significant penance. That Jesus was a trickster, never more so than when he was keeping quiet and waiting for you to make up your own mind.
By the time Epic Steam had been in Buddy’s barn for only three days, whinnying and stampeding around his stall, staring at all the fillies, and in every way creating a ruckus, Buddy was ready to geld the animal. But you didn’t go to an owner and tell them that a three-million-dollar two-year-old who hadn’t run his first race yet and had the breeding of a king needed his golden treasures, truly a set of family jewels, removed just for the sake of some grooms and exercise boys who made three hundred dollars a week. And you didn’t go to Jesus and tell him that, just because you maybe hadn’t passed the last test, you weren’t going to pass the next one, either. At least, not right away.
19 / THE KENTUCKY DERBY (I)
THE THING Tiffany enjoyed most about her relationship with Ho Ho Ice Chill was visiting Ho Ho’s family in Connecticut. Ho Ho’s father was a handsome sixty-two-year-old former defensive back on the New York Giants named Lawrence Morton, who lunched with Kiwanis Clubs, played golf with the other real-estate agents in his town, gave little talks on positive motivation, and always had a smile on his face. But the smile on Lawrence’s face wasn’t nearly as big as the smile on the face of his second wife, Marie, who was a Frenchwoman from the actual nation of France. They had a ten-year-old daughter named Alienor who had already developed and put into place her personal style. Alienor idolized Paloma Picasso, and always wore the same outfit every day—black jeans and a dazzling white T-shirt, with little black French sneakers and a necklace of tiny jet beads. She told Tiffany that she didn’t see why she should ever have to vary this outfit for the rest of her life. Marie told Tiffany with a shrug that this was a very French attitude. Knowing what a French attitude was gave Tiffany a terrific thrill. The reason Marie always had a smile on her face was that she adored Lawrence, and why shouldn’t she? Everyone adored Lawrence. Lawrence’s sense of peace was like a depth of clear water. “Well,” said Marie over some tea and cookies in th
e Mortons’ sunny kitchen, “it took me a year to get Lawrence to fall in love with me, and I was very beautiful then. But I knew that if Lawrence ever really looked at me, and fixed it in his mind to take care of me, then that would be forever. Ah! Ah!” She smiled and closed her eyes, just at the thought of Lawrence.
Ho Ho Ice Chill was Lawrence’s only rap-singer offspring. Ho Ho’s sister Ivy was a tax lawyer, his sister Helen was in real estate with Lawrence, and his brother, Norman, was a marketing executive at Microsoft, out in Seattle. Sometimes, when Ho Ho needed a little advice, he got on the Internet and got Norman’s marketing group to brainstorm a promotional campaign or something like that. As a result, Ho Ho’s record company was being eyed as a possible takeover target by Microsoft. But, Ho Ho explained, so was everything else. The children’s mother was a community activist in Oakland, California.
Sometimes, when Tiffany remembered how she had bolted out of Wal-Mart with Bone Bones, she imagined she had known that this was where she was going, but, of course, that was impossible. What was really true was that she had been bored enough to try anything, and she had set aside her usual distaste for trading on her looks and lucked out.
Tiffany liked every word that she heard at the Mortons’ house—France, tapenade, Paloma Picasso, Microsoft, please, thank you, honey, sweetheart, chéri, Earl Grey, orchid, garlic, closing, investment, nude (as in a painting), terrace, riding lawn-mower, maman, s’il vous plaît, ce soir, assiette, coq au vin, daube, glace. Ho Ho, for his part, had a focused interest in all the words Tiffany knew but hated to use, which referred to drugs, sex, violence, being tough, and making a name for oneself in spite of worlds of hardship. Ho Ho, it had to be said, liked Tiffany, but he idolized Roland, Tiffany’s brother, whom he had never met. Yes, Roland had been in prison. Yes, Roland had a friend who was murdered. No, Roland had never killed anyone. Yes, Roland was a great and hypnotic talker. Yes, Roland was a bad man or a lost soul, or both. Yes, Tiffany hoped that, brother or not, she would never see Roland again.
Ho Ho had been a rap star for about two years. Tiffany had heard of him. He wasn’t as big as some, was bigger than others. Like the rest of the family, he was dynamite at marketing. He had a real instinct for knowing what people wanted just before they wanted it. He also had his father’s height and build, which made him look more threatening than he really was. He had an entourage. He had girlfriends. He had videos and advisers and hangers-on. What he didn’t have, and where would he get it, Tiffany thought, was a sense of himself as a killer. Instinctively, Ho Ho knew that he wasn’t going to jail, the way that instinctively Roland had known when he was ten that he was going to jail. Ho Ho thought that his career might last another year and then he would market something else. But to get that other year, he thought, he had to have some new material, and that was what Tiffany was for, telling him everything she could remember about Roland, which he then wrote verbatim into songs. Although she and Ho Ho did a good imitation of being hot for one another, they weren’t, and they both agreed on this. She didn’t like sex much and Ho Ho was in love with one of his comparative-literature professors from his only year in college, whose Ph.D. dissertation he kept next to her picture by his bed. Tiffany liked the title of her dissertation, “Getting from Here to There: The Visionary Travels of Matsuo Basho.” Even so, when Ho Ho talked about the woman and what she did all day, Tiffany didn’t think that was what she, Tiffany, would like to do. Nor, when all was said and done, did she want to linger much longer at the lovely house in Connecticut, even though she preferred that to traveling to musical engagements, and most of the entourage liked it so much there, they were ready to move right in. After it was clear that he didn’t expect her to devote herself to satisfying his passions, she often said to Ho Ho, “Well, baby, what do you think I should do?”
School. Office work. Modeling. School again. A restaurant career. Retailing. Property management. School. Actually, thought Tiffany, the surroundings were nicer but the problems were much the same in Connecticut as elsewhere. And the weather was depressing her. There were daffodils out, but it was chilly and damp. It looked like you could go outside, but you couldn’t. Marie offered to teach her to cook, but though Tiffany enjoyed those dishes and very much appreciated their names, she did not want to make any of them for herself or others.
It was Ivy who, when they were sitting around the dinner table one Sunday, eating one of Marie’s cassoulets (another wonderful word, Tiffany thought), said that Ho Ho ought to buy a racehorse. Lawrence shook his head. He said, “That used to be a good tax write-off, ten years ago, but now you’ve got to pay attention to it.”
“What’s a tax write-off?” said Tiffany.
Ivy looked at her kindly. “It’s when you’re making too much money and you need something that you’re losing money on to offset what you’re making.”
“Well,” said Ho Ho. “I like horses.”
“I’ve never seen a live horse,” said Tiffany. “Only on TV.” Everyone was careful to use standard English around Lawrence, even the rougher members of Ho Ho’s entourage.
Everyone at the table looked at her.
Marie said, “Mon Dieu! Chérie, you have never seen a horse? My father back in France, he used to rescue the horses. Once we had thirty horses in our yard, and the newspaper came and took a picture and wrote a piece, and all of the horses went away to homes.”
“I want to win the Kentucky Derby,” said Ho Ho. “I want to be the first black man and rap singer to own a Derby winner.”
“There was a great black jockey, you know,” said Lawrence. “Won the highest percentage of races of any jockey ever. His name was Isaac Murphy.”
“What’s the Kentucky Derby?” said Tiffany. She was sort of joking. But it was always interesting to see where Ho Ho went with her queries.
“Ho Ho,” said Ivy with a laugh, “buy this girl a horse. She needs to be educated.”
Ho Ho turned around in his chair. The chair creaked under his weight. He was one of those big black men who looked fearsome alone on the street. Part of the reason he had an entourage, Tiffany knew, was to reassure white people—no group of black men could dress so outrageously, cop such an attitude, and be so numerous without corporate sponsorship. To not be intimidated by him, you had to get close enough to see his eyes, dark, twinkly, and good, the eyes of a man who could and would still sing the lullaby his mother had sung to him twenty years before. He said to her, “You want a horse, baby?”
Tiffany nodded.
“What kind of horse you want?”
“Do you want,” said Marie, correctively.
“What kind of horse do you want, baby?”
“The kind of horse that wins the Kentucky Derby,” said Tiffany.
“Well, we’ll do that, then,” said Ho Ho. “Who’ve we got from Kentucky?”
“Lamar is from Kentucky,” said Helen.
“We’ll call him tomorrow,” said Ho Ho.
Though she had never seen a horse in the flesh, he came easily, fluidly into Tiffany’s mind, some kind of red color, like a penny, and shining. Tiffany saw that Marie was smiling at her. She said, “What was it like, having all those horses around?”
“It was a great deal of work. Some of them were very thin and sick. We fed them and brushed them and petted them. They were most grateful.”
“They were?”
“You know, a horse is a very affectionate beast,” said Marie.
Tiffany turned to Ho Ho. She said, “How about after supper, um, dinner?”
Everyone laughed indulgently. That was the way they laughed in the Mortons’ household, always indulgently.
20 / WRECK
IT WAS FUCKING COLD. Even though the stands faced into the setting sun, there was no warmth, and the forty-degree breeze felt like a freezing torrent. In twenty-two years in America, this was the thing Deirdre hadn’t yet adjusted to—the weather: ninety-four degrees and 90-percent humidity in the summer, bitter cold in the winter, and not much in between. The twelve hors
es in the race, all of whom had looked chilled in the paddock, were now trotting around to the backside, where the gate stood like an ice tray in the pale sunlight. George was betting. The horse Deirdre was running was named Mighty Again, but in fact he would never be mighty again. Three weeks before, Deirdre had had him gelded in a bid to focus his attention. The owners, two guys in cold cuts, were down on the rail. They had been bettors for years, had only just gotten to be owners. They still preferred it down on the rail and they always wore their lucky clothes when they were running a horse. Their lucky clothes were a motley collection of items from all fashion eras, including the one’s father’s lucky oxfords from the 1940s, when the father in question had hit a 125-to-1 shot at Oaklawn. Deirdre couldn’t decide if these owners had style or had no style, but she liked them. They were Irish way back, Mahoney and Byrne. But that wasn’t why she liked them. There were whole populations of Irishmen that Deirdre didn’t like.
One of these was not George, who came up the steps and sat down. He said, “Good Lard, Cousin, it’s colder than the devil’s navel up here!”
“Don’t be picturesque with me, young man.”
“You’re smilin’, Cousin.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Once in a while you can’t help yourself. Try as you might—”
“Try as I might.”
Deirdre put her glasses to her eyes to watch the loading. Uneventful but lengthy. Twelve horses was too many. Always too many, but especially too many at this time of the day. She sighed.