Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

by Maggie Estep

  “Ruby,” Ariel breathlessly answers on the first ring.

  I give her an update on her boyfriend’s whereabouts. “But I can’t follow him onto the backstretch,” I explain.

  “That’s probably where she is,” Ariel says.

  “Where who is?”

  “The other woman,” she says darkly.

  “I don’t know about that,” I say, “but it’s safe to venture that Frank works there, Ariel. On the backstretch. I don’t think he’s a handicapper or anything. More like a groom. Or an assistant groom. But if he’s got another girlfriend, I haven’t seen any sign of her so far.”

  Silence at the other end.

  “You there?” I query.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Oh.” I wait.

  “All right. Let me see what I can do about getting you a pass for the backstretch. I’ll call you in a half hour.”

  Of course, when the phone rings twenty odd minutes later, making its ominous sick cricket sound in my raincoat pocket, it’s about a half mile into the fourth race and both Oliver and I have money on a little bay filly who is, right now, running in third place.

  “Yes,” I say, clicking the Talk switch.

  “What’s the matter?” comes Ariel’s voice. “Is he doing something?”

  “What?”

  The filly is falling back to fourth place now.

  “Ruby? Are you watching Frank?”

  I barely hear the poor woman because the truth is I’m watching our filly pull on her inner reserves, switch leads, and hit the accelerator, fighting back into third then cruising past the chestnut in second. She valiantly scrambles to catch up with the leader but misses the jackpot by a nose as they cross the finish line.

  “Son of a bitch,” I say.

  “What? What has he done?” comes Ariel’s choked voice.

  “Sorry,” I tell her, “I was watching a race. My horse ran second.”

  “Ruby, you’re not being paid to watch horse races,” Ariel snaps.

  I offer her a few seconds of stony silence.

  “I’m sorry,” she counters, “I didn’t mean to get angry.”

  “Yeah,” I say flatly. I turn my back to Oliver so he won’t see the look on my face. I don’t do well with authority. It’s why I live the life I do. I would never make it in an official business environment or in any kind of traditional hierarchical arrangement. The reverse is also true: I can’t stand telling people what to do, even if their whole lives have been devoted to following orders.

  “I’m not going to be able to arrange any credentials for you today,” Ariel says in a softened voice. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to start from scratch again tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I say, still flat and cold.

  “I’m sorry I was testy, Ruby, please understand,” she says.

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’m sorry too. I get carried away when I’m near horses.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I like horses.”

  “Perhaps you could pass yourself off as an exercise rider,” she says. Of course I think she’s joking, but when I realize she isn’t, I tell her it would take a bit of doing for me to stay on one of these horses for five minutes—let alone steer one around a racetrack while looking like I know what I’m doing.

  “Maybe you can try getting me credentials as a journalist,” I tell her, feeling a nice thrill at the prospect of potentially ambling around the track with an “all access” pass. “I’ll wait around out here anyway,” I add, “see if Frank maybe catches the gambler train back to the city after the last race.”

  “The what?”

  “The racetrack special. Frank took the gambler train this morning. Maybe he’ll take it back into the city this afternoon. I’ll wait and see.”

  Ariel thanks me profusely, clearly contrite. I click the End switch and stick the phone in my pocket.

  “So,” Oliver says, “I got some betting to do. Can we go to the paddock and look at the horses? I want to see what kind of mood they’re in.”

  “Yeah, maybe Frank will surface again too.”

  “To hell with Frank. I’ve got money to make,” Oliver says cheerfully as we head out to the paddock. On the way, he stops at a betting window to cash in his ticket for the last race—since he prudently bet the little bay filly to place, he collects a tidy twenty-two bucks on his three dollar bet.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon losing ourselves in the sight of glistening horseflesh, tiny brightly clad men, wild, toothless degenerates, and unbelievable blue skies. I keep an eye out for Frank, the swarthy trainer, and the skinny groom. From my program notes I learn that the trainer’s name is Arnold Gaines. But he doesn’t have any more entries today. And I gratefully give up trying to spot him or his iniquitous employee Frank.

  The last race of the day is about to go off but neither Oliver nor I have found much to be inspired by in the twelve entries; 14K claimers with spotty past performances.

  The sky darkens, and around us gloom starts to prevail as hopes of hitting the jackpot wane. Oliver collects his modest winnings—I’m down twenty bucks—and we head toward the train. We plant ourselves in a spot near the grandstand exit and watch for Frank, who fails to materialize. As the last stragglers climb onto the train, Oliver and I get on and collapse into a three seater. Oliver rests his head on my shoulder and the train pulls ahead.

  “You feel all right?” I ask, looking down at the top of his head, wanting to cradle it, instill health in it.

  “I feel great,” he sighs. “I got chemo tomorrow, though. After chemo, I’ll be sick for days. Don’t worry, baby,” he adds, looking up at me. “I don’t care about petty vagaries of the flesh, I’m rich!” He yanks a wad of cash from his pocket and waves it in front of my face.

  In a seat across from us a lumpy older guy glowers at us, clearly having not fared as well.

  A half hour later the train pulls into Penn Station. Where this morning’s cargo was full of inflated hopes and swapped tips, now the mood is dour. Surly guys jab by, hurtling themselves to the nearest bar. Raspy older women set their mouths tight and disappear into the glaring burlesque of rush hour Penn Station.

  Oliver and I say our good-byes. He kisses me on each cheek then turns away, waving like a shy, young boy. I watch his ghostly thin frame as he threads through the rush of people.

  I turn and head down into the subway. I feel a little sick to my stomach.

  Mark Baxter

  11 / A Tenderness Between Us

  Wanda is up to no good. Clad only in a paint-smeared antique black lace nightie, she is painting some sort of mythological she-creature on her wall. The creature has an exquisite head adorned with horns. The body is that of a hyena with eight frightening breasts. Sometimes it is alarming to consider what must be lurking in my lady’s subconscious.

  As Wanda reaches up high to add a touch of red to one of the creature’s horns, her nightie travels up her thighs, revealing her delightful bottom. She is wearing conservative cotton panties but they’re a bit loose, and now, as she bends forward, I am tortured by the beauty that lies between her legs. I am not permitted to touch her while she’s working.

  During the opening weeks of our liaison, she would often throw me out of her house the moment I had sated her considerable sexual appetites.

  “You’ve inspired me and I thank you, now I must work,” she would say, and, still naked or clad only in one of her lovely sex garments, she would literally shove me out the door. In time, I coerced her into letting me stay to watch her work. While she does this, I practice piano in my head. These practices are particularly fruitful, inspired as they are by the sight of Wanda.

  When she bent forward moments ago, I had just been working on a difficult passage of the Schoenberg that I’ll be playing in the Havemeyer Competition a few days from now. I’d been making good progress until Wanda bent forward.

  Now I am in pain.

  I quietly get up from the futon. I am wearing only my boxer shor
ts, which are tenting gloriously at the front. I walk up behind Wanda and put my nose an inch from her wondrous hair. She smells of sex and paint thinner. She suddenly reaches behind her and jabs at me with a paintbrush, managing to streak my stomach and boxer shorts.

  “These were exorbitantly expensive,” I say, motioning at the boxers as she turns around to scowl at me.

  “You know the rules, Mark. You stay in your spot and leave me be or you are out.”

  “But look at me,” I protest, indicating the streaks of paint on my stomach.

  “Now look at you,” she says, suddenly sweeping her paintbrush up my arm, coating it too in blue paint.

  Were she anyone else, I would be extremely angry. But she is Wanda. Though she is eight years my senior, she is an impetuous, horrible child, albeit an intelligent, radiant one. And I love her.

  She stands, measuring me with her honey-colored eyes; her mouth is in a half laugh. I look at her sternly.

  “It’s impossible to look severe with a hard-on like that,” she says, reaching down into my boxers. “you’re now going to pay for disturbing my work,” she threatens, pulling the boxers to my knees and putting her mouth on me. But I want more than her mouth. I pull her up by the shoulders and turn her around, yanking down the ungainly cotton panties and entering her.

  That keeps her busy for a while.

  But then it’s the same old story. After she comes three times, she kicks me out. I’m still naked and half blue, but she shoves me toward the door.

  I’m not amused anymore. I break away from her, and, no longer feeling good-natured about her fractiousness, go over to the futon to start putting my clothes on. She’s turned back to her painting after hastily pulling her nightgown back on.

  Once I dress, I collect the scores I brought—I had planned to read through these as we lay side by side on the futon. In this romantic fantasy, Wanda would read Demonology, a book of short stories she was completely enraptured by, while I absorbed myself in JSB’s piano concertos in D minor and occasionally nibbled at Wanda’s exposed body parts.

  I stuff the scores into my satchel, suddenly feeling angry. I loathe feeling angry. I walk to the door. I hear Wanda come bounding behind me.

  “Mark,” she yells, “what are you doing?”

  “Going,” I say, not turning around.

  She quickly inserts herself between me and the door. Gives me a show of rounded eyes and breasts spilling out of nightgown. It makes my heart hurt.

  “Don’t be angry. I’m sorry,” she says, leaving her lips parted a fraction of an inch.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, opening the door and passing through.

  I can feel her astonishment. I’d never before reacted badly to her irreverent treatment of me. I stride down the hall and down the wide marble steps of her tenement. Just then, I loathe Wanda.

  There are malingerers on her stoop. Hippie-type young white girls who are sitting dreamy-eyed, doing nothing at all.

  “Excuse me,” I threaten as I weave my way through them.

  “Sorry,” one of them beams up at me. She’s glassy-eyed. Probably too much pot. Or perhaps she’s another victim of yoga. Like the Wench.

  Thinking of the Wench brings a wave of warmth. I hadn’t dwelled on our most recent lesson just yet. The many horrors of it. Well, there really hadn’t been that many. She had apparently practiced a bit. No doubt after doing her infernal yoga. The Wench is always trying to get me to go to a yoga class, claiming it will help me reduce stress before competitions. I once made the mistake of wearing a short-sleeve shirt, and Her Royal Stubby Fingeredness saw my rash.

  “What’s the matter with your arm?” she asked blatantly.

  I told her it was none of her business, but this seemed to wound her, so eventually I confessed that it was just a bad case of dermatitis brought on by stress. Then, of course, she wanted to know what was stressing me, and I had to explain about the piano competitions. It was imperative for my career that I win one before turning twenty-one.

  The Wench had instantly jumped up from the piano bench to demonstrate something called sun salutations. It was quite a spectacle, although I can’t say I was opposed to the lovely Wench crawling around on the floor of my practice room at Juilliard. It did give me something to savor later. Nonetheless, the Wench still hasn’t succeeded in getting me into yoga.

  As I walk north, thinking I’ll eventually hop on a subway, I picture Wanda as I’d first seen her, wearing an absurd white plastic coat with a fake fur collar. She’d been gawking at a small Rembrandt at the Met. I go there regularly to visit the Caravaggios. I find that I can amuse myself for long stretches of time by observing the masses as they amble through that particular gallery. Almost everyone is drawn to the Caravaggios. It is deeply enjoyable to see the pull that strange, long dead little man’s work has on people whose lives he would be hard pressed to fathom.

  On that particular day, having an hour to kill before crossing the park to get to my next class, I took my time, going to look at paintings other than my beloveds. Though I loathe Vermeer, find Goya abhorrent, and have little use for Titian, I am fond of Rembrandt. I went to take a look at one of my favorites, a nice little dark depiction of Saint Peter in his dotage. I found that a lass was hoarding the painting, standing just a few inches in front of it and effectively blocking if from anyone else’s view. I was so horrified by her white plastic coat that I refused to look at the face that belonged to it. Until she turned around. When she turned around, I was lost.

  “Don’t mind me, I like to pretend it’s mine,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder at the Rembrandt.

  “Of course,” I said, understanding perfectly. “Don’t let me interfere.” My initial annoyance was melted by the radiance of her grin. It made me feel generous and tolerant.

  “Come,” she said, reaching for my arm and gently pulling me to stand at her side. “It’s so tragic,” she said, indicating poor little withered Saint Peter. “When I’m sad I come see it and the sadness leaves.”

  We stood together, blocking the Rembrandt from all interlopers. Many minutes passed.

  “I must go,” I said eventually.

  She looked up at me, smiled, and then, shockingly, rose onto her tiptoes and kissed me full on the mouth.

  I stood swaying a little.

  “Go on, then,” she said, laughing. “You said you had to go.”

  “But—” I protested.

  “But I will see you back here at the same time on Friday,” she said.

  I was there a half hour early on Friday. I parked myself on the bench nearest the Rembrandt. For three days I had been weak-kneed remembering the strange encounter. It had taken monumental feats of concentration to practice properly. I was exhausted by it all. I sat on the bench, waiting for the lovely woman who loved Rembrandt.

  When she arrived, wearing a purple coat this time, I instantly took her arm and led her to my Caravaggios.

  “Oh yes, I guessed that you loved them too,” she said.

  Then she kissed me again. At first I resisted. I was afraid my legs would embarrass me by giving in. But she demanded that I succumb and I did. Until a security guard archly recommended a motel room.

  I was blind and addled as she led me out of the museum and onto a downtown bus. The bus was filled with people, none of whom had a clue that this attractive woman was torturing me. She wasn’t looking at me or touching me but I was burning alive from fever. Eventually the bus ride ended. She led me up to the top flight of a five-story tenement, into an apartment reeking of paint and cigarette smoke.

  After locking the door, she removed my coat and dropped it on the floor. I didn’t protest although it was a black cashmere coat given me by my godmother, Dot, who also pays my Juilliard tuition. She removed her own coat and stood before me, her body an inch from mine. She arched her face toward me, her honey-colored eyes looking earnestly into me.

  I asked her name. Wanda wasn’t necessarily the answer I’d hoped for, but I’ve come to like it.
r />   She unbuttoned my white cotton shirt and ran her hands over my chest. “you’re very young,” she said.

  “So are you,” I said, already sensing that, though she was older than me, she was just an overgrown impetuous child.

  She smiled at this. She was about to do God knows what to me when I took control of the situation, surprising her by ripping the little row of buttons fastening her green pants and hiking the pants down over her hips. She stood grinning at me, pleased at what I’d done. I turned her around, removed her sweater, and kissed her lower back, my lips trailing down to her ripe bottom. I bit each luscious cheek. She tried to turn back around but I gently pushed her onto the floor. I covered her with my body and bit her neck. She let out a small yelp. She struggled underneath me, apparently unaccustomed to not being in charge. I let her up. She looked crazed. She ripped at my pants, breaking the zipper as she tore them off me. She put her mouth on what was, until then, the most painful erection of my life. I didn’t want to come that way. I pushed her back and told her I wanted to be inside her now. I watched her hunt around for condoms. She was wearing bright pink lace panties and a translucent pink tank top. She was exquisite.

  Eventually she located a condom and put it on me. I entered her, finally.

  I didn’t let myself come. I didn’t trust her.

  For two weeks I would visit her each night but never let myself come.

  I can’t say the same for her.

  I’d had my share of sexual encounters before Wanda, and they’d all left me wishing I hadn’t taken the time. These encounters had been with nervous girls who were gifted musicians or dancers. None of them understood their own bodies, never mind mine. Now, all that was changed. However, Wanda didn’t give me much of herself when we weren’t in bed. Just little bits here and there. She was estranged from her parents and had put herself through two years of art school by doing electrical work. Eventually she had tired of school. She now worked thirty-odd hours a week with electricity the rest with paint—and with me. She soaked me up. She was avidly curious about music and knew nothing. I taught her.