by Otto Penzler
“’Specially compared to my own.” Katie drove a 1985 Ford compact, not a new model when she’d bought it. After this roomy number it would feel about the size of a sardine can.
Katie was suddenly quiet, realizing how she sounded. Like she was hinting that Fritzi give her this car, or another like it. She didn’t mean that at all. She only just wanted to talk. She was lonely, and she wanted to talk. After last night, she wanted to be assured that Fritzi cared for her, that he wasn’t already forgetting her, his mind flying ahead to the Meadowlands racetrack, to that blur of frantic movement out of the gate and around the dirt track and back to the finish line that would involve less than two minutes, yet could decide so much. She was frightened: If things turned out badly for Morning Star, as, she’d gathered, they hadn’t turned out all that wonderfully for Pink Lady, Fritzi would be plunged into one of his moods. If he didn’t call her, she could not call him. He’d never exactly said, but that was her understanding. Wanting to tell him, It’s lonely being the only one in love.
She wondered: Maybe Fritzi wasn’t driving because his license had been suspended? Or maybe: nerves?
If they were living together, or married, Katie had to concede, Fritzi would be like this much of the time: distant, distracted. If—why not be extravagant, in fantasy—they had children, he’d never be home. Yet she felt tenderness for him. She wanted to forgive him, for hurting her. Katie’s father, now deceased, a machine shop worker in Jersey City through his adult life, had been the same way. Probably most men were. So much to think about, a world of numbers, odds that always eluded them. So much, they couldn’t hope to squeeze into their heads.
Lonely? That’s life.
The night before, in her apartment, in her bedroom where he’d rarely been, Fritzi had showed Katie snapshots of Morning Star, taken at the Thoroughbred farm where the horse was boarded and trained in rural Hunterdon County. The way Fritzi passed the snapshots to her, Katie could sense that he felt strongly about the horse; the way he pronounced “hairline fracture,” with a just-perceptible faintness in his voice, allowed Katie to know that Fritzi felt this injury as painfully as if it had been his own. “Beautiful, eh?” was all Fritzi could say. Katie marveled over the silky russet-red horse with a white starlike mark high on his nose, the high-pricked ears and big shiny black protuberant eyes, for Morning Star was in fact a beauty, and maybe the knowledge that such beauty was fragile, so powerful an animal as a horse can be so easily injured, was a part of that beauty, as pain was part of it: the pain of anticipated loss.
“Oh yes. Oh Fritzi! Beautiful.”
Two of the snapshots had been bluntly cropped. A third party, posed with Fritzi and Morning Star, had been scissored out of the picture. Katie wouldn’t ask: It had to be the third wife. (Her name was Rosalind. Very beautiful, people said. A former model. And younger than Katie Flanders by several years.) In the snapshots, Fritzi Czechi was smiling a rare wide smile, one of his hard-muscled arms slung around the horse’s neck, through the horse’s thick chestnut-red mane. Fritzi was wearing a sports shirt open at the throat, his stone-colored eyes gleamed like liquid fire; clearly he’d been happy at that moment, as Katie had to concede she’d never seen him.
Carefully Katie asked, “Was this last summer?”
“Was what last summer?”
“… These pictures taken.”
Fritzi grunted what sounded like yes. Already he’d taken the snapshots back and put them away in his inside coat pocket, with his narrow flat Italian leather wallet that was so sleek and fine.
Later, making love in Katie’s darkened bedroom, Fritzi had gotten so carried away he’d almost sobbed, burying his heated face in Katie’s neck. She’d been surprised by his emotion, and deeply moved. Katie wasn’t the kind of girl who could make love with a man without falling in love with him, or, it was fair to say, she wasn’t the kind of girl to make love with a man without preparing beforehand to fall in love with him, and deeply in love with him, like sinking through a thin crust of ice and you discover that, beneath the ice, there’s quicksand. She’d been wondering if she would ever hear from Fritzi Czechi since the last time she’d seen him, months before, and now he was with her and in her arms, and he was saying, “You’re my good, sweet girl, Katie Flemings, aren’t you?” and Katie pretended she hadn’t heard the wrong name, or maybe she could pretend she’d heard, but knew that Fritzi was teasing. She said, “I am if you want me, Fritzi.” She hadn’t meant to say this! It sounded all wrong. Holding Fritzi’s warm body, stroking his smooth tight-muscled back, kissing the crown of his head where his hair was thinnest, as, half-consciously, you might kiss an infant at such a spot, to protect it from harm, she teased, “Are you my ’good, sweet guy,’ Fritzi Czechi?”
Fritzi was most at ease in banter. The way an eel squirms, so you can’t get hold of it.
• • •
Fritzi said, “Exit after next, sweetheart.”
The Meadowlands exit was fast approaching. Traffic was becoming congested in the northbound lanes. Katie, who’d been cruising at fifty-five miles an hour, was wakened from her reverie by her lover’s terse voice. The BMW handled so easily, you could forget where you were, and why. Maybe he’s testing me. Like a racehorse.
“Looks like lots of people have the same idea we do.” Katie meant the other vehicles, headed for the racetrack. “Coming to see Morning Star win his race!”
Again, this sounded wrong. Childish. Katie knew better. Men who followed the horses, especially men like Fritzi Czechi who were professionally involved in the business, didn’t require vapid emotional support from women, probably they resented it. All that they required was winning, which meant good luck, beating the odds, and no woman could provide that for them.
Except for the Meadowlands complex, which covered many acres, this part of Jersey wasn’t developed. The land was too marshy. There were dumps, landfills. Long stretches of sere-colored countryside glittering with fingers of water like ice. Toxic water, Katie supposed. All of northeast Jersey was under a toxic cloud. Yet there was a strange beauty to the meadowlands, as it was called. Even the chemical-fermenting smell wasn’t so bad, if you were used to it. Katie remembered how once when she’d driven along this northern stretch of the Turnpike, into a wasteland of tall wind-rippled rushes and cattails that stretched for miles on either side of the highway, traffic had been routed into a single, slow lane, for there were scattered fires burning in the area; mysterious fires they’d seemed at the time, which Katie would learn afterward had been caused by lightning. The season had been late summer; much of the marshland was dry, dangerously flammable. Clouds of black, foul-smelling smoke drifted across the highway, making Katie choke, stinging her eyes. There were firetrucks and emergency medical vehicles, teams of fireworkers in high boots in the marsh, Jersey troopers directing traffic. Katie had tried not to panic, forced to drive her small car past fires burning to a height of ten feet, brilliant flamey-orange, some hardly more than a car length from the highway. Like driving through hell, you took a deep breath and held it and followed close behind the vehicle in front of you, hoping the wind (yes, it was windy, out of the northeast) wouldn’t blow a spark or a flaming piece of vegetation against your car, and after a mile or so you were out of the fire area and you could see again, and you could breathe again, and you felt the thrill of having come through, a sudden stab of happiness. “I’m alive! I made it.”
Fritzi was directing Katie to exit, and where to turn at the top of the ramp. As a horse owner he had a special parking permit. Again Katie wondered why he wasn’t driving the BMW and would afterward think, It was all so deliberate! Like life never is.
They went to the long open barn behind the racetrack where the horses were stalled before their races. This part of the Meadowlands complex, hidden from view of spectators, was bustling with horse activity. Katie stared: so many horses! A local TV camera crew was filming the noisy disembarkment of a Thoroughbred stallion from his van, led blinkered and whinnying down a ramp by h
is elderly trainer. Photographs were being taken. Katie was struck, as she’d been at her previous visit, by the number of what you’d call civilians in the barn: families, including young children, hovering about their horses’ stalls. And everywhere you looked, horses were the tallest figures: their heads looming above the heads of mere human beings, who appeared weak and inconsequential beside them. Even Fritzi Czechi looked diminished, his face suddenly creased with an expression you wouldn’t call worry, more like concern, an intense concern, as he was approaching Morning Star’s stall.
For this warm June evening at Meadowlands, Fritzi was wearing designer sports clothes: an Armani jacket, jeans that were fitted to his narrow hips like a cowboy’s attire, and dark canvas shoes with crepe soles. The jacket was sleekly tapered, though boxy at the shoulders, with large stylish lapels; the fabric was a soft pale gray, the color of a dove’s wings, and only if you looked closely could you see the fine, almost invisible stripes in the cloth. Beneath, Fritzi was wearing a black T-shirt: but a designer T-shirt. Fritzi Czechi always dressed with a certain swagger, unlike most guys from Jersey City of any age or class, and his hair was styled to appear fuller and wavier than it was. Katie saw he wasn’t tinting it, though. A fair faded brown beginning to turn nickel-colored, like his eyes.
A photographer for the Newark Star-Ledger recognized Fritzi and asked to take his picture with Morning Star, but Fritzi shrugged him off, saying he was too busy. Usually, in public, Fritzi Czechi was smoothly smiling and accommodating, so Katie knew: This race meant a lot to him.
And if to Fritzi, then to Katie Flanders. My future will be decided tonight. Suddenly she was scared! On all sides she could feel the excitement of the races, like tension gathering before a thunderstorm, and this evening’s Meadowlands races were ordinary events, no large purses at stake. Katie didn’t want to imagine what it might be like at the Belmont Stakes, the Kentucky Derby. Millions of dollars at stake. Was this where Fritzi Czechi was headed, or thought he might be headed? Or was Fritzi just a small-time Jersey horse owner, hoping for luck? Katie felt how deeply her life was involved with his, or might be. She wanted him to win, if winning was what he wanted, and if he wanted badly to win, she wanted this badly, too. A man is the sum of his moods, it was moods you had to live with. If he had a soul, a deeper self, that was something else: his secret.
The tips of Katie’s fingers were going cold. She clutched at Fritzi’s arm, but he was getting away from her, walking so quickly she nearly stumbled in her two-inch cork-heeled sandals with the open toes and tropical-colored plastic straps. Katie was a soft-bodied fleshy girl, and she was wearing a candy-striped halter-top nylon dress that showed her shapely breasts to advantage; the skirt was pleated, to obscure the fullness of her hips and thighs, about which she felt less confidence. Her dark blonde hair was tied back in a gauzy red scarf, and around her neck she wore a tiny jade cross on a gold chain, a gift from Fritzi Czechi on the occasion of some long-ago birthday he hadn’t exactly remembered when Katie showed it to him.
Fritzi, see? I love it!
What?
This. That you gave me. This cross.
Quickly Katie had kissed Fritzi, to cover his confusion. She was skilled at such maneuvers with men. Always, you wanted a man to save face: Never did you want a man to be embarrassed by you, still less exposed or humiliated. Unless you were dumping him. But even then, tact was required. You didn’t want to end up with a split lip or a blackened eye.
Right now, Ftitzi was practically pushing Katie away. He’d forgotten who she was. At Morning Star’s stall, talking in an earnest, lowered voice with a fattish gray-haired man who must have been the horse’s trainer, while Katie was left to gaze at the horse, marveling at his beauty, and his size. She would play the wide-eyed admiring glamorously made-up female hiding the fact she’d been rebuffed, and was frightened: “Morning Star! What a beauty. So much depends upon you…” Katie was trying to overhear what Fritzi and the trainer were talking about so urgently. This was a side of Fritzi unknown to her: anxious, aggressive, not so friendly. It might have been that he and the other man, who was old enough to be Fritzi’s father, were taking up a conversation they’d been having recently, in which the words she, her, them were predominant. (Fritzi’s wife Rosalind? His ex- or separated wife who was a part-owner of Morning Star? Was Fritzi wanting to know if she was at the track, if the trainer had seen her?) Fritzi had only glanced at his horse, immense and restless in his stall, being groomed by a young Guatemalan-looking stable hand, and must have thought that things looked all right. Morning Star would be racing in a little more than an hour. When she’d visited Pink Lady before her race, Katie had been encouraged to stroke the horse’s damp velvety nose, and to stroke her sides and back, astonished at how soft and fine the hair was, but Morning Star was a larger horse, a stallion, and coarser, and when Katie lifted her hand to stroke his head as he drank from a bucket, he raised his head swiftly and made a sharp wickering noise and nipped at her fingers quick as a snake. “Oh! Oh God.” Katie stared at her hand, her lacquered fingernails, that throbbed as if they’d been caught in a vise. Within seconds there was a reddened imprint of the horse’s teeth across three of her knuckles. Fritzi called over sharply, “Katie, watch it,” and the trainer said, with belated concern, “Ma’am, don’t touch him, Mister can bite.” Katie quickly assured them she was all right. (Later she would realize: The stallion might have severed three of her fingertips, in that split-second. If he’d bitten down a littleharder. If he’d been angry. If Katie had been due for some very bad luck.)
Katie was hurt, the young Guatemalan groom hadn’t warned her she might be bitten. He was rubbing Morning Star’s sides, he’d been combing his mane, must have been aware of Katie putting out her hand so riskily, yet he’d said nothing, and was ignoring her now. And Morning Star was ignoring her, though baring his big yellow teeth, stamping, switching his tail. Ready to race? Did a horse know? Katie supposed yes, the horses must know. But they didn’t know how risky their race could be, how they might be injured on the track, break a leg and have to be put down. At one of the races the previous year, a horse and jockey had fallen amid a tangle of horses, and the horse had been “put down,” as Fritzi spoke of it, right out on the track beneath a hastily erected little tent. Katie had been appalled, she’d wanted to cry. You came to watch a race and you witnessed an execution. “Morning Star! That won’t happen to you.”
Fritzi came to inspect his horse. Fritzi dared to stroke the stallion’s head, talking to him in a low, cajoling voice, but not pushing it, and not standing too near. Always he was aware of the stallion’s mouth. He spoke with the groom, and a short, stunted-looking man who was Morning Star’s jockey, not yet in his colorful silk costume. It was a measure of Fritzi’s distraction, he hadn’t introduced Katie to either the trainer or the jockey. She stood to one side feeling excluded, hurt. Embarrassed! She would make a story of it to amuse her girlfriends, who were eager to hear how things had gone with Fritzi Czechi. That damned horse!— it almost bit off three of my fingers. And you know Fritzi, all he does is call over, Katie, watch it.
Or maybe she wouldn’t tell that story. It wasn’t very flattering to her. Maybe, looking back on this evening at Meadowlands, in Fritzi Czechi’s company, Katie Flanders wouldn’t carry away with her any story she’d want to recall.
• • •
Of the nine races at Meadowlands that evening, Fritzi was interested in betting on the second, third, and fourth. Of the fifth race, in which Morning Star was racing, he seemed not to wish to speak. Maybe it was superstition. Katie knew that gamblers were superstitious, and touchy. She knew that being in a gambler’s company when he failed to win could mean you were associated with failing to win. Still she blundered, asking a question she meant to be an intelligent question about Morning Star’s jockey, and Fritzi replied in monosyllables, not looking at her. They were in the clubhouse before the first race, having drinks. Katie had a glass of white wine. Fritzi drank vodka on the rocks, and ra
pidly. He was too nerved up to sit still. Men came over to greet him and shake his hand and he made an effort to be friendly, or to seem friendly, introducing Katie to them by only her first name. Katie smiled, trying not to think what this meant. (She was just a girl for the evening? For the night? Expendable, no last name? Or, Fritzi had forgotten her name?) Many in the clubhouse for drinks were nerved up, Katie saw. Some were able to disguise it better than others. Some were getting frankly drunk. In other circumstances Katie would have asked Fritzi to identify these people, whom he seemed to know, and who knew him, at least by name. Fritzi ordered a second drink. He was looking for someone, Katie knew. The wife. Ex-wife? Rosalind. Fritzi was smoking a cigarette in short, rapid puffs like a man sucking oxygen, for purely therapeutic reasons. When forced to speak with someone he smiled a bent grimace of a smile, clearly distracted. Compulsively he stroked the back of his head, his hair curling behind his ears. Katie would have liked to take his nervous hand in hers, as a wife might. In an act of daring, she did take his hand, and laced her fingers through his. She told him she was very happy to be with him. She told him she was very happy about the previous night. “And I won’t ask about the future,” she said, teasing, “because Fritzi Czechi isn’t a man to be pinned down.” Fritzi smiled at this, and stroked her hand, as if grateful for the bantering tone. Yet always his gaze drifted to the entrance, as a stream of customers, strikingly dressed women, came inside. Katie asked if he’d stake her at betting, as he had the previous year, and Fritzi said sure. “Not only am I going to stake you, sweetheart, you’re going to place bets for me, too.” Katie didn’t get this. Must be, there was logic to it. She wasn’t going to question him. She wished she could take chloroform and wake after the fifth race, when the suspense was over, and Morning Star had either won, or had lost; if he’d lost, had he lost badly; if badly, how badly. Katie had a sudden nightmare vision of the beautiful roan stallion crumpled and broken on the track, medics rushing toward him, the sinister canvas tent erected over the writhing body… It would be Katie Flanders’s broken body, too.
