by Otto Penzler
Except Katie wasn’t worth as much as Morning Star, whose bloodlines included Kentucky Derby winners. Katie had no life insurance, for there was no one for whom her life was precious.
After his third vodka, Fritzi took Katie to place their bets at the betting windows. The first race was shortly to begin. This wasn’t a race in which Fritzi was much interested, for some reason he hadn’t explained. Only the next three. And in each, he was calculating they’d win the exacta, which seemed to Katie far-fetched as winning a lottery: Not only was your bet on the winning horse, but on the horse to place. (What were the odds against the exacta? Katie’s brain dissolved into vapor, thinking of such things.) The money Fritzi gave her to bet with was in crisp twenty-dollar bills. Katie wasn’t paying much attention to the odds on the horses. How much could they win, if they won? Especially she didn’t want to know the exact sums of money they’d be losing, if they lost. Of course, all the money was Fritzi’s. Yet, if they won, Katie would win, too.
She thought, He does love me. This is proof.
Fritzi led her to their reserved seats, in a shady section of the stadium, at the finish line, three rows up. Drinking seemed to have steadied Fritzi’s nerves. He was still smoking, and looking covertly around. Whoever he was looking for hadn’t arrived yet. Katie was beginning to tremble. (All the money she’d bet! And the fifth race, Fritzie’s race, beyond that.) The first knuckles of her right hand were reddened, swollen, and throbbing.
Katie said, “I’m just so—anxious. Gambling makes me nervous.”
Fritzi said, “Horse racing isn’t gambling, it’s an art.”
He told her if you knew what you were doing, you didn’t risk that much. And if you didn’t know what the hell you were doing, you shouldn’t be betting.
“My way of betting,” Katie said, meaning to be amusing in the little-girl way she’d cultivated since childhood, “would be to bet on the horses’ names.”
Fritzi let this pass. “A name means nothing. Only the bloodline means anything. At the farm, young horses are identified by their dams’ names. Until they demonstrate they’re worth something, they don’t have any identity.”
Katie was grateful that Fritzi was talking to her again. Taking her seriously. She wanted to take his hands in hers and lace their fingers together to comfort him. Horses were at the starting gate, the crowd was expectant. A voice in her head, mellowed by wine, reminisced, That time at Meadowlands! Remember how nervous we were, Fritzi?’ I didn’t want to tell you how badly my hand was hurting. . .
Fritzi was saying, as if arguing, “Horse racing isn’t a crap shoot. It isn’t playing the slots. You figure how the horse has done recently. You figure the horse’s history, meaning the bloodline. You figure who the jockey is. You figure who the other horses are, he’ll be racing. And the odds. Always, the odds. There’s people who believe, and maybe I’m one of them, there’s no luck at all. No luck. Only what has to be, that you can figure. Or try to.” Katie was silenced by this speech of Fritzi’s, which was totally unlike him. He seemed almost to be speaking to someone else. Not the slightest trace of banter here, or irony.
It was during the first race that Fritzi’s wife, unless the woman was his ex-wife, came to sit a row down from them, twelve seats to Fritzi’s right. Katie saw, and recognized her immediately. Or maybe Katie was reacting to Fritzi’s sudden stiffness. Rosalind was with a tall sturdily built man of about Fritzi’s age with olive-dark skin and ridged, graying hair. She was a striking young woman, as she’d been described to Katie, stylishly dressed in a lilac pants suit with a loose, low-cut white blouse, and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her long straight dyed-looking black hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin was geisha-white, and her mouth very red. She was theatrical-looking, eye-catching. Katie felt a pang of jealousy, resentment. Rosalind was said to have been a model even while attending East Orange High School, and at the peak of her brief career she’d appeared in glossy magazines like Glamour and Allure. She’d married Fritzi Czechi and gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage and within a few years the marriage was over and it was Rosalind who’d sued for divorce. All Fritzi had ever said about this third marriage in Katie’s presence was that mistakes were made on both sides: “End of story.”
Katie knew better. Not a single guy she’d ever dated, or even heard of, no matter how long divorced, if he hadn’t been the one to initiate the divorce, he never forgot. A man never forgets, and never forgives.
Katie wondered what it would be like: a former husband still wanting you, when you didn’t want him. A former lover still loving you even as he hated you. A man you’d slept with, and hoped to have children with, fantasizing how he might kill you, for betraying him.
There had to be money involved, too, with Fritzi’s marriage. He’d signed over the house to Rosalind, and the house was reputedly worth a half-million dollars. And there was Morning Star, and maybe other horses. Common property. Katie felt how Fritzi was holding himself so still he was almost trembling, as if their seats and the stands and the very earth beneath them were vibrating, shaken by horses’ pounding hooves as they galloped around the track. Katie stared, seeing nothing. A blur. People were on their feet, shouting. Katie hadn’t bet on any horse in this race, none of the names meant a thing to her. She and Fritzi had no stake in the outcome. She scarcely glanced up when the winner was declared. The time: i.46.41. The purse was $17,000. (The purse for the fifth race would be $34,000.) Katie brushed her hand against Fritzi’s and felt his icy fingertips.
High overhead, drifting across the red-streaked sky, was a lighted dirigible advertising a brand of cigarettes. Katie glanced upward, startled. Though she didn’t exactly mean it, she heard herself saying to Fritzi, “These big open stadiums! They scare me. Somebody could drop a bomb. Some sniper could shoot into the stands. On TV I saw this soccer riot somewhere in South America. Think if people panicked, how you could be trampled…”
Fritzi said, “There’s cops here. Security cops. Things like that don’t happen in the U.S.” Fritzi was forcing himself to speak in a normal-sounding voice. But still he sat stiffly, turned slightly to the left to prevent him seeing the strikingly dressed young woman who’d been his third wife, and the man who was with her. Katie thought, dismayed, He loves her. He’ll never get over it. She had a vision of Morning Star winning his race, and Fritzi and Rosalind coming together to hug each other, united in victory. Reconciled. Was that how this evening at Meadowlands would turn out?
Ruefully Katie rubbed her throbbing fingers. She saw, shocked, that one of her meticulously manicured fingernails, lacquered ivory-pink, was broken and jagged. The nail was splitting vertically, into her flesh.
After the first race, in which they had no stake, things would happen swiftly.
• • •
In the second race, Katie had placed bets on Sweet Nougat to win and Iron Man to place. They came through. Katie was on her feet screaming and flailing the air as the horses raced around the track. All of it happening so fast: like a speeded-up dream. The horses’ rushing legs, pounding hooves, the jockeys crouched over their backs in colorful silk costumes, little monkey-men wielding whips— “Oh my God! Oh my God we won! We won, Fritzie, we won!” Like an overgrown child Katie flailed the air with her arms, hardly able to contain her excitement. The color was up in her face, her pulse beat in a delirium of hope. Fritzi remained seated. With his stub of a pencil he made a check on the racing form. When Katie tried to hug him he stiffened, keeping her at a little distance with his left forearm; not a forcible gesture, and in no way hostile, but Katie would recall it afterward. Didn’t want me to touch him. Oh Fritzi!
In that first race, clocked at 1.25.01, Katie and Fritzi won $1,336 each.
“Honey, you don’t even seem much surprised,” Katie said, lightly chiding. She dabbed at her overheated face with a tissue. “Fm surprised. I never win things!”
Fritzi shrugged, and smiled. As if to say that, with him, now she would.
In the third race, they’d
bet on Hot Ott to win and Angel Fire to place. Another time Katie was on her feet flailing the air and screaming and another time their horses pulled away from the pack, Hot Ott by a length ahead of Angel Fire, the two horses racing head-long and furious in the homestretch, and Angel Fire was overtaking Hot Ott, had almost overtaken Hot Ott, but had not, and so it was Hot Ott to win and Angel Fire to place. “He won! Our picks won!” Perspiration glowed on Katie’s skin, her eyes were radiant with innocence and hope. In this race they hadn’t won quite so much as they’d won in the first, but it would be $834 apiece. Katie sat close beside Fritzi wanting to hug, hug, hug the man, but content with just nudging knees. She fanned herself with the track program. Tendrils of hair clung to her forehead. She was trying not to glance to the side, to observe the third Mrs. Czechi in her elegant wide-brimmed straw hat, calm and beautiful in profile; though she was wishing she’d worn a straw hat herself, it conferred such class to the wearer. “Some days, they seem to last forever. I mean, you remember them forever. It’s like eternity. This is one of them, for me, Fritzi, it is.” Katie spoke happily, heedlessly. She was one to speak her heart, when she believed she spoke truthfully, and when what she said would be heard, and valued, by another whom she trusted. Stiff and unyielding as a man who has been wounded and is trying not to betray pain, Fritzi was observing Katie with his stone-colored eyes that were oddly moist, sympathetic. That was what Katie believed: sympathetic. Fritzi Czechi was her friend, he’d always be her friend, not only her lover. “It’s like at certain times in our lives, rare times, God peers into time out of His place in eternity and it’s like a—” Katie paused, blushing, not knowing what she was saying: a flash of lightning? a spotlight in a theater? an eclipse of the sun, as the sun is easing free of the shadow over it? Probably she was making a fool of herself, chattering like this. Fritzi squeezed her hand as if to calm her. “Katie, you’re my good, sweet girl, aren’t you?” he said, and Katie murmured yes, yes! and Fritzi said, “You and I go ’way back. We’re old buddies.” Katie shut her eyes to be kissed, and Fritzi did kiss her, but only on the nose, wet and playful as you’d kiss a child.
It was like Fritzi was amused by her, for her caring so much that they’d won a couple of thousand dollars. But Katie was feeling, well—like a winner should. Flying high! Drunk! That happy airy floating kind of drunk before you start to stumble, and find yourself puking into a toilet. She’d had just one glass of dry white wine in the clubhouse but it was as if she’d been drinking champagne all evening. She had a quick warm flash of being married to Fritzi Czechi and the two of them living somewhere suburban; no, they were living in Fair Hills, or was it Far Hills, Jersey horse country, Fritzi could raise Thoroughbreds, champion racehorses. In the barn, she’d liked the smell of the horses. Even the horses’ droppings. It was mixed with an overlying smell of hay. And that was sweet. She would learn to ride a horse: It wasn’t too late. Tall and elegant in the saddle she would take equestrian lessons, lose eighteen pounds and be slender again, and Fritzi would love her, and possibly he’d be faithful to her. But always, Fritzi Czechi would be her friend.
The fourth race! In the fourth race, Ftitzi and Katie won the lottery: the trifecta.
Heavenly Jewel to win, Billy’s Best to place, Sam the Man to show. They’d picked them all.
Another time Katie was on her feet, squealing, radiant with excitement. It was like she was back in high school those frenzied Friday nights cheering for the Jersey City team to win. Except here were nine horses, and of these nine any one could win, all the more triumphant their victory when Heavenly Jewel thundered across the finish line by a nose ahead of Billy’s Best, and there came Sam the Man behind, and this time even Fritzi registered a smile, a small smile of surprise, yes Fritzi was surprised to have won the trifecta. (So maybe he did believe in luck, after all.) Katie cried, “Fritzi, it’s magic. You are magic’’ Magic meant they’d collect $3,799 each.
Still Fritzi seemed not-himself, somehow. Katie nudged his knees. Why wasn’t he sexier, funnier? “You don’t always win like this, honey, do you?” Katie asked, and Fritzi shrugged, “No. I have to admit.” It was like Fritzi that, though he was visibly warm, he wouldn’t unbutton the Armani jacket. A film of perspiration gleamed on his fair, flushed skin like miniature jewels. Slowly he stroked his hair behind his ears, a man in a trance.
The next race was the fifth.
Morning Star, and eight others. Katie was so scared, she hoped she wouldn’t faint. She could see that Fritzi was in some zoned-out space, very quiet, very still, just staring at the starting gate. Morning Star was second-to-inside, his jockey wore yellow silks. There was a hush of expectation through the stands. Covertly Katie glanced to Fritzi’s right and saw the beautiful black-haired young woman in the wide-brimmed straw hat also sitting very straight, very still, and gripping the arm of the man beside her.
Katie was trying not to think hairline fracture, beyond computation, put down. Was there a more devastating term than put down! She remembered the tangle of horses and jockeys in that race last summer, a horse had balked coming out of the gate, and swerved sideways into another, and horses had fallen, and jockeys, and the race was jinxed from the start though other horses had pulled away in the clear, and Pink Lady had galloped so hard, you could see the filly was running her heart out, yet the evil little monkey-man hunched over her neck continued to use his whip, and shuddering and in a lather she’d galloped over the finish line not first, not second, but third—and wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that good enough? Though that evening, Katie had to concede Fritzi had been in an irritable mood, waving away Katie’s elation, and the well-intentioned congratulations of others. For third place wasn’t good enough. Third place at Meadowlands, a weekday race that’s one of nine races, the purse is only $21,000 to win, no: not enough. Not for Fritzi Czechi. Gallop your heart out, it isn’t enough.
For a melancholy time then Katie hadn’t heard from Fritzi Czechi. He was back with his wife Rosalind. If she’d begun divorce proceedings, these were halted. Temporarily. Katie made inquiries about Pink Lady and learned that the filly had lost races, hadn’t qualified for some high-stakes handicap in Florida, and Fritzi had sold her.
What happens then, Katie asked, dreading to know. Whoever it was telling her this, a jokey kind of guy, he’d run his fingers across his throat. “Dog food.”
Katie didn’t believe that, though. She did not.
Not Pink Lady who’d been so comely, of whom, for a while, Fritzi Czechi had been so proud.
• • •
At the gate, one of the horses was stamping its feet, misbehaving, there was a delay and the horse was led off and an announcement made, Duke II was “scratched.” Katie thought: This was good luck, what might have gone wrong in the race went wrong before the race, and Morning Star was safe.
“Morning Star” : Katie murmured the name aloud. She squinted to see where he was positioned. The tall horse, beautiful russet-red coat, white starburst high on his nose, was lost amid the others at the starting gate. All nine horses were large, beautiful, powerful beasts with muscled haunches. Each was prized by its owners. Each was worth a lot of money. It was like seeing someone you think you love, unexpectedly in a public place, and you realize he isn’t extraordinary, isn’t that good-looking, nothing special about him but you’ve invested your heart in him, you love him and want to love him and to withdraw that love would be to violate your own heart, to turn traitor.
The race began. So fast! Sudden! Katie was on her feet, blinking in confusion. Somehow it was more than the usual confusion of horses’ flying hooves, the gaily colored costumes of the jockeys, Katie’s eyes were dazzled, hardly could she catch her breath. Morning Star! Where was he? Another horse was in the lead? By a length? Pulling away? She saw the roan stallion thudding along behind, caught in the pack, struggling to break ahead. A horse did break ahead, but it wasn’t the roan stallion. On Morning Star, the monkey-man in the yellow silks wielded his whip. All the monkey-men were wielding their
cruel little whips. Katie was too frightened to scream, to squeal, to flail her arms this time. For this was the race of her life.
She saw Morning Star, her lover’s horse who’d bitten her, galloping into the turn, straining to pull away from the others. Almost, Katie had an evil thought: wished there would be an upset: a spill: two horses tangled together, three horses, and falling, and Morning Star would pull away, free. In her trance of oblivion she was praying, God, let him win. God, God, let him win I will never ask another thing of You. The lead horses were in the backstretch. Morning Star was among the lead horses now. Was Morning Star pulling forward? He was! The lead horse, a big purely black stallion, had begun to wobble, other horses would overtake it. Swift and pitiless other horses would overtake it. There was the yellow-clad jockey easing his horse faster, always faster. Katie was screaming now, unaware. Screaming herself hoarse. She had no awareness of Fritzi, who was on his feet beside her, but very quiet, only just staring, his arms slightly lifted, elbows at his sides. She had no awareness of others in the stands shouting, screaming. There came horses into the homestretch, Morning Star on the inside of the track, in fourth place, now in third place, galloping furiously, now overtaking the front-running horses, in second place close behind the lead horse and edging closer, ever closer, to passing that horse; and if the track had been longer, if only the track had been longer!—the roan stallion would have passed the lead horse, thundering across the finish line only just a half-length behind the winner.
The race was clocked at 1.10.91. It would be the fastest race of the evening. Anchor Bay the winner, Morning Star second, and Blue Eyes third. Katie’s cheeks were damp with tears. She had never been so happy. She cried to Fritzi, “Oh, honey, that was good, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? His first time back, with his knee hurt? We came in second, we didn’t lose, he did real well, didn’t he? Honey?” In her excitement Katie was pawing at Fritzi, wanting badly to hug him, and he gripped her elbows to calm her, to steady her; he was himself in a daze though not smiling, not delirious with relief and happiness like Katie, more like a man waking from a dream of heart-stopping intensity not knowing where he was, but knowing what he must do. His face that was usually flushed was ashen, a rivulet of sweat ran down his forehead, his stone-colored eyes were shimmering with moisture. What was wrong with Fritzi Czechi? Telling Katie, with a small fixed smile like a mannequin’s smile, “We did real well, sweetheart. Right. This is our lucky day.”
