by Rosa Foxxe
He sat down next to her and slipped an arm around her neck.
“You look like you're pretty down in the dumps,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”
“Well, this will sound silly,” she said. “I mean, really silly. I don't even know if I want to tell you. Is there any way I don't have to tell you? I mean, can we just forget about the whole thing and go do something fun?”
“Forget about it?” Vinnie said. “No, of course not. I want to know how you are feeling and what's going on inside of your head. It doesn't bode well for me that you are sitting here with such a glum look on your face.”
They both sat side by side without speaking as the horses thundered around the track in front of them.
“Well, I guess I was just thinking that,” she started. “I was just thinking that maybe . . . Vinnie, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I was just thinking about how I don't belong here.”
Vinnie nodded gravely without looking over at her and put her hand on her knee.
“I know what you are feeling,” Vinnie said. “This place is dead. There isn't any soul here. I felt the same way when I first showed up in this God forsaken town. But let me tell you something, it isn't so bad when it works for you, you know what I mean? All of these people are here because their lives are so shallow and meaningless back home. That's really why they come, isn't it? No one comes here to learn about themselves or grow as a person. No one comes here thinking, 'This will be what's best for my little boy as he grows up.' Well, maybe some of the poor do, and then they end up in the gutter.”
Vinnie paused again as horses made their way around the track in front of them loud as a train.
“Point being is that no one comes here to get better, people come here to let loose and forget,” he said. “And it used to get me down too. And I'd feel all alone because everyone around us is from money, and not the kind of money you earn but the kind of money you're born with. This whole town, every last bit of it, was made so some mid management schmuck in some fortune 500 company could come here and get drunk, and cheat on his wife, and maybe catch a fight, then say something like 'What happens here stays here,' then get back on a plane and go back to where the fuck they came from initially. And yes, that is pretty fucking depressing when you think about it. So I try not to.”
There was a lull in the circling of horses around the track and Tyra looked at Vinnie.
“What do you think about then?” she asked.
“I think about the good things,” he said. “About the jobs that I create and the good people that use them to feed their families. I think about the charities I give money to so some of the poor people can get relief from their current plight. I think of my family back home who is depending on me to make things go well here. Things can't go poorly, you know. Everything has been given to me, everyone in the family has been put at my disposal. And if I mess it up then that's it, everything that we earned and all the battles we fought and won were for nothing.
So that's what I think about. I also try to avoid the horse track because it is especially bad watching these grand beasts circle the track like this. They were meant for so much more. But if not for the track, then how would we know them? Sure, maybe they should have been left to run wild forever, but most of the horses you see were never out in the wild to begin with. Most of them started in captivity, just like their parents and their parents before them.”
Vinnie stood up and Tyra stood with him.
“Come on, let's head back to the casino,” he said. “There is some art I'd like you to see.”
*
Vinnie and Tyra spent the rest of the day browsing his fairly substantial art gallery. But as the day wore on, Tyra sensed that Vinnie would send her off at the end of it. She wasn't sure how to feel about it, because she also got the feeling that he would use business as an excuse to distance himself from the event.
That wasn't the kind of ending Tyra wanted, even though she knew the reason it would end like that was because Vinnie planned on having her back around, which was good. But she would rather he come to the airport to see her off, like he came to pick her up. But that was before. Things had changed now; sex changed things. It wasn't in a bad way, it was just that their dynamic was a little different and not yet romantic enough that she could expect him to see her off like she wanted it to be.
The whole day she kept thinking about it until finally he brought it up.
“You know, I've had a great couple of days with you,” Vinnie said. “And although I wish we could have had more than one night, sometimes fate does not permit us the opportunity to choose how long we spend with each other.”
“Will I be leaving tonight?” she said.
Vinnie nodded, then kissed her on the cheek.
“But I'll have you back soon.”
Then everything was a blur, and soon enough she was back in Des Moines standing in the airport terminal, hailing a taxi to take her to her place. Had it all been a dream? She wondered, as the cab pulled up, if people actually had dreams long enough and intense enough they actually believed they had been somewhere else doing something else instead of dreaming.
Vinnie did seem like a dream now. One that had ended too quickly. Or had it? What good things could have happened if they would have spent another night together? Maybe they could have connected on an even deeper level, but there was the even more likely chance that the newness might have become threadbare and then they'd have seen the flaws in each other.
Vinnie was a smart guy to cut it short and keep it sweet. It certainly was making her want more of him. How long she'd have to wait, that would be up to him. But she knew it wouldn't be that long. After all, she was what he wanted, and there was only one of her. Vinnie would be content tonight; he'd think about the last two days and one night with a smile.
In a few nights he would get lonely, though. He'd think more and more about how nice it had been to have Tyra around, how hot she was, and how good of a lay she was. Tyra knew this as surely as she knew that the sun would rise the next day. So, as she slipped into her own bed she didn't worry at all about Vinnie or Vegas or any of the stuff that had happened while she'd been there with him. She just smiled and drifted off to sleep. She'd see Vinnie again, and when she did, sparks were sure to fly.
Chapter4
Tyra felt good to be back home at first. Being away just for a few days had put her in a nostalgic mood. She wondered how she could feel anything for the Midwest when life could be so hard there, or at least seems that way at times. All of the people in her life were very interested in what had gone on during her vacation. Her fellow workers were especially inquisitive.
“So what kind of business was this?” her boss asked.
His name was Steve and he was just curious in the good-natured way of Midwestern people. He had no idea that the kind of contest she'd entered was anything but a scam. When she'd pointed out that it had kind of been a scam since none of the men had been eligible as far as she knew. He'd conceded the point, but didn't seem convinced it was anything short of amazing.
“A casino, among other things,” Tyra said. “There were parts of it that were super glamorous—the theater was very impressive, as was the show but of course there were parts that were less than savory as well.”
“Prostitution?” Steve asked.
Tyra wasn't offended by the probing, especially since she knew that Steve was just interested in the way someone would be if they saw a comet flash by and could ask it questions as it went.
“Nothing like that as far as I know. It's just gambling. I don't know. I never thought it would rub me the wrong way. I mean it's a choice just like everything else. Maybe it isn't the act itself, it's just how much some people need to stay away from it and can't. And I'm not so sure about the horse races. I mean, how well they really treat the animals?”
“I've heard mixed things when it comes to animal rights about those types of situations,” Steve said as he sipped coffee behind his big d
esk. “The tracks and the circus and the like. I don't know if they treat them right or not. It's hard to parse out the fact from the fiction sometimes, because you know damn well some of those trainers actually care about the animals. But sometimes the show turns into spectacle and that's when things tend to leave the tracks when it comes to ethics and stuff like that. Like that one movie about the water park with the killer whales. I'm sure you've seen it.”
Tyra shifted in her chair. She wasn't in a hurry to end the conversation by any means. She'd wanted to talk to Steve before she left for the trip but he hadn't been around. Corporate often called him back home to handle special accounts that needed a certain touch. Steve was the kind of guy who made everyone feel comfortable, even when they were about to sign a very serious legal documents. Steve put Tyra at ease to the point where Tyra had started thinking of him as kind of a father figure. He always asked about her life and never hit on her or even showed any interest at all—Steve had been happily married for longer than Tyra had been alive.
They talked about all kind of things, sometimes things that were completely ridiculous to talk about in the work place. Steve didn't hesitate to call Tyra in his office to show her pictures of penguins in Africa, or read a quip from a movie review that was poignant. Tyra had never had a boss like Steve before, one that she genuinely trusted and looked forward to talking with.
“I haven't, actually,” Tyra said after a pause. “I don't think I could handle it. But the animals aren't what's really on my mind as much as the human who invited me out there.”
Steve leaned back in his chair and nodded as he looked out the window thoughtfully, taking a long sip of his coffee. Tyra knew that sometimes he had a hard time finding the right words, or knowing if he even needed words because he should really just sit and listen. She'd never talked to him about a man before but she didn't think that it would be a big deal or anything like that. She wasn't going to say anything that wasn't safe to say at work and she didn't plan on breaking down crying.
Besides, she really wanted to hear what Steve thought of the whole thing.
“Should I,” Steve hesitated, “voice my opinion? I mean, you know as well as I do, most of this stuff. I feel like I'll just be telling you things you already know.”
There was a storm moving in from the west. They were both studying it out of his office window. Iowa had a lot of storms, and some of them could turn nasty pretty quickly. It had been awhile since they had had a gentle storm, the kind that people write about to each other in letters, trying to capture the peaceful sound of rain pattering on a roof or the serene scene of snow as large as silver dollars slowly wafting down from clouded skies.
“Sometimes it's good to hear what I already know,” Tyra said. “You know how things can be when emotions get involved.”
“Are emotions involved?” Steve asked.
That was a good question. As far as emotions went, Tyra would need to know a whole hell of a lot more about the man that had selected her from all the girls before she could put a big word like “love” on what they were doing.
“I guess I'm not sure what we're really doing,” Tyra said. “And I know that sounds bad because I obviously slept with him.”
Steve splayed his forearms in front of him, careful not to spill his coffee.
“Hey, I don't know that,” Steve said. “And to be honest, I didn't even think about it. Not one bit. You know why? Because whenever I'd start to think about it I'd be like, 'Nope! Don't do it! It's none of your business!' And then I just don't think about it and I think about something else instead, like the weather.”
Steve gestured to the building storm on the horizon. The weather was something that a lot of people from the Midwest like to fall back on when they didn't have anything else to talk about, or so Tyra had always thought. Maybe there were other things the weather was good for, like growing things. Maybe some people spent a good chunk of their lives out on the prairie and just thought of the weather instead of thinking about other peoples' business. Then again, there were plenty of people who only talked about other peoples' business who had spent their whole life in Iowa.
“Well, just because you don't think about it, doesn't mean that other people don't think about it,” she said. “I know no one here is mean enough to say anything, and I mean work people, they are all nice to me. And I don't think word will get around town or anything like that since you folks are the only people who even know about it. But I'm just saying, that if it did, it would look a little bit sordid to some people.”
Tyra finished and sighed a long, heartfelt sigh. She'd been holding in those words for some time, waiting for the right person to listen.
“Was it sordid?” Steve asked. “And I don't ask to judge, and I'm not judging, nor do I care to judge. I'm just walking through the doors that you keep opening up in our conversation. First you mention that you slept with him, now you mention that it was sordid. And you are the only one saying these things.”
“Well what do you think,” Tyra asked. “And I don't want to hear about the weather, or about how your dog is sick, or how your kids are doing, or anything else that you could think of to keep from just telling me what you think. Oh, I also want to know how it looks, not just what you think. Because I think what you'll think will have the intention of not hurting my feelings.”
Steve put the coffee mug to his lips and grimaced. The coffee must have been going cold. One of Steve’s very few pet peeves was cold coffee, even lukewarm coffee. It just disgusted him outright.
“God, I hate it when the coffee goes cold all of the sudden,” he said. “This mug is insulated with air, so it's supposed to stay hotter longer. You know, it's like hollow. But it seems to get cold really fast when it does get cold.”
Steve's eyes ducked down to the desk when he saw Tyra glowering at him.
“All right, all right,” he said. “I get it. Fine. I'll tell you what you want to know. My actual thoughts, and what other people think. And since you want to know so badly I'll tell you at length what I think and what others think as well.”
Steve poured his coffee in the trash, the last little bit, and set his mug down on his desk with an air of finality. Tyra realized she was going to get exactly what she asked for and now she wasn't sure if she really wanted it. What if he said something horrible? What if it was something that he could never take back, no matter how hard he tried? There were a lot of ‘what ifs ‘going through her mind, but she knew that if she didn't give Steve the chance to speak that she would leave his office and spend the rest of her day sulking at her cubicle like some little kid who didn't have the gumption to open a present for fear of getting the wrong thing.
“Go,” Tyra said. “Before I change my mind. And quit waiting for me to change my mind already!”
Steve just dove in head first. “I frankly don't care what you do. At all. You're a good person, a hard worker, and you're smart. That's really all I care about. I hire people like that because I want my entire staff to be like that, that way I can have people in my office talking about all kinds of things. And please, please, don't think that me not caring what you do is me not caring about you.”
Steve paused and looked at his nails for a moment.
“But I won't steer you wrong on this one. I would care if what you were doing was all kinds of screwed up. Like you were sleeping with bartenders for shots or something. But you aren't. And honestly who wouldn't sleep with the guy who owned the casino and flew them across the country to hang out for a few days? Money, power, social status—all of those things have to do with overall attractiveness whether anyone wants to believe they do or not. That's just how life works.
And I bet this guy was a real gentleman, too, wasn't he? I bet he opened doors, and pulled out chairs, and in general was just there for you when you needed him. Wasn't he? Not that you really needed him but he wasn't scarce. Or at least I figure. Correct me if I'm wrong, because if he treated you poorly then my mind changes.”
Ty
ra shook her head.
“You're on the right track about his behavior,” she said. “He made himself very available. But I got the feeling that it was like a vacation for him. But that doesn't mean that he was there all the time. He had to do some stuff, casino stuff, I guess. I don't know what it was but he was occupied a good chunk of the day after. Then that night I took off.”
Steve nodded his head, then put his hands together so that the pads of his splayed fingers braced off each other in the age old profile of someone thinking.
“Well, like I said, the man runs a pretty big business,” Steve said. “So he'd be gone for a little bit of it.”
Tyra nodded.
“So, let me guess,” Steve said. “Let me guess one thing. And you don't have to answer if you don't want to. And I honestly don't know. And don't take this the wrong way and freak out or anything.”
Steve had never prefaced anything he'd said like this to her before. It made her nervous.
