Gargantuan

by Maggie Estep

Irolled over and almost had a heart attack when I made contact with another body. I was about to reach for my weapon when I realized the body belonged to Lucinda and that I had invited her to be here.

  I sat up and looked over at the girl. She was lying on her side, turned toward me but sleeping at the far edge of the bed. She had one hand tucked under her cheek. Somehow, she looked weak in spite of her muscular body’s obvious strength.

  After taking a nap yesterday evening, I’d awakened feeling panicked. I’d put on clean clothes and had taken a quick walk to clear my head and think things through. The Bureau. My horses. Ruby. When I got back to the apartment I tried calling Ruby again. No luck. My facial hair was itching and I was lonely.

  I called Lucinda. She sounded a little aloof but did accept my invitation to go out for a late dinner. We had wine with our meal. Whiskey after. I offered to drive her back to her place. We got into my car. She gave me a soft sad look, then tentatively reached over and brushed her lips against mine. I put my hand on hers. Her skin was rough. She kissed me again. Harder this time. I took her home with me.

  She stood perfectly still as I removed her clothes. I tried to be tender. She was nervous. It was awkward and vaguely painful. And now, here she was. Sleeping at the far edge of the bed, as if afraid of intruding, even in sleep. She was naked and the sheet had come off the bed.

  I went into the kitchen and put a can out for Cat. I watched her devouring the little brown squares of meat, then proceeded into the bathroom to throw water on my face. I looked in the mirror, watching droplets trickle from my beard. I realized that until now I had never slept with a woman while sporting facial hair.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Lucinda was sitting up. She had pulled the sheet all the way up to her chin. Her hair was matted, her eyes were puffy, and she looked frightened.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “What time is it?” she asked abruptly.

  “Quarter to four,” I said, motioning at the bedside clock.

  Lucinda jumped out of bed. I got a good look at her back and the dark pink scar that was violent evidence of her accident. It was thick and ran the length of her spine. I felt my stomach knot up.

  “You’re looking at my scar,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She gave me a dirty look, then went into the bathroom. I heard her running water in the sink.

  I went into the kitchen and shuffled around. I made coffee, poached some eggs, and toasted four pieces of bread before Lucinda appeared. She looked considerably happier than she had upon waking. She smiled and looked around the kitchen. Cat had finished her cubes of meat, but was lingering near the bowl, licking her paws.

  “I made breakfast,” I told Lucinda.

  “Can’t eat now,” she said.

  “You can’t? You have to ride though, you need energy.”

  “Nope. Slows me down,” she said, shooting a dirty look at the toast.

  “I’ll watch you eat,” she said, sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs.

  I felt uncomfortable choking down my eggs as her eyes bored holes in me. She said nothing as she sipped black coffee. I tried bringing up a few topics. Who she was riding for this morning, Will Lott’s new turf mare, like that. Anything I said or asked was met with monosyllabic grunts. She evidently felt as awkward as I did. This was a relief, really.

  Twenty or so minutes later we left my apartment together. She said she had some riding clothes in a tack room at the track and didn’t need to go home.

  I parked the car then walked Lucinda to Don Beach’s barn, which was on the way to mine. The sun wasn’t thinking about coming up yet but the backside was alive and thrumming. The radios were going. Horses were whinnying. Buckets were rattling.

  “I’ll see you a little later?” I said as we lingered there at the edge of Don Beach’s shedrow.

  “Yeah,” she shrugged, not seeming to relish the idea.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. I could feel eyes on us. One of Don Beach’s grooms was staring. Within a half hour the backside would be talking about how the attractive exercise rider who’d had an accident and lost her nerve was sleeping with some claimer trainer with a beard.

  “Sure, everything is fine,” Lucinda said then turned her back to me.

  I wasn’t at all sure she’d turn up at nine to work my horses. Clove was racing and I was only going to walk her that morning but the other two needed work. I chastised myself for everything as I headed to my barn to feed.

  My horses looked worried. Humberto, the groom who feeds for both the trainers I share the barn with, was already there, dispensing grain to everyone but my three. I greeted the stocky Peruvian man. He favored me with a grunt. He seemed to get along with the horses just fine but he didn’t have any charm to waste on people.

  MY HORSES WERE relieved when I dumped breakfast into their feed tubs. They’d all changed hands so many times before they’d doubtless had some very shitty handlers and missed more than a few meals. It made me a little sick to think about.

  I stood in Clove’s stall while she ate, watching to make sure she was cleaning up every last bit of her light breakfast. I didn’t need to worry. She inhaled the stuff then rattled her tub with her nose, letting me know she wasn’t pleased about the tiny portion.

  “You’re racing today, girl,” I told her, patting her neck. She truffled at my sweatshirt pockets, looking for the treats I normally kept there.

  “Sorry, girl. Not today.”

  I started taking off the wraps I’d had on her overnight. Her legs felt good. Cool, firm.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her. For an answer, she put her nose back into her empty feed tub. I took this as a good sign.

  I WENT ABOUT my business, mucking the stalls and grooming. Humberto had a salsa station going. It was giving me a headache but I didn’t want to start anything by asking him to turn it down. My efforts to block the music out led me to worrying over Ruby. Why she hadn’t called back. How I would sound to her when we did talk. If she would read my voice, my pauses, and know that I’d slept with someone else and that it had only made me miss her worse.

  The morning stretched out under a bed of clouds that was turning the day humid. It was getting close to nine. The plan had been for Lucinda to work my two horses right after the track renovation break, so they’d have the best footing possible. My horses needed all the help they could get. But nine had come and gone and I was about to give up when Lucinda appeared. Her hair was pinned up and her chaps were covered in mud. She looked good though. Like she’d absorbed a nice portion of the speed and power of the horses she had worked.

  “Hey,” I greeted her, trying for a relaxed tone, like I’d never had any doubt she’d show.

  “Ready?” was all she asked.

  Though she obviously didn’t have much to say to me, she communicated with Mike’s Mohawk well enough. I sat in the grandstand with binoculars, looking on as the woman I’d slept with worked my horse. I’d told her to give him a slow two-mile gallop. His back had been bothering him and I didn’t want to push him until he was a hundred percent. The horse wanted more though. Bobby Frankel’s star four-year-old, the one that had won the Derby the previous spring, was breezing under much scrutiny from the press and half the backside. The big dark colt came up to Mike’s flank, and my gelding fought Lucinda. Mike’s Mohawk didn’t know or care that he was a six-year-old Ohio-bred claimer. He didn’t want the other horse getting by him. Lucinda battled with Mike for a few moments and finally got him to settle and focus and let the other horse blow on by.

  Lucinda and I laughed about it later, after we’d worked Karma and put both him and Mike away.

  “Nobody told Mike he’s a claimer, huh?” Lucinda said, grinning.

  “That’s my horse,” I said. I asked her if she wanted to get some lunch but she declined. I was relieved. Maybe last night would blow over like a mediocre dream.

  BY EARLY AFTERNOON, there was nothing to do but wait around for Clove’s race
. The race was a seventeen-thousand-dollar claiming event for fillies and mares four years old and up. At age eight, Clove was definitely up. I’d fussed over the mare a lot already there wasn’t anything more to do for her and I really should have tended to some Bureau business but I just couldn’t. I tried calling Ruby again. The machine came on requesting that I leave good messages. I hung up and dialed her cell phone. The girl hates phones but back a few months ago, when I was still in New York and could never track her down, I bought her a cell phone. Not that she ever turns it on. I was expecting to get the voice mail and I almost hung up when she answered.

  “Yes?” she said. She must have known it was me, caller ID would show my number. But maybe by now she’d forgotten my number.

  “Ruby, it’s Ed.”

  “Hi,” she said. It was hard to read her tone. I could hear familiar background noise.

  “Are you at the track?” I asked, feeling a bit indignant that she’d be at a racetrack without me.

  “I am,” she conceded. “Are you?”

  “Yeah, of course, where else?”

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “I miss you, girl,” I said, surprising myself by getting right to the point.

  “You do?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Oh—” She fell silent. I waited. She didn’t add anything to that “oh.”

  “What are you doing at the track?”

  “Watching some races. With Violet Kravitz.”

  “Who is Violet Kravitz?”

  “Married to Henry Meyer, the trainer? Had Spyglass, that nice sprinter last year?”

  “Oh. Right. How’d you meet her?”

  “Long story,” she said.

  There was another pause.

  “I miss you too,” she said then.

  My mood improved considerably.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  At which point Lucinda appeared out of nowhere. I think I winced at the sight of her.

  “Look,” I said to Ruby, “I got a horse running this afternoon, I’d better get her ready. You gonna be around in the next few days? Can I talk to you a little more?”

  “Oh,” she said, a weird tone in her voice, “there’s intrigue actually. I’m not really around. But sort of.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you about it. Soon.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling deflated.

  Lucinda was looking at me. Her eyes were so dark they were impossible to read.

  “I’ll talk to you soon?” I said into the phone.

  “Yeah. Soon,” Ruby said.

  And that was it.

  I hit the Off switch and put my phone back in my pocket. I looked at Lucinda.

  “I didn’t get any lunch yet. Was wondering if you still wanted to eat,” Lucinda said, her voice catching a little.

  What with fussing over Clove and worrying about Ruby, I hadn’t eaten either. I figured going to the cafeteria with Lucinda might put me in the path of Roderick or one of the others I was trying to establish contact with.

  I found myself enjoying Lucinda as I watched her shoveling food into herself. When she’d refused breakfast this morning I’d suspected some sort of eating disorder, but, unless she was planning to trot off to the toilet and vomit, the girl apparently believed in feeding her healthy appetite. She was putting it away and, seeing the look of surprise on my face, motioned at her food, and said, “I don’t store it, I burn it.”

  I could feel eyes on us as we ate. Obviously word had in fact spread about Lucinda and me. No one knew me from a hole in the wall but Lucinda had been a top exercise rider. Her accident—and her coming back from it—was the stuff of minor legends. People knew who she was and they wanted to know her business. All the more if it involved a low-rent trainer who couldn’t possibly advance her stalled career.

  As we left the cafeteria, Roderick accosted us. He was warm now. Evidently, my friendship with Lucinda had earned me points.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “you get so you need some help with your string, maybe I could give you a couple hours here and there.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, trying to look pleased. “That’d be great, Rod, thanks. Course, I’m not there yet. Can barely pay myself. But it’s nice of you.”

  Roderick grinned, though more at Lucinda than at me.

  “I gotta go get my mare ready, she’s racing,” I told Roderick.

  “Okay,” he shrugged, looked at Lucinda from under his eyelids then turned and walked off.

  Lucinda seemed oblivious to the fact that the slow-witted groom wanted to follow her off the edge of the earth. She also didn’t seem to have anything to do with herself. I asked if she wanted to come help me get Clove ready.

  “Sure,” she said.

  She was hard to read. Not that I wanted that badly to read her, just that I felt like I owed it an attempt considering our two bodies had pressed up close to each other.

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, Lucinda stood at my side as I gave the jockey I’d hired, Sylvere Osbourn, a leg up onto Clove and led the pair around the walking ring.

  “What you want me to do with her, boss?” Sylvere asked in a condescending tone.

  Sylvere had been a very successful apprentice in his native Panama before coming up to the States to seek his fortune. He wasn’t a bad rider but he refused to play politics and gave trainers and owners his undiluted and unsolicited opinion on just about everything. He’d have been better off having never learned English. There were plenty of riders who spoke not a word of it and thus couldn’t get themselves into hot water mouthing off. It was all the same to me though, the guy could ride and he was the best I could afford.

  “She likes to come from behind so keep her in back of the pack awhile but don’t wait too long to make a move,” I told Sylvere. I’d gotten hold of tapes of three of Clove’s past races and had studied her preferences. I was hoping my conveying these to Sylvere wouldn’t go in one ear and out the other.

  “She’s usually got enough in the tank to come wide though and she likes that better than waiting in traffic,” I added.

  Sylvere nodded but I wasn’t exactly confident that he was going to follow my instructions. Of course, the way Clove had worked in a minute six, I didn’t have any great expectations. I watched him steer Clove onto the track and meet up with the pony horse. Clove looked pretty lively, like she was excited about racing.

  I went to one of the betting windows and put fifty bucks on her to win. It was a stupid thing to do but I had to do it. To her credit, Lucinda didn’t bet my mare. Even though doing so might have curried favor with me.

  “You don’t think she’s gonna do it, huh?” I asked Lucinda as we walked over toward the rail.

  “She might,” the girl said diplomatically.

  The horses were at the gate now. Clove loaded in peaceably and stood well as she waited for the bell. A moment later, the gates sprung open and the twelve fillies and mares bounded forward. I checked the tote board. Clove had gone off at 40-1. Second longest shot on the board.

  To my astonishment, Sylvere seemed to be following my instructions. He was letting Clove settle at the back of the pack. A small chestnut filly had set the pace and it looked fast. At the quarter mile the announcer called the time: twenty-two and change. Which was suicidal for a route race for claimers and, ultimately, would benefit Clove’s running style. I felt a quiver of hope. Which shrank at the three-quarters pole when Clove was dead last, close to fifteen lengths off the leader. I looked away, pained. Suddenly though, Lucinda grabbed my arm.

  “Look,” she said, motioning wildly at the track, “she’s coming on.”

  Sure enough, my bay mare was on the move. Like a damned bullet. Using herself so beautifully it looked like the other horses were standing still. She effortlessly passed horse after horse, and, with less than a furlong to go, she caught the pacesetter and pulled ahead, widening the margin to two lengths under the wire.

  I felt my heart hammering my chest.
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br />   “She won! She won!” Lucinda was saying, in case I hadn’t noticed.

  This was my first win as a trainer. At 40-1 no less. And I’d bet fifty bucks on her. Not bad for a day’s work.

  Lucinda was still at my side as I walked out onto the track and grabbed Clove’s bridle. Sylvere looked extremely pleased with himself.

  “How you like me now, boss?” he said, grinning down at me.

  I reached up and shook Sylvere’s hand then led Clove into the winner’s circle. Her eyes were huge and she was blowing pretty hard but her ears were forward; she was proud of herself. It was all I could do not to kiss the horse as I stood there, trying to keep her still for the photographer.

  Once the photographer finished, Sylvere leapt down off Clove and, accepting a few handshakes from well-wishers, made his way to the jocks room to change his silks.

  Lucinda was still glued to me as I led Clove back to the barn to walk her off and bathe her. I made a big fuss over the mare and she was clearly pleased with herself. She actually seemed to be holding her head a little higher and she had a new brightness in her eyes.

  And then, as afternoon loosened and turned to evening, after I’d groomed and wrapped and lavished attention upon Clove and finally put her up for the night, I found myself with a great deal of nervous energy. I didn’t want the electricity to end. Lucinda was still there. Raking the aisle in front of my horses’ stalls.

  I was torn. I didn’t think I could please this girl even if my heart had been fully in it. And it wasn’t. All the same, I felt like she’d had something to do with the beautiful hue of the day and I felt like I owed her something. I asked her to come home with me. She accepted. Not showing any feelings about it. Just saying, “Okay.”

  BEN NESTER

  17.

  The Comfort of Strangers

  When I finally laid eyes on the little guy my heart started beating so fast I thought it might come drumming out of my chest. Darwin was three now but to look at him, I’d have guessed four. He was rippled with muscle and built solid from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. What had been just flecks of gray in his coat had taken over now. He was a rich, dappled gray. He looked like a racehorse even though he’d only run one race so far. He was fussing at his groom, giving the guy just enough of a hard time to let him know who was really in charge. I felt so proud of the colt.