by Maggie Estep
By the time I get back to my place my knees hurt and my stomach is in knots from running on a full stomach but it’s the least of my worries. The cats, who came to greet me at the door, seem aware that something is wrong. They keep out of my way as I press the Play button on the answering machine. Another message from Sal. Again, I try his cell phone. Still nothing. I have to go to the track.
I run into the bedroom to put on warmer clothing. I’m just getting my red down jacket out of the hallway closet when the phone rings. I race over to get it on the second ring.
“Yes?” I answer breathlessly.
“Ruby?” says a female voice.
“Who’s this?”
“Violet Kravitz.”
“Oh, hello.”
“There’s been some unpleasantness at the track,” Violet says.
“Unpleasantness? What?”
“Murder,” Violet says quietly.
“What?” I feel like I’m going to vomit.
“Layla, an exercise rider. She was murdered during morning works.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling relieved and then immediately guilty for my relief.
“I nearly scratched Jack from his race. I feel very strangely about running my horse on such a terrible day. However, Henry thinks we should run.”
“He’s probably right,” I offer, still not sure what any of this has to do with me and half expecting worse news to be forthcoming.
“You’re not working today?” Violet asks.
“No, my boss sent me home.”
“That’s good.”
“How so?”
“I’m calling because I understand that you and Attila have had some sort of disagreement and I assumed you weren’t planning on coming to watch the race. I can’t say that the atmosphere here is particularly good but I would like to see you and I’d like it if you were here to cheer Jack on. The horse was so fond of you and I admit to having small superstitions. I feel your being there would help him somehow.”
“I’m actually on my way,” I tell Violet. I’m aching to tell her exactly why I’m on my way. I bite my tongue though.
“That’s wonderful,” she says, sounding genuinely delighted. “You’ll come find us on the backstretch then? We’ll be in the receiving barn. I’ll leave your name at Security.”
“Thanks, Violet, yes, I’ll be right there. Oh, and have you seen my friend Sal?”
“The big fellow? Attila’s friend?”
“Yeah, him.”
“I saw him earlier, yes. He was with Attila after this morning’s terrible events. I haven’t seen either of them in a while though.”
“All right, I’ll be there soon, Violet, and thank you.”
I hang up and realize that the only way I can conceivably get to Aqueduct quickly is to take a car service. I put a jacket on, check that the cats have fresh water, then throw money, keys, and cigarettes in my pocket and leave. I glance over at Ramirez’s door and wish it were open. I don’t know that I’d tell him what I’m up to, but just having a “Hello, lady” from him would give me strength. The door is closed though and there aren’t any sounds emanating from his apartment. I go down the stairs two at a time and jog over to the car service on Mermaid Avenue. There are two cars parked outside the tiny storefront, waiting for something to do. A lively Dominican man ushers me into his beat-up white Lincoln Town Car and I tell him my destination.
“You playing the ponies?” he asks with interest.
“No, I mean yeah, maybe, but I’m going to see a horse I know in a race.”
“Oh yeah? You got a hot tip for me, girl?”
This makes me wonder. Do I? Will Attila ride well?
I tell my driver to bet Jack Valentine in the fifth.
BEN NESTER
25.
Runaway
I stare at the little guy knowing there’s a chance I’m not going to see him again for a long while. Darwin’s groom, Petey is mucking some stalls out down the aisle. He nodded at me when he saw me heading over here. I feel okay about Petey. In the time I’ve been watching him, I’ve seen he’s come to really give a shit about Darwin. Maybe not the way I do, but I know he’ll see to it nothing bad happens to the little guy. Though Petey can’t do anything to keep the colt safe on the track. It’s up to me to take care of that. Which means I might not be seeing much of Darwin anymore.
Darwin reaches his head over the stall guard, trying to bite at my pockets where he knows I’ve got peppermints for him.
“Hey, no biting,” I tell him, tapping him on the forehead a little. He pins his ears at me. I frown at him. Eventually, he puts his ears forward again. I scratch under his chin and feed him a couple of peppermints, watching him roll them around on his big tongue.
After a long while, I run my hand down Darwin’s face one last time and then walk away. I don’t turn around even though I can feel him looking at me.
I’m back at Carla’s shedrow going over some tack I’ve got hanging on a hook in the aisle. I’m just getting some gunk out of a bit when I hear a loud noise and I look up to see a horse tearing toward the barn. I frown up at the sight and it takes me a minute to realize it’s my boss, Carla, on a runaway and that he’s taking her back to his stall. Before I’ve had time to think, Carla is ducking, trying to flatten herself against the horse’s neck as he shoots for his stall. The stall door is closed and the colt bangs right into it then starts rearing.
“Nester!” Carla screams, sounding genuinely terrified.
I come within a few feet of the flailing horse and start grabbing at his reins. He’s snorting and crazed and can’t figure out which way is up. I’ve got to get hold of him before he hurts himself and my boss.
I try to put myself inside the horse’s mind to send good thoughts there. The horse calms down a little bit. I reach for the reins. Carla’s still screaming which isn’t helping any. I pull the horse’s head toward me but he spooks and tries to rear again. I send him more calmness and in that one moment of quiet, Carla gets her feet untangled from the stirrups and hops down.
“Jesus,” she says, collapsing right there in the dirt.
The horse, a two-year-old named Soft Demon, is terrified and still trying to pull away from me.
“Don’t do it, buddy,” I tell him. “You’re gonna hurt yourself and you won’t like that one bit,” I say.
He suddenly stands completely still, his big eyes and labored breathing the only sign of his chaos.
People have gathered around, some of them having seen the start of the event up in the paddock where Carla was trying to give the colt a schooling session, though why she rode the poor colt in the paddock I don’t know. I thought she was just going to lead him around and show him the sights there. Carla gets to her feet and people start asking if she’s all right. I open Demon’s stall door and lead him inside. I stand at his head awhile talking to him and at first he just keeps looking around, expecting something terrifying to suddenly appear in his stall. After a long five minutes, he finally puts his head down and rubs against my chest. The terror has abated. I start taking the tack off him. He’s wet with sweat and I’ve got to walk him off but I don’t want to risk taking him out of his stall again with all the brouhaha going on out there. I feel myself getting angry at the rubberneckers and, as I let myself out of the stall, I glare at them. Carla is evidently enjoying a moment in the sun over it all, holding court, recounting the event. This annoys me. I clear my throat: “Folks, please move along, I got a scared horse I gotta walk off.”
At first Carla looks at me like I’m a fool, but eventually she starts nodding in agreement.
“He’s right,” she says, “we need some quiet here.”
Which is when I notice the big bald guy. The one that’s always hanging around that jockey husband of Ava’s. His is one of at least six faces staring at me, though what the hell he’s doing here I couldn’t tell you. I thought I saw the guy get in his truck and drive away when I was tagging after Attila two hours ago. The guy was upset about the girl
dying on the track and I’d watched him yelling at the jockey—seeming to hold him somehow responsible. I had also felt like the shooter was after the jockey—who’d been dressed the same as the girl exercise rider. I wished the shooter had offed the jockey—then it wouldn’t be my problem anymore. Now though, I’ve got even more problems. Once I do get the jockey out of the way, I figure I have to find that shooter. After all, he almost killed a horse.
The onlookers start leaving, but the big bald guy keeps standing there, looking at me. I look right back at him to the point where it’s getting weird. Just when I’m about to say something to the big guy, he turns and goes away.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts clouding my head but I need to get Soft Demon cooled off, so I keep the thoughts away and go back into the colt’s stall. I put his halter on and run a stud chain under his lip. I lead him outside and start walking him. He snorts a little at Crow, who’s tied up outside the tack room, but on the whole, the colt is back to his normal self. I match my pace to his and we walk, my right foot hitting the dirt at the same time as his right front hoof.
ATTILA JOHNSON
26.
The Layout of Eternity
It can all turn on a dime. Two days ago I had hope. The blizzard had stopped, I was about to get on a horse, and I had a romance going with a very attractive woman. I knew some folks were ticked off that I was refusing to hold horses back, knew maybe there’d be consequences, but meeting Ruby had made me want to clean my slate. I never suspected how severe the consequences would be.
Right now, I’m sitting in a far corner of the grandstands where no one would think to look for me. I’ve got a watch cap pulled down over my telltale pale hair and I’m wearing a thick overcoat to disguise my smallness. And I feel pretty goddamned small. It’s forty-five minutes till the first race and I have to get to the jocks room soon, but I needed to be alone first, to stare at the track, to attempt to clear my head. All around me, Aqueduct is coming to life. Bettors are arriving swollen with hopes and jocks are going into the jocks room and owners are wondering if this is their day and trainers are cautiously optimistic and horses are being led from their barns and I just don’t care about any of it, can’t feel any of the adrenaline and beauty coursing through me because Layla is dead and it should have been me. By now, I’m sure the unlucky sniper has learned of his mistake and is hunting me. And Layla is hopefully off somewhere, her soul transported to a calmer place. I’m not sure what I think about the potential for afterlives and souls but in all likelihood, I’ll be getting a tour of the layout of eternity very soon. I’m not planning to hold Jack Valentine back this afternoon. I’m going to give him my all.
Harsh wind is blowing over the track and up into the grandstands. I shiver and sink deeper into my overcoat. An old man in a down jacket has taken a seat a few rows in front of me. He has a hot dog which, by now, surely must be frozen. I don’t know what he’s doing out here when there’s ample room in the heated part of the grandstands. He probably just doesn’t like people. Is a loner among loners. He spreads the Form on his lap and bites into his hot dog. Out on the track infield the tote board starts flashing odds. The man in the down jacket crumples up his paper hot-dog plate and throws it to the ground. I’m incensed. I once heard a song lyric saying something to the effect of I can be condemned to hell for every sin but littering. I hate littering. I want to kill this man for littering.
With this thought, I get up from my seat. I walk past the litter-bug and shoot him a disparaging look. He looks right back at me. He has dead eyes in a face the color of pollution. If I do make it through this day alive and find some way to place myself in the world, I won’t have to look into the dead souls of the more degenerate gamblers anymore. There are plenty of respectable horseplayers and race fans but for every one of them there are two droolcases who barely even see the horses and certainly don’t think of them as the noble creatures they are. I’ve heard these types call horses pigs, blood clots, and of course, the ever popular nag. It’s these people who are the real nags and ought to be forced to gallop thirty-five mph on one leg with blood pouring out of their mouths.
As I walk toward the jocks room, I remember telling Jim, the racing secretary, that I’d stop in and say hello. His wife is friends with Ava and the four of us used to grab dinner sometimes. Now I never see the guy. I make a quick detour but Jim’s in the middle of a thousand things so I don’t stay very long. A few minutes later, I go into the jocks room. There is a smell of sweat and mud. The bright sound of men’s voices rising and falling.
The TVs are on, some showing regular TV, others showing the odds for the first race. I sit in a chair and pick up a copy of The New York Times. I stare at it as the riders for the first race get ready to go out to the paddock. Time passes. I feel curiously blank as I stare at the newspaper’s type. It blurs before my eyes and then turns to horses. The ink is galloping.
I look up at the TV. The riders are getting astride their horses and being led to the track. The horses are skittering, preening, spooking. I feel each horse’s heart beat inside my own. Tears come to my eyes.
RUBY MURPHY
27.
Bad Lady
By the time the driver drops me at the Aqueduct backside entrance it’s only an hour before the first race goes off. I pay the driver, thank him, and get out. By now, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy of worry and there’s a sheen of cold sweat on my forehead. I keep seeing the image of Attila in his towel, sprinting through the motel parking lot. It makes me sick with guilt, but guilt isn’t what the bad feeling is about. I don’t even know what the bad feeling is about. But it’s bad.
I walk into the tiny security office.
“You here for Kravitz?” a gentle-voiced matron asks.
“Yeah,” I nod. I don’t suppose there are many un-credentialed visitors to Aqueduct on a bleak weekday like this.
“Nice lady,” the matron says, and suddenly I’m not sure if she’s talking about Violet Kravitz or me. For a moment, I tangentially think of Pattahbi Jois, the ashtanga yoga guru, an eighty-something-year-old Indian man whose workshops I have taken on occasion. He is fond of calling his students “bad lady” or “bad man,” reserving the much coveted “nice lady” or “nice man” for some particularly excellent execution of a pose. I once earned a resounding “bad lady” for being alarmed when he came over and adjusted my balance in headstand. He kept nudging my legs forward and I felt like I was going to topple over and break my neck. I fought against his adjustment and was called “bad lady”—to the delight of my friend Jane who was practicing just to my right.
Bad lady has a bad feeling, I think to myself as I pin my credentials to my down jacket and walk toward the receiving barns. Not even the smells and sounds of the backside can do much to improve my bleak state of mind. I’ll probably feel better once I lay eyes on Attila and assure myself he’s in one piece. Maybe I’ll even relax and enjoy some races.
I reach the receiving barn and begin walking down the aisle, looking for Jack Valentine. It’s slightly embarrassing because there are so many bay horses that I stop in front of a few different stalls mistaking their inhabitants for Jack. I go all the way down the aisle before finally seeing a long bay face that looks intensely familiar. My recognizing the big gelding is aided by the fact that Violet Kravitz is standing at Jack’s side.
“Ruby!” Violet smiles but it’s a sad smile, still clouded by the day’s events. She comes out of Jack’s stall.
“Hi, Violet.” I find myself hugging her which is surprising because I’m not a big hugger. I try but I grew up in a family where demonstrativeness was reserved for animals. As a result, my sister and I are slightly hug-shy.
“I’m sorry about what happened this morning,” I tell Violet.
“Yes. It’s tragic.” Her lovely pale eyes are a world of sadness. “I’m very thankful that you’ve come though, Ruby. It helps.”
I have no idea how my being here could help anything but I’m pleased that she feels this way.
“Attila is quite glum. I’ll understand if you need to keep your distance from him, but I’d bet it would cheer him considerably to lay eyes on you.”
I doubt that. I shrug.
“Where is he?” I ask casually.
“I think he’s in the grandstands,” Violet motions in the direction of the track. “He likes to do that sometimes before going into the jockeys’ room. I think it centers him to sit gazing out at the track.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling slightly miffed. This is yet another thing Attila never told me about.
“Well, maybe I’ll go look for him,” I tell Violet.
“I think you have someone to say hello to first,” the lady says, indicating Jack Valentine who has his head hanging over his stall guard and is staring at me intently.
The horse looks like an eager puppy. I walk over and extend my palm for him to lick. He does this slowly and thoroughly. With my free hand I scratch between his ears. Violet stands to the side, beaming, as if she’d made him herself.
For a few lovely moments time stands still and I am utterly transfixed by the horse. Reality intrudes eventually. I tell Violet I’ll see her after Jack’s race. For a moment she looks forlorn. Then she nods, and turns to forage for something in a trunk she has sitting in front of Jack’s stall.
THE WIND IS ANGRY as I head into the grandstands to try finding Attila. Or maybe it’s just me. The grandstands are almost entirely empty. I see just one old man in a down jacket, staring at the tote board.
I go back inside and over into the clubhouse. It’s not exactly packed but the heat has been cranked and it’s toasty, almost homey in here. I wave at Johnny my favorite teller. Johnny’s a sad soul. We talk sometimes and he always asks me about myself but rarely reveals anything about himself. I nearly fell over when he told me he was once a jockey. I don’t know why. I guess I expect retired jockeys to do something more glamorous than being a teller. But for most of them, once their riding career is over, there aren’t that many options. A few go on to work for trainers or become trainers themselves. Some become jockey agents. Others end up selling real estate or drinking the rest of their days away. I guess being a teller makes sense. I’ve even met a few down-on-their-luck trainers who hold teller jobs for a while till things pick up. I wonder momentarily if I should become a teller, but then I remember that I don’t like handling money.
