by Maggie Estep
It takes me a couple of minutes of driving around to remember which block it is, but finally I find the little brownstone on North Sixth Street. There’s a spot right in front. I pull in and wait. At five minutes to five, my wife strolls onto the block. She looks so good. It takes her a minute to notice my truck and when she does, her eyes get big and I see her hesitate. I jump out of the truck.
“Sal, what the fuck are you doing here?” she spits.
“Come on, Karen,” I say.
“Come on what?”
“Let’s talk.”
“I have to get Jake.”
“Sure. I’ll give you both a ride home and then you and me talk.”
“Are you kidding me?” She is so angry she actually comes closer, putting her face just a few inches from mine. She’s turning red from head to toe.
“Karen, I’m not sure how I’ve made you so damn mad but I’m sorry about it. Please come home.”
“Just like that? Months of relationship crimes and I’m just gonna go, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll go home.’ No fucking way, Salvatore.”
Wow. Salvatore. Now I know she’s mad.
“What relationship crimes?”
“You’re off gallivanting with that fucking Ruby slut. You bring her home to fucking dinner, Sal, that’s what. And then you claim she’s got some boyfriend and you’re off at the track helping her boyfriend? I don’t think so.”
“What’s Ruby got to do with this?” I ask, genuinely shocked. “Her boyfriend was in a bad spot. I tried to help.”
“Oh right. Yeah. Sure. You think I’m fucking stupid? You think you can just go bang the nearest slut and I don’t mind ’cause you’re putting food on the table and big TVs in the living room? And you ain’t gonna be putting nothing nowhere if you don’t go back to work, Sal.”
“Karen, honey, I got a bad back.”
“You got a bad dick is what you got.”
Now I’m offended.
“Karen, listen to me,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders.
“Don’t touch me,” she hisses.
“Karen, I love you. I think about you constantly. I want to make love to you five times a day. I don’t understand you at all but I love you. Will you marry me?”
This seems to stump her.
“What?”
“Will you marry me?”
“I already made that mistake, Sal.”
“I want to do it over, Karen. I want to marry you again. I want you to tell me everything you think. I want to know everything.”
Her mouth is open a little and she’s quiet. I’ve genuinely surprised her.
“I gotta go get Jake,” she says after a few moments.
“Get Jake. Then come home and talk to me.”
“I’ll have to think about that,” she says, turning her back to me.
I watch her walk up the stoop and ring the violin teacher’s doorbell.
She looks so fucking good. And what’s more, she’s my wife.
ATTILA JOHNSON
33.
Dead by Yesterday
I’m awakened by a terrible wheezing sound. I sit up on the narrow lumpy bed but my eyes won’t open and my head is throbbing. I rub my face and start breathing deeply. The wheezing sound is getting louder. I finally pry my eyes open. My vision is blurred as I look around, trying to find visible evidence of the horrible sound.
I throw the thin blanket back, stand up, put my boxers on, and walk into the hall. The sound seems to be coming from the room next to mine. I put my ear to the door and bingo. The wheezing is coming from the entrails of room three at the lovely Sea Breeze Hotel in Coney Island.
Suddenly, the weight of my head against the door makes it swing open and I nearly fall into a darkened room.
“What the fuck?” a raspy voice asks.
“Sorry,” I say into the dimness. “I got lost.” I realize this sounds ridiculous.
The wheezing grows louder then a light comes on and I’m face-to-face with the source of the terrible sound. He’s a thin old man sitting in a straight-backed chair. He’s yellow all over and his eyes are lost in folds of drooping wrinkled flesh.
“What the hell you doin’, fucko?” the thin man asks.
“I’m very sorry. It was an accident. Sorry to have intruded,” I say, backing into the hall. The man is wheezing even louder now and looks like he’s about to keel over.
“Are you all right, sir?” I ask, even though it’s obvious he isn’t.
“Mind your beeswax, fucko,” he says.
I walk back into my room, fantasize briefly of punishing the old cruster for calling me fucko, and then decide his life is punishment enough and besides, at this point, I am a fucko. A no-good has-been. I’m nearly thirty-five years old and my distinctly lackluster riding career is over after five wins, five seconds, and eighteen thirds. I’ve got two grand in the bank and a crummy rented basement apartment. The woman I thought I might fall in love with has disappeared, my wife is insane, and my daughter probably hates me. I am a fucko.
The filthy carpet is cold under my bare feet so I get back in bed, pull the blanket over my head and ponder what possessed me to come to this rancid hotel. I had a notion I’d run into Ruby by staying here, just a block from her place. She’d once pointed the Sea Breeze Hotel out to me and told me she’d spent a night here long ago, before she’d moved to Coney. I figured if she could stomach it, it wouldn’t be all that bad. I was wrong. The place is the worst kind of dive and what’s more, I haven’t been able to find Ruby. I’ve called, I’ve rung her buzzer, I’ve even run into Ramirez, the grouchy neighbor, but he didn’t know where she was either. And now I’ve had a fitful cold night and been awakened by the old wheezer next door. Though if I think about it, it’s all icing on the cake since I expected to be dead by now.
One thought that’s kept my instinct for self-preservation alive and well is my daughter, Grace. I’m not sure I trust Ava to stay sane enough to properly raise our daughter and I dread to think what would happen if my drunken father somehow got custody or worse yet, Ava’s rigid right-wing parents. I start obsessing over the whole thing and it occurs to me to write out a will and attempt to assign custody to someone I trust. I spend a few moments contemplating this but the only person I can think of is Violet Kravitz and I can’t quite picture the lady’s reaction to being willed a child. It seems if she wanted one, she’d have gone ahead and had one.
I eventually get out of bed and put my clothes on. They don’t smell all that good but I’m afraid to go back to my apartment to get clean things. I probably shouldn’t even be within miles of Coney Island since whoever is trying to do me in has tried doing it here. But the fact is, I have no idea what to do or where to go. I suppose I could go back to North Carolina. I’ve got a few friends there. I could probably get work on a horse farm. Eke out an existence—but little more. Life without racing isn’t much of a life and I’m too old to start from scratch.
None of these thoughts serve to cheer me or make the dank hotel room less dank. I throw water on my face, run my fingers through my hair, then put my jacket on and go down to the front desk to return my key to the rail thin black woman at reception. She says nothing as I hand her the key and thank her.
I’ve completely forgotten about the car and probably wouldn’t have remembered until much later had I not walked right by it. I bought it yesterday afternoon before going to ride my last race. I figured if there was any chance of my staying alive, I’d need a car. I’d known for a while that Pepe, one of Violet and Henry’s exercise riders, was trying to sell his Gremlin. The car is bright orange. Not the most anonymous car in the world but cheap and available on short notice. Pepe wanted two grand for it but I got him down to twelve hundred. The thing will probably die after fifty miles but it’s better than nothing. I unlock it and get in. I still have no idea where I’m going. I take my phone out and try Ruby’s various numbers once more for good measure, not really expecting her to be there. I start wondering if she’s suddenly packed up he
r cats and left town.
I put the phone away and stare at the gray silence of Surf Avenue. I’ve never seen it this sleepy and contained and I remember pictures Ruby showed me of this strip a hundred years ago. The wide dirt road was lined with amusements and horse carriages. Happy people strolled, wearing clothes that now seem so restrictive and formal but must have been considered sportswear at the time. I wish I could go back and live in a time when horses were everywhere and people didn’t leave one another.
I feel another bout of tears coming but I’m tired of crying, having cried more in the last twelve hours than in the collected thirty-four and three-quarters years of my life.
I pull the Gremlin out of its parking space and drive up onto Surf Avenue, making a left onto Ocean Parkway.
Next thing I know, I’m pulling up to a storefront lawyer in the middle of a Hasidic neighborhood off Ocean Parkway.
A very young woman is sitting at a desk in the front room. She seems quite surprised to see a walk-in client in spite of the fact that a sign outside indicated that such clients were welcome. I guess I don’t fit the bill for their regular clientele, all of whom, judging by the three people seated in the waiting area, are Hasidim.
I explain to the young woman that I’d like to draw up a will. She looks at me crookedly and I’m not sure if she thinks I’m an absolute nut case or if she has some sort of eye problem. She asks me to take a seat and I do. The magazines all appear to be in Hebrew so I just sit, staring at my hands. For some reason, I haven’t examined my hands in a long time, and as I notice now how old and battered they are I simultaneously think of Ruby’s nicely made hands that her piano teacher has convinced her are stubby. I suddenly want to kill the piano teacher.
About a half hour later I’m ushered into a cluttered back room with a drop ceiling. The lawyer is a man named Saul Victory who, as it happens, doesn’t seem to be Hasidic at all though I suppose he might be a less rigid Hasid who doesn’t go in for all the dark suits and hats and exotic hair configurations.
“A will?” Saul Victory says after offering me a seat.
“Yes,” I say.
Saul Victory doesn’t seem to think it’s a strange request. In fact, he’s a rather nice man and becomes extremely animated when I tell him I’m a jockey.
“Ah,” he says, getting a dreamy look, “how I miss that horse, Point Given.”
“Yes. There’s a lot of that going around. Speculation about what he could have done as a four-year-old. He was a very good horse.”
“He was a gangster,” Saul Victory exclaims, pounding his fist into a pile of papers on his desk. “I’ll never forget the way he looked on Belmont Stakes day with that crazy mask on his face—What do you call that mask?”
“Blinkers?”
“Yes, his crazy blinkers and the way he walked. He walked like Muhammad Ali. That horse was a gangster.”
I can’t say I ever really thought of Point Given as a gangster, but okay. I don’t have the heart to tell old Saul here that my racing career is as over as Point Given’s. As we get through the business of drawing up a will, I let him keep chatting about some of the horses he’s watched race. He is, with good reason, vigorously enthralled by Funny Cide and smitten with Azeri. He even mentions Ruby’s favorite horse, Sherpa Guide.
An hour later and several hundred dollars poorer, I walk out of Saul Victory’s office feeling a little lighter.
And then a strange thing happens.
I have a very strong urge to see my wife.
The idea is so shocking to me that I pull the Gremlin over to the side of the road and sit for several minutes trying to think through this surprising urge. But I can’t see straight or think straight. I need to see my wife.
I start driving to Queens.
Soon enough, I’m in front of the house. The crummy two-story vinyl-sided house. I don’t know how we could have expected to be happy in a vinyl house. I remember trying to talk Ava into holding out until we found a brick house. She wouldn’t though. Wanted to settle somewhere the second we landed in New York.
I pull the Gremlin into the driveway.
I walk up the two steps to the front door and knock. Nothing happens and I’m almost relieved. This can’t possibly be a good idea. Then, just as I’m about to turn and get back to the Gremlin, Ava comes to the door. She’s wearing a white fuzzy bathrobe and her hair is up. It occurs to me that she’s beautiful.
“Attila?” she says, unsure.
“Hi, Ava.”
“What are you doing here?” she asks, dangling her arms loose at her sides.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “Is Grace here?”
“You came to see Grace?”
“No, mostly I came to see you. But I miss Grace.”
“What are you really doing here?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.
“I don’t know. I miss you.”
“Damn straight you miss me. I didn’t trust you to realize that though.”
“Huh?”
“Oh just come in and shut up.”
“Okay.”
I follow my wife inside our vinyl house.
BEN NESTER
34.
Compelling Thunder
The sky has gone mad and a massive storm is drumming at the windows of Ava’s friend’s cottage. Crow is lying on the blanket I’ve put down for him and he keeps putting one paw over his face, as if protecting himself from the thunderstorm. I’d like to just lie down next to him and put my own paws over my face and hope for it all to go away but it’s not that simple.
I’m sitting on the lone chair in the place. There’s a futon in one of the two bedrooms but I’ve only taken small naps now and then. I have to keep my vigil. The girl is locked in the cabin behind the cottage and, although I boarded up the windows, she could still conceivably find a way out if I don’t pay attention.
The rain is coming harder and one of the windows starts leaking. A crash of thunder lets loose and Crow howls, compelled to add his song to that of the sky.
Ava has loaned me a cell phone and I take it out of my pocket now, trying Ava’s home number for what seems like the thousandth time in the last twelve hours. Again, no answer. I haven’t talked to her since leaving the track, when I called to tell her about the change of plans and how I’d had to take the girl instead of the jockey. She’d seemed a little surprised by this, but told me to go ahead and take the girl upstate. Ava was supposed to call again though and she hasn’t.
I get up and go into the little bathroom with its ancient blue tiles. I relieve myself and look out the bathroom window toward the cabin. I suppose I have to feed the girl now. I go back into the kitchen and look into the fridge where I’ve put the few groceries I bought back in Queens. When I open the package of sandwich meat, Crow comes running over and starts doing a dance. When that fails to make me feed him, he jumps straight into the air, then lands and chases his tail. It’s pretty impressive. I give him a piece of bologna. I make a sandwich for the girl, tuck a bottle of water under my arm and then tell Crow to follow me outside. We both trot through the little yard between the house and the cabin, trying to dodge the raindrops that are falling and turning the snow to slush. I have to put the sandwich down so I can pull my keys out of my pocket and I issue a threat to Crow not to eat the prisoner’s sandwich. It takes me a minute to unlock the huge padlock and I manage to get pretty wet.
As I push the door open, I find her standing there, staring at me.
“Please,” she says, “my cats need to be fed, please let me call my neighbor.” She’s obviously pretty worked up about it, has her face all bunched up and there’s no color in her lips. She’d tried this one yesterday afternoon, on the ride up here, piping in every twenty minutes or so about her cats. I figured it was just a ruse but now I’m starting to wonder. She does look like a girl who’d have cats and, to my chagrin, Crow continues to feel drawn to the girl, is in fact nuzzling her right now as she pets his head.
“Crow!” I call out to the disloyal dog.
“It’s fine,” the prisoner says. “I like dogs,” she adds, entirely missing the point, which is that I don’t like my dog kissing up to strangers.
“I’d like for you to imagine you’re in my shoes,” the girl says now. “You’re trapped somewhere and your dog is at home, starving. If the positions were reversed, I’d let you call a neighbor to have them feed your dog.”
She stares at me so hard I’m convinced she’s trying to bend my mind. I stare right back at her, feeling torn—on the one hand worried about her damned cats, on the other hand picturing Darwin and how, however indirectly, this girl could have impact on his well-being.
“Please?” the girl says. She looks down at Crow then back up at me, adding another please.
“How about you eat something and we’ll think about it,” I say, offering the sandwich.
She stares down at the sandwich in much the same way she was staring at me a few seconds ago.
“What is that, meat?” she asks.
“Yeah, pastrami and bologna.”
“Thanks, but I’m a vegetarian,” the prisoner says. “I don’t eat anything with a face.”
This takes me by surprise and I look down at the sandwich in my hand, suddenly picturing a face on it.
“This doesn’t have a face,” I say.
“At some point it did.”
I can’t really argue with that even though deli meat is so far removed from animals that it practically is vegetarian.
“So,” I say, feeling like a complete jerk, “you definitely don’t want this?” I indicate the sad-looking sandwich, even though I know the answer and, in fact, wonder if I’ll give up meat. Up till now, I’d always thought vegetarians were just pale people who liked being difficult. But this face thing has freaked me out.
“No, I’m not going to be eating that,” the girl affirms.
“Mind if Crow has it?”
“I don’t know if processed meat is good for him,” the girl says, sort of sternly. “I feed my cats raw meat.”
