Then he shrugged and looked away from me. “Find another pretty horsey, why don’t you? Saratoga’s full of them. Even better, I hear there’s a horse show going on up the highway a few exits. Why don’t you braid up some of your ponies here and see if you can get a few ribbons to hang up on your mirror?”
I heard Kerri catch her breath at the insult, but I just laughed. “Oh, Roddy,” I said. “Fuck you and yours.”
***
Kerri went to Delaware without protest. She had a way of setting her jaw when asked to do something important; I'd seen it when she walked a horse in the paddock before a race. It was a confidence-inspiring quirk, something that reminded me that even though she had an annoyingly cutesy side, she was a tough and knowledgeable horsewoman when push came to shove.
She was making the face now, climbing into the airport taxi with a duffel bag over her arm: just enough space for a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a halter and lead for the filly. I was watching from the front porch of our little bungalow, waving good-bye, resisting the urge to run after her and give her advice. She knew what to do. I’d explained the process. All she had to do was pick up a rental car at the Wilmington Airport, get to Delaware Park in time to put in a claim, put her halter on the filly, and arrange to have her shipped out in the morning. It was a lot of trailering for the poor filly to contend with, from Saratoga to Delaware, a race run, and back again to Saratoga in just a few days’ time, but it was the last time she’d be treated so callously, I promised myself. And I promised her. I was going to figure her out, and put her in the winner’s circle, and then take her home to Florida to be my pretty, pretty princess. And to hell with anyone who got in my way.
I was furious that she was entered in a race already, as a matter of fact. Three days’ break! After running like a broke-down stable pony! But the email alert that Luna Park, Chestnut Filly, 3, was entered into a $15,000 claimer the next day at Delaware had popped up on my phone just an hour or so after I told Roddy Ellis what I thought of him, and I’d laughed after I’d finally gotten over my temper tantrum. I called our secretary in Florida still laughing, asking her to find Kerri a flight to Delaware that evening.
There were times when I was very happy to have the money to play these sorts of games, despite the fact that Alexander was certain to disapprove.
The car door slammed and the cab took off, leaving me alone on the porch to reflect on the wild morning. The disquieting quiet of Personal Best, the escalating feud with Roddy Ellis that was now crossing state lines, the lack of communication from Alexander, and—oh, shit—that three o’clock drink with Johnny. I looked at my phone. Two thirty! I was still in barn clothes and stinking of horse sweat and liniment from doing up legs after training. Probably other things, too, but the menthol and camphor of the liniment covered all those other things up. It covered everything up. It was a giant wave of odor, wilting flowers and killing bees. I spun on my heel and headed upstairs for the quickest, soapiest shower I could manage. I was really looking forward to hanging out with someone who wouldn’t want to talk horses for a change.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Walking in Circles
“You smell like soap.”
I smiled to myself and settled into the corner of the dark wooden booth. Johnny had indeed found a quiet bar where we wouldn’t be seen on a racing day. I didn’t think we’d be seen if everyone in the Saratoga stands descended upon this place for Happy Hour, as a matter of fact. It was the darkest cave of a bar I’d ever been in, the wooden benches seeming to recede into the shadows as if they were embarrassed by their inevitable scars and graffiti. There were pictures on the walls, but it was too gloomy to say what they might have been. Probably racehorses, anyway; I didn’t care what Johnny said about it, there was no such thing as a public establishment in Saratoga that wasn’t devoted in some way to the racehorse. That was the whole point.
“I occasionally smell like things besides sweat and horse shit,” I allowed. “But never perfume. I’m no city girl, no matter what Ryan told you about how much I like to booze it up on the town.”
“Girls in the city smell like sweat and creosote,” Johnny said thoughtfully, lifting his beer. “In the summer, anyway. They might not know it, I guess.”
“Creosote?” I was perplexed. Creosote was a country smell. Creosote was black-board fencing baking in the summer sun. The hot scent of it mingled with the green grass and the electricity of the storms always hanging in the air, a pungency I thought only existed in Ocala.
“From hot train tracks,” he explained. “And the smell in the subway stations, something industrial, like coal. Although the trains are electric, so I don’t know what it actually is. Maybe oil. Train shit. It gets in your hair. Sticks to your clothes.”
“Sounds lovely.” But I thought I knew what he meant. I took a sip of my own beer, savoring the grapefruity bitterness on my tongue, as refreshing as cold lemonade on this July afternoon. There was something delightful about this dark little cave and the lightheadedness from the beer and the quiet music mumbling from hidden speakers—something about its utter removal from my workaday world of hot sunlight and sweating animals and shouting, cussing, smoking horseplayers that made the afternoon feel like a vacation. I needed a little escape now and then. And then I remembered, without pleasure, the way you suddenly remember depressing things in the middle of your most pleasant moments, that the vet was coming in the morning to look over Personal Best, and my gaze fell. Johnny noticed immediately, which was impressive when you considered that we were sitting in the luminary equivalent of Jonah’s whale.
“Horse trouble?” he asked.
“How can you tell?”
“What else would it be? That’s all you people ever have: trouble, trouble, trouble. It’s like, why do you torture yourself like this? There’s got to be easier ways to make a living.”
“How do you know?”
“Mike sold all his horses three years ago, said they were more stress than he could ever handle. That’s why he rents the barn out and just watches other people’s horses walk around instead. He likes to be around them, not be bankrupted by them, is what he says.”
I nodded. That seemed like a logical way to enjoy horses, really … let them be someone else’s problem, and just concentrate on the pleasure of being near them. Unless you were a psychotic micromanager like me. “You come see Mike every summer?”
Johnny laughed. “Nah. The family barely knows him. I’m just getting to. Uncle Mikey, the family black sheep. The gambler and the drinker. I’m gonna try to take after him, but they’re big shoes to fill.”
“So you’re just randomly visiting your uncle for a few weeks?”
He smiled, gleaming teeth feline in the darkness. “I’m visiting you.”
This was just too weird. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. “Dude, there is no way you came up here because Ryan told you I was cool. That’s ridiculous and you shouldn’t expect me to believe it. What do you take me for?”
“You didn’t hear the things he said about you.”
I took a long pull of my beer. “I don’t think I want to.”
The lone waitress came over with a bowl of popcorn she’d poured out of a warehouse store bag. There was just enough light to see the popcorn’s ghastly orange hue. I smiled up at her, in thanks for the apparently toxic snack, and she sort of grimaced and walked away. “Friendly service,” I joked, hoping to change the subject, but Johnny just smiled again, his face twisted ever so slightly, and took a handful of the radioactive popcorn. I chose to abstain. He watched me while he crunched the kernels, waiting for me to pick up the conversation again.
But I decided that awkward silence was just the thing. Johnny wanted to be weird and stalker-y? Fine. I would drink my beer and when I had finished it I would decline another and it would get so uncomfortable that he would be forced to drive me home and never bother me again. He would just sit on his ass under the shade tree with Mike Weston and all his other middle-aged cronies a
nd listen to them make jokes about, I dunno, commie liberal Democrats or something, and I would be free to take care of my horses in peace, and then he’d get bored and go back to the city, and I’d run horses and try to keep Kerri from going to bed with Roddy Ellis and speak to Alexander in short, frustrating phone calls for the rest of the summer.
Sounded like a plan, all right.
Johnny was watching me still. He had an intensity to his gaze that was not in keeping with his slouching, devil-may-care exterior. There was more to him than he was letting on. “What do you do for a living?” I asked suddenly, wondering if I could label him and compartment him in my mind, wondering if that would make me feel better, less attracted to his strangeness, his appealing danger beneath that mask of lazy college student.
“I’m a music promoter,” he said grandly, and waited for me to be impressed.
“What does that even mean?” I wasn’t impressed at all. I thought about it, I considered it, but no. He was full of shit. This kid was no music industry honcho. He didn’t have the energy.
“I write a blog,” he admitted, grinning. “A music blog.”
I had to laugh. “Nice try.”
“So you’re not into music promoters, is that what you’re saying?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t want to read too much into this, and don’t think I’m an idiot, if I did, but … I’m married, Johnny.”
Johnny put his index finger on my wedding ring, the diamond a dull glint in the dim bar. “I kinda saw the rock. ‘Don’t read too much into…’ I haven’t been obvious enough? You’re a cool chick, Alex. I wanna hang out with you.” I thought he might have blushed, but it was impossible to say. He looked away, retreating into the depths of his pint glass.
I wanted to hang out with him, too, and think about things besides horses, but maybe not the things he wanted to talk about. I was trying to think of how to get out of here as quickly as possible when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I snatched it and squinted. The vet. How convenient! “Shit! I gotta take this.”
Johnny sighed and waited, not terribly agreeably, while I made arrangements to meet Dr. Palmer at the barn in an hour. When I ended the call, he threw a twenty on the table. “Let’s get you back to your ponies.” He heaved himself up from the table and made an elaborate show of stretching, as if I had bored him to the point of sleeping.
But I just smiled to myself. Whether you wanted the attention or not, it was nice to know that there were men out there who wanted to … you know … hang out.
***
“He wasn’t like this when I left.”
Dr. Palmer nodded briskly and leaned against Personal Best’s abdomen. How could the coat have gotten so dull in a matter of hours, I wondered. How could his red sheen have lost its shimmer between the time I threw lunch grain and now, suppertime? I watched Dr. Palmer’s close-cropped brown hair as she bent over, stethoscope pressed to his twitching, quivering ribcage, listening to hear what his heart, lungs, and all-important stomach and intestines were up to as they went about their behind-the-scenes work.
When she straightened, she had a grim look on her face. It made all the sun wrinkles stand out, drooping the corners of her mouth into a frown. Dr. Palmer was probably only forty-odd years old, but she’d spent it all outside, and her lack of interest in sunblock was all too apparent.
“There’s no gut sound at all,” she said, shaking her head. She wrapped her stethoscope up, winding the cords around the head-piece, and headed for the truck. “So that’s the first problem.”
“The first?” I watched her rattle drawers in the back compartment of the truck. She pulled out bottles, syringes, a plastic bag of fluid, needles. The works.
“I’m going to run some blood tests,” she called back, dropping meds onto a tray. “The fatigue came before the colic. There’s something else going on in there.”
I pressed my forehead against Personal Best’s velvet muzzle. He sighed against my face, soft nostrils fluttering, but didn’t pull away, as he should have. From behind me, I heard feet shuffle in the dirt. “You don’t have to stay, Johnny,” I said without turning around. “I can handle this.”
“You might need help,” he countered. “You sent that girl of yours on a trip, right? What if you need a hand? I’ll stay,” he finished. “I’ll wait and see.”
But I didn’t need help. The colt was tired, and sick, and he let Dr. Palmer poke and prod and prick him without the least bit of fuss. I jingled the chain over his nose for appearance’s sake, but he didn’t need a distraction; he seemed to welcome every bit of work the vet was doing on him. The worst thing he did was stretch his head out and yawn while she was holding up the IV jug of vitamins and electrolytes, the fluid running into a needle she’d stuck right into his vein.
In the end, I was left to walk the colt in more endless circles, just as we did every morning, until his digestive system responded to the mineral oil she’d pumped into his stomach and he passed manure. His fever had been brought down with Banamine, his blood had been pulled into vials for testing. The bill was put on my tab with a stylus stroke on her iPad. But the waiting was going to cost me far more.
And Johnny stood by and watched it all, eyes wide at the variety of needles and vials and bags that were brought around to treat the horse. To his credit, he hadn’t fainted or looked away when Dr. Palmer had put on her long glove and done a shoulder-deep rectal exam, pulling out a few balls of manure while she was at it. I had to admit, I liked a guy who wasn’t horrified by veterinary work.
“I’ll have results for you in a few days,” Dr. Palmer said, packing up the truck again. “Call me if he doesn’t pass manure in the next couple of hours. And keep him isolated. Don’t let him touch noses with any other horses, don’t take him out when there are other horses in the shedrow. If he has something infectious it could go around Saratoga like wildfire, and that would be a disaster.”
I nodded; no one liked me anyway, I thought, so I probably shouldn’t compound the situation by killing all their horses. Next to me, my red colt stood wearily, eyes half closed and nostrils flared with the effort of standing on his own four hooves. He seemed to worsen by the minute. “We gotta walk, buddy,” I told him, but he didn’t respond until I gave a couple of tugs on the lead shank.
I went on walking the colt, my feet aching with the long day that grew longer, while Roddy Ellis’s grooms silently arrived from wherever they’d spent their afternoon and went about haying, watering, and graining his horses. My own horses grumbled for their dinner, but there was no one to give it to them. Kerri was in Delaware, and Gabe and Manny only worked in the morning. They’d have to wait until Personal Best took a poop, unfortunately. I looked over my shoulder at the laboring colt and wondered how long that would be.
“I can feed them,” Johnny called, standing in the center of the shedrow. “If you tell me what to do … ” His voice trailed off uncertainly as Bonnie Chance took up a rhythmic banging on the metal screen in front of her stall webbing, slamming a fore hoof into it approximately every half second.
“Knock it off!” I shouted as I passed her, swinging the end of the leather lead shank close to her face, and she snorted and ducked back into the recesses of her stall. I heard her squeal and kick the wall in retaliation, but I had already moved on and had to ignore her bad behavior. There was no motion but forward now. I had to keep the colt walking. We turned the corner, walked past Roddy’s grooms; they glanced up at me but didn’t say anything. They knew the rituals of sick horses well enough. They kept their distance in case it was infectious. They exchanged unreadable glances: too bad, or, we better watch ours, or, serves her right, crazy rich lady who thinks she’s a trainer.
“Alex?” Johnny asked as soon as I reappeared on my own side of the barn. “I can feed, yeah? Come on, let me help.”
I gave in. “Fine. Feed chart is on the wall in the feed room. Everything’s labeled. Feed is in bins, meds are on the shelf. Follow the chart, grab their feed tubs, and mix it up
. And for God’s sake, don’t switch up their tubs. Set them on the floor in order, one through six. Let me look before you put them out, okay?”
He nodded, and the intensity in his gaze finally overpowered the mask of blase whatever, man that he was so clever at hiding behind. I thought, for the first time, that this was a guy I could really like. And then I passed away from him, on down the shedrow, taking my increasingly recalcitrant horse with me, and I heard Johnny’s footsteps in the feed room, the clanging of metal trash can lids as he pulled them back to find the oats and sweet feed and beet pulp hidden within, and all the horses in the barn began to rumble and whinny and neigh at the prospect of their long-overdue suppers.
By the next turn I’d taken, he had gotten the allotments of grain into the big round feed bins; by the second he was dosing out the various powders and granules of vitamins, minerals, and medications that differed from horse to horse. By the third round I had heard some unmistakeable sounds of horse flatulence filtering from behind me and I was starting to feel confident that Personal Best was going to perform that most basic and essential of functions in the near future, and I paused long enough to look in at the sea of feed bins that Johnny stood bewildered in the midst of. At a glance, the volumes of feed and the colors of powders in each one seemed correct.
“I tell you what,” I told him, thinking of the inherent danger of letting him snap the feed bins into place against the horses’s stall webbings while they were snatching at the feed within—if he was even brave enough to try it, I’d be impressed— “Mix all of those up with some of that molasses in the jug. . . one good glug will do it, just to soak in the powders. And then when you’re ready, you can take the colt and I will put the feed in the stalls.”
Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2) Page 19
