Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley

  It wasn’t hard getting a private room for twenty at the best restaurant in Boca Raton, then transporting the whole crew—grooms, hot walkers, assistants, the woman who did the books, Eileen, everyone—over there, no matter what languages they spoke or what they were wearing. Smiles and welcome followed them everywhere. They drank Perrier-Jouët and ate pesto risotto with scallops, then ate osso bucco and veal piccata, and then the limos took everyone away drunk, and Al’s cellular rang, and it was his partner, saying that Al had to get the late plane back to the City, because there was some fuckup in Croatia, where they had a factory, and so Al himself left, and there they were, Rosalind and Dick, sitting alone, except for Eileen, across from each other at a table littered with the remains of a very very good party. Eileen sat in the chair next to Rosalind, directly across from Dick. Her ears were forward and she was looking at him expectantly, and it seemed to Rosalind that he and she, the humans, could at last do what both of them had been longing to do for hours, which was to stare straight into each other’s faces without stopping or turning away or speaking or wondering who might see them. Already, Dick’s face was as familiar to Rosalind as her own. And his familiar face had a strange look on it, a scowl-like look that was not a scowl but a look of intense feeling—his inner life emerging unprotected into the rosy candlelight of the room. She was far more careful of her own look. She tried to make it almost blank, almost a mask, so that he would have to come out farther, reveal himself more, just to get a rise out of her. You would think she did this all the time, but she didn’t. In her eighteen years with Al, she had considered it beneath her dignity even to flirt with another man. And she didn’t intend to flirt with Dick, either. If he came toward her, it would have to be on his own, without encouragement. The appetite that had detonated inside her that afternoon was not for fun or amusement. It was for something mysterious and testing. No man, she thought, should be lured to that through the false advertising of a smile or a toss of the head. She thought of Nefertiti, making herself look like that, and she waited. Eileen was thinking of something, too. She put her forefeet on the table and drank delicately from a goblet of mineral water.

  “Ah,” Dick said. “Rosalind. Thank you for the party. Everyone really had a terrific time.”

  “Did they? Good.” Eileen sat back down.

  “I mean it. This is not a world that most of them—”

  “It was Al’s idea. Al is a generous man, in his way. Sometimes that isn’t an obvious way, I admit.” Now she permitted herself a smile.

  The next thing he said would show, she thought, that he had made a choice, and she didn’t dare influence that choice in one way or another. She guessed he would say something like “Well, then,” or “Late, for me,” or “Where can I drop you?” Perhaps all of those remarks passed through his mind, unselected. At any rate, he said, “You have beautiful hair.”

  She nodded.

  “And beautiful eyes.”

  She nodded.

  “And beautiful lips.”

  “All original equipment,” she said, “even the hair. No one in my family goes gray.”

  “Yours is …” He shook his head. “I don’t know, sunny. Sandy. Palomino! Ha!” He smiled in a friendly way, but he had let the cry out, no mistake about it. Rosalind took a deep breath, and then Dick said, “Where are you staying?” Eileen began to pant.

  “I think Al was at the Meridian. We’ve bought a condo recently, but I haven’t finished furnishing it yet.”

  Then he said, “Let’s go there.”

  Then she said, “Let’s.”

  WHAT SHE COULD TELL when he was taking down her hair, and then unbuttoning her jacket and her blouse, was how many years he had spent with horses. His gestures were smooth and consistent, and once he had his hands on her body, he kept them there. But they weren’t eager and hungry; they were quiet and reassuring, warm, dry, and knowledgeable, as if he could find out things about her by touching her, the way he would have to do with horses, the way, perhaps, he would do with Laurita tomorrow, running his hands down her legs looking for heat. His touch, in fact, belied the look on his face, which was disturbed and eager. His touch was almost idle. When he had his hand on her neck, she felt him probe a little knot there, press it and release it, the way her masseuse did, then move down to her shoulder, and do the same there. It was as if no degree of desire could interfere with his habit of taking care. They had been naked for ten minutes when she spoke for the first time. She said, “I bet the horses like you.” Eileen, who had been lying curled on the bed, jumped down and went under the bedskirt.

  “They seem to, actually.”

  “You have a nice touch.”

  “I get along well with dogs, too. Though Eileen hasn’t really made up to me.”

  “And you don’t get along with …?”

  “Owners, maybe.”

  “Al likes you.”

  He looked her right in the eye. “Oh, they like me all right. I don’t like them.”

  Rosalind threw back her head and laughed.

  “And I don’t get along with my wife.”

  “Is that why you look sad?”

  “No doubt. Do I look sad, then?”

  “You do to me.”

  He sighed. “I’ve been afraid it would get out.”

  “You looked happy after the race. Well, not happy, but excited. Almost happy.”

  “I was almost happy. Closest I’ve been in a pretty long time. She’s a bomb-shell, that filly.” Here was where Rosalind fell in love, because Dick had a whole different smile for this filly when he thought of her, a whole separate category of secret delight that crossed his face and pierced Rosalind for some reason she didn’t begin to understand. She had been looking for mystery, hadn’t she? Well, here it was.

  Even so, they could still stop, get dressed, turn back. Their friendly conversation and her laugh showed that. In the atmosphere of the room, there was some levity, some detachment, some pure friendliness that they could build upon to get out of this. Rosalind knew it. But instead she put her fingertips on his lips and ran them gently around, a multitude of her nerve endings tickling a multitude of his. And then she leaned forward, letting her hair fall on his shoulders, and kissed him.

  Maybe he wasn’t getting along with his wife, but it was obvious that he had gotten along with her fine at some point, or with someone else, because his knowledge about what to do with Rosalind was instinctive and expert. First, he took her face between his hands and very gently and attentively ran his thumbs over her eyebrows, the planes of her cheeks, down the line of her jaw, bringing them to a rest upon her lips, where, after just a moment, he put the tips of them into her mouth. She could feel him touching her tongue and the inside of her lips. Then he smoothed that moisture into her cheeks and chin, over and over, until she was groaning. Then he ran one hand lightly down her throat, reminding her what a long and vulnerable throat it was. Then the other hand. Then he looked at her and kissed her, first just soft kissing, then firmer kissing, then tongue kissing, then gently biting her lips, kissing, biting, kissing, then kissing her neck, then biting, then kissing. Except the bites weren’t bites, so careful and considerate were they, as if he were inside her skin and knew exactly what would be exciting and what would be painful. He bit her shoulders, left, then right. Meanwhile, his hands had found her breasts. Al’s hands always happened upon her breasts as if he had never felt breasts before, but Dick’s hands knew breasts perfectly well, and hers, it seemed, in particular. Pretty soon, but not too soon, his lips found them, too. She closed her eyes, because she didn’t want to look at anything but his face now. His face was the only familiar thing in the room, and if she couldn’t look at it, then what was happening in her body was too terrifying. Her body was already arching and shaking, but she wasn’t orgasming. She was just responding to the lightness of his touch like iron filings to a magnet.

  Now his hands moved downward, to her waist. She had not known the waist was an especially erogenous zone, but as h
e squeezed her waist and ran his thumbs and hands over her belly, she felt her whole lower body turn to fire, and sparks shoot out of her toes. It was as if there were some spot there, near her navel, that was sensitive and he knew it, he knew just where it was and how to activate it. She opened her eyes now, and saw that his eyes were closed, and that, furthermore, she was participating unbeknownst to herself. She was rhythmically pinching his nipples, and he liked it. His hands fell away from her waist to her buttocks, and now he wasn’t so gentle with her. He squeezed them hard, over and over, pinched them, too, but it didn’t hurt. Always there was that quality in his touch of being unable to hurt living flesh. It was alluring, but, more than that, it was fascinating. While this was going on, she opened her eyes again, and he was looking at her. He looked happy and fond. The look made her moan, because she didn’t feel that she deserved fondness from him. Suddenly, and very very lightly, he touched her labia so that she cried out, and as she was crying out, he penetrated her, kindly but firmly, threw back his head, and closed his own eyes, seeming to pull her over himself as easily as a glove.

  He penetrated her to the core, didn’t he? He knew just how to do that, the way a racehorse knew how to find the finish line: wherever he penetrated her to, that was the core, and she felt it. He eased gently back and forth a time or two, and it wasn’t so comfortable just then, but right when she was going to say something, or ask something, she got a wonderful feeling of moisture flooding her, and his penis turning to silk inside of her. She said, “What was that?”

  And he said, “Sometimes it takes a moment or two for the foreskin to slide back.”

  “You have a foreskin?”

  “I do, indeed. I was born in Britain when my father was training horses there for some years.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t notice. I guess I was looking at your face.”

  He smiled.

  But then there was no time for talking, only for probing more and more deeply into this feeling she was having all through her body of melting around him as he went farther inside of her, and just when she orgasmed, he covered her face with his warm hands and made her go where he was inside her and she disappeared.

  About two, Rosalind got up and put on a robe, and went over to the window and sat down, looking out over the beach and the dark ocean. There were stars everywhere, even in spite of the lights below. She hunched forward in her chair and looked down, then looked out again, taking her thick hair in her hands, hair that was her lifelong friend. She twisted it into a tail and curled it around her hand, then took a pencil out of a container on the desk and pinned it up. At that moment, she was thinking nothing. You could have asked her to swear, and she would have sworn, under oath, that she was thinking nothing. That she was utterly at peace and blank, well fucked, Al would have said, had said from time to time, referring to himself as well as to her. She put her hand between her legs and smelled her fingers, smelling the both of them together, then wiped her hand on the robe.

  What was it that did it? She thought about this long afterwards, obsessed about it, even. What was it that switched her so suddenly out of that blank, satisfied state? Perhaps it was the knowledge that the care he had taken of her was impersonal, nothing to do with her, only a quality of his that he brought to everything, something she responded to, but nothing she could claim. And she hadn’t intended to claim anything, had she? This wasn’t about claiming, it was about investigating. Nevertheless, whatever it was, whether something she thought or something she saw when she turned her head to glance at him on the bed, her blank satisfaction dissolved once and for all into pure longing. All her powers drained out of her then and there, as lost as if they had dissipated into the stars, and tears began to run down her cheeks. Eileen emerged from under the bedskirt and yawned, then stretched, first backward, then forward, with slow relish. Then she espied Rosalind at the window and crawled over to her, low crawl, pushing with her short back legs and swimming with her elbows. Her head was up and her eyes were bright, and she made a funny picture, but she didn’t even begin to relieve Rosalind’s sadness.

  6 / ALL IRISH

  IF THERE WAS A VARIETY of female that fit in on the backside, either here at Pimlico or anywhere else in the racing world, Deirdre Donohue didn’t know what it would be, but she did know that it wasn’t her variety. Over her long five years as a trainer of Thoroughbred racehorses, she had learned that she was (1) too loud, (2) too opinionated, (3) not pretty, (4) without charm, (5) badly dressed, (6) too unassociated with men to be reliably heterosexual, (7) too liberal in her political opinions, (8) too taciturn (which fit in with her loudness and opinionatedness because she only spoke up when she was really pissed off), and (9) lacking a sense of humor. When the men trainers were telling dirty jokes during morning works and she came up, they always fell silent. Being generally men of the old school, they would naturally fall silent if a woman came upon them telling dirty jokes anywhere, but they resented the fact that they couldn’t tell dirty jokes on the backside of a racetrack of all places, and so they resented Deirdre, without differentiating between her femininity and her lack of a sense of humor.

  Deirdre could not say that her switch from training jumpers to training racehorses had been a success, but in the end it was easier to put a jockey, which she had never been, up on a talented runner than it had been to put a rider up on a talented jumper that she herself might have ridden if she hadn’t broken her back falling off over a six-foot oxer at Devon. That was eight years ago, when she was thirty-two. Now she was forty, with no husband, no children, no friends among her colleagues, twenty extra pounds that felt like they belonged to someone else, and a manner that even she didn’t like. She had two things going for her: a splendid Irish accent and a string of steady winners. Her old friends on the jumper circuit were still her best friends, partly because she still had an eye for a good potential jumper who might make a match with a rider she knew. More than a few runners she had retired showed up in The Chronicle of the Horse, their necks arched and their knees neatly folded over impressive obstacles, but she never went to watch them, and the people she knew at the track acted as if that world didn’t even exist except below a certain fiscal horizon. And it didn’t. The racetrack, even in Maryland, where the big money most assuredly was not, thought of itself as Hollywood or Big Oil, and of the jumper circuit as writing poetry or owning a family restaurant—a good enough way to while away a life, but nothing Important.

  It was thinking these sorts of thoughts at the track that kept Deirdre Donohue silent and pissed off.

  It was only with her bookkeeper, Helen, and her assistant trainer, George Donohue, an actual second cousin who hailed from five miles away from the Curragh itself, that Deirdre put on her other personality, which was the one the horses knew—attentive, thoughtful, kindly, thoughtful, generous, thoughtful, and thoughtful. It was Helen, who had been keeping Deirdre’s books since she had her first jumper barn when she was twenty-four, who had once pointed out to Deirdre that she had this alternative personality, and she often urged her to trot it out in company, but Deirdre kept it under wraps. To Helen, she said, “The men around here wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it,” and Helen had to admit this was true.

  It was George who had all the Irish charm and all the Irish looks and all the Irish capacity for a wee drop, but at twenty-four himself, he had only risen about fifteen degrees on his alcoholic trajectory, and had many useful years left in him before he had to be shipped back to the old sod. The other thing about him was that, even though Deirdre’s owners’ wives didn’t know it, it was George who was gay. That was why he had been shipped over in the first place.

  They were a pretty good close knot of a threesome, and as a result, Deirdre was in a better mood than she had been in years. Life with horses had taught her to accept, expect, and even to enjoy the temporary quality of all good things. She, George, and Helen were a good thing. At the moment, she was sitting with one of her owning couples. Deirdre never made the mistake that s
ome trainers did, which was talking to the man and ignoring the woman. In the first place, she would never do that, and in the second place, most owners came as a couple, and whoever had first accrued the money didn’t matter, and neither did whoever first got interested in horses. In most, though not all, cases, horses seemed eventually to suck them in equally. Now she was listening intently to the Hollisters and making faces. She knew that Helen, who kept glancing in the window, was trying to signal to her to stop making faces, but she couldn’t help it. What the Hollisters were saying was pushing every button she had.

  Daniel Hollister said, “He’s a good trainer. I asked around.”

  “You asked around?” exclaimed Mary Lynn Hollister. “Why in the world would you ask around?”

  “It’s called research.”

  “It’s called gossip, Skippy.”

  Deirdre was almost always able to suppress a bark of laughter when Mary Lynn called Daniel Hollister, who was an anti-trust lawyer and Washington power-broker of nearly stratospheric importance, “Skippy.”

  “He said the horse could have won. I mean, everyone always says that, but he came right up to me and said, ‘That horse won, didn’t he?,’ like there was a rumor that the horse won.” He stuck in a note of petulance. “Like everyone around expected the horse to win.”

  “Not me,” said Deirdre.

  “Well, then,” said Skippy Hollister.

  Quod erat demonstrandum. Deirdre had had an excellent Catholic education that had left her with a whole collection of Latin phrases that no one else but George understood. “Speed kills,” said Deirdre.