by Jane Smiley
“I am an assistant professor at Berkeley.”
Farley had dropped behind the two men and now took Joy’s hand. Soon enough after that, he took his hand out of hers and slipped his arm around her shoulders. As they walked along, she found herself getting closer and closer to him, as if, contrary to the very thing she had just been thinking, there was no getting enough. This sort of behavior was a shameless, daring thing to do at the racetrack, where gossip and teasing were the rule and sentiment was dangerous to feel and dangerous to show, but they did it anyway—open, endless, glorious affection.
“Have you investigated the course of my family’s fortunes over the next fifty years?” said Mr. Tompkins.
“I used the public data in an experiment I did for a paper, yes. There were other families, too. Rockefeller. Milken. McCaw.”
“How’d we do?”
“Fine, but there were unknown personal factors.”
“Such as?”
“Whether your children from your first marriage are planning to contest the ownership of family property with your children from your second marriage. That sort of thing drains resources very quickly, and they are usually unrecoverable.”
“Why would they?”
“They often do. In the majority of cases where the worth of the assets is over a hundred million dollars, its almost a given.”
“How can I stop them?”
“That was not an element of my model.”
“Why didn’t you call me and warn me about this?”
“The experiment wasn’t about you, Mr. Tompkins. It was about the model. I wanted to see how it worked and what it said. You were just data.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Tompkins.
“It was my dissertation.”
“Got you,” said Mr. Tompkins.
Farley said, “This filly looks good. When she came off the farm she was little and weedy, but look at her. She’s blossomed with the work. That’s a good sign.” Joy’s ear was so close to his chest that she thought she felt the resonance of his words rather than heard them.
Mr. Tompkins gazed at Mr. T., then said, “So this guy’s had a happy ending.”
“Yes, sir,” said Joy.
“Must like it back at the track,” said Mr. Tompkins.
“He has an effective betting system, but no money of his own,” said Elizabeth.
“Does he think this filly is going to win this race?” Joy noticed that when Mr. Tompkins looked at Elizabeth he seemed a little intimidated.
Elizabeth glanced at Mr. T., who was strolling along. They were almost to the place where he had to turn back. He wasn’t allowed to cast an eye over the horses in the saddling enclosure like the other bettors. Joy gave a little cough, but Mr. Tompkins really was regarding Elizabeth with fascination. Finally, she said, “He says you never can tell. He’s streaming me a picture of a straight green place with rails on each side and big white buildings.”
“Longchamp,” said Farley and Mr. Tompkins simultaneously.
“He’s galloping behind another horse and overtaking him, and then a dog runs out of the stands, and, let’s see, it seems to scare the other horse, who bumps Mr. T., and so they go off to the side, kind of, and then another horse comes from the far left and beats them.”
“That’s possible,” said Mr. Tompkins. “The French take their dogs everywhere. But what about this race?”
“He has to stay here,” said Elizabeth, “but usually I go look at the horses, and then we discuss them, and then I make my bets.”
“You’re kidding,” said Mr. Tompkins.
“I’m in the black for the year,” said Elizabeth. “Way in the black. Plato and I went to sex school in Hawaii on my winnings of the spring.”
“Sex school?”
“You know, Tantric yoga. Penetrating your chakras with rosebuds and turning them clockwise and counterclockwise? That sort of thing. It was very informative.”
“Fun, too,” said Plato.
“Thank you, Mr. T.,” said Elizabeth. Mr. T. paused, halted, turned back. As he walked away from the filly, she turned her head and gave a plaintive whinny.
They kept her walking. “She’s not as afraid as she was,” said Joy. “She used to rear and spin when he left.”
Elizabeth looked in her handbag, pulled out a tissue, blew her nose. “We’re trying to get her to reinterpret her world.”
“What does he say about my children and my wife?” said Mr. Tompkins.
Elizabeth paused. Then she said, “He wants to know how many mares are in your band, and whether your children are weaned or not.”
“Really?”
“No. He has nothing to say about your estate-planning problems.”
They entered the saddling enclosure as a group. Joy felt herself separate from Farley as they had to to do their business. The groom walked the filly around the slots exactly twice before walking her into her slot, number five. There were six other fillies in the race. Froney’s Sis stood with her head up and her ears pricked, staring tensely around her at the other runners. The support network closed in on her, and the groom began unwrapping her legs. Oliver put the numbercloth over her back. No one said anything except the groom, who murmured continuously. Farley set the saddle on the filly’s back, counted to three, reached under for the girth, which Oliver handed him. Joy stood at her head, stroking her ears and forehead lightly with her fingertips. She seemed to feel Farley’s every movement through the filly’s body. When he was done, he stood back and the groom led her out again, and he came back over to Joy and took her hand. What if, Joy thought, this contact were to end? What if that? After a bit, the jockeys began to come out of the jockey room. Roberto Acevedo, the jockey they always used, approached them with a smile. Farley introduced him to Mr. Tompkins.
In the walking ring, they surrounded the filly again while Farley threw Roberto up into the saddle. Mr. Tompkins took Elizabeth’s elbow and said, “What’s the word?”
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “he says they’re a mixed bunch. He’s seen all of them train at one time or another, though the number-six filly he’s only seen once, but she’s long-legged and awkward, the kind who has some growing to do. He doesn’t think much of her.”
“She’s five-to-two.”
“I never pay attention to human handicappers. This one he considers a turf horse, not suited to the conditions of the race. He doesn’t give her much chance.”
“My head is spinning.”
“Maybe I should just give you his bets. Our filly to win, number two to place, and number seven to show. I’m going to bet a three-way box myself. Fifty bucks.”
The whole group of them followed the filly out of the walking ring and under the stands, and then Elizabeth and Mr. Tompkins peeled off to go to the betting windows.
The tote board had Froney’s Sis’s odds at sixty-to-one, but by the time they were sitting down, they had dropped to forty-to-one. Joy said, “What’s he doing?” Actually, conversation between them seemed superfluous to Joy.
Farley laughed. “You know, if I ever saw Tompkins bet twenty dollars on a horse, I don’t know when it was. But look at the money bet on her. It went from twenty-three hundred to seventy-five hundred. I didn’t know Elizabeth was such a persuasive person.”
Out on the track, the filly was jogging calmly with her pony, not looking around, not jerking her head, not even flicking her ears. She had grayed out pretty well over the summer, and built up muscle, too. Plato said, “Elizabeth is the most persuasive person I ever met. I hope she’s persuading Mr. Tompkins to give me a job.”
“You’ve got a job,” Joy pointed out. “At Berkeley. Isn’t that good?”
“I prefer the Tompkins life-style to the Berkeley life-style. Don’t forget, I was a commodities trader in Chicago. I feel that a change is coming over me again.”
Farley said, “You know, I feel a change is coming over me, too. I’m beginning to have a notion of an idea of a thought of a hope for this filly. She looks happy. There she goes
, right into the gate.”
“You know,” said Plato, “horse racing is the perfect sport of capitalism. In every race, one horse wins, and then everyone discusses it—was it luck, or ability, or strategy, or breeding? And then there’s another race, and another horse wins, probably a horse who lost last time. In the microcosm, the structure is very strict, but in the macrocosm, the structure is very forgiving.”
Elizabeth and Mr. Tompkins joined them right then, as the gate opened and the seven maidens headed down the track. It was a lovely race, at least from their point of view. The gray filly broke smoothly, right alongside the big chestnut, and the two of them moved to the rail, the chestnut on the outside, Froney’s Sis on the inside. The chestnut was a reliable, straight runner, and Roberto was able to use her as protection for his filly. Froney’s Sis, used to the same sort of protection and steadiness and size from Mr. T., seemed to match the other filly stride for stride, and when the chestnut tried to pull ahead, she could not. In the meantime, the front runner dropped back, and, coming around the turn, four of them found themselves in a bunch. Farley said, “Fractions aren’t bad, either. Maybe this filly can run.”
As they came into the stretch, Joy saw Roberto ask the filly to make a decision. The other fillies had choices to make, too, about whether they were too tired. And the big filly was. She dropped back. The lead filly was, too. She dropped back. Now Froney’s Sis was running just half a length behind the favorite, a bay filly by Deputy Minister who had class flowing over and around her like the jet stream—Mabee was her owner, Baffert was her trainer, Stevens was her rider. This was only her second start, and she had run third in her first start. She owned this race. Except that, for some equine reason to be investigated later, Froney’s Sis dropped and stretched and at the wire was ahead by a neck.
The tote flashed “photo,” but that was for third and fourth place. Right there, right in front of them, the filly’s number, five, went up easy as you please.
Farley said to Mr. Tompkins, “How much did you bet?” He gave Joy a squeeze.
Mr. Tompkins, never daunted by mere sums of money, said, “Oh. Five thousand. That was what I had in my pocket, and Elizabeth said I should just reach into my pocket and bet what I came up with. I forgot I had that, but I—”
Plato said, “You won two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I won fifteen thousand dollars myself,” said Elizabeth, “since I hit the trifecta.”
Plato said, “You know, Mr. Tompkins, I was wondering how you feel about the question of the concentration of income and assets in the hands of a very small percentage of the population.”
“Well,” said Mr. Tompkins, “I’ll tell you. The more I spend, the more I earn. I don’t know why this is.”
“Karma,” said Elizabeth. “Dharma, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it is your dharmic purpose in life to be swimming in dough. Maybe in your last life you starved to death or something, and so you chose the Tompkins family to be born into so you could get a square meal. Something like that. Are you tired of all this money?”
“Well, yeah. My kids talk about it too much, that’s what I’m tired of.”
“Could I,” said Plato, “could I interrupt, sir, to ask you for a job?”
“Doing what?”
“Future management. Orienteering. Mapping the unknown dimension of time. Theory and application both. I could be your house intellectual in a very new field.”
“What sort of salary do you want?”
“Two hundred grand would be nice in the first year.”
Mr. Tompkins cleared his throat. The filly was trotting back toward the winner’s circle, evidently pleased with herself. Mr. Tompkins watched her for a moment as Umberto went up to her and took hold of her bridle. He said, “All right. I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, but if you can do this one thing, you got the job. Go to the big payout window with this ticket. They know me, and they’d take half of it away from me right there, but they don’t know you. Get the money and bring it back. Whatever you get you can have as your first year’s salary. You can take care of the taxes on your own. I have to go to the can after this photo.”
They got up and went down to the winner’s circle, all of them. Just as the photographer was taking the picture, Elizabeth said, “Well, back to Hawaii in March for the intermediate-level course.”
Farley smiled down at Joy and stroked her cheek. She decided for the umpteenth time not to wonder what she had done to deserve all of this.
NOVEMBER
47 / BREEDERS’ CUP
AL WAS DRINKING COFFEE and reading the New York Times. His knee hurt, his head hurt, his shoulder hurt, his back hurt, his big toe hurt, and one of his molars hurt. He wondered if it was too early to wake up Rosalind and complain to her. Last night they’d had a word or two about the Breeders’ Cup, this year at Churchill Downs, not so very far away, and they could have stayed at that bed and breakfast in Versailles, what was the name of it, but where was Laurita? Where was his trainer? Where, for that matter, was his helpmeet? Yes, she was in bed, but where was she with regard to this, his dearest wish? Al drank the last of his cup and poured himself another one, then reached for a doughnut. He had already been out this morning, on his own, in the Mercedes, and while out, he had bought doughnuts, the very worst possible thing for his heart, arteries, stomach, colon, you name it. He looked at the doughnut, number four, and the doughnut looked good—orange frosting and black sprinkles. A doughnut like that was almost as good as a drink. He looked in the box. He had also chosen a blue doughnut and a pink doughnut. They were there, waiting for him. Regression to childish appetites, he understood from his AA group, was often the recourse for those who did not get their way. Maybe so, but the doughnut (Al took a big bite) was fantastic.
On this particular morning, the morning of the biggest day of the year in horse racing, Al would have liked it to be duly noted by his trainer and his wife that he was a saint. He had let this thing go by that they had had together. He had said nothing about it but had been understanding and forbearing. He had made a real effort to overlook the injury done to himself, Alexander P. May-brick. He had opened his eyes, which was what his first wife was always telling him to do—open your eyes, Al, wake up and smell the coffee—and seen that Rosalind was at least as unhappy as he was, and, okay, Dick, too, with that weird wife of his, no wonder someone like Rosalind would appeal to him. He had brought the whole thing up in his AA meeting several times, had been counseled to be grateful and do nothing, and he had been grateful—sincerely grateful that Rosalind hadn’t left him when she very well could have and even, it was implied by a few, should have; she would not be widely blamed for doing so, but probably consoled and admired for putting up with him for so long—and he had done nothing. But not only was there no acknowledgment of his sainthood on the part of either Rosalind or the horse-trainer, there wasn’t even much sympathy for the fact that he once again did not have a horse running in the Breeders’ Cup. Laurita’s excellent spring and summer had been followed by a lackluster fall—two starts, no wins, and then a condylar fracture, and there you had it. What got his goat was their tone. They were impatient with his disappointment. Al thought, and he was sure even his AA group would agree with him, that, given the events of the last year, they could cut him a little slack, be a little sympathetic. A major betrayal didn’t have to be accompanied by a minor one. Injury didn’t have to be accompanied by insult. Al felt himself steam up in a way that not even the doughnuts could ameliorate.
He thought he would go down to the City and watch the races at some anonymous OTB shop. He thought he would leave without telling Rosalind, but he wondered if she would even know he was gone.
AT THE FARM in Maryland where Limitless was still cultivating his own concept of himself, it had been rainy and chill all week, so the horses were kept in at night. The fields were muddy, there was no grass to speak of; it was better i
n every way for the horses to be eating nutritious first-cutting hay. The barns were airy and convenient, the training facilities perfectly thought out, the staff intelligent and experienced. Night after night, Limitless tore up his stall furnishings. He sat on his automatic waterer until they removed it altogether and put in a bucket, but he managed to get that off the wall, too, along with the corner feeder. He tore that down three times, so they started feeding him out of a rubber feed tub, but you could see him with that—as soon as he’d taken a bite or two, he’d pick it up in his teeth and flip it over. He made a lot of noise. The stableman whose apartment was in that barn woke up two or three times a night at the kicking and pounding. The morning of the Breeders’ Cup, they got up to find that he had taken down the entire wall between his stall and the one next door. The two horses were uninjured, but had switched places. It almost gave the stableman a heart attack when he saw the two faces looking at him over the wrong doors. The wall rebuilt, Limitless pawed at the straw, the clay floor, the decomposed granite beneath it, as if tunneling to freedom. Breeders’ Cup day, they let him out. Yes, the footing was treacherous, and, no, there wasn’t anywhere good to put him, only a big drylot without any protection from the weather at all. He ran and ran, mane flying, tail in the air, stopping, turning, kicking up his heels. As a rule, you don’t like to see a horse run like that—anything could happen—but Limitless had made his point. The farm manager and owner agreed that he could live out for the winter.
IT WAS RAINY and chill on the backside at Pimlico, too, where Tiffany was bedding the stall of Hopefully, a four-year-old gelding who was out galloping and would be back in twenty minutes or so. She had dragged the bale of straw into the stall, and now took out her knife and cut the baling twine. The straw, golden and clean smelling, popped apart. Tiffany put away her knife and picked up her fork and began poking the flakes of straw and tossing them. Deirdre liked the straw to be deep all around, and mounded up against the walls in a big cozy nest. Tiffany wasn’t thinking about the Breeders’ Cup, or about anything else. She was just poking and tossing and hearing the comforting rustle of the dry stalks, feeling the now familiar wooden handle of the fork in her hands, bending and stretching and lifting. Bedding stalls was almost as pleasant as rubbing the horses. First you attached the horse by his halter to a tether in his stall, then you took the black rubber currycomb and made small circles all over his body from his ears to his tail, but never on his legs. Then you brushed him down with a stiff brush, this time including his legs. Then you brushed him down with a soft brush. That was when you did his face, down the nose, around the ears, under the jaw. Usually they turned their heads toward you for that, even the ones who didn’t like currying and brushing. Then you stood on his left side, facing the back, and picked up his feet and cleaned them out with a metal hook called a hoofpick. Then you combed his mane and forelock and picked the tangles out of his tail. And then you woke up and noticed that fifteen minutes or twenty minutes had passed and not only did you feel kind of warm and buzzed inside, the horse looked shiny and neat. It was just the way Tiffany had thought it would be at Dagoberto’s when she was begging Dagoberto to let her get closer to the horses. As close to the horses as possible was exactly where she wanted to be, close enough to touch them and pet them and hear their jaws masticating hay and their bellies gurgling and the air moving in and out of their nostrils. And the Breeders’ Cup had nothing to do with it.
