Despite the talk of Michael, Carl had an excellent week of riding. On Thursday, another rainy day where the track turned to gravy, Carl had three runner-up finishes—two on long shots. The trifecta payoffs in these races were in the thousands for just a two-dollar bet. The next morning, following workouts, Christine rubbed his shoulders and later she walked in on him taking a shower. She turned off the water, stepped in, and put both of her hands on the towel rack. He almost lost his footing at one point. He grabbed for the soap dish. It took a while for them to finish and after they did they dried off and went to bed. They fell asleep on top of the covers. When Carl awakened again, Christine was sleeping on her back and he watched her. Without opening her eyes, she said, “Carl?”
“Yes?”
“I ran into Mrs. Lovain at the Food Lion yesterday. Do you know who I am referring to?”
“No.”
“The woman who lives in one of the apartments across the alley. She said you are watching her. She tried to say it more tactfully than that. She said, ‘Chris, I didn’t know you had a new fella living with you.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ She gave me one of those polite smiles after that. I had to think for a second about what she was really trying to tell me.”
“Tell her to close her blinds if she doesn’t want people to see her.”
“The apartments on this side of that building are pretty small. I’m sure she feels boxed in.”
“She lives alone. I don’t watch her undress or anything. Good lord.”
“She’s over fifty.”
“I’ve been on the racetrack my whole life. What am I missing? I wonder about that. I wonder what a different kind of life has to offer.”
“There’s nothing in it at all,” she said. Her face turned in his direction. “Zero.”
“You gonna stay away from that?”
“It got to me and Michael,” she said. “We weren’t ready. In a way, I hope we never will be.”
Carl said quickly, “Me neither. Look, what’s Mrs. What’sherface do? I was thinking she is a librarian or something.”
“She’s adjunct at Cleveland State. She gets an alimony from her ex. When it was hot last summer and there weren’t any guys in either of our apartments, we’d open windows and talk. It was neat. I felt quite citified,” she said. “Where do you watch her from?”
“Our table. I sit there in the evenings and work on my computer. I look over and there she is. She arrives home, goes straight for the wine, then disappears, returns in a sweatshirt and jeans. She has really nice gray hair. She makes herself something in the microwave, eats at her table. Reads the paper. Has another glass of wine. She takes her time doing everything. It’s all right. It’s not too bad.”
“If there was a man over there, would you watch?”
“Men generally aren’t as interesting. Are they?”
“Actually, they are.” She laid her arms at her sides.
Something inside Carl tensed. He was not going to be enough for this woman. He said, “Do you want me to stop looking over at her?”
“No.” She reached over, touched the covers by his hip. “Of course not. But I want you to know that she sees you.”
Carl won the last two races on the card that afternoon. The next day he took the feature, an overnight handicap aboard a nervous little mare named Royal Harmony. The subject of Michael didn’t come up again until the following Tuesday morning. Christine mentioned joining an athletic club but wondered how she could find the time to work out regularly, and then, after the slightest pause, she said, “He followed me to the track on Sunday. I picked up his khaki-colored Toyota in traffic about a mile away from Summit. He didn’t even bother to hide. He drove behind me into the parking lot. He waited for me to get out of my car and start walking for the track before he got out of his. Inside, I tried to find a different pari-mutuel clerk, but it’s always the same old goddamn faces in there. He’s friends with some of the clerks, I guess. I started to get confused, so I just walked to a window, made my bets, and got out of there. I didn’t even collect my winnings from the day before.”
“How’d you do on Sunday?”
“I didn’t bet that favorite you won on,” she said. “I didn’t think he’d carry his speed like that. Even you had your doubts.”
“I did,” Carl said, then leaned back in his chair. “But I am one mean-riding monkey right now, Christine. You need to accept that. You’re putting some of your winnings away, I hope.”
“Of course. I also cleared out the bottom drawer in the bureau in case you need that. I started a bank account for you.”
“You did what?”
“You don’t want more space?”
“I need another drawer. I mean the bank account. I already have a bank account.”
“Now you have another. Surprise.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“As I walked away from the window, he did. He said, ‘I want you.’”
Carl said, “I guess he does.”
“He said, ‘Help me, Christine.’”
“Jesus Christ.” He brought his arms forward, rested them on the table. He circled two fingers around the handle of the mug. “I’ll talk to him. While you’re at work tomorrow.” He thought, What exactly do you want me to say? Carl found himself shaking his head. “Tell him, Jumping Java, the one on Marquette Avenue. Four p.m. If he’s one minute late, I’m leaving.”
“It might scare him,” she said. “He might not want to.”
“Well, then we tried, Christine. All right? It’s not like we’re waterboarding the guy. It’s not as if we are madly in love.” That last line caused him to stop. Carl made his hand flat and cut into the air with it like a politician. “I will talk to him.”
Christine looked at him in a cold way. “I told you once that I am not a whore. Everyone at work thinks that about me now. Living with a hot jockey. Everyone wants a tip. I try to tell them. I say, ‘Look, he doesn’t tell me everything.’”
“I tell you what I know for certain.”
“People crave sure things. They need to be reassured.”
Carl nodded. “You shouldn’t worry about what people say.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I am just telling you what I deal with. Goddamnit, when I talk do you listen at all?”
Carl had seen Michael before, at the Seven Seas last fall. A tall, blond man who had walked over to Christine at the bar while Carl had been talking her up. I’ll see you later, sweetheart, he’d said. Or, Goodnight, sweetheart. He showed up frequently and Carl hadn’t had a good feeling about him even then. At the bar one night, Carl said, Is that guy from Summit Park? A trainer? I don’t recognize him.
That’s my ex, she said. Then she began to wipe down the counter. Try me again later—okay, Carl? I’m beat.
Carl had insisted Michael be punctual for their meeting at Jumping Java, but Carl himself was fifteen minutes late getting there. He walked in and immediately spotted Michael seated in a leatherette chair by a window with its back to the street. The chair by it had a dish on the seat. Michael had his elbows on the arm rests and was touching the tips of his fingers together. He wore a black blazer and a button-down shirt with the collar open. Carl approached, and as he did, Michael stood and lifted the plate from the seat of the chair next to him. He was tall, taller than Christine. Carl did not put out his hand when he said, “Michael, right?”
“That’s right.” He placed the plate on the shiny black coffee table at his shins. He straightened, buttoned the second button of his wool blazer. Carl sat in the free chair. Michael unbuttoned his jacket again and sat down. Michael had wavy, long hair that flared out on either side of his neck, scared blue eyes and a prominent nose that looked as if it had been broken on any number of occasions. He had faint freckles under his eyes. He wore faded jeans, sneakers. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that women liked him. Carl laid his arms on the arm rests. Music played. Jazz, Chet Baker. “Coffee?” Michael said, motioning in the direction of the counter at the back of the room.
Carl turned partway, twisted his neck. “You having anything?”
“I did,” Michael said. “Espresso. Biscotti.” He motioned to the plate on the coffee table before them. Carl considered the plate, the crumbs there.
Carl unzipped his jacket then zipped it up halfway. “Yeah, I’m running late today.” He glanced around the room, noticed for the first time the size of the crowd. Most of the people seemed to be here by themselves—reading, nipping at their coffees, working on their laptops. Carl said, “Where did you go to school?”
“Indiana,” he said. “Small college.”
Carl wanted to ask, What are you thinking about right now, Michael? Are you thinking you’d like to beat the hell out of me? Or do you just want to be partners? “With Christine,” Carl said, in an absent way.
“A hick school in a hick state,” Michael said.
Carl felt the shape of his face change. “I’m trying to make her some money right now.”
“That’s your main interest, huh?”
Carl did not take his eyes from Michael. “No, it’s not.” Someone at the next table answered a cell phone and Carl and Michael turned their heads partway. The person on the phone, a teen boy in a denim jacket, had his back to them. Carl said, “Michael.”
“What?” Michael said. The kid in denim moved away.
“Yes?” Carl said.
“You said ‘Michael.’”
“I did? No, that was a ‘Michael’ at the end of my sentence. Like ‘No, it’s not, Michael.’” Carl looked at him. His button-down shirt had a worn collar and he looked disheveled, defeated. Carl had agreed to talk with Michael not because he thought he could really help things but primarily to position himself with Christine as vastly superior to her ex. Now Carl knew this was not possible. Michael was a hapless, unrealistic gambler. When Christine was without him, she was pragmatic, intelligent, kind. But these things were not all a person felt, nor all they desired to.
Michael said, “Where’s Big Zip right now?”
“California,” Carl said. “They ran him in the Ancient Title Handicap last time. Didn’t do any good.”
“Seven furlongs is too long for that horse.”
“I know that.”
“I remember the first time I saw the horse’s name in the entries here last year. I thought his name was Big Zit. Maybe they ought to bring him back here, let you ride him again. This is where he belongs.”
Carl did not say anything to this. Michael wanted to insult him, perhaps believing Carl was emotionally attached to Big Zip in some way. Carl had ridden thousands of horses; many of them were either mistreated, ignorant, misunderstood, or ill-tempered. Some loved to run and they wanted to run for him. Big Zip had been a rare find on the salvage-yard circuit, and as Carl rode Big Zip to its first victory he knew the horse wouldn’t be here for long. He got to ride Big Zip four times in all and was grateful for each opportunity. But he was not emotionally attached to the animal.
Michael puffed his cheeks, then exhaled. He seemed ready to pop up from his chair, but he stayed put. “She thought it would be a good idea if we talked,” he said. “She thought maybe we could work out a deal. Turns out she likes making money.”
“She’s a good player from what I can tell,” Carl said. “She listens.”
“Are you in love with her?” Michael said in a voice louder than the one he had been using. He kept his eyes straight ahead. “I am.” His voice turned quieter. “This is the way it is. You all will never be able to keep me away. I’m already closer than you know.”
Sounds like a song, Carl thought. He didn’t say this; he didn’t need to belittle Michael. It didn’t seem necessary. “I’ll give you one good tip a month if you will stay away from her.”
From the corner of his eye, Carl watched for a change in Michael. The music now was a ballad, a female singer whose voice Carl didn’t recognize. “I’ll text you,” Carl said. “But this isn’t going to be any dead lock, Michael. I might listen for info and I’ll give you good information. But I don’t want to hear it from you if things don’t work out. It’s a horse race, all right? Don’t forget that.” Carl folded his hands together, rested them just above his waist. “I sure am not going to give you anything I am riding. Doesn’t work out, you’ll accuse me of something.” After he said that last part, he wished he hadn’t.
Michael’s voice said, “Stay away?”
Carl tried to concentrate. “Don’t go anywhere near the apartment. When Christine is at the windows, stay away. You need to let her concentrate.” Carl’s voice fell off. He wanted to say something about the bar, too—the Seven Seas. “The second she complains to me about anything, no deal.” He listened to the music; the singer had a lovely voice, with an Irish brogue. “You don’t have to say yes,” Carl said. “Either she’ll complain to me or she won’t. If I don’t hear anything else about it…”
“All right, I get it,” Michael said. “But it’s like you’ve been telling me, jock. No promises.” He looked in the direction of the window that faced the street. “I don’t get it with her and you guys. You jockeys. You’re not the first—you know that, right?” Michael’s jaw muscles worked. “Did you hear what I just said?”
Carl slowly shook his head, but this was only because he didn’t want to talk with Michael anymore. There was nothing left to say.
Michael said, “What is it with you jocks?”
“Don’t know.”
“You’ve got an advantage over me. See, you’re up on those horses. I don’t ride racehorses. My wife is fucking a jockey,” he said. Carl wanted to leave then, but something kept him in the chair. Michael shook his head. “We need to get out of this place. Before something really bad happens.”
“You need to calm down,” Carl said.
“If I was small, I’d be the greatest jockey in the world,” Michael said. He didn’t turn in Carl’s direction for this. “I am fearless. I know how to win.”
Carl stood and left the coffee shop. He left Michael there and didn’t look back. Carl’s heart beat hard in his chest for some reason. He decided to drive to the Seven Seas Tavern and report to Christine about how the meeting had gone. Whatever he would tell her, it would only be the truth. He and Christine had been trying to keep things clear. This had been quite helpful.
Happy Hour wasn’t until six, so she’d be able to find a few minutes for him. He would sit at the counter and she could serve him a glass of red wine. Carl hadn’t been to the Seven Seas since he’d made up his mind that he wanted to live with Christine. Once he’d decided that, he’d wanted her to see him in a different way than over a bar counter.
Christine had started working there last summer, right before Labor Day—a period when Carl had been struggling to find mounts. He was a journeyman, a rider with nothing special to offer. Carl liked to sit at the bar counter and watch a baseball game with the other horsemen. Some riders, especially successful ones, could make a drink last. Carl liked red wine, how the taste of it could linger. A few sips could hit him pretty hard. He didn’t want to be loopy in front of anyone and he didn’t want to speak bitterly about anything, which other riders sometimes did. If he had more than a glass he’d have to sweat it out the next morning, put on a sweatsuit and jog a mile around the track after training hours. He was already in good shape.
One Saturday afternoon late last summer, he’d come to the end of another mountless afternoon and decided to drive over to the Seven Seas, find an open seat at the counter, and when he did, Christine, a new hire, stood in front of him. She asked what he wanted. She didn’t know that Carl was a nobody, that he rode for table scraps. Men in the bar would flirt with her; that was why the owner had hired her.
In time Carl saw that whenever anyone offered a hint about how an upcoming race might turn out, Christine seemed less fed up. She tried to look untouchable, but clearly she would pay attention if you said certain things. It became her reputation. If a rider or a trainer had something to say, something to tell her, she would listen. Carl, of course, had practically nothing to offer in this arena—not until Big Zip came along. After this, Carl felt as if he had some things to say to her. Big Zip gave him that.
Even right now, right this minute, after leaving Michael at the coffee shop, Carl couldn’t say for certain that he loved Christine. He would have to admit that he longed for her attention. He wanted her to listen to him. Perhaps love arrived at times in this shape, in this category. Whenever he looked at her he would think, All right, I’m ready to talk. I want to talk about what I know for sure.
He opened the door to the bar and a ray of winter light shot right past him, went all the way to the counter. Michelle Branch played from the jukebox. Christine always looks in the direction of the door when it opens, he thought. Carl smiled at her. She bent forward, lifted a bottle of wine and when he shook his head, she reached for club soda. A couple of grooms from Tanya Nehi’s barn inhabited one end of the counter. Geezers played cards at one of the tables; at another a pair of young couples split an iced bucket of beer. Carl sat at the spot where Christine had placed his glass of soda. She wiped her hands on a little towel she kept behind the counter. She stood and glanced down at Carl with both hands on her hips. She nodded. “How do,” she said.
Carl thought about what he wanted to tell her. He said, “He’s never going to let you go.” He was not trying to scare her, but he did wish she’d appear worried, at least a little. Carl touched the edge of his soda glass. “Why did you want me to talk to him, Christine?”
“You’re the jockey.” Her lips barely seemed to move. Carl turned his shoulders, glanced at the room. He had a feeling of helplessness that he wanted to give in to. She said, “I wanted you to know he was out there. I didn’t like the idea of lying to you.”
He focused on the jukebox, the illuminated blue neon lights running along the frame. Without turning back, he said, “You could’ve lied to me. That would have been all right. I don’t recall asking for complete honesty. Did I ask for that?”
“You want me to order a plate of—”
“No.” He turned to face her again, then lowered his eyes, looked at the glass. “It’s all right,” he said. “Everything will remain the same.”
“I want it to. I really do. I like winning.”
“Well, hell yes,” he said. “I’m glad tomorrow’s a race day, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
He closed his right hand, tapped his knuckles on the counter. “I owe you for the soda,” he said.
Carl wanted to eat, but he waited until he was back in the apartment. He opened the kitchen cupboard; she had added to his tuna supply. Almost certainly, she possessed good intentions. This was what he ate and she simply wanted him to have more of it. Carl couldn’t help but think of a pet-food section at a grocery store, however. The tins were neatly stacked. Each of them held a small portion of food. It was enough for a meal. Of course, Carl had learned this long ago. A squeeze of lemon, a few bits of ground pepper. He stood before the cupboard and the newly purchased tins of tuna and he couldn’t help but think about his life on the whole. What he wanted. The way that he conducted himself. It all seemed very primitive. I ride horses, he thought. That’s what I know, and when Christine and I talk it’s really all I have to say. Nothing will be different tomorrow.
Carl wanted to avoid this onrush of despair. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and thought, All I need to do is hang on. Hold on. Ride my horses and then come back here and live with Christine. He thought, I knew it wouldn’t last anyway. He closed the cupboard and opened it again. He took in a deep breath and exhaled. He stared at the tuna tins. I am a tuna tin.
Carl didn’t want company and he didn’t want her to see him this way. He was beginning to feel philosophical. In this apartment, he had tried to create a certain type of reality for himself. Now he had to face an additional reality, one that might wind up eliminating the one he wanted. He’d ridden in a dozen states and couldn’t remember each racetrack anymore. Some, more than a few, had gone extinct. When you couldn’t establish yourself in one place, you needed to move on to another, and when you did this you learned to tell yourself that the new place would be worth moving to because things could be different there. At the very least, you had to manifest the appearance and demeanor of a man who believed these things to be true. If you had been around long enough, your reputation might arrive just ahead of you and you’d need to show the local horsemen that you didn’t carry your discouragements with you. You were only there to ride. Over the years, Carl had learned how to present himself this way. He hated this. It was dishonest, and it provided him with the greatest regret about his own life. He hadn’t thought he’d need to call on this particular skill so early this year, in this particular year especially. Christine had told Carl that she and Michael were “walking through the ruins.” In a way, even this meant they were still together.
Could he already be losing his focus? His touch? Spring had just begun. He had been riding in races for almost twenty-nine years. Lying awake that night with the lights off, his eyes open, he understood, perhaps for the first time, that he actually might have chosen the exact wrong profession for his life. Carl thought, I have always taken losing so badly. This alone might be the reason he was not, nor would be ever be, a top jockey. A top rider didn’t care about losing, at least not in this way. It didn’t make his heart sink. It didn’t make him sometimes feel that everything would be lost. Losing just made a top rider more determined. It made him want everything that much more. But this had not been the case at all for Carl. It had just eaten at him, bit by bit, for the longest time. How much of me is left? He thought of the kitchen shelves in the apartment, the ones stacked with tuna tins.
Carl awakened without an alarm the next morning, as usual, and he turned to look over at Christine, though he couldn’t see anything in the darkness of the room. He thought about reaching for her shoulder, waking her, but could not think of what to say if he did. He pulled himself quietly out of bed, walked to the bureau, took out socks, underwear, jeans, a long-sleeve t-shirt, and he dressed in the bathroom. He felt exhausted, looked down at his bare feet. He wanted to brush his teeth.
He showed up on time to work out the horses he had agreed to work out. He talked with the trainers of these horses afterward. The last horse Carl got on, a chestnut mare named Feeling So Pretty, had a rattling, uneven stride, as if the track itself were knee-deep in tin cans. Following the workout, Carl chatted with the trainer, Fredi Garcia, and he wondered if he should comment on the horse’s unsoundness. Carl thought, Fredi knows this. We’re talking about this horse’s next race, but we are kidding ourselves. Even if it wins, we are kidding ourselves. I just don’t understand it. Carl shook his head at one point while Fredi was talking about running the horse in a long-distance race next week, something at a mile and an eighth. “What is it?” Fredi said.
“Nothing.”
“You okay?”
Carl rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “Yeah. My mind just drifted there for a second.” Carl stuck his hands on his hips and stared at Fredi. “I’m listening.”
Carl was having coffee with Christine later that morning and he broke away from discussing that afternoon’s seventh race. “Have I ever mentioned a horse named Feeling So Pretty?” he said. “An old mare I get on for Fredi Garcia?”
Christine held a pen in her hand and had a notebook in her lap. She stopped writing in the notebook and looked up. She had her hair tied in a ponytail and the ponytail rested over one shoulder. Her face was scrubbed and her eyes were bright. “No, I don’t think so,” she said.
“Just some old head-banger,” Carl said. His voice drifted. “Table scraps.”
“And?”
“He wants to run her next week. I felt like saying ‘Why don’t you retire this goddamn heap? Call it quits before she breaks down and falls dead right on top of me.’”
Christine blinked at him. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because then where would I be?”
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t have to ride Feeling So Pretty anymore.”
“Nobody will use a crack-up,” he said.
They sat at the table in the quiet for a time. Christine sipped from her coffee mug. She closed the notebook, set it on the table. She placed the pen on top of it.
Carl said, “You got that right. I am not going to win a race today.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”
Carl glanced at the window. “It seems like you’re a shrink sitting there like that with a pen and a pad and everything.”
“You are living here with me. I’m not your fucking secretary, Carl.”
“It’s Michael,” he said, almost immediately. “You know that.”
“I told you, he and I…drifted apart.”
“Apart,” he said. She had lowered her head. He waited until she looked his way. Carl said, “It’s all right, Christine. I have a past, too. Every time I want to see you I don’t always see you.” His voice lost some of it firmness. What he said was not true. He suspected they both knew it. “I don’t want to think about what I don’t have. Wanting too much is sad. Being satisfied is sad, too.” He cut his right hand into the air. “I’m trying to get it right there in between.” He smiled and hoped she was watching him. “But it’s tough.”
“I know.”
“It’s hard to stay on a winning streak. You have to forget practically everything.”
“Maybe we ought to get you hypnotized.”
“I tried that once, I think,” he said. He wanted to say, I think I’ve tried just about everything. But he didn’t want her to hear as much. He didn’t want her to hear these particular words. “Don’t get carried away with your gambling, Christine,” he said. “Don’t think that any of this is easy.” She regarded him in a patient way. “I know what you have been through.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” she said.
“I feel a little slump coming on. Maybe you better hang on to your money for a little bit.”
“Are you trying to punish me or something, Carl?”
“No.” He shook his head at this. “Not at all.”