The following morning, once workouts had concluded, he returned to the apartment and they had coffee together. This was a Sunday morning, a cloudy and cold one and Carl’s arms and legs were like clay. It felt as if he had already lost everything. He said, “Navajo Canyon, that small gray filly I’m on in the second…she doesn’t like to be whipped at all. I learned this about her last time I rode her. We finished mid-pack in a maiden claimer, what, nine days ago?”
“Right,” Christine said. “That was a Friday.”
“The trainer, Jose Able, he’s a nice guy who ought to be selling Vitamin Water or some goddamn thing. Last time, he told me that when it was time for us to make our move, I needed to show her the whip, then get to sticking her. When I showed her the whip, she accelerated. When I hit her with the thing, she just flattened out. I think she was telling me she understood how it all worked. Jose has her back in the same kind of race today. I am going to ignore his instructions. She ought to go forward a few lengths.”
“Think she’ll get a piece?” She made notes as she spoke.
Carl waited until she looked up at him. “I’d be surprised if she didn’t,” he said.
Christine nodded.
“I thought we’d catch the six o’clock to San Diego on Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “Have dinner on the plane. Lobster or steak.” He smiled, which he wanted her to see.
“How am I going to bet that race?” she said.
With your hands and your pocketbook, Carl felt like joking. Suddenly, he felt a great many things, but none of these feelings were actually helpful. He was pleased that Christine appeared to be in a thoughtful frame of mind.
“You are going to call me on Saturday morning, right?” her voice said. There was a pleasant, false touch of urgency.
Carl said, “What do I know about riding in California?”
“It’s Big Zip. What else do you need to know?”
Carl dropped his head, let his shoulders sag. “That’s all it takes? Well, hell.”
“Tell me what you think…right this second.”
“Del Mar has an artificial surface. I rode on artificial at Turfway in northern Kentucky a couple of seasons ago. The track surface there is made of little bits of carpet and tiny bits of rubber. The horses don’t make any sound when they run. You can’t hear their hoofbeats. Weird. They say it’s safer than dirt.” Carl couldn’t read her expression. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay, Christine? Like bet all the money you’ve already made. Big Zip has been on a losing streak out there and it’s probably for one reason and one reason alone. Those horses out there are just a hell of a lot faster. Asking me to go out there and change all that is an act of desperation. The guy who owns the horse could have said as much.”
“All you’re doing now is protecting yourself against disappointment.”
“I guess so.”
“This could be the start of something great,” she said.
“I hope it is. I really do.”
“It’ll be a good trip. I already have a positive vibe about it.”
“Will everything be different when I get back?” Carl hadn’t wanted to ask the question. It was one more thing to think about, one more thing to throw him off.
“This will be your place,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about where you’ll be living. If that’s what you mean.”
“And you will be here?”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll be here on Sunday. Is that when you get back?”
“Where does Michael live?” Carl said. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that.”
“He has an apartment on the east end of St. Clair Avenue. It’s a sublet. He pays by the month.”
Carl would lose Christine to Michael. He had known this for as long as he could care to admit. Little would be proved by getting angry with her. He might as well pack up his boxes and head for the next place. Charles Town. Mountaineer. Right this second, he hoped that she could read his mind. He said, “I might just go out there and win on that goddamn horse. Upset of the century.”
Christine nodded at this. There was an informed look to her expression.
“Anyway, you know better than to bet everything,” he said.
Navajo Canyon, Carl’s best chance to win a race that afternoon, finished a faraway second to a first-time starter named Exemplary. Carl tried hard and rode capably on his remaining mounts, but he couldn’t keep his mind clear. There’d been a time when losing had brought clarity to his thinking. When he was younger, losing had meant he’d made poor choices with his life. It suggested he had significant shortcomings. He remembered having long talks about losing with his first wife, Kelly, while they were still married. They did this for good reason. They were broke and boom-boom-boom had three children. Kelly talked about losing too much. He began to blame her for his losing, even though he already knew losing was always going to be a big part of this.
Carl had spoken with Kelly on the phone last Christmas. She’d remarried years ago and now worked in the human resources office at the University of Akron. Their kids had turned into adults; both daughters lived in Akron, had married men from there. They were close to their mother. At one point during their talk last Christmas, Kelly told Carl each girl wanted to start a family soon. Are you ready to be a grandfather, Carl? Kelly had said. Sure, of course, Carl said right away. Kelly didn’t go on to tease him about riding racehorses and being a grandfather. This almost certainly would be the case. Their son, Teddy, had struck out on his own, and from what Carl had gathered, Teddy liked to sell things. He made good money at it. Carl and Kelly’s kids were average-sized, like their mother. Carl talked to everyone twice a year, around Christmas and on individual birthdays. He didn’t know about their problems. He wanted to be helpful to his wives and children, but he supposed the only way of doing that was through money. They probably had more than he did, anyway. Everyone was polite.
Alycia, Carl’s second wife, had once said to him, You will always win just enough to believe you have done the right thing with your life. She had said this after a fight, not during one. At the time, Carl thought this was an overly dramatic offering. Carl had talked to her this past Christmas, like he always did. She and Carl, like Carl and Kelly, had an unspoken rule about bringing up the past. Carl, for whatever reason, had felt like reminding her of that line, though he didn’t want to revive any dead and buried issues. He simply wanted to tell her that she had been correct. It hadn’t changed anything when she’d said it for the first time and it certainly would not change anything now. That was how right she had been. He simply wanted to tell her he wanted more these days. He thought she might like to hear that. But none of this would matter to Alycia.
She had remarried too and now lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. Her Facebook posts suggested she liked taking her camera to the lake. Alycia was tall and blond and still slim. Her husband was a big man with a chiseled face. He looked like Chuck Woollery. In practically all of her Facebook photos, Alycia was smiling, with Chuck embracing her in many of them. Carl hoped there was not a falseness to this, that this wasn’t simply because the camera was on them. Carl knew his time with Alycia had come and gone. He had missed out with her. He could stand it. But, he was strong enough to still wonder about it.
On Monday evening Carl packed a suitcase for his trip to San Diego. He had moved in with two different suitcases, one a large vinyl case with an endless number of zippers and pockets, and in this he kept clothes—jeans, western shirts—he hadn’t worn in a while but for some reason couldn’t part with. In there, too, were old racing programs and some win photos from when he first started out as a rider. He hadn’t looked at them in years. He knew he wouldn’t use the case for anything else. There weren’t going to be any vacations to the Bahamas. That was all right; the realization of this had barely bothered him at all.
The other case he had was smaller, for overnight trips. It had a retractable aluminum handle on one end and wheels at the other. He had bought this perhaps a half-dozen years ago, perhaps even longer, when he decided the larger case would only be used to store things he wanted to hang on to. He bought the smaller case—and he remembered this idea specifically now—because it might be useful if someone wanted to fly him in for a certain race. When he bought the smaller case, he still had not given up on the idea this might happen. He lived with Christine and now another thing he had fantasized about was actually going to happen. He could never have predicted the exact circumstances. He never thought he would ride at a place like Balboa Park; he’d only allowed himself to hope for a ride at Philly Park or one of the tracks in Jersey.
Carl had stored both cases in a closet in the bedroom he shared with Christine. The closet door was always open because Bo’s litter box was in there. When he brought out the smaller case, it felt light. In fact, when he unzipped the front flap, he saw the case was empty. He set the empty case on the bed and supposed that in the end he was still something of a fool, nothing more than a superstitious creature. He had left it empty for a reason. Carl decided to leave the opened case on the bed with the hope that Bo might appear and climb into it. Cats liked doing things like this. Carl left the bedroom and when he returned after messing around on his computer for an hour, he saw the case was still empty. Carl kept his eyes on the case and tried to remember the last time he had seen Bo. On occasion the cat had walked out to the kitchen area while Carl ate a tin of tuna and worked at his computer. Carl looked under the bed. Nothing, no shining cat eyes looking back. He walked to the closet again because he realized something. When he had been in there a few minutes ago, he hadn’t had to step around the litter box. He looked again in the closet and discovered the box was gone. There was nothing wrong with Bo; Christine would have said something. He stepped out of the closet and eyed the empty suitcase on the bed. In a while, he began to pack.