Later that morning, Carl sat up in bed in his hotel room and absently flicked the remote from one channel to the next until he finally just switched off the set altogether. He pulled an armchair over to a window in his suite that faced the hotel’s huge, egg-shaped swimming pool. It didn’t seem warm enough to swim, though the lounges that rimmed the pool were occupied, mostly by pale-complected people. Carl had yanked off his boots and pulled on his white robe, but otherwise he wore his riding clothes. He propped his socked feet on the window sill, watched the people around the swimming pool and wondered if he could do anything to keep Christine. They weren’t going to last forever. Carl and Christine had both understood as much, even after it was agreed that he would live with her. He’d had to accept the offer to fly out here and ride Big Zip in a race. Not to do it would be admitting he was afraid to leave Christine alone for fear of the inevitable: that she would reconcile with her ex-husband, the gambler. A call from California was a rare thing, and if Big Zip finished up the track on Saturday, Carl would never get another. He had to try. He had to be exactly where he was right now, but it wouldn’t matter whether Big Zip won on Saturday. If Carl won or lost, Christine would not change her mind. If he won, she might even feel less guilty about leaving him, though it would belittle her to conclude such a thing.
He pictured the moment from earlier that morning when, right after daybreak, the groom led Big Zip from the stall and brought the horse over to where Carl stood, the groom and Henry Forrest both interested in his reaction. They’d expected to see more than Carl tapping at the horse’s muzzle with the palm of his hand. He’d tried to appear indifferent. He’d thought, Are you the one? Can you be the one who can change it all for me? He didn’t like to think this way because it made it seem like what he already had was insufficient. Far from plenty. He had spent a long time convincing himself otherwise.
Big Zip looked slick that morning, and Carl liked the idea of being on the horse’s back again. Big Zip galloped confidently over the artificial surface. They passed the open-air grandstand on their way down the stretch. The rows of seats seemed to cascade down from the center of the sky. It took them no time at all to get past that. The clubhouse was a quarter the size of the grandstand and was fronted with a grid of blue-tinted glass panes. The only sounds were the gentle noises of the galloping horses on the track. If Carl had known very little about his work, he might easily have believed Saturday’s race would be nothing more than a cakewalk. If a person wanted to be fooled into thinking something, that was their business. But all you had to do was look around. Each of the horses here seemed to be in wonderful condition. They trained in glorious morning air. The Pacific Ocean was right across the highway. The waitresses in the clubhouse dining room were probably just slight variations of Courteney Cox. All of this could keep anyone going forever, until the end of time. Things were good out here. You just needed to modify yourself. Turn believer.
Now Carl watched as one young man did laps in the pool. The man wore goggles, a yellow skull cap, and a dark blue Speedo. He seemed to possess an infinite amount of stamina. Carl checked his Timex, had it set to Summit time. He reached for his cell and dialed Christine. It was three o’clock in the afternoon there, before she had to go to work. Her voicemail answered, the beep arrived. Carl said, “Hey, it’s Carl here. Out in California. Everything’s fine. Listen, I was just thinking about something. I was named on a horse in the nightcap today at Summit, he’s a seven-year-old, name’s Holdfast. The horse has been running good, but they replaced me with Bill Hoyer, I think. Bill’s not strong and he won’t be able to rate that horse at all. Christine, I’d get out a Racing Form and handicap the race. Throw that horse out of all your exotics. He’ll be favored and it’ll burn a lot of money. Christine? It just hit me. I don’t why I didn’t call you about it earlier… Well, like I said, everything’s fine here. Talk to you later.”
Carl slipped the phone back into the pocket of his robe. He closed up the robe, had the folds stuck between his legs when the cell rang. It took him a moment to find it. “Hello,” he said.
“It’s Tab.”
“Tab,” Carl said. “Right.”
“What about I drive over there and pick you up? Bring you out here to watch some races? You can see how the track is playing.”
“I want to do something like that,” Carl said. “Tell you what, I am not quite ready to go yet. I’ll get a taxi and get over there myself.”
“Want to meet me in the clubhouse or something?”
“Let me just get there and watch the races myself. Let me see what I can see. That okay?”
“Yeah, sure. They just want me to touch base with you.”
“Somebody think I’m going to go crazy out here?” Carl said. “Hookers, dope, more dope, more hookers?”
“Happens every minute of every day.”
“Maybe next trip. I’ll see you in the lobby tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Good enough, I guess.”
Carl hung up, remained in his chair. He looked down to the people around the hotel swimming pool. Carl didn’t want to go to Balboa Park or any other racetrack today. It would be unprofessional of him not to, though, so he would. At least he could do it when he was ready. In a while, he walked over to the nightstand, dialed the front desk. The operator said Carl would need to let the bellman know if he wanted a taxi but Carl said, “Do it for me, please. The taxi is to take me to Balboa Park. I’ll be down there in about twenty minutes.”
A green car with black letters reading “Coronado Cab” on the passenger door was waiting for him when Carl stepped through the sliding glass doors at the hotel entrance. The driver was a middle-aged black man with a bald head and when Carl leaned into the open passenger window, the driver said, “Taking you to the track?”
“Right,” Carl said. He decided to sit in the front seat.
The driver didn’t appear surprised by Carl’s decision. He tapped a button on the meter and red digits appeared; Carl already owed the guy a buck twenty-five. “You’re a jockey,” the driver said.
“That’s right.”
“Riding anything good?” Immediately, they were bogged down in traffic.
“I flew out here from Cleveland to ride a horse on Saturday. His name is Big Zip.”
The taxi moved forward a few feet before stopping again. The driver sat sprawled out in his seat. He touched his hand to his mouth. “Big Zip. I think I know that name.”
“Are you a horseplayer?”
The taxi moved forward again. “I am not.”
“Maybe you read something about the horse in the newspaper.”
He said, “No, not really. I guess it’s just one of those terms or something.”
Carl said, “He felt good today. Not that I’d recommend betting it, though.”
The driver nodded. “Oh. All right.”
Carl didn’t mind talking. He had only been here a day and didn’t want to feel sick of California yet. He tried to think of something else he and the driver could chat about. When they arrived at the entrance to the clubhouse at Balboa, the meter read $10.75. They had ridden along without speaking. Carl held out a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Just give me a five for change.” A nice tip. Carl said, “I do appreciate it.” He hoped the driver understood.
Carl exited the taxi and strolled to the clubhouse entrance. More sliding glass doors opened for him and inside he had to buy a ticket. Carl felt astounded at the intensity of the air conditioning. The clubhouse carpeting was like something from an Atlantic City hotel, a pattern of big triangles, bright green-and-yellow ones. There were vendor stands for programs and Racing Forms and Carl bought two programs, one for Balboa and one for Summit. When he asked about the simulcast parlor, the good-looking kid selling the Forms swung out his right arm and pointed. Carl walked in this direction and a minute later discovered the simulcast parlor, wedged into one corner at the far end of the clubhouse. Scattered about were a few tables for two. One wall featured three rows of flat-screen TV sets. A wall perpendicular to this one offered betting windows. Two of the windows were occupied by actual people; the remaining half dozen featured automated teller machines. The programs felt like tissue in Carl’s right hand and the ink had already smeared under the tips of his fingers. He walked closer to the wall of TVs. His eyes went from one to the next until he found the TV that featured a live shot from Summit Park. Racing had already begun at Balboa for the afternoon and the races were going on just outside. But they could wait. The nightcap at Summit happened to be a few minutes away. The horses were on the track for the post parade. The horse Carl would have ridden, Holdfast, appeared on the screen. It wore an orange saddlecloth with a white number 7 and an impassive-looking Bill Hoyer sat atop its back. An info bar at the bottom of the screen had the odds at 6–5. The betting public didn’t seem to care that Carl had been replaced. Holdfast was a small gelding with big nostrils and on the TV set, the afternoon light in Cleveland seemed to be a yellowish green. The camera focused on the horse that walked behind Holdfast, the number 8. Carl understood that he should be on that TV screen right now. His eyes would be focused down the homestretch of Summit Park. To his right would be the largely empty grandstand. He would get to ride in this race and then he would get in his car and he could clean up, change back into his civilian clothes, and drive back to the apartment he shared with Christine. It had taken him a long time to find a setup he could appreciate. One phone call from a wealthy, meddlesome man and all of this seemed far away again.
He needed to do something. He glanced over the smeary pages of the program for Summit and picked out the second, third, and fourth choices. He walked to a betting window, where he boxed those three horses in exactas and trifectas. He made a fifty-dollar win bet on the second choice in the race, New Normal, who was ridden by Ilya Kamanakov’s apprentice rider, Rafael Barrero. Carl had these tickets in his shirt pocket as the horses loaded into the gate.
Holdfast, as Carl expected, broke quickly and stole away from the others. Hoyer’s black boot took the shape of a checkmark as he sat back in the saddle with his feet shoved forward, trying to rein in Holdfast’s speed. Holdfast opened up three, then four lengths on the field. When they entered the far turn, they accelerated even farther away. Holdfast could be rated for only so long. Hoyer knew that to keep fighting the horse would rob it of energy. It led by more than a half-dozen lengths as the field turned into the stretch, and this was where the hard running began for the others. Holdfast was tiring and Hoyer was tossing the reins and just brush-stroking with the whip. Only with a hundred yards left in the race did the others begin to gain—and when they did, they gained fast. But they were too late to change anything. Holdfast held on to win by a neck.
Carl didn’t gamble much anymore but losing a bet felt too familiar to him just then. He reached into his shirt pocket and crushed together his tickets with his hand. On his way outside, he dropped them into a trash bin.
The clubhouse was separated from the grandstand by a spacious paddock, one that featured a walking ring in front of a line of saddling stalls lined in handsome, rich-colored wood. The walking ring, like the track, was an oval. The border was a path of white sand and in the center grew bright, putting-green grass. The saddling area adjacent to the walking ring consisted of a dozen rectangular stalls side by side. They were not under any type of cover. When it rained, Carl supposed the horses were simply saddled in the rain. It couldn’t be a frequent occurrence, not out here. He looked over the walking ring and the saddling area and tried to imagine a rainstorm. The picture in his mind seemed so beautiful he had to blink his eyes twice.
Carl strolled along a footpath alongside the walking ring. He wanted to sit in the open-air grandstand and it took him a couple of minutes to walk all the way to the far end. He strolled under the stands, under the shadows there, and then he took a walk up a length of steps that were constructed in the shape of a square corkscrew. At the top of the steps was the first row of the grandstand’s second tier. He wanted to be up high. The second tier of stands was sparsely occupied with horseplayers. The horses for the second race jogged along the backstretch. Carl found an empty section to sit in. He grinned in wonder; he couldn’t be any farther from the finish line. He held the programs for Summit and Balboa and to start, he placed the Balboa program at his hip. He leafed through the Summit pages, even though the races there had concluded for the day. When he glanced up, the horses were near the starting gate on the backstretch. He tried to picture himself out there, aboard Big Zip. He wondered then when his very last ride would be. This was something he didn’t think of often because in one way it was difficult to imagine and in another it was not. It would be the result of a horrible spill. He could never picture himself one day simply saying I’ve had enough of this. The spill: he would hear the sound of hoofbeats, then a snapped ankle and then the weight of a horse would crash down on him. He would feel the bridge of his nose caving in; this would be the last thing. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine this; a good many jockeys ended this way.
He decided to check his cell phone to see if Christine had called to give him a little grief about the horse he’d told her to bet against. There were messages from a couple of trainers at Summit. Christine, he supposed, wasn’t checking her calls on a regular basis just now because she was trying to put her marriage back together. Even though it was her shift, she might not be at the Seven Seas. After Carl had left for California, she might have asked for a couple of days off. She and Michael would have long talks about gambling. Christine would be the one doing the talking. She would lay out things for him. She would explain that things were going to go a different way this time. Michael would listen and then when it was his turn to speak, he would talk about love. Christine would say, That’s fine, but this time we’re going to use our heads. We’re going to be shrewd and we are not going to panic. Michael’s life would be less than it was, but he would have almost all of it back. Michael had told Carl this much. When Carl got back to Cleveland, he could talk to Christine, explain to her that the odds would not be in her and Michael’s favor, bit it simply wouldn’t matter. When it came to Michael, she couldn’t be reasoned with. She was in for a difficult future.
When Carl returned to the apartment, Christine might want to keep the arrangement going. He already knew that he would agree to this. He would simply create a new rule: No more talk about Michael. He appreciated her honesty and he had heard enough about Michael. He needed to focus on his riding. Carl would do his best in the San Diego Handicap and when he flew home after this, his business was going to get a lift. Even though Bill Hoyer had just won a race that Carl was supposed to. Carl was at Balboa Park because a rich man was willing to pay him handsomely to ride a good horse that had been losing since it had left the Rust Belt. Bill Hoyer would never be able to say such a thing, not in a million years.
The horses in the second race at Balboa broke from the gate. There was the call of the race on the P.A. system. Carl watched the race with a dry mouth. The horses headed for the far turn. On Saturday, that would be him, the man who might get Big Zip winning again. Carl imagined having the lead as the field for the San Diego ’Cap made their way around the turn. He tried to imagine all that could change as the result of a single race.