He arrived in Cleveland near four a.m. Ohio time. Carl wished he hadn’t canceled his morning workout schedule at Summit because he felt like getting on horses now, as many as could be lined up for him. He imagined driving to the track, yanking some rumpled clothes from his suitcase, and then going from barn to barn to see who needed a rider that morning. Too many people knew that he’d left for California and the San Diego Handicap. The result of the race was not yet twelve hours old. He shouldn’t show up on the backstretch at Summit seeking work this morning. He didn’t want it to seem like things really had gone so badly for him out there.
He drove for the apartment on this cold, black morning. It was late April. Christine might be there right now, sleeping alone in their bed. This was the best-case scenario, and he felt the rhythm of his heartbeat change at the thought of it. While Carl had been away, Michael could have easily said or done something mindless or unforgivable. Carl arrived at the Singing Bridge Apartments and parked in the slot assigned to their unit; Christine’s car was not there. He opened the door to the apartment and it felt different than four days ago. He opened the bedroom door and didn’t see her shape under the covers. Quickly, he flipped the light switch on and off. He turned it on and left it on. A minute later he turned it off. He walked out to the living room, where he had left his suitcase on wheels.
Carl needed to leave for the track just before noon, and that was when the front door to the apartment opened and in stepped Christine. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and a cloth jacket—white with brown patches on the elbows. Her hair was loose. Carl had not seen the jacket before and she didn’t appear surprised to see him there. He sat on the loveseat. An open copy of Metropolis rested on his lap. He was glad to see her, but he was also fed up. She had never looked quite this beautiful. He held up the magazine with two hands and said, “Sustainably smart designs.”
She said, “Why, there you are.”
Carl lowered the magazine. “I gotta get to the track, Christine.”
“I know.” She walked to the kitchen and carried over a clear plastic chair.
He said, “The cat’s gone. You could’ve told me that. You could’ve been up front about that. I wouldn’t have gone to pieces.”
“You were getting ready for California,” she said. “Like the biggest race of your life.”
“It wasn’t…” Carl said. “You see—”
“I need to talk to you.” She sat forward and clasped her hands together. Her eyes were dry and her expression had a blankness to it. She wore no make-up. Her freckles were so lovely. Christine said, “I am going to say what I am going to say and then I want to leave because neither of us is likely to be very happy. I simply don’t think it’s reasonable…”
“Tell me.”
“Please don’t get impatient with me. I just need you to listen and to think about what I’m offering. Carl, I’m moving out. I’ve already taken some things over to Michael’s, and this week I’m going to move over everything else I need. I want you to keep this apartment. Here.” She held out a folded piece of paper. “I started a bank account for you. Take it. There’s almost five thousand in there. I cashed in the first-class ticket, deposited it. Take it before…” He did, and she sat back. “I still have five months left on the lease, and I will pay half the rent until the lease is up. You’ve made me money, and I have no problem at all doing this. We okay so far? Michael and I have been talking and we have a proposition for you.” She decided to cross her legs at this point. “Tell me about your trip.”
Carl lifted his hands then dropped them atop the magazine. “I won’t be riding Big Zip again, Christine.” He closed the magazine and placed it on the cushion next to him. “I closed my eyes during the race. Twice, actually. Dropped my whip at the eighth pole.”
“You did what?”
“Surprise, surprise.”
She swallowed at this and he felt like doing the same. He had planned to take the closing-of-his-eyes moments to the grave.
Christine said, “I thought you rode him fine. We watched the race at the simulcast parlor. I saw you being interviewed before the race, but it was too loud and I couldn’t hear what you said. I was really pulling for you. You don’t know how much.”
“If I had won the frigging race, would it have changed any of this?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you have something else you would like to tell me, darling?”
“Do you think you might want to stay here?”
“Christine, I have no idea. I have to leave for the track in about fifteen seconds.”
She leaned forward again, reached one hand in his direction. She didn’t touch him. “I know your schedule,” she said.
“Jesus Christ, how bad is this?”
“Michael,” she said. “We.” She was leaning forward and now she held her hands together. “Wanted to ask you about a business proposition.” She dropped her head and when she looked at Carl again, she said, “I can’t go through with this.”
“This is your apartment,” he said. “You can’t leave.”
She decided to sit back in the chair.
“Why did you take the cat away before I left?”
“He was getting used to you. Bo traveled here with me and Michael. We got him from a shelter in Detroit. He was named something like Luke or Duke. But then we read about Obama’s dog. We like the president’s dog. This is our cat, Michael’s and mine. Having you here… I don’t know. It made me happy in a way.”
“I never really had a chance with you. I knew that,” Carl said. “Why did I keep trying?”
Christine said, “You fucking guys.” She had her arms crossed. “Stay with me, Christine.”
“I am moving in with Michael. Didn’t I just tell you that?” She brought her hand up and laid it flat on her chest, just under the base of her throat. “I married him. I was in love with him the first time I laid eyes on him. This is not what I am here to talk to you about.”
“I’ve seen a million guys like him. They never change.”
“You should talk.”
He let that one go.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I have changed. I have changed just enough. I learned something from you, Carl. Maybe it was something I knew all along. But you showed me what matters.” She spoke carefully. “The most irresistible person in the room is the one who has the better idea on how the race is going to turn out. When Michael and I were first together, it was him. Now it’s me. It just might be me. I know it and he knows it. I have the bank book to prove it. I want to participate in all of this, goddamnit. Carl, I want you to listen to me. Michael has an idea, and I told him that it might offend you. He thought we all might be partners. We would pay all of your rent and we would cut you in on a third of the profits. The deal would be that I would appear here every race day and have coffee with you. You would talk and I would listen just like before.”
Carl didn’t speak right away. In a minute, a calm arrived over the surface of him. “I thought you said you had a handle on things.”
She said, “I’m trying to hold the good pieces of my life in place.”
He pointed an index finger at her, but he didn’t say anything. He set his hands in his lap again. “You’re doomed.”
She said, “No, I’m not. I would never think like that, not in a million years. Neither would…” A moment later, she got to her feet. She walked for the door and when she closed it, she did it in a quiet way, which hurt him as much as anything.
Carl left the apartment a few minutes later. He drove for the racetrack under a sky of gray and white swirls. He laughed at himself. Doomed. He wasn’t trying to be cruel to her. This was the word that he had spoken, however. It could apply to so many things, so many levels of this life. It was a most accurate and most useless word in this manner. Still, Carl wished he hadn’t said it—at least not to someone like Christine, who deserved better.
He understood that he was about to have a bad afternoon.
Before each race he rode in, he shook hands with the trainer, who would say something like, “I see you’re back,” or “Well, look who made it home.” No one mentioned the race in California specifically. It was a difficult thing to say something positive about. Carl appreciated the politeness. He lost on all six mounts he had. After he dismounted and unsaddled, none of the trainers he had ridden for made an unfortunate remark about Big Zip or Balboa Park. On more than one occasion, Carl said to a trainer, “He just didn’t have it today.” This was fairly close to a criticism of the job the trainer had done getting the horse ready for the race, but none of the trainers he said this to showed any signs of irritation about Carl saying such a thing. He drove to Singing Bridge Apartments that night and sat at the kitchen table; he ate his tuna fast, directly from the tin. He wondered what other horsemen thought of him now. He imagined that they might believe his ride on Big Zip at Balboa Park was a heartbreaking experience for him. Horse of a lifetime, one more chance to sit on its back, and so forth. Carl had gone out to California to ride, but there hadn’t been a lot of choice in that. The result of the race suggested he was simply a certain kind of man who needed to be in a certain kind of place. What he could do was always how he ought to be measured. He understood it was time to get an agent. He needed to change the focus from the result of the San Diego Handicap to the fact he had been asked to ride in it.
He knew that he would never be able to do this on his own.
He sat on the loveseat in the living-room area and opened his cell phone. He paged through the names on his contact list until he found Ilya Kamanakov and he pressed the green button to dial. The phone rang three times on the other end. Ilya said, “Cahl. Cahlavo.”
“Ilya,” Carl said. “I have been meaning to call you for some time now. Take you up on that offer.”
“Hah, hah. Funny. That’s funny. I am on death row. Remind me not to hire you for my lawyer.”
“No, I wouldn’t want me, either,” he said. “Listen here, I’m just back from riding at Balboa and I am ready to start making some money. I think we can do it. It’s not even close to summer…”
“Can’t do it,” Ilya said. “Cahl.” He did not say anything else. Carl wondered if Ilya just liked the sound of the word.
“I know, you’ve already got Milord and that kid Barrero. Get rid of Milord. He’s a stiff. I hear his arteries harden a little more every time I blow past him in the stretch.”
“He’s in the top ten of the standings.”
“Bottom of the top ten,” Carl said. “Come on now, let’s win some races. Ilya, the only reason the guy is in top ten at all is because you represent him.”
“Gary Shells is looking for a rider,” Ilya said. “Man with a mustache. You know who I am speaking about?”
“Gary Shales? Yeah, I know who he is. He isn’t as good as you.”
“No, he is not. But he is looking for someone. I’m married right now, see? I leave Guillermo, I am a lowlife. I get a rep I don’t need. Guillermo says he wants to go to Tampa for the winter. He wants warm weather. All that sunlight, it is too much for me. Call me after the meet in September. I want to stay up here.”
Carl said, “You got a number for Shales?”
“No, I don’t.”
“If you see him…”
“I will.” Ilya didn’t hang up then. Carl supposed Ilya was waiting for him to do this first. He was a good agent. On his way up for sure.
“You watch the race?” Carl said.
“California? I did. How much you get? You mind me asking?”
“Five grand. You could’ve gotten me twice that, right?”
“Sounds like a lot to me,” Ilya said.
“Sounded like a lot to me too.”