Two days later, Carl went to the track kitchen after morning workouts for a meeting with Gary Shales. The kitchen tables were crowded but Gary had secured a couple of seats at the end of one. The seat across from Gary was empty. He wore a straw hat with a green band around the crown. He was a tall, wiry man with a stooped posture, his age somewhere between thirty and sixty. He had a thick mustache and just his lower teeth were visible as he spoke. Gary was from out on the Great Plains and had ridden bulls and bucking horses until a quarter horse had fallen on him in a rodeo in New Mexico. He walked with a black cane, one that some hard-hearted people said he did not need. Carl approached the table and saw the cane leaned against an edge of it, near Gary’s left elbow. Gary didn’t stand and he and Carl didn’t shake hands. Carl took the open seat across from Gary and they nodded to one another. Gary had a couple of unopened bottles of water in front of him and he picked one up and held it over. “Didn’t know if you’d be thirsty.”
Carl accepted the bottle, which felt cool and slick in his hand. He unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. He set the bottle on the table after this and glanced around the room. The cafeteria line was long, out the back door. Conversation seemed steady, like someone had left water running. Gary had chosen the time and place for the meeting, and he wanted people to see he and Carl might be going into business together.
Carl lifted the water bottle in front of him, considered the label, and then he set the bottle down again. “Whose book you have last?”
“Lori Wydick,” Gary said. “Until last December. She promised her mother she’d quit the game. So she quit.”
“Where is she riding now?”
“Sportsman’s Park.”
Carl said, “I haven’t seen my mother for a long time now.”
“Neither have I.”
Carl felt a smile arrive at one corner of his mouth. “I usually do my own bookkeeping and make my own appointments. Monitor my own business. I feel like letting someone else do this for a while. Last Saturday, I rode out at Balboa Park. You see that?”
Gary Shales nodded his head one time.
“I stayed in a hotel suite that was bigger than the last two apartments I’ve lived in. When I got back here my girlfriend told me she had moved back in with her ex-husband.”
Gary twisted the cap on his water bottle back and forth. “What can you do?”
“Remind people I was good enough to be asked to ride at Balboa. After that, just tell me where to go and what time to be there. I’ll be at the top of my game in no time at all.”
“All right.”
“You ever hear anything about me, Gary? That I am unprofessional in any way? Something maybe a while ago? Be straight.”
“A bit of a pain in the ass. Back in the day. Your rep now is you try. You’re not afraid.”
“I didn’t know anything back then.”
“Nobody does.”
“What about talent?”
“What about it?”
Carl tapped his knuckles on the table top in a light way. He did this twice. “You got a family, Gary?”
“No.”
Carl drew in a breath, then he sat back and reached into the pocket of the down vest he wore. He held out a set of folded papers. “We don’t need a contract, do we? Not unless you want one. These are my schedules for the next two days. Includes morning workouts and afternoon races. I’ve already given a commitment to these people. You want to add to the lists, fine. From here on, you make the lists. I like to work, Gary. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for the water,” Carl said. “Let’s talk tomorrow night. Call between seven and eight.”
Carl liked how the meeting had gone and when Gary called him the following evening, Carl was ready to talk. Gary, however, did not say much. This was his reputation, but Carl knew that sometimes this kind of person would talk a blue streak in front of certain people. Gary did not. On the phone, Gary spoke in three- or four-word sentences. He said things like, “Bourke’s got a call. Fourth race, Friday. Looks fast.”
“Good,” Carl said. “Right.”
“Willingham’s filly for Sunday.”
“Yes?”
“Told him we’d pass.”
“Why?”
“Crazy.”
“Don’t worry about that, Gary.”
“She sees dead people,” he said.
Carl laughed. “Put me on her. What else?”
The entire call went this way. In a way, Carl liked it. Things seemed simple again.
At the end of it, Gary said, “Anything else?”
“Sounds good.”
“Talk tomorrow.”
Overall, Carl believed that the spring and summer were not lost—not yet. Gary was going to be a good agent, and if Carl could start winning races again, they might make for an excellent team. Gary knew horses and he was organized. Carl failed to win a race on Friday and Saturday, but these were the mounts he had lined up on his own. His touch wasn’t there. His confidence was absent. Christine had moved out. Everything had turned to nothing. This had happened to him before. It simply got harder to deal with. He never wanted to act like any of this wasn’t the truth. That would make riding and winning even more difficult.
Christine had apparently been showing up at the apartment during the afternoon races at Summit Park, collecting more of her things. Clothes, books, shoes. She could have finished the job faster and it meant something that she hadn’t. Perhaps she had doubts about Michael. Who wouldn’t? The guy was a floating crap game. If he wasn’t risking something, he wasn’t breathing, etc. There was going to be a ton of losing with a man like that. When Christine was with Carl, she could gamble, but it didn’t have to be a personal statement. She actually could make a little money for herself, just enough to keep her interested in all of this. With Carl, she had a bit of a good thing going. So she moved out of the apartment slowly. It also could have been an apartment she liked. This was the place she had to herself after she kicked Michael out. She seemed, at least to Carl, to do fairly well on her own.
Carl went winless on Saturday afternoon at Summit Park and when he returned to the apartment late that afternoon, he found Michael sitting on the loveseat. Michael hadn’t turned on any lights and appeared to be looking at the door after Carl closed it. Carl set his gym bag on the floor. Michael said, “She’s not here, man.”
Carl fought off a wave of uncertainty. He walked over to where Michael sat and grabbed the collar of Michael’s dark, long-sleeve rugby shirt. Carl’s fist clutched the fabric not an inch from Michael’s jawline. Carl popped Michael’s jaw with his fist before letting go.
“I don’t care about anything, either,” Carl said. “Just so you know.” He stepped back, then turned and walked for the kitchen.
“Right. Whatever,” Michael said after him.
Carl yanked open the door of the refrigerator and lifted out a partially full bottle of white wine. He stepped out to the kitchen table, he and Michael watching one another.
Michael brushed at his collar. “She doesn’t know I’m here,” he said. “I slipped the key from the ring before she left for work.” The afternoon light was falling, and the light from the windows was green-blue. It would be dark soon. Carl didn’t want to turn on a lamp. He couldn’t tell if Michael had been drinking. Carl had been drinking some last night. He decided to sit at the kitchen table. He even considered opening his laptop, looking up results from other tracks.
Michael said, “I wanted to see if there was anything I left behind that I still wanted. I used to live here…for about five minutes. She said she didn’t want me back in here, it was your place now. I can’t have her telling me what to do all the time. Not just yet.” Michael slouched low on the couch. He sat with his knees apart and turned to Carl when he said, “You do anything today?”
Carl held the bottle in his hand. His eyes were on the label. “No.”
“She used you, man.”
“So?”
A laugh came from Michael. “You must not care about anything. You jocks.”
“I could’ve talked till I was blue in the face trying to explain what a tool you are, Michael.”
Michael looked straight ahead again. “Yeah, well, maybe she should have listened to you. We’re leaving, in a few days.”
“Please don’t tell me you are here looking for a tip on a horse,” Carl said.
Michael said, “I just told you why I was here.” There was nothing spoken between them for some time. The light inside the room changed, held some scarlet and gold. Michael said, “I’ve walked through this apartment three times already. I don’t want anything from this place. But, I had to come here to find that out. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“You have her back and now you don’t want her?”
Michael’s voice turned quieter when he said, “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“If I had one wish in the world right now it would be that you would simply evaporate.”
“I know. I know. What’s going to be different, jock? You seem to know a lot of things.”
“I know horses.”
“That’s not what I am talking about.” Michael pulled himself up from the loveseat. He sat forward, let his arms dangle between his knees. “What’s different?”
“I’m not going to give you advice about your own wife.”
Michael offered a dumb-looking grin. “You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?” The expression on his face seemed to be a mixture of defiance and defeat. He looked like he was about to say, Unbelievable. “I think I really came over here to see you,” he said. “Tell you that we were leaving Cleveland. I think that you think I’m afraid of you. But I came over here to tell you I’m not.”
“I should’ve told Christine how I felt about her right away. She wouldn’t have let me live here, though.” He wasn’t talking to Michael, but Carl wanted to say these words out loud, in front of someone. “I would’ve been just another guy.”
The men looked at one another for longer than a minute. Michael said, “She’s never said anything bad about you.”
Carl’s eyes went to the window and they stayed there. “Goodbye, Michael.”
The apartment had turned shadowy. From the corner of his eye, Carl saw Michael stand. Michael walked for the door quickly. When he closed the door it left a sharp sound in Carl’s ears.