Carl worked out the horses at Summit before returning to the apartment. The morning light was bright and he sat at the kitchen table and leafed through the pages of the Racing Form while he wore his reading glasses. He hadn’t worn them when Christine was around. He’d known what he wanted to say; he hadn’t needed to check past-performance lines. He studied the feature race for a time. Carl had a mount, McKenzie Bridge, a plodding long shot that seemed to be in over its head. But the thing was, the other horses in the race were all speed-burners. There came a sound at the front door, a key in the lock, the lock turning. The door opened and only then did she knock on it. “Anyone home?”
No. He said, “Over here.” He took off his glasses, folded them in one hand. She wore clogs, pantyhose, a gray dress and windbreaker-type jacket with the collar turned up. She stood by the table with her hands in the pockets of the jacket. “Who’s getting married?”
“We went to St. Paul’s for mass,” she said with a flap of both arms.
“You already got him going to church?”
“He’s the Catholic. We’re going to the races this afternoon. You going to live in the apartment? You gonna spy on Mrs. Lovain, ask her out?”
“She’s old enough to be my mother.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Haven’t really had time to think about whether I’ll stay here, Christine. You said you had already paid…”
“We’re going to pay,” she said. “Haven’t done it as yet. I’m still kind of organizing things.”
Catholic Church, racetrack. It sounded like Michael was running things. Still, Christine was pretty good at the racetrack. Better than him.
“I wanted to bring over my key,” she said. “Michael told me about yesterday.”
“I’d have done the same thing.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“I was crazy, too,” he said. “Back when.” He tried to grin. “You leaving the chairs here? The table?”
“Michael has a table and chairs at his place. These are…”
“Imitations.”
“Right.”
Carl guided the empty chair back from the table. “Have a seat for a minute,” he said. “He’s outside right now, waiting?”
“I drove over here alone.”
“His idea?”
She didn’t respond.
Carl said, “So, you’re not Catholic?”
“Not really.”
“You know, one day I might be a churchgoing man myself. Please sit. I’ll only beg you to stay for a while. Then, I have to get to the track.”
Christine moved the chair closer and sat. She appeared to deflate. Her arms were limp at her sides. Her eyes went to the Racing Form spread out on the table and then over to Carl. “You going to start winning races again anytime soon?”
He said, “I hired an agent. On Thursday. Gary Shales.”
“I don’t know a Gary Shales. Doesn’t hang out at the bar, does he?”
“Yeah, well. I think Gary just keeps to himself.”
“You needed an agent,” she said. “How come you never wanted one in the first place?”
They had talked about this before. He wanted to offer a different response. There were different truths to it. He didn’t like the past-tense usage of need. Carl said, “I got used to the fact I wasn’t going to have a great career. A great career means people do things for you. I learned how to do everything on my own.”
“You don’t want help?”
“I’d rather be the jockey who doesn’t like agents rather than a jockey ditched by them.”
“So why do you have one now?”
“Well, I just got back from California, didn’t I?” He said this and then he cracked a smile, though maybe to her it didn’t look like much of one. He said, “I talk to each of my ex-wives every year at Christmas. Stay around for a while and I’ll add you to the list.” Christine crossed her arms. He wanted to injure them both a bit, but she didn’t appear to be interested. She looked to the front door, her eyes were focused on it. He said, “I just wanted to be someone different for a little while. That’s what I like about being with you. It wouldn’t have been forever anyway.” She didn’t look in his direction. “I don’t know what that says about the life I was leading beforehand. Other than it was bullshit.”
She said, “You don’t believe that.”
Neither of them spoke for a time. Christine held a keychain in her right hand. Her fingers circled around it. He wasn’t going to say the next thing.
“Carl,” she said. She didn’t want to say anything at all, he thought. She did turn to him partway and then her eyes went again to the Form on the table.
“Already?” he said. He wanted her to clear out then. He wanted to say, You can’t do this. You do this and I will grow to hate you. There was no way he would talk with her about today’s races. She had left him for another man a week ago. She was in love with her ex-husband. She had been a kind woman and now she was not.
Carl said, “What I really liked about having you around was that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to let you down. That is a very good feeling, Christine.” He wanted her to look in his direction and when she did, he didn’t speak. Her expression told him everything. Carl pointed to the Form. “I wouldn’t tell you the horse I’m on in the feature is a sure thing today. Because I could never be sure of such a thing. But I keep looking at the race. It keeps making more sense to me. I see how it might go. I’d never make you a promise, though. I’d only tell you what I knew for certain. You know that.” He swallowed. “But I don’t want to talk about races with you anymore, all right?” He decided to turn a page of the Form. He put on his glasses. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.” But what she said could barely be heard. She reached her hand over to the table and laid the keys there.
“Don’t come back here,” he said, as she walked for the door. There was nothing to it. No energy, no emphasis on any particular word. She closed the door and his eyes went back to the opened page of the Racing Form.
Carl won with two of his first four mounts that afternoon. In the feature, he gave a shrewd ride to McKenzie Bridge. They stayed on the rail for most of the trip and in the final hundred yards, the three horses remaining in front of him wilted. Carl swung McKenzie Bridge off the rail, weaved his way between the faders, intentionally brushed Hoyer on the number 4, though it wasn’t enough to stop Hoyer from riding. Hoyer yelled after him, “Payback’s comin’, old dick!” McKenzie Bridge went on to win by two lengths at odds of 14–1. Carl sat atop McKenzie Bridge for the winner’s circle photo, the horse breathing so hard Carl thought it might just take one more huge breath and then fall over dead. After weighing out and offering the saddle to a valet, Carl walked in a steady way for the jocks’ room. He walked slow enough so that Christine might find him. He had one more horse to ride and Carl’s in-sides seemed to be made of feathers. He had clued Christine in that things might turn out this way, but only when he’d said it to her had he felt he had a good chance.
Carl walked to the jockeys’ room alone. His mount in the nightcap was a first-time starter, Bubble Wrap, trained by an Ian Willingham, a young British kid with a bad temper. His horses were all this way, too, but when a mean horse learned how to win, it could become a victory machine, especially in the bush leagues. Gary Shales had been a bit worried about this one, but underneath his indifferent demeanor, Gary might have been something of a fusspot, a worrywart. Carl didn’t know him well enough yet. In the post parade, Bubble Wrap seemed tense and unhappy, and as she warmed up, she seemed to be holding her breath. Carl talked to her a bit, said he understood. “We’re about to have a lot of fun together,” he said to her at one point. In the starting gate, without any warning sign at all, she flipped. Carl was catapulted into the air. He landed on the point of his right shoulder. His face smashed into the dirt. He heard the sound of the horse grunt and wheeze and then it sprang onto its feet. There were hoofbeats, two sets of them, the filly running away and an outrider chasing her, and the hoofbeats faded. He was told later that when he was able to stand, he began to run from one outrider to the next, begging someone to push his shoulder back into place. Carl remembered nothing of this. He rode in an ambulance to Good Sam. He wanted to stay awake while his shoulder was set back in place, but the pain was too much. He had to be sedated. His treatment room had a television set and when he awakened, he watched an episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey. There was not a remote to be found. When the attending doctor appeared, he said, “You have a concussion. You need to stay with us overnight.”
Gary Shales gave Carl a ride home from the hospital the next morning. He drove a Ford Celebrity, an early-model car that seemed to be in incredibly good condition. Gary said, “So.”
Carl said, “Doc said it’ll be a month before I’m ready to lift anything heavier than an inkpen.”
“Need an operation?”
“He said I ought to think about it. Some ligament damage. It’ll heal okay. Always does.”
“Unbroke horses.”
Carl raised his left hand to his mouth and coughed a weak-sounding cough. “I should’ve seen it coming. Some things I don’t worry about. Just a part of me that isn’t there.”
Gary said, “What makes you a rider.”
“Yeah. But then when you don’t ride what do you have? You watch other people do it. You wonder.”
Gary didn’t need to answer and they rode along in silence. When he spoke he said, “Make money on other people doing it.”
“Right. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Have to look for somebody else. Wind up with somebody who doesn’t know anything at all.”
Carl wanted to laugh but his chest was weak. “Those guys can hit it big.” Carl pointed, “Then just take a right up here.”
Gary nodded. “They disappear, too.”
“I know they do. That’s the building, just pull to the curb.” Gary stopped the car and let out a breath. He gave a nod to Carl. “Need any help?”
“No,” Carl said.
“Don’t rush it.”
“Right.” He reached for the handle to open the door. Gary got out, walked around the front of the car. “I got it,” Carl said, though he was by himself inside the car. Gary arrived at his side, opened the passenger door. Carl pulled himself out of there. “Bye,” Carl said. “Thanks.”
“Liked working with you,” Gary said. “Short time we had.”
“Yep.”