I get off the train in New York City. I haven’t seen Callie since October. I don’t like the look of it as I walk out on Seventh Avenue, but I’m glad the streets are numbered. It’s Nations’ Cup night at Madison Square Garden, her first time on the team. Thirty-seven days since she left me in the dark at Presqu’Ile.
The horse show is on top of the railway station, seven storeys up. Ticketholders only are allowed to get there in the lift. I didn’t even have a ticket for the train.
I go around the back of the building, sneak up the ramp with a horse being led up to the stables, as if I am one of the grooms, then I watch from the collecting ring, among the potted plants and filler. A swing band plays show tunes, women wearing gloves sit just near me. I spit on my fingers to fix my hair.
Callie has one fence down, no one’s yet gone clear. She rides from the arena, serious like a little girl, goes right by me as if I’m not there. I want to go to her but Buddy Black appears. I’ve seen his photo in the magazines. He hugs her hard, it’s more than congratulations. I stand there like a shrub.
I follow them back to the stable area: Callie, the horse, and her hangers-on. I wait nearby, standing in the aisle. Callie sits down on a bale of hay, Buddy Black pulls off her boots. She can’t ignore me, I’m right there.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, an unlikely shrillness in her voice.
“I came up on the train,” I say.
“This is Day,” she announces. “He’s Australian,” she says, like it’s an excuse.
“G’day Day,” says one of them, as though they were the first to ever have said it. Buddy Black looks at me.
“Can I talk with you?” I ask Callie.
She looks inconvenienced, leads me around the corner and into an empty stall.
“Are you with him now?”
She doesn’t answer, looks away.
“You’re supposed to be with me.”
“I’m not supposed to be with anyone,” she says.
“Why did you run away?” I hold her shoulders. I want to shake her, but I just hold them. She reaches her hand and rubs behind her neck. Drops of rain start banging on the roof.
“I was leaving anyway,” she says.
“But we’re best friends.”
“You wanted me to do things,” she says.
“And you light fires,” I say. It’s the first time she looks at me. “And you’re with Buddy now.”
“Fuck Buddy Black,” she says.
I pull her to me, try to kiss her face, but she turns and frees her mouth, calls out to the others as if she’s needing help. I hear them coming, the famous Buddy Black. He comes in and puts his arm around her.
“Everything okay, Callie?” he asks. He’s so American.
“Her name’s Calliope,” I say. He looks at me oddly.
The others stand there, waiting for me to leave. They think that I’m a danger.
At first I walk and then I’m running, through the stables and down the ramps and into the street, into the hot dirty rain; I look back in case Callie is coming. But she’s not, he must be holding on to her.
I close the doors behind me on the train back to Baltimore, sit down in the corner. I watch myself in the window, like I’ve done on trains before, my wet face reflected in the glass.