Gargantuan (10 page)

Nan’s cigarette was propped between her lips and a good two inches of ash threatened to fall on her huge belly. Girl was eight months pregnant. I’d once made the mistake of mentioning to Karen that Nan was knocked up and smoking and Karen had stormed in there and given Nan a piece of her mind—along with photos she’d downloaded off the Internet depicting birth defects in kids whose mothers had smoked. As a result, I’d been persona non grata at Johnny’s for a couple of months and Karen had been permanently banned from the place.

“Hey, girl,” I nodded at Nan. She looked up from her magazine and scowled. She was a cute kid actually, a petite brunette with blue eyes. She’d just turned twenty and was apparently already starting on her mama’s path of popping out a kid every other year. This was her second—the first, Mimi, currently asleep in a stroller behind the counter, had come out just fine, no birth defects in spite of the smoking.

“Pop’s in the back, Sal,” Nan said, going back to her magazine. She was still scowling—now with something to really scowl about considering her ash had fallen onto her stretchy pink top.

I went to the side of the counter and through the little door, down the hall and to the back room. Johnny was on the phone, as was his son, Nicky. A third guy whose name I couldn’t remember, some kind of cousin, was staring at the TV that was broadcasting
the OTB channel. Normally, this time of day, the channel would have been broadcasting Aqueduct, but with the Big A being closed, they had some Gulfstream Park races showing.

“Howya doin’, Sal?” the cousin said.

“Good. What’s up?” I said.

“Nothing at Aqueduct today. Fuckin’ snow.”

“Ehh, watch your mouth, Fulvio,” Johnny said, having just hung up from taking a bet. Johnny was Catholic. We all were, but Johnny’s Catholicism adhered to a peculiar moral code that said being a bookie and hitting the sauce were okay but no cursing or birth control. “Sal, howya doin’?” he asked me.

“Good,” I nodded.

“Where ya been?” he asked, though he knew damned well his daughter hadn’t let me set foot in the place for three months.

“Busy,” I said, playing his little game.

“You remember Fulvio, right?” Johnny wanted to know.

I nodded again. No wonder I hadn’t remembered the guy’s name. What the hell kind of name was Fulvio? I knew the kid had been born in Naples. His folks had come over when he was little so I didn’t think he even spoke Italian anymore but he had a seriously Italian name.

The phone rang and Johnny got it.

Nicky had hung up from his call now.

“Hey, Sal, howya doin’?”

I was getting a little sick of telling them how I was doing, but unless someone else came in the room I wouldn’t have to answer the question again after this.

“Good, Nicky, how’s by you?”

“Took a bath on the second at Gulfstream.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Yeah,” the kid shrugged.

Nicky was a good-looking kid. One thing you could say for Johnny and his missus, at least six of their eleven kids were good-looking.

“Who’s Velasquez riding at Gulfstream today?” I asked, figuring since I’d somehow ended up here, I must have had a bet on my mind.

“He’s on a maiden filly in the next race. I can give you twenty to one on her.”

“Yeah? Who’s the filly?”

“First-time starter. Dunno. But she’s by Hennesy,” he said, uttering the sire’s name with reverence.

“Yeah, that and two dollars will get her on the subway.”

“Yeah, could be,” Nicky said. “Two hundred large at Keeneland yearling sale though, and she’s got John Ward training her.”

“Uh,” I grunted. I liked the trainer’s record and Velasquez, the jockey, was a monster. I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in yearlings costing too much though. Didn’t mean they could run. I was the kind of guy who rooted for underdog, inexpensive horses. I’d almost had to kill myself when Funny Cide had lost the Belmont Stakes. Like everyone, I’d been hoping for him to stick it to those regally bred million-dollar colts one more time. It hadn’t been his day though and a blue-blooded horse won.

“You want it or not?” Nicky said, getting a little impatient with me.

“Sure. Twenty to win,” I said.

A few minutes later, I watched Velasquez shoot the filly out to the front of the pack and stay there until two lengths from the finish line when a 35-1 filly caught her.

I felt a little depressed but not too bad and, since I wasn’t sure why I’d come here in the first place, I decided it might be time to get on with my day.

“I guess I’m gonna get going,” I said to Johnny.

“Oh yeah?” he said. “You need a drink, Sal?”

“No thanks, Johnny,” I said, feeling a little aggravated since, after ten years in AA—I had actually told Johnny about it—he still offered me drinks every chance he got.

“You got any more bets to place?” he said.

“I dunno. What’s on at Aqueduct tomorrow? I hear they’re opening up again.”

“Yeah. Ain’t much to like. My uncle Davide got one of his in a race,” Johnny shrugged. Johnny was loyal to his uncle and this loyalty extended to his touting the uncle’s racehorses. Uncle Davide is, from what I gather, pretty high up in what’s left of the mob in these parts, but the guy does not have an eye for horses at all. I’ve never seen anyone pick out bum-luck horses with more consistency than Davide. I don’t think he’s ever had a horse run in the money, never mind win a race.

“Yeah? How’s Davide doing?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Johnny shrugged. “There’s a decent allowance colt in the fourth tomorrow,” he added, brightening, “Oat Bran Blues. Good horse. But he’s got that apprentice Attila Johnson in the irons and I heard something about the kid holding his mounts back for a little extra payday. Probably why he’ll go off at twenty to one or so.”

Bingo. This is why I was here.

“Yeah, I heard that apprentice ain’t crooked anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Johnny suddenly looked more interested in me than he’d been in a number of decades.

“Yeah. I know someone who knows him.”

“And what, the kid
admitted
he was fudging?”

“He ain’t a kid actually. I think the guy’s in his thirties or something,” I said, choosing not to answer the question as it might involve me in a way I didn’t care to be involved.

Johnny looked at me blankly. I got up to leave, wondering if he was gonna press the issue.

“Come on, Sal, tell me what you heard.”

“I just heard he wants to win,” I said, and then I went out, nodding at Nan, who was smoking another one by now.

I got in the truck. Put Mr. Schoenberg back on. Thought about Karen. Wondered what might befall me if I went home. I couldn’t figure it out. I put the music up a few more notches. Decided I might actually like opera.

E
ventually, the chaos over the masked rider passed and I went ahead and walked a half-dozen horses for trainers I knew—including Arnie Gaines, the trainer Ruby had walked hots for nine months back. I stopped by Henry Meyer’s barn again to talk to him about how he wanted me riding Oat Bran Blues, the big floppy-eared bay I was riding in the fourth race the next day.

I stuck my head in his office and saw Henry’s wife, Violet, sitting in Henry’s chair, her feet up on the desk. She was frowning in concentration as she studied tomorrow’s
Form
.

“Ms. Kravitz,” I greeted the lady.

In spite of having married into one of the most misogynistic professions going, Violet Kravitz held on tight to her maiden name and the appellation of Ms.—even though, back when Ava and I were still attempting something, Ava had proudly come in one day waving a
New York Times
essay by a saucy young woman who was dead set against Ms. and insisted on being called Miss.

“Attila,” Violet said, looking at me over the top of her spectacles. “What exactly happened on the track this morning?”

My stomach knotted. I wondered if she’d heard rumors about me and suspected this morning’s mayhem had had something to do with me. I hoped not. I respected and was fond of both Henry and Violet and would never do anything to interfere with one of their horses.

“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” I said.

“You keep out of harm’s way, all right, young man?” Violet’s
blue eyes had grown wide. She was so guileless. It made me feel soiled in contrast.

I nodded.

“You’re going to do right by Muley tomorrow, yes?” Violet asked.

Oat Bran Blues was known as Muley around the barn. His right ear was stunted and flopped to one side like a mule’s—a result of having explored a bees’ nest as a foal. He’d been stung mercilessly and the ear had given up on growing. At seventeen hands, Muley was a big horse, but the tiny flopping ear gave him a clownish appearance that he always seemed to be compensating for by being spooky and difficult under tack.

“I’ll try to keep out of Muley’s way, ma’am,” I told Violet.

She laughed at this. Women love the way I always defer to the horse, though it isn’t something I do to curry favor. Early on in my career I’d been taught well by an old claimer named Justa Bob. Nothing fazed Justa Bob. He was just a racehorse. Just a claimer. But wise. All I had to do was lightly hold his mouth in my hands as he methodically took care of business. He would stand quietly in the gate, break perfectly, then settle in a few horses wide, calculating exactly how much effort was required to pick off the horses in front of him. He would switch leads without being asked, giving himself an extra gear and, with less than a furlong to go, he’d bring himself up to the leading horse’s shoulder. Two strides shy of the wire, he would surge just enough to get his nose in front. The plain, brown gelding showed me how races were won.

They weren’t all like that though. You had your first-time starters and your crazies who were wound so tightly they’d become uncoordinated and fall on their faces if you didn’t tell them how to put one hoof in front of the other. The ones I loved best though let me know what they wanted and I gladly obliged.

“Don’t ma’am me, Attila, I don’t want to feel like I’m eighty please.”

“Sorry, Violet.” I grinned at her, feeling a wave of fondness for this eccentric and gentle woman.

She then went on to show me, with much disgust, the
Racing Form
handicappers’ notes on Oat Bran Blues. The comments weren’t favorable. About the horse or his rider. It angered me.

“Don’t look like that, dear,” Violet said. “I wouldn’t let Henry continue to put you on our horses if I didn’t believe in you.”

I felt myself flushing.

“Did you need Henry for something?” Violet asked. “He’s at the racing secretary’s office, probably back in a half hour.”

“Just wanted to go over any special instructions for Muley’s race.”

“You know Muley He means well but he’s spooky. We’ll have a shadow roll on him this time, ought to help. Just keep him out of traffic and let him do his thing.”

I thought back to the first time I’d seen a shadow roll. Someone had had to explain its function. How you put it on the noseband of the bridle and its fuzzy bulk prevents the horse from seeing shadows on his own nose—which might frighten him.

I nodded at Violet, then told her I was going to go have a little chat with Muley.

“Good.” Violet smiled, pleased.

I walked down the aisle, stopping to greet Ballistic, running a hand down his white blaze. The horse doesn’t have the best barn manners though; he pinned his ears and showed me his teeth.

“Yeah yeah,” I told him, “you’re the boss.”

I went down to Muley’s stall and let myself in. He was truffling at his empty hay net but he put his ears forward and lifted his head to look at me. “Hey you,” I greeted the horse as I went to stand next to him. He bumped his nose against my forehead and nuzzled at my hair.

“Easy, it ain’t hay,” I told him. He obligingly kept his teeth behind his lips.

I spent about ten minutes with the big gelding, feeling the way I always do around a horse I like. Like I’m a kid. Untouched by the world and all my self-made problems. Nothing to cloud me, just the
warm inquisitive presence of the horse. A lot of jocks don’t spend much time hanging out with horses. To them, horses are vehicles for income and stimulation. Sure, they feel them on some level—they wouldn’t be good riders if they didn’t—but they’re not prone to hanging around the barn much. To me, that’s the gold. Horses are intensely social creatures. They’re often frustrated at humans’ failure to understand them, but if you just put in that extra something, scratch that special spot behind their withers, pay attention to what they’re telling you, they let you into their world.

After socializing with Muley for a while, I headed home to change into jogging clothes. I walked the two miles to where I rent a basement from an insane Irish family. I hadn’t been there in a while and Mrs. O’Rourke, the matron of the family, was hanging out on the glassed-in porch like she’d been waiting for me all week.

“Where you been, Johnson?” she demanded—not that I was tardy with rent or had perpetrated any tenant crimes. The woman was just nosy. She wanted to know about my life, hoping its hardships would make her own shine in contrast.