Gargantuan (22 page)

One night a few months ago, I invited Jane and Liz and her young daughter, Georgeann, to dinner. Strangely enough, Jane and Liz recognized one another. They’d apparently met in college some fifteen years earlier. The two never really got to know each other in those days but, after being unexpectedly thrown together again, they’ve grown close and now seem to spend more time together than I spend with either one of them.

“Where is Liz?” I ask Jane. “I’ve tried to call her a few times and I’ve left messages but I haven’t heard back from her.”

“Oh, she went to Florida for a week,” Jane says.

“Florida?”

“Yeah. I think she recently broke up with a guy and you know how she gets.”

“No, how does she get?” I ask. I hadn’t even known Liz to date anyone since breaking up with Georgeann’s father.

“She likes to travel after a breakup—whereas you just take up with the nearest jockey.”

“I’m not sure why you’re being so spiteful today.”

“I’m sorry,” Jane sighs. “I’m just worried.”

“I’m worried too,” I admit. “I don’t really know what the right thing to do is.”

Jane offers a few suggestions, such as calling the police or the FBI or, specifically, Ed Burke of the FBI. I tell her I’ll take it under consideration and, after a few more minutes, we hang up.

I look around at my messy apartment and, fearing I’ll get permanently glued to the couch, I get up and walk over to the piano. It’s close to ten now and Ramirez won’t abide my practicing for long but I might be able to get in a couple of Bach Inventions. It’s actually good for me to have to play within earshot of an irritable neighbor. He seems to complain a lot more when I make mistakes than when I get through a piece with a minimum of flubbing.

I sit down, and, failing to heed my teacher Mark Baxter’s command to play twenty minutes of scales before doing anything fun, I launch into the first Invention in C.

I get through it smoothly, which is no great feat since I’ve been working on it for seven months. I’m about to try a more difficult piece when the phone rings again. I get up and walk over to the caller ID box, again hoping to see Attila’s number there.
Florida
, the box announces, not bothering to tell me the caller’s name though I know it’s Ed. My heart rate accelerates. I pick up the phone.

I
study Lucinda from across the breakfast table. She’s looking down at the
Racing Form
. Her hair is hanging in two lank black curtains. Her nose is twitching as if an insect has flown in and is
buzzing through one of her nostrils. It occurs to me that this isn’t what I’m supposed to be thinking of a woman I’ve bedded on two consecutive nights. I ought to be seeing a glow around her. But there’s no radiance coming from this girl and I don’t think Lucinda actually even likes me much. We’re just both lonely.

Suddenly she gets up, goes over to the oven, pulls open the broiler door, and removes two pieces of maimed toast. She smiles as she deposits these on my plate. I stare down at the charred bread. She stares too and, after a moment, finds a knife and scrapes off some of the blackness. It still doesn’t look appetizing.

“Thank you, that’s lovely,” I say. “Sure you won’t have some?”

“I’m sure,” she says.

“You’re gonna ride Mike for me this morning, right?”

She looks at me. Her nose twitches again. “Sure,” she says.

As I take a bite of charred toast, I reflect that something is obviously wrong with me. I know there are men who make sport of screwing women they’re not that fond of, but I’m not one of them. I ought to be screwing the woman I do like. Ruby.

“What are you thinking about?” Lucinda asks me. Her dark eyes have gotten small.

“Ruby,” I say flat out.

“Ruby? Who is Ruby?”

“Sort of my girlfriend,” I say, immediately regretting it.

“Oh,” she says.

“She’s not officially my girlfriend. Lives up north.” I backpedal a little.

“Well that’s lovely,” Lucinda sneers.

“I’m not trying to disrespect you, Lucinda. You asked what I was thinking about and I told you. I should have told you about her sooner. I wasn’t sure how much you wanted from me. We’re both just lonely, right?”

“Thanks a fucking lot,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing up.

“Hey, Lucinda, I’m sorry,” I say, but she’s stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind her.

Moments later she emerges with her clothes on. She doesn’t look at me.

“Lucinda, I’m sorry,” I say weakly.

“Fuck you, Sam Riverman,” she says, walking out the front door.

And now I feel like total shit. Treating people badly just isn’t necessary. I hesitate for a minute, unsure of what to do. If I go after her she might think I care. Of course, I do care slightly. Just not that much.

I put my shirt on and go out the door. There’s no sign of Lucinda. I don’t know where she could have gone since she doesn’t have a car. I go back for my car keys and, a minute later, I’m driving out of the complex. Within a few moments I see her, walking briskly along the side of the road. I pull alongside her and roll down the window.

“Hey, Lucinda, get in the car.”

“Fuck you, Sam Riverman,” she says, and keeps walking.

“Lucinda, come on. It’s not that bad.”

She stops walking, puts her fists on her hips, and looks at me.

“You’re a creep,” she says.

“No, not really. We should have talked sooner.”

She looks like she’s considering reaching into the car and ripping my head off. Then her fury turns to a pout. A coquettish gesture I wouldn’t have guessed was in her repertoire.

“Come on, get in,” I say.

She stands pouting a moment longer then comes around to the passenger side and gets in.

“Why were you such a jerk to me?” she asks.

“I’m sorry, Lucinda, I wasn’t trying to be a jerk.”

“Well, you were!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” she says. Her eyes are so sad.

“Come back to the apartment with me while I get ready then I’ll give you a ride to the track?”

“Yeah,” she says, “okay.”

I pull the car back onto the road, make a U-turn, and head back to my apartment.

A HALF HOUR
later I’ve showered and dressed and fed Cat. Lucinda has spent the whole time at the kitchen table, reading the
Racing Form
.

“You ready?” I ask her, picking my car keys up off the table.

“Yeah,” she says darkly.

I feel like if I try talking to her she’ll reach in the kitchen drawer, get a knife, and stab me. So I say nothing.

She is quiet during the ride to the track. As we pull into the backside, I ask her again about giving Mike’s Mohawk a workout later that morning.

“Yeah, I said I’d do it,” she answers bitterly.

“Okay then.”

“I’ll be ready for him around nine,” she says.

I drop her near Jack Jenkins’s office, where she’s meeting with the trainer to talk over a few horses he wants her working. She looks at me briefly, says nothing, and walks away.

Lucinda’s hoopla has put me behind schedule. I’m half an hour late feeding my three horses and they look depressed. I think of the horse joke: A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the long face?”

My horses’ faces all look longer than usual.

I go into the feed room and prepare their grain.

I let them finish eating then I muck the stalls, clean the waterers and feed tubs, and start grooming Mike.

I’ve long finished wrapping and tacking up Mike’s Mohawk and there’s still no sign of Lucinda. It would probably be a good idea to find a new rider for my string but I’ve already made the poor girl feel like shit, no need to add to it. Particularly since she’s hypersensitive about her riding skills.

By the time nine-thirty rolls around, I’m feeling frustrated. My horse needs his work and the girl did say she’d ride him. I go walking
off to look for her and am storming around, eliciting curious looks from grooms as I poke my head in at various shedrows. I’m about to turn and head back to my barn when I see Sebastian Ives, a groom who worked for me in my previous incarnation as an assistant trainer up at Belmont. He’s walking a liver chestnut horse in front of a very well kept barn. I duck my head to avoid his noticing me. He knows I’m a Fed and though I look different, Sebastian and I worked side by side for four months and he might well recognize me just by my walk. Just as I’m passing him, he stares right at me. I quickly look away.

“Hey!” the thin black man calls after me.

I keep walking, feeling shitty about it because I liked the man a great deal. From the looks of it though, he’s doing just fine. Don’t know whose outfit he’s working for but the shedrow seemed very classy.

I go back to my barn and find Lucinda sitting in a plastic chair she’s pulled over in front of Mike’s stall. She’s a little dirtied up from riding and has her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’s drumming her long fingers on the plastic chair.

“Hi. I was looking for you,” I say, glancing down at my watch.

“Here I am,” she shrugs.

“So. Mike. I want you to do a mile with him. I had the chiropractor work on him yesterday. His back should feel better.”

I notice that Lucinda’s giving me a skeptical look.

“What?” I ask, “plenty of people swear by it. Thought I’d try it. Seems to have helped.”

“You gonna call the animal communicator next?” she sneers, referring to the occasional “horse psychics” who circulate at the tracks.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I reply, a little wounded because the thought had crossed my mind. “What’s the matter, Lucinda?” I ask, looking into her hardened eyes, “and don’t tell me you’re just mad because I have a girl up north. You didn’t ask me anything. I didn’t lie to you.”

At first, her face tightens and she looks like she’s going to hit me, then, she softens and lets out a small sigh.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It’s everything. Nothing is going right. Then finding out you’re into someone other than me, that didn’t help.” She shrugs and seems so vulnerable.

“Well,” she adds, “why don’t I go get on that horse of yours.”

I look at her for a minute, feeling a mixture of things. Wishing I could help her but not knowing how. Her face is set now, trying to tell me she’s okay.

We get Mike out of his stall and, in what feels like amiable silence, head over to the track. Fists of cumulus clouds have invaded the pure blue of the sky.

I GO TO
the rail and focus my binoculars on Lucinda and the gelding. Mike actually looks okay out there. He seems interested in his work and he’s moving nicely, like maybe the chiropractor did help him.

I watch the pair start cantering and, after about a furlong, shift into a higher gear. They’re going along nicely when suddenly I hear people shouting. I put my binoculars down for a minute and scan around. Then I see it. A loose horse, coming up right on Lucinda and Mike. I put my binoculars back to my eyes, trying to see if Lucinda knows yet. She can doubtless hear the horse but I’m not sure if she knows he’s riderless. The loose horse comes up to Mike’s rump and, to my horror, starts nipping at my horse’s hind end. I see Mike shy toward the rail. I panic. I don’t think Lucinda has faced anything like this since coming back from her accident and I feel my stomach knotting. I focus on her face, but I can’t see enough to read her expression. It seems like she’s keeping herself together though. She’s slowing Mike down and it looks like she’s calm even though the loose stud colt is still nipping at Mike’s ass.

To my relief, an outrider finally catches the unruly colt and gets
him away from Mike. In a few more moments, Lucinda has pulled Mike up and is trotting over to the rail.

Lucinda steers the gelding over toward me, and, as she comes closer, I see that she’s grinning ear to ear.

“Hey, you okay?” I ask.

“I’m great,” she beams.

“Yeah? You handled that well.”

“I know,” she says. “I got my nerve back.” Her face is more open and relaxed than I’ve ever seen it.

“So you did, girl. So you did.”

Lucinda hops down, tells me she’ll see me later, then walks toward the grandstands. Probably going to make rounds, make sure the whole backside knows what happened to her out there and how well she handled it. I lead Mike back to the barn and find he’s none the worse for the wear, even seems a little livelier than usual, like his misadventures made him feel important. Humberto grunts at me, “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” I tell him, not sure how he could have already heard about the incident. Humberto briefly looks from me to Mike and back. Then he turns and heads to the tack room. A moment later, he’s got the salsa blaring.

BY LATE AFTERNOON
, I uneventfully finish up the rest of my horse chores, take care of a little Bureau business, and finally come home to have a long soak in the tub. Cat perches on the closed toilet seat, occasionally dipping a paw into the bathwater as if testing its temperature for me. I sink down low into the water, letting it come all the way up to my nose. I feel like several tons have lifted off me. Lucinda is going to be all right. It’s unlikely I’ll sleep with her anymore and it’s even more unlikely that she’ll care. I inadvertently helped her get her nerve back and there’s a good chance that’s all she wanted.

I decide to try calling Ruby.