Horse Heaven (36 page)

Now Joy was sweating. The sun was well up over the Central Valley and her eyes were beginning to hurt. Probably it was going to be so hot today that it would be inhumane to ride Mr. T., her greatest joy. She went into the office to find her sunglasses.

The flyer in Joy’s box read, “Tompkins Equine Employees! Sign up now! Last trip of the spring! Mr. Tompkins will take ten equine employees to Hollywood Park on June 7 for a day at the Races! First Come First Served! Several Tompkins Worldwide Racing horses are entered to run!”

Joy looked across the office at Hortense, Mr. Tompkins’ personal secretary, then out the window to see if there was any evidence of the man himself. Nowhere in sight. She said, “Hortense. Do we have to wear the white jackets?”

“He said chambray shirts. It’s a little too hot for the white jackets. That’s what I told him.”

“Thank you.”

“You going?”

“Well, I never have.”

“Oh, it’s fun, honey. That DC-3 is something else. Right out of the Second World War. I love to go. Let me sign you up. You look like you could use a break, sweetie.”

“I think I could, Hortense. How many have signed up?”

“Only two, plus you. And it’s day after tomorrow. He’s going to be disappointed. But I tell him nobody likes to be trooped around like a bunch of school kids. He doesn’t listen.”

“Do you think I could take a friend?”

“I don’t see why not. He always likes a crowd.”

M
AYBE, THOUGHT
F
ARLEY
, if he started every day with a nap in the parking lot, every day would turn out like this one. What happened was, he stopped at a deli on Century Boulevard about five and got himself a bagel with lox cream cheese and a cup of coffee. Then he set them on the dashboard of his Yukon and drove into the trainers’ parking lot. It was still cool out, and not very bright, and just after he parked his car, he was overtaken by the most soothing knowledge that, instead of opening the door of the truck and getting out, he was going to put the seat back and fall asleep, and then he did. When he woke up, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, the sunshine had come through the windshield and warmed his bagel and his coffee was cool enough to drink, and so he sat there, biting and chewing and sipping, and he knew he was going to have a good day.

He had two in—one in this race, and one in the ninth. This race was his very own race—he had persuaded the racing secretary to write this race for his French filly, and even though the racing secretary had written it for horses of both sexes, this filly was strong and fit. Farley thought, in the barn, that she could take on any turf horse at the track, and when he got her out there and saw the others, he knew it. She had a pleasant manner, but she was self-possessed and self-confident. She was also big and built in that French way—legs like posts, lean body, low-set neck, big ears. Her owners had made their money, together, in cable TV, selling home food-dryers and herbal supplements. The filly had a whole agenda of herbal supplements that she was given every day, along with regular chiropractic, massage, and acupuncture. “We
would never treat our animals less well than we treat ourselves,” said the wife, Alise. Farley had been given to understand that, though Alise and Vincent had only one racehorse, they also had five cats, four dogs, a goat, two ferrets, a chicken, three guinea hens, and a donkey. Should he be reincarnated yet again, Farley thought, he would like to come back as any animal belonging to Alise and Vincent.

Now the filly had been saddled, had Chris McCarron on her, and was jogging around to the starting gate. Farley was enjoying the comforting presence of Alise and Vincent, who were sitting beside him in his box, holding hands and talking quietly to one another. They always spoke quietly. They never asked questions, but they were always interested to hear what he had to say. They had excellent manners, like the filly. Perfect owners. Farley yawned. He almost never yawned before a race. He was almost always a little tense. But there was something entirely reassuring about that French filly and her owners. He felt better today about his career and his life than he had in months. In the light of this good day, he saw how bad he had been feeling.

Now a group came into the next box, Joe Zimmer’s box. Farley smiled, because it was a Tompkins group, probably from the ranch. Kyle Tompkins had horses with trainers all over the track, all over the country, all over the world. The group from the ranch were all wearing chambray shirts with “Tompkins Ranch Means Perfect Beef” in a circle around the head of a Hereford steer. Only one of them, an extremely tall, large woman with a loud voice, had escaped the uniform. She sat nearest to Farley, just on the other side of the railing. There was still a long way to go to the starting gate—the horses were only beginning the backstretch. The sun was warm. Overhead, round-bodied jets were arriving from Europe. Farley closed his eyes.

“Which one is ours?” said the loud voice.

“The chestnut with the blaze. The jockey is in all white with a silver ‘T’ on his back.”

Silence.

“No. Can’t see it,” said the loud voice. “That chestnut is ouchy in his back, just behind the saddle.”

“I don’t think Mr. Zimmer would run an unsound horse.”

“He’s not unsound yet. Just ouchy enough not to want to really put out.”

“Who do you think?”

Silence.

“That brown one in the pink shirt with the green dots.”

“She’s a filly. The rest are colts. I don’t know.”

Silence.

“Well, she’s feeling good from top to toe.”

Yes, thought Farley, and opened his eyes. The other woman, not the big one, but quite a little one, was looking right at him. When he opened his eyes, she smiled. He said, “You’re talking about my horse.”

“The filly?”

“Yes. She just came over from France about a month ago.”

“What’s her breeding?”

“Blushing Groom.” The horses went through an opening in the inside rail of the dirt track and up the hill to where the gate was positioned on the grass.

“Mmmm,” said the little one, still not looking away from him. He knew he was smiling. She was smiling, too. He said, “No white coats.”

“We threatened to strike if we had to wear the white coats off the ranch, so he compromised with these. Tomorrow we have shirts that read ‘Perfect Skin Can Be Yours’ across the back. He flew us down in the DC-3. On the tail, it reads ‘Tompkins Fleet Perfection.’ ” They laughed.

“I train a few for Kyle Tompkins.”

“They’re in the gate,” said Alise. Farley tore his eyes away from the little one. She was very pretty, he thought, in that half-sundried, sparkly, horsey way. She had blue eyes. The gate opened right in front of them, and the filly took off. She ran as if alone, two or three lengths ahead of the other horses. Farley put his binoculars to his eyes and focused on the jockey’s face. Chris looked relaxed and happy. His lips were moving.

It was the most boring race Farley had ever witnessed. The filly ran well ahead all the way around, and then took off after the second turn, and eked out another three lengths. Her ears were pricked the whole way. When she crossed the finish line, Alise said, “How marvelous! What a lovely day we are having. Thank you so much, Farley.” And Vincent said, “Good job, I must say!” There was no screaming. The Tompkins horse had come in third.

Well, the thing was, they had to go down to the track and the winner’s circle. They had to make much of the filly, who was hardly sweating. They had to do this and that and that and this, and when Farley got back up to his box, the Tompkins crew was gone. Before the fifth race, he called Joe Zimmer’s cellular and Joe answered. He said, “Hey, baby. This is Farley Jones. You know that Tompkins bunch?”

“Yeah.”

“What was the name of the little one? The little blonde one.”

“I don’t know, Farley. I didn’t catch it. Was she cute?”

And then Farley was embarrassed, and so he mumbled something, hung
up, and put the whole incident out of his mind. Do not investigate or pay attention. Do not take anything to heart.

Sometimes these precepts were harder to follow than other times.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, in the office, Joy took Mr. Tompkins’ copy of the
Thoroughbred Times
out of his box and leafed through it. She put it back. She took out the new
Blood-Horse
and leafed through that, but it was no use. There were no pictures of Farley Jones in either of them, and after she had looked for five minutes, she was so embarrassed at herself that she shoved the magazine back in the box and scurried out of the office the moment she heard Hortense returning from the rest room.

A
S FOR
F
ARLEY
, it was a shock, was it not, to return to what had become his normal state of mind. He knew for sure that very day, that very moment when Joy was looking for his picture, that he was just enduring. The one day in months when he hadn’t had to keep his spirits up had shown him just how hard he was working every other day to do so. Today. Tomorrow. Telephone calls-horses-death. The connection jumped into his mind instantly, and even though he laughed at it at once, so silly, too silly ever to actually say, it stayed right there, a Black Hole the size of a pinprick right in the center of his brain.

D
ICK WAS ALONE
in his box, binoculars in his hand, waiting to want to watch Laurita make her way around the track to the starting gate, which was a furlong down the track. Her morning line had dropped from two-to-one to eight-to-five. She was the favorite, with Exotic Wood, who had shipped in from California, the second favorite at two-to-one. A year older and several lifetimes meaner, the California mare would be hard to beat, and Dick was a little intimidated by her and her connections. Or he would have been, if he’d had the mental space anymore for anything other than reliving his time, now finished, with Rosalind Maybrick.

Although the Bird of Paradise was a big race, and Laurita’s picture had gotten into the
Form
, Rosalind and Al were not in New York but in Europe somewhere.
Al was sorting out the production of large metal objects that could only be lifted by heavy equipment, and Rosalind was sorting out the consumption of small porcelain objects that could only be lifted with the utmost care. Hungary. That’s where they were. Al had told him that. They were supposed to call him tonight and find out about the race.

In fact, it was good to be alone. He sat quietly. Sometimes he thought about Rosalind, or, rather, he re-experienced, as if it were actually happening, the feeling of her fingers on his shoulder and neck, over his cheek and chin, back down his neck to his shoulder again. That’s where she had him, not in the lovemaking or the gazing or the other accoutrements of an Affair, but in that liquid touch. Right there, the very thing at the nexus of his marriage, touching, and the nexus of his life with the horses, touching, right there he found the source of his deepest longing for Rosalind.

On the other hand, there was Louisa’s cousin, who had just come to visit and to talk to him about Louisa. Louisa, in the opinion of the cousin, was holding, but barely. He was worried about her. They had spent two days wandering around the track, the cousin in dress shoes, discussing Louisa with much intensity. Dick had not confessed his affair, but the cousin had commented that he seemed a little on edge.

It was nice to watch a race. In a race, anything could happen. Laurita was behaving herself very nicely. She was one of those horses who could have had any sort of life and done well in it.

The cousin was a therapist, which had reminded him that he could go back to his own therapist, which, guiltily, he had not. The cousin had started out as a comedian many years ago (he was now over fifty), moved into psychotherapy, and now counseled only the dying. He called himself a death therapist. In Dick’s estimation, the man, though kind and well meaning, and certainly fond of Louisa, was obsessed with his own death.

As nice as Laurita was, though, this Exotic Wood mare made her look like an amateur. She strode out, glanced around, put the pony in his place. She had “boss mare” written all over her.

Another way Rosalind had liked to touch him was just to stroke his stomach and chest, lightly, idly, first down, then up, then around in an inward-turning spiral, then back around, in an outward-turning spiral. They would be talking about horses or something and he would barely be noticing. So how was it that right now he could feel the hair under his clothes flatten this way and then that way? He almost looked down his shirt to see what was going on in there.

The cousin’s father had, indeed, suffered an unusual fate, but Dick wasn’t sure what meaning there was in it, or if it had any meaning at all. At one
point, he had given up his day job, insurance underwriting, to take up his first love, playing the trumpet in a big band. All during the death therapist’s early life, the father was away much of the time on musical engagements. The band went by bus.

Now the horses got to the starting gate and entered as quietly as debutantes lining up to receive admirers. After they were all in, there was an unusually long pause, during which Dick imagined all these experienced fillies and mares discussing their male trainers and jockeys in the frankest terms. And then the bell rang and the gate opened.

Sometimes, not even erotically, Rosalind’s fingers wandered over his testicles and down the insides of his thighs. Dick stifled a little gasp at the memory.

The young ladies were running well, in a bunch, the way they might on the range somewhere.

One icy night in New Hampshire, the band bus got into a terrible accident, and several of the band members were badly injured or killed.

The speedball, an A.P. Indy filly named Ann Page, put daylight between herself and Exotic Wood. Laurita was fourth or fifth, deep in the pack.

Other times, she would just run her finger up his spine and tickle the back of his neck.

One of the band members who died instantly was the death therapist’s father. He was impaled on his trumpet. When the death therapist said these words, “impaled on his trumpet,” Dick had laughed so hard he nearly fell down. Fortunately, the death therapist had been doing therapy for so long he took nothing at all personally, so he waited calmly for Dick to pull himself together.