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Still, for some reason, this little guy with his bright blue eyes was growing on me. Or maybe I just wanted to help out. I offered my services.

“You want, I could watch your back,” I said.

“Huh?” Both Attila and Ruby looked at me, not knowing what I was talking about.

“I could look out for you. I’m out on Disability right now. My wife’s never home and my kid’s off at school most of the day. I don’t watch my ass I’m gonna lie on the couch all day popping Percocet. I could come with you to the track. Keep an eye on you.”

“It’s not just at the track. They seem to know my every move,” the jockey said.

“Well,” I said, “I can’t be with you twenty-four/seven but just about. My wife hates me this week and my kid ain’t home much. Maybe if I made myself scarce for a couple of weeks I’d get appreciated more.”

Attila looked at me and blinked. So did Ruby.

It took a little more persuading and, to tell the truth, I don’t know what I was thinking, why I was so gung ho on the whole idea, but after a while, Attila agreed to it.

Ruby went in the kitchen to tend to those cats of hers and Attila and I stayed in the living room, talking about it all, him telling me the way his schedule worked each day. He seemed a little suspicious of my motivation for doing this. I would have been too. But it was just something I wanted to do. I couldn’t have explained it at gunpoint.

Eventually, I got up to go. I told them I was stopping next door at Ramirez’s place to ask him to keep his eyes open. The guy’s a piece of work. Never quite got over his tour in ’Nam. Which is to say, all these years later, he’s one alert and paranoid motherfucker. Couldn’t hurt to have him keeping an ear out.

After me and Ramirez shot the shit awhile, him telling me he was thinking of asking his girl Elsie to marry him, me telling him, What the hell, why not? And then asking him to keep an eye on Ruby, I went home.

Karen, my wife, was in the kitchen, doing terrible things to our dinner. Jake was in his room, doing his homework. The kid is studious. Makes me proud. I didn’t interrupt him, just cracked his door a little, and saw him hunched over his desk, already looking like some professor at age seven. I smiled to myself. Then went to watch what my wife was doing to that poor meat loaf.

ATTILA JOHNSON

5.

After Near Death

I was sinking into the middle of Ruby’s exhausted couch, turning my entire life over in my mind. Ruby was at her piano, sitting a little hunched, her small, not-so-graceful hands pulling beauty from the yellowed ivory keys. She was playing Bach. Her favorite. Sometimes I couldn’t distinguish Beethoven from Haydn from Schubert. But when she played Bach, I knew it.

The female cat came over and bumped her head against my foot repeatedly, as if trying to shake an idea loose inside her tiny head. My own head was full of images. The cold beautiful freedom of running on the empty beach. Nothing ahead but snow, sand, and horizon. Then I’d sensed rather than seen someone behind me. Before I’d had time to think, I was being wrestled to the ground, face-first. I struggled and yelled as I was dragged into the icy water. I took in huge involuntary gulps of cold salty sea and felt my head freezing as someone held it under the surface. I was kicking but I could feel myself weakening. I was on the verge of blacking out when suddenly my attacker let go. I pulled my head out of the water and saw a seagull dive-bombing a spot just in front of me. For a moment I thought the gull had somehow saved me. Then I saw a man standing on the beach, looking at me. I wasn’t sure if he was the one who had just been trying to drown me. I got to my feet and stood there, knee-deep in the water, looking at the tall black man.

“You okay, mister?” the man asked me.

“Did you just try to drown me?” I asked, feeling ridiculous, struggling out of the surf.

“Nope. That guy did,” he said, motioning to the right. I looked and saw a figure running away. “I was just walking along here and saw something funny going on,” he continued. “I yelled out, asking what the guy was doing