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By Root 353 0

life suddenly flashes in front of my eyes. I begin wondering exactly how all my highs and lows and in betweens have brought me here. I can’t say I ever had a vast plan. I never sat down and mapped out where I wanted it all to go. If I’ve ever had any calling in life it was probably to run away with a small traveling circus. But by the time I was old enough to do such a thing, circuses were few and far between. So I drifted. Then settled at Coney Island and took up piano. I get a lot out of both my home and my instrument, but sometimes I wish I’d made a plan. Problem is, I don’t have an obsession the way Attila does. I want a horse pretty badly and sometimes I think I should go work at the track and get my fill of horses, but I don’t know enough to be anything more than a hotwalker and that, I know from experience, is a pretty difficult and incredibly low-paying job. So here I am. In a brown room with an intensely appealing but disturbed jockey with a price tag on his head.

“Are you feeling low? Is this too depressing?” Attila is looking at me intently.

“It’s fine,” I lie. “Let me just get the cats settled.”

I reach down and open Stinky’s and Lulu’s carriers. Their eyes are huge as they emerge. Lulu immediately darts under the bed while Stinky glances around, looks disgusted, and lets out a demanding meow. I get a dish from my bag and fill it with water from the bathroom sink. All the while, Attila sits on the bed, staring ahead.

I go over and put my hands on his shoulders. He looks impossibly sad. I can’t say I feel particularly cheerful myself. “I think I need a nap,” I tell him.

“It’s not that late.”

“I know. I’m tired though.”

He frowns slightly. The truth is I just need to shut the world out and I suppose Attila knows this. I grab my toothbrush and face cream from my bag and go into the bathroom. At least the bathroom isn’t brown. I stay in there awhile. I brush my teeth even though I haven’t eaten anything in a long time and I’m starting to feel starved. When I was growing up, both my mother and father were obsessed with fat. They never carried an extra ounce of fat and lived in fear of doing so. Unlike Attila, they didn’t have professions that demanded fatless bodies. They just didn’t like fat. As a result, both my sister, Chloe, and I had phases of veering toward anorexia. We’d freak out if we saw anything resembling fat on ourselves. We were always hungry and avoided bread, sweets, and pasta like the plague. Then one day I realized I just wasn’t fat and I ate again. I have some meat on my ass but it belongs there. Chloe remains underweight.

I stand at the sink staring at myself. My face looks a little hollow and my eyes seem huge. I look frightened and hungry. I suppose I am both.

I come back out of the bathroom and find Attila lying on the bed reading The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet. He picked it off my shelf one day and immediately became engrossed. The guy can read. In my time, I’ve associated with some distinct nonreaders but Attila’s not one of them. He rips through books about three times as quickly as I do. I lie down next to him.

“I’m going to nap now,” I inform him.

He looks up from his book and leans over to kiss me lightly. I kiss him back, then curl onto my side and close my eyes. I’m so weary I feel like I’m encased in cement. Stinky jumps up on the bed and comes to lie near my chest. I bury my nose in the fur of his neck and start counting horses, hoping to lull myself to sleep.

SAM RIVERMAN/ED BURKE

12.

Savage in the Heart

I was in Clove’s stall, squatting down near the mare’s hind end, feeling for heat in her legs. She’d worked her five furlongs in a thudding minute and six seconds and had galloped out lethargically. This wasn’t normal. Even for an old claiming mare like her. I ran my hands down her cannon bone, then cupped her fetlock, expecting to feel a little filling or at least some heat. Nothing. I went over each leg. They were all fine.

Throughout my little inspection, Clove kept craning her neck to look at me. She seemed politely bewildered, happy for the attention