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I WENT ABOUT my business, mucking the stalls and grooming. Humberto had a salsa station going. It was giving me a headache but I didn’t want to start anything by asking him to turn it down. My efforts to block the music out led me to worrying over Ruby. Why she hadn’t called back. How I would sound to her when we did talk. If she would read my voice, my pauses, and know that I’d slept with someone else and that it had only made me miss her worse.

The morning stretched out under a bed of clouds that was turning the day humid. It was getting close to nine. The plan had been for Lucinda to work my two horses right after the track renovation break, so they’d have the best footing possible. My horses needed all the help they could get. But nine had come and gone and I was about to give up when Lucinda appeared. Her hair was pinned up and her chaps were covered in mud. She looked good though. Like she’d absorbed a nice portion of the speed and power of the horses she had worked.

“Hey,” I greeted her, trying for a relaxed tone, like I’d never had any doubt she’d show.

“Ready?” was all she asked.

Though she obviously didn’t have much to say to me, she communicated with Mike’s Mohawk well enough. I sat in the grandstand with binoculars, looking on as the woman I’d slept with worked my horse. I’d told her to give him a slow two-mile gallop. His back had been bothering him and I didn’t want to push him until he was a hundred percent. The horse wanted more though. Bobby Frankel’s star four-year-old, the one that had won the Derby the previous spring, was breezing under much scrutiny from the press and half the backside. The big dark colt came up to Mike’s flank, and my gelding fought Lucinda. Mike’s Mohawk didn’t know or care that he was a six-year-old Ohio-bred claimer. He didn’t want the other horse getting by him. Lucinda battled with Mike for a few moments and finally got him to settle and focus and let the other horse blow on by.

Lucinda and I laughed about it later, after we’d worked Karma and put both him and Mike away.

“Nobody told Mike he’s a claimer, huh?” Lucinda said, grinning.

“That’s my horse,” I said. I asked her if she wanted to get some lunch but she declined. I was relieved. Maybe last night would blow over like a mediocre dream.

BY EARLY AFTERNOON, there was nothing to do but wait around for Clove’s race. The race was a seventeen-thousand-dollar claiming event for fillies and mares four years old and up. At age eight, Clove was definitely up. I’d fussed over the mare a lot already there wasn’t anything more to do for her and I really should have tended to some Bureau business but I just couldn’t. I tried calling Ruby again. The machine came on requesting that I leave good messages. I hung up and dialed her cell phone. The girl hates phones but back a few months ago, when I was still in New York and could never track her down, I bought her a cell phone. Not that she ever turns it on. I was expecting to get the voice mail and I almost hung up when she answered.

“Yes?” she said. She must have known it was me, caller ID would show my number. But maybe by now she’d forgotten my number.

“Ruby, it’s Ed.”

“Hi,” she said. It was hard to read her tone. I could hear familiar background noise.

“Are you at the track?” I asked, feeling a bit indignant that she’d be at a racetrack without me.

“I am,” she conceded. “Are you?”

“Yeah, of course, where else?”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

“I miss you, girl,” I said, surprising myself by getting right to the point.

“You do?”

“That surprises you?”

“Oh—” She fell silent. I waited. She didn’t add anything to that “oh.”

“What are you doing at the track?”

“Watching some races. With Violet Kravitz.”

“Who is Violet Kravitz?”

“Married to Henry Meyer, the trainer? Had Spyglass, that nice sprinter last year?”

“Oh. Right. How’d you meet her?”

“Long story,” she said.

There was another pause.

“I miss you too,” she said then.

My mood improved considerably.

“Yeah?