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By Root 283 0

I soothe the beast as best I can, then stand up to get the orange juice. Before opening the fridge, I glance at the photo of Sherpa Guide I have hanging there. Sherpa Guide is my hero. A diminutive bay racehorse who has a heart the size of an ocean. He’s just a New York-bred gelding of humble lineage—and I adored him long before Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide suddenly made being a New York-bred gelding a glamorous thing. Sherpa doesn’t always win but he always runs his heart out. His owner thinks very highly of him and often puts him in tough races. A few months ago, Sherpa ran in a big stakes race and went off at odds of 60–1. Though he had a bad trip and got boxed in on the rail, he still managed to run fourth, earn his owner twelve thousand dollars, and beat the pants off several regally bred colts. I couldn’t have been prouder. Ed used to encourage me to get in touch with Sherpa’s owner and trainer and meet the horse but I never did. I’m afraid to. What if he doesn’t like me? I’d have to kill myself. Instead, I keep a photo of him taped to my fridge and look at it whenever I need succor.

“Staring at Sherpa again?” Attila has come back into the kitchen, fully clothed now.

“Every day,” I say.

“I don’t know why you don’t just go meet the damned horse and get it over with.”

“I will,” I say. “Someday.”

Attila rolls his eyes at me. While Ed seems to understand my caginess about the whole thing, Attila just thinks I’m silly. I brood slightly over this as we sit down to eat our poached eggs. Three for me, one for Attila.

Outside the kitchen window, the snow is redoubling its efforts. Enormous flakes are sticking to the window, staring in at us before melting and sliding away like little ghosts. Attila takes one bite of egg, then looks out at the snow and frowns. I know he wants to get back to the track and ride. He likes me, he lusts for me, but, for him, nothing holds a candle to steering a thousand pounds of racehorse.

BIG SAL

4.

Cool My Head Off

That morning, my kid had come into the kitchen and, before sitting down to his bowl of cereal, looked up at me and said, “Dad, I need a horse.”

The kid’s seven years old. And he hadn’t asked for a pony, mind you. A horse. And now, a few hours after this request of his, I was standing on the snow-covered beach at Coney Island, staring at the lady who’d put horse notions into my kid’s head. Ruby Murphy. Wearing that stupid red coat of hers.

I’d brought Ruby by to meet my family a few weeks earlier. The girl had been a little down, nursing wounds from a guy she was crazy about who had up and moved to Florida. She doesn’t have any family in New York and I felt like she might benefit from being around mine. The day before coming by my place, Ruby had been out at Aqueduct, hitting exactas with her friend Liz, a good-looking but tough-as-tacks little blonde who probably packs a Magnum in her panties. So the night Ruby came by my place to meet my kid, and try to keep a pleasant look on her face as she ate my wife’s cooking, she talked about horses horses horses. She works at the Coney Island Museum, but for a month last spring she worked out at Belmont walking off racehorses and she’s been horse crazy ever since—even more so lately since taking up with a rider. That night at dinner, Ruby had talked on and on about racing and riding—and this horse and that horse and I’d seen a craving come into my son Jake’s eyes. But he hadn’t said anything about it until this morning at breakfast, saying, “Dad, I need a horse.”

“Yard isn’t big enough for a horse, kid,” I told him and he got thoughtful the way he does and said nothing more about it. I felt bad, I hadn’t meant to silence him so quickly, but I didn’t know where to go with such a request.

Now here was the girl responsible for my son’s sudden horse fever. Ruby Murphy. Standing on the beach, knee-deep in the snow, staring ahead.

She hadn’t noticed me yet so I called out to her: “Hey, Shorty.”

She turned toward me and smiled her crooked smile.

“What are you doing, Sal?” she asked.

“What’s it look like I’m doing,