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At first, her face tightens and she looks like she’s going to hit me, then, she softens and lets out a small sigh.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It’s everything. Nothing is going right. Then finding out you’re into someone other than me, that didn’t help.” She shrugs and seems so vulnerable.

“Well,” she adds, “why don’t I go get on that horse of yours.”

I look at her for a minute, feeling a mixture of things. Wishing I could help her but not knowing how. Her face is set now, trying to tell me she’s okay.

We get Mike out of his stall and, in what feels like amiable silence, head over to the track. Fists of cumulus clouds have invaded the pure blue of the sky.

I GO TO the rail and focus my binoculars on Lucinda and the gelding. Mike actually looks okay out there. He seems interested in his work and he’s moving nicely, like maybe the chiropractor did help him.

I watch the pair start cantering and, after about a furlong, shift into a higher gear. They’re going along nicely when suddenly I hear people shouting. I put my binoculars down for a minute and scan around. Then I see it. A loose horse, coming up right on Lucinda and Mike. I put my binoculars back to my eyes, trying to see if Lucinda knows yet. She can doubtless hear the horse but I’m not sure if she knows he’s riderless. The loose horse comes up to Mike’s rump and, to my horror, starts nipping at my horse’s hind end. I see Mike shy toward the rail. I panic. I don’t think Lucinda has faced anything like this since coming back from her accident and I feel my stomach knotting. I focus on her face, but I can’t see enough to read her expression. It seems like she’s keeping herself together though. She’s slowing Mike down and it looks like she’s calm even though the loose stud colt is still nipping at Mike’s ass.

To my relief, an outrider finally catches the unruly colt and gets him away from Mike. In a few more moments, Lucinda has pulled Mike up and is trotting over to the rail.

Lucinda steers the gelding over toward me, and, as she comes closer, I see that she’s grinning ear to ear.

“Hey, you okay?” I ask.

“I’m great,” she beams.

“Yeah? You handled that well.”

“I know,” she says. “I got my nerve back.” Her face is more open and relaxed than I’ve ever seen it.

“So you did, girl. So you did.”

Lucinda hops down, tells me she’ll see me later, then walks toward the grandstands. Probably going to make rounds, make sure the whole backside knows what happened to her out there and how well she handled it. I lead Mike back to the barn and find he’s none the worse for the wear, even seems a little livelier than usual, like his misadventures made him feel important. Humberto grunts at me, “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” I tell him, not sure how he could have already heard about the incident. Humberto briefly looks from me to Mike and back. Then he turns and heads to the tack room. A moment later, he’s got the salsa blaring.

BY LATE AFTERNOON, I uneventfully finish up the rest of my horse chores, take care of a little Bureau business, and finally come home to have a long soak in the tub. Cat perches on the closed toilet seat, occasionally dipping a paw into the bathwater as if testing its temperature for me. I sink down low into the water, letting it come all the way up to my nose. I feel like several tons have lifted off me. Lucinda is going to be all right. It’s unlikely I’ll sleep with her anymore and it’s even more unlikely that she’ll care. I inadvertently helped her get her nerve back and there’s a good chance that’s all she wanted.

I decide to try calling Ruby.

BEN NESTER

22.

When the World Stops

Spinning

I woke up and turned over on Ava’s bumpy couch. My body hurt like hell. I’d taken a spill off my boss Carla’s pony horse the day before and though I hadn’t been knocked unconscious, I was damn sore. Which is probably what woke me. That or being worried about Ava lurking there. She’d done this about a week earlier. I’d woken up and felt