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Harsh wind is blowing over the track and up into the grandstands. I shiver and sink deeper into my overcoat. An old man in a down jacket has taken a seat a few rows in front of me. He has a hot dog which, by now, surely must be frozen. I don’t know what he’s doing out here when there’s ample room in the heated part of the grandstands. He probably just doesn’t like people. Is a loner among loners. He spreads the Form on his lap and bites into his hot dog. Out on the track infield the tote board starts flashing odds. The man in the down jacket crumples up his paper hot-dog plate and throws it to the ground. I’m incensed. I once heard a song lyric saying something to the effect of I can be condemned to hell for every sin but littering. I hate littering. I want to kill this man for littering.

With this thought, I get up from my seat. I walk past the litter-bug and shoot him a disparaging look. He looks right back at me. He has dead eyes in a face the color of pollution. If I do make it through this day alive and find some way to place myself in the world, I won’t have to look into the dead souls of the more degenerate gamblers anymore. There are plenty of respectable horseplayers and race fans but for every one of them there are two droolcases who barely even see the horses and certainly don’t think of them as the noble creatures they are. I’ve heard these types call horses pigs, blood clots, and of course, the ever popular nag. It’s these people who are the real nags and ought to be forced to gallop thirty-five mph on one leg with blood pouring out of their mouths.

As I walk toward the jocks room, I remember telling Jim, the racing secretary, that I’d stop in and say hello. His wife is friends with Ava and the four of us used to grab dinner sometimes. Now I never see the guy. I make a quick detour but Jim’s in the middle of a thousand things so I don’t stay very long. A few minutes later, I go into the jocks room. There is a smell of sweat and mud. The bright sound of men’s voices rising and falling.

The TVs are on, some showing regular TV, others showing the odds for the first race. I sit in a chair and pick up a copy of The New York Times. I stare at it as the riders for the first race get ready to go out to the paddock. Time passes. I feel curiously blank as I stare at the newspaper’s type. It blurs before my eyes and then turns to horses. The ink is galloping.

I look up at the TV. The riders are getting astride their horses and being led to the track. The horses are skittering, preening, spooking. I feel each horse’s heart beat inside my own. Tears come to my eyes.

RUBY MURPHY

27.

Bad Lady

By the time the driver drops me at the Aqueduct backside entrance it’s only an hour before the first race goes off. I pay the driver, thank him, and get out. By now, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy of worry and there’s a sheen of cold sweat on my forehead. I keep seeing the image of Attila in his towel, sprinting through the motel parking lot. It makes me sick with guilt, but guilt isn’t what the bad feeling is about. I don’t even know what the bad feeling is about. But it’s bad.

I walk into the tiny security office.

“You here for Kravitz?” a gentle-voiced matron asks.

“Yeah,” I nod. I don’t suppose there are many un-credentialed visitors to Aqueduct on a bleak weekday like this.

“Nice lady,” the matron says, and suddenly I’m not sure if she’s talking about Violet Kravitz or me. For a moment, I tangentially think of Pattahbi Jois, the ashtanga yoga guru, an eighty-something-year-old Indian man whose workshops I have taken on occasion. He is fond of calling his students “bad lady” or “bad man,” reserving the much coveted “nice lady” or “nice man” for some particularly excellent execution of a pose. I once earned a resounding “bad lady” for being alarmed when he came over and adjusted my balance in headstand. He kept nudging my legs forward and I felt like I was going to topple over and break my neck. I fought against his adjustment and was called “bad lady”—to the delight of my friend Jane who was practicing just