Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [98]
I feel another bout of tears coming but I’m tired of crying, having cried more in the last twelve hours than in the collected thirty-four and three-quarters years of my life.
I pull the Gremlin out of its parking space and drive up onto Surf Avenue, making a left onto Ocean Parkway.
Next thing I know, I’m pulling up to a storefront lawyer in the middle of a Hasidic neighborhood off Ocean Parkway.
A very young woman is sitting at a desk in the front room. She seems quite surprised to see a walk-in client in spite of the fact that a sign outside indicated that such clients were welcome. I guess I don’t fit the bill for their regular clientele, all of whom, judging by the three people seated in the waiting area, are Hasidim.
I explain to the young woman that I’d like to draw up a will. She looks at me crookedly and I’m not sure if she thinks I’m an absolute nut case or if she has some sort of eye problem. She asks me to take a seat and I do. The magazines all appear to be in Hebrew so I just sit, staring at my hands. For some reason, I haven’t examined my hands in a long time, and as I notice now how old and battered they are I simultaneously think of Ruby’s nicely made hands that her piano teacher has convinced her are stubby. I suddenly want to kill the piano teacher.
About a half hour later I’m ushered into a cluttered back room with a drop ceiling. The lawyer is a man named Saul Victory who, as it happens, doesn’t seem to be Hasidic at all though I suppose he might be a less rigid Hasid who doesn’t go in for all the dark suits and hats and exotic hair configurations.
“A will?” Saul Victory says after offering me a seat.
“Yes,” I say.
Saul Victory doesn’t seem to think it’s a strange request. In fact, he’s a rather nice man and becomes extremely animated when I tell him I’m a jockey.
“Ah,” he says, getting a dreamy look, “how I miss that horse, Point Given.”
“Yes. There’s a lot of that going around. Speculation about what he could have done as a four-year-old. He was a very good horse.”
“He was a gangster,” Saul Victory exclaims, pounding his fist into a pile of papers on his desk. “I’ll never forget the way he looked on Belmont Stakes day with that crazy mask on his face—What do you call that mask?”
“Blinkers?”
“Yes, his crazy blinkers and the way he walked. He walked like Muhammad Ali. That horse was a gangster.”
I can’t say I ever really thought of Point Given as a gangster, but okay. I don’t have the heart to tell old Saul here that my racing career is as over as Point Given’s. As we get through the business of drawing up a will, I let him keep chatting about some of the horses he’s watched race. He is, with good reason, vigorously enthralled by Funny Cide and smitten with Azeri. He even mentions Ruby’s favorite horse, Sherpa Guide.
An hour later and several hundred dollars poorer, I walk out of Saul Victory’s office feeling a little lighter.
And then a strange thing happens.
I have a very strong urge to see my wife.
The idea is so shocking to me that I pull the Gremlin over to the side of the road and sit for several minutes trying to think through this surprising urge. But I can’t see straight or think straight. I need to see my wife.
I start driving to Queens.
Soon enough, I’m in front of the house. The crummy two-story vinyl-sided house. I don’t know how we could have expected to be happy in a vinyl house. I remember trying to talk Ava into holding out until we found a brick house. She wouldn’t though. Wanted to settle somewhere the second we landed in New York.
I pull the Gremlin into the driveway.
I walk up the two steps to the front door and knock. Nothing happens and I’m almost relieved. This can’t possibly be a good idea. Then, just as I’m about to turn and get back to the Gremlin, Ava