Gargantuan (3 page)

“Don’t squirm, girl, I gotcha,” I told her.

I deposited her on the couch and she reached for me, roughly pulling me to her. Then her mouth was on mine again, her small hands searching my surfaces. And so on and so forth.

It was one of those things. Our bodies fit together perfectly.

Everything about her made sense to me, from the top of her ruffled black head to the tips of her luscious red toenails.

Two weeks into all this, I was over at her place one night when a blizzard came clamoring out of the sky, snow sliding down in sheets. We sat on Ruby’s lumpy green couch. She had a CD playing, classical music by some Polish guy. The music was beautiful and sad. It made me think of all the things that had gone wrong in my life but it also brought the good to mind.

Ruby had the lights out and we were staring out at the night that was bright with snow.

“What’ll happen to the track tomorrow?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Closed probably,” I told her.

“So we can stay up all night?” she said, slipping her hand down my pants in that unceremonious way she had.

“Apparently,” I said, putting my hands inside her fuzzy white bathrobe.

We spent the next day in bed. And the day after that. Five days went by and the snow was still coming down and we were both wrecked from sexual excess.

I FINISHED STRETCHING
and sat down at the edge of the bed. Ruby’s red nightgown was still hitched up, exposing her rear end. I ran my hand very lightly over her right hip and along her ass. She rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s six. And it’s still snowing. Sleep,” I said.

“Are you okay?” she asked, sitting up and pulling the sheet all the way to her chin.

I wasn’t entirely okay. I had a lot on my mind and most of it was unpleasant. I wanted to tell her, to come clean, but I couldn’t. Not just yet.

“I’m fine,” I lied, reaching over and pushing a strand of hair off her forehead, “everything is fine.”

She frowned slightly and studied my face. I worked at keeping it relaxed, empty. I think she knew something was bothering me but she was tired and soon sleepiness won out. She lay back down. I pulled the blanket over her and watched as she slipped back into a sound sleep.

I went into the kitchen to get an apple from the fridge. I stared out at the snow while I munched the apple. The fire in my body was getting worse. I didn’t know if I should go outside and run a couple miles or do three hundred sit-ups or what. I needed to get on a horse. I needed to feel an animal’s spirit beating inside my own. But the weather wasn’t cooperating. So I just stood there, on fire.

I
’m starving but I’m terrified of taking out my box of Honey Nut Cheerios since the sight of it might give Attila a carbohydrate craving and cause him to eat several bowls of the stuff, then feel obliged to purge, take laxatives, and run ten extra miles to prevent the Cheerios from adding ounces to his riding weight. All of this would make me feel horribly guilty, and I have enough guilt in my life as it is. I feel guilty sleeping with Attila when Ed’s still in my blood. I feel guilty because my father’s dead and I’m alive. I feel
guilty over Ratso, a cat I had back when I used to drink too much. I left the cat with a roommate when I got carted off to rehab and the roommate abandoned him while I was two hundred miles away and detoxing. It was the only time I had truly homicidal feelings for another human. Then it all just turned to guilt. And I don’t need any more guilt. Right now or ever. I decide against the Cheerios and opt for making poached eggs. I know Attila will eat one.

I get the egg carton out of the fridge and, even though I fed the cats not ten minutes ago, Stinky thinks he’s starving. He meows, then actually rises up on his hind legs and tries to swat my hand. This is quite a feat considering that he weighs close to twenty pounds and has an enormous belly. He looks like an acrobatic Buddha. I try to distract him from his alleged hunger by giving him a catnip mouse but he’s not interested. He goes to lie under the kitchen chair and shoots me withering glances.

I boil water, then gently drop eggs into it. One of the eggs flops and the yolk breaks. I can’t say that I have strong culinary skills. I grew up in a house full of animals, and my sister, Chloe, and I ran wild with the dog pack while our parents worked. As a result, Chloe and I are great at taking care of animals, but not so good at things like cooking or cleaning.

“You’re cooking?”

I turn around and find Attila, freshly showered with a towel wrapped around his waist. His arms and torso are so stunningly fit that I nearly lose control of the last egg I’m attempting to drop into the water.

“I’m poaching some eggs,” I say, turning back around and taking care not to let the egg break.

“You got a poacher?” he asks, coming to stand at my side.

“What’s that?”

“You know, a gizmo you put the eggs in so they poach elegantly.”

“No, I guess I don’t,” I say, contemplating the notion of poaching eggs elegantly.

Attila smiles and apparently finds it appealing that I don’t have
a poacher. He reaches for me and I drape my arms around his waist, savoring his narrowness. Ed is thin but nearly a foot taller than Attila. He doesn’t feel narrow. In fact, I don’t remember what he feels like and this probably isn’t the moment to try remembering.

“The eggs will burn,” I say, pulling back from Attila.

“I don’t think poached eggs can burn, but okay,” he says, relinquishing his grip on me.

I get plates from the cupboard and start scooping eggs out, managing to break another one in the process. Yolk oozes onto the cheerful floral motif of the plate which, I believe, was a hand-me-down from my best friend, Jane, who is perpetually upset by my lack of kitchen accoutrements. Jane is hardly the queen of kitchen-wares, but she firmly believes in a certain amount of household civility that I just don’t possess. Whenever there’s a gift-giving occasion, Jane gives me kitchen items as opposed to the frivolous baubles I’m partial to.

“You’re a veritable household goddess.” Attila points at the oozing yolk then kisses my neck. “I’m going to get dressed,” he adds.

I turn to watch him walk away. He has no ass to speak of, but that’s fine.

I put the plates on the kitchen table, set cutlery and paper towel napkins out. Stinky is still scowling at me from under the chair so I get down on all fours and scratch him under the chin. After about ten seconds he gives a reluctant purr. I’m not sure what’s distressing him more: not being fed again or Attila. Stinky doesn’t approve of my boyfriends. Though he vaguely tolerated Ed, he has no use for Attila and refuses to come into the bedroom to sleep when Attila is around. 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.

T
hat 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, lady?” I was naked except for my bathing suit and my boots.

“You coming?” I asked her, knowing full well her cutoff point is November. She loves the water and will go in when it’s pretty damned cold. Which is how we’d first met. Both of us taking a dip in the Coney waters late October two years back. The girl doesn’t mind cold water. Just not
this
cold.

“No way,” she shook her head. She’d come to stand closer to me now. I saw that her long black hair was knotted and that she had bags under her gray eyes. She looked like she’d tumbled out of bed, put her coat on and come to the beach.

“I’m just waiting for Attila, he’s running,” she said, motioning toward Brighton.

“The jockey?”

“Yeah.” She looked sheepish and I could see she had in fact just tumbled out of bed.

“I can’t believe you’re going out with that guy,” I said.

Ruby and I had been talking about Attila Johnson one day just a few weeks before she’d met him. I like to play the horses now and then and Ruby and me were talking about some races. I’d noticed, as she had, that there was a new apprentice with an unlikely name. Especially considering he was a little blond-headed white guy.
Seemed to me
Attila Johnson
sounded like the name of a massive black guy, not a shrimpy little blond guy.