Sweet Nothing (7 page)

Another lunatic, another crackhead. “Nope,” I say. “I got to go.”

“What's your hurry?”

“I'm on a date.”

“One of them pay-by-the-hour deals?”

The guy hasn't showered in days. His teeth are yellow, and he looks like he dressed out of a dumpster. He follows me to the condiment counter and moves in close as I'm pumping mustard.

“You know somebody looking for something like this?” he says and lifts his T-shirt to flash the butt of a gun sticking out of his jeans. “I'll let it go cheap.”

“Who are you?” I say. “I don't even know you.”

I push past him, almost spilling the Cokes in my haste. See, I'm learning. That dude is surely going to die young, and I don't want to go down with him.

“SOON AS A
bitch opens her mouth,” a buddy once said, “I stop listening.”

Four or five of us were drinking in a dive where failure hung thick as cigarette smoke in the air. Something contrary welled up in me—a sudden, intense disgust at the hatefulness we used for cover—and I pointed out to my friend that I'd seen him talking to women plenty of times.

“Talking, maybe,” he said, “but never listening.”

I like listening to Lupe. We sit in the stands and eat our hot dogs, and she tells me about her ex, Jesse's father. I asked for details about him because her and I are going to yank out our pasts like weeds and throw them away. The story is a sad one, but she makes it funny by spelling out the words she doesn't want Jesse to hear and calling her ex Dick instead of his real name, so the kid won't know who we're discussing.

They'd been together since high school, and she married him when she got p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t even though she knew he was an a-s-s-hole. Which was stupid, it's clear to her now, because of course the guy cracked under the pressure; of course he couldn't hold up his end of anything. He quit every job he managed to get, f-u-c-k-e-d around on her constantly, and beat on her when he was d-r-u-n-k. She finally had enough of it and got her brothers to come over and throw him out, and every day since then has been a good one.

“I'd like to meet him,” I say. “In a dark alley. With a baseball bat.”

“He's not worth the trouble,” she says.

“He was the wrong man for you,” I say. “It's good you found out early.”

“Wrong man, right man,” she says. “You're all the same.”

“No, we're not,” I reply. “We come in all kinds of crazy.”

This gets a laugh out of her, and we sip our Cokes and watch the horses for the next race parade down the track. A big roan bucks, almost tossing his jockey, and the crowd applauds. I'm transfixed by a man standing half in the shadow of the grandstand and half in the sun, split right down the middle, dark and light. One step in either direction will change everything.
Move,
I think.

“I like number two,” Lupe says, wiping ketchup off Jesse's chin with a napkin. “He's pretty.”

Toe the Line is the horse's name, three to one.

“You know how to pick 'em,” I tell her. “He's one of the favorites.”

She reaches into her purse and pulls out two dollars. “I want to bet on him.”

I wave the money away. “My treat.”

“Nope,” she says, thrusting the bills at me. “That's bad luck.”

Her smile could stop a war. I take the two bucks and turn to leave. The man I was watching before is gone. If he went light, I'd planned to go with the four horse; dark, the nine. Now I'll have to bet both.

WHEN I GET
back from the window with our tickets and a box of popcorn for Jesse, Paul is sitting in the row behind us, leaning forward to talk to Lupe. Something takes hold of my guts and squeezes.

“Here he is,” Paul says as I approach. “The man himself.”

“Watch your purse around this one,” I say to Lupe.

She laughs. Paul looks hurt, then angry.

“She was asking how we met,” he says.

Danny Boy brought us together. Gave us the keys to the back door of his brother's house and told us to trash the place, paid us each a hundred bucks. Those were not good times.

“Who can remember?” I say. A warning.

Paul picks up on it. “I can't,” he says. “I sure can't.”

I give Lupe her ticket, and the kid tries to grab it out of her hand. She tells him to sit still. We make small talk as the horses walk to the starting gate. All I can think of is the pistol in Paul's waistband. It's like there's a snake coiled under Lupe's seat where she can't see it, and I'm ignoring it so as not to alarm her, all the while terrified that the damn thing is going to strike. Paul's talking about Hawaii, telling Lupe how great it is there: Oh, the sand. Oh, the water. Oh, the food. He's never been to Hawaii; he's never even been to San Diego.

A stiff breeze sweeps up a bunch of losing tickets and whips them around the legs of the Mexicans lining the fence next to the track. The gates swing open, and the horses are off. I'm not normally a stander or a shouter, but Lupe, you know, and the kid, that's part of the fun for them. So as the pack comes into the stretch, I'm on my feet with everybody else, even though my picks are already out of the money.

“I won!” Lupe yells as the horses cross the finish line.

“We won!” Jesse yells.

Lupe hugs him, hugs me, hugs Paul. When things settle down, Paul starts pumping her for info: where she lives, where she works, what she drives. I interrupt with “So, who do you like in the next race?”

“Paul said Kentucky Straight looks good,” Lupe replies.

I glance at my program. Thirty-five to one. That's Paul right there: If he can't win, he doesn't want anyone else to. Fucker lives his whole life that way.

“It's a long shot,” I say.

“What's that mean?” Lupe asks.

“It means you bet a little to win a lot,” Paul says.

“Good, 'cause a little is all I got.”

I'm not going to argue. We're supposed to be enjoying ourselves. And what's two bucks? Paul, though, has got to go.

“Come on,” I say to him. “I'll buy you a beer.”

“Just bring it to me,” he says.

“Nah, come with me. I want to talk to you about something.”

He gets up reluctantly, knowing he won't be back, kisses Lupe's hand and bumps fists with Jesse.

As soon as we're out of their sight, I give him a shove. He stumbles and almost goes down. The maniac has a gun, and I push him. I'm a genius; I truly am.

“I don't appreciate your jokes,” I say.

“So what?” he says. “She's not that cute. In fact, her ass is gigantic.”

I lurch toward him, and he backs off.

“Get going,” I say, keeping an eye on his hands.

“You know what?” he says. “I'm done with you.” Then he turns and, thank God, walks away.

I DECIDE TO
visit Willy and Leon in the clubhouse, see what horses they like. You're supposed to have a stamp to get in from the grandstand, showing you paid extra. I don't, but the woman guarding the entrance is too busy texting to look up when I wave my hand under the black light and hurry past her.

Willy and Leon are legends, twin brothers who worked as pari-mutuel clerks, taking bets here and at Hollywood Park for thirty years before retiring. They still show up every day, out of habit, know all the jockeys, all the owners, all the trainers, and they're usually good for a tip.

I find them in their usual spot, a booth in a quiet corner of the clubhouse snack bar beneath a bank of monitors showing races from all over the country. Five or six other regulars sit with them, and the table is covered with dope sheets, marked-up
Form
s, and Styrofoam coffee cups. The men all wear clothes from twenty, thirty, even forty years ago. They never venture outside to watch a race live, and they communicate with one another mostly in grunts and whispers. Their days are spent scribbling arcane symbols on their programs or staring up at the screens overhead, tongues clenched between their teeth.

At my hello, Willy taps Leon, who takes off his reading glasses and glances around, confused, before spotting me. The brothers are both five feet tall and just about as wide, with big round heads and bulging eyes, and they both comb their graying hair to the same side. The only way anyone can tell them apart is that the lobe of Willy's left ear is missing, sliced off in a gang fight when he was a kid.

“Hey, buddy boy,” Willy says. “Keeping out of trouble?”

“You know me,” I reply.

“That's why he's asking,” Leon says, and he and Willy jiggle with silent laughter. Rumor has it that they've won and lost millions over the years, that they once shared a woman who broke both their hearts, and that they still sleep in their childhood bedroom at their mother's house.

“I need a winner,” I say.

“And you came to them?” one of the other men at the table says with a snort. “They're in so deep, Obama's gonna bail them out.”

Everybody gets a kick out of this, one guy laughing so hard he goes into a coughing fit.

“Seriously,” Willy says. “It's nothing but nags today.”

“Yeah, keep your money,” Leon adds.

“Come on,” I say. “You guys have something.”

They lock eyes for a few seconds, then Willy runs a fat finger down the chicken scratches he's made on a memo pad.

“The five horse in the sixth might come alive,” he finally says.

“Might,” Leon emphasizes.

Willy announces that he needs to use the can. He's sitting in the center of the booth, which means the guys to one side or the other will have to slide out and stand up, but neither group wants to move. I leave them bickering about it and go to a window, where I cash in Lupe's ticket for eight dollars and put two back on Kentucky Straight.

For my bet, I figure it's been three races now since a favorite has come in, so it's got to happen this time. I mean to lay ten on the horse, but out of habit say twenty and decide not to correct it. I don't want to get in the way of anything.

“COME ON, BABY,
come on!” Lupe shouts, but it's no use. Kentucky Straight runs last, and the favorite ends up third. So we're both losers.

“Made for each other,” I say to Lupe.

“I'm no loser,” she replies.

“It was a joke,” I say.

We sit poring over the prospects for the next race when we should be getting to know each other better. This was a horrible place to take her on a first date. I see that now. I'm under too much stress here. Now that I'm down, all I can think about is ways to get back up. And Lupe, look at her, jiggling her leg, twisting her hair, squinting at her program like someone taking a test. The zoo would have been better, something fun for the kid. He's bored to death here, nothing to do but play with his doll, make it jump in the air and kick his mother's arm.

“What's your guy's name?” I ask him.

“Black Dragon.”

“So he's like a ninja?”

“Bingo, brainiac.”

Shadows are creeping up the foothills just beyond the track, and it'll get chilly as soon as the sun sinks a bit lower. We should leave now, while I still have enough cash to buy us a couple of Big Macs. I'm trying to figure out how to suggest this to Lupe without sounding as lousy as I feel when she jabs her program with a bright pink fingernail and says, “I want this one: Divalicious.”

Fifty to one. The girl is throwing away her pennies, but, hey, I don't have any room to talk. She roots around in her purse, hands me two dollars, and says, “What happened with you and your wife?”

It's only fair. She told me about her marriage. But which story does she want to hear? How Christine and I met at a casino where she was a waitress and I was on a winning streak? That's a good one. Christine thought it was always going to be like that, the high life, and that's why she said yes when I asked her to marry me two weeks later. She'd never been with a gambler before, though, never ridden that roller coaster.

Or how about the one where I had to sell everything we owned to pay off a loan shark, and we lived out of our car until I could pilfer enough from the cash register at the liquor store where I was working to get a room at a motel?

Or how about how I promised again and again to quit gambling but didn't, and when the truth finally dawned on Christine, she texted her good-bye while I was sitting at a poker table—
Thx 4 ruining everything
—and disappeared into outer space?

No, Lupe doesn't want to hear any of those, and I don't want to tell them.

“We made mistakes,” I say. “There was love there, but not enough.”

Lupe frowns. “What does that mean? Did you leave her, or did she leave you?”

“Me,” I say. “She left me. And the man I was then, I don't blame her.”

“But you've changed, huh?”

“I get a little better every day, I hope.”

“You're full of s-h-i-t,” she says with a laugh.

“I know what that spells,” Jesse says.

THEY'VE BOTH GOT
to use the restroom, so I lead them back under the grandstand and thread them through the crowd. We avoid the old woman picking through the trash, the drunk screaming in Spanish into his phone, the dude with crazy eyes who's telling security he'll smoke anywhere he fucking wants. A pigeon has found its way inside and flies frantically from one end of the room to the other, just above everyone's heads.

“Can you go with him?” Lupe says, nodding at Jesse when we get to the door to the women's room.

“Sure,” I say.

I take his hand and walk him to the men's. He steps up to the one urinal that's set lower than the others and unzips his pants.

“Need any help?” I ask