“I’ll be damned. The old man’s gettin’ more and more corralled, ain’t he? Damn near hobbled, I’d say.”
“What was wrong with the horse?”
“Not a damned thing. It just keeled over. They’re talkin’ about it havin’ a heart attack, but it didn’t.”
“You sure?”
“Well, it could have,” Peppy said. “But that horse had more wind than any of ’em. It never had been short of breath, unduly. He could go straight up a steep hill and then break into a full-blown run. Which is why the old man liked him. Never had the slightest pain in his forelegs. Three years old.”
“Was the horse killed, do you think? Poisoned, or something?”
“Something,” Peppy said. “We’ll never know. I was told to get that horse buried before I ever pissed again.”
“A good horse like that,” Jack said. “I don’t know. I’d think the old man would want an autopsy done on it. Him.”
“Me, too. Always a chance of a virus, or somethin’, affect the other horses. We’d need to know about it. No, sir: ‘Bury that horse before it’s cold, Peppy,’ is what the old man said. So that’s what I did. You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things, around here.”
“So Doctor Radliegh has never gone back to the stables for his morning ride. You think someone is tryin’ to get him, Peppy?”
“Doc Radliegh?” Peppy drained his beer can. “You’d have to be a fool not to suspicion it, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is anybody doin’ anything about it? Why doesn’t he get out of here?”
Peppy shrugged. “What do I know? I’m just a horse.”
“You got any ideas who might have poisoned the horse?”
“Anybody could have. Nothing is locked around here. Haven’t you noticed?” Peppy pointed at Jack’s front door.
“There isn’t even a lock on your own front door. Sure hope you left your diamonds to home.”
“We’re not safe in our beds.”
“You got that right.”
“Who around here would know how to poison a horse?”
“Anybody. Poisonin’ a horse ain’t difficult. Horses are poor, stupid critturs, like us. They can kick ya’, throw ya’, break your leg against a fence rail, but they ain’t got no defenses against what you really can do to them, any time, all the time.”
A large form blotted the sun out of the doorway.
Against the light, Jack could not see who it was.
“I want a ridin’ lesson,” a man’s voice said.
Peppy stood up. “Yes, sir, Caballero.”
“Bareback.” The man giggled.
“That takes a good horse,” Peppy said. “One who won’t throw ya.”
Jack got up and crossed the room so he could see who was in the doorway.
“You get obstreperous,” Chet drawled. “I’ll just pull down on your ears.”
He lunged at Peppy. He grabbed him by the ears. He pulled his head down. He raised his own knee. Gently he nuzzled Peppy’s nose against his own thigh muscle.
Chet laughed and let go of Peppy. “Come on.” He returned to the door. He said to Jack, “You want to join us?”
Red-faced, Peppy took Jack’s beer can from his hand. He tried to crush a can in each hand simultaneously. Jack’s half-full can squirted beer on the floor. “Oops! Sorry.”
Chet had gone next door.
Peppy said, “You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things, around here.”
•
Through the wall, Jack heard Chet and Peppy making noise in the next apartment.
Jack stuffed his swimsuit in a pocket of his shorts and went for a bike ride.
He rode past the office building, the airport, then around a nine hole golf course.
In the early dusk there were lights on in the clubhouse. There were a few expensive cars in the parking lot.
There was neither music nor laughter coming from the clubhouse.
From it, he could smell food cooking, especially fish.
Around the greens were executive style homes, with driveways, set deep in perfect landscaping.
These houses were more different from each other than were the smaller houses around Vindemia Village.
He biked up the long slope the other side of Vindemia’s Main House. At the top of the hill, he stopped. Legs straddling his bike, he looked around. He believed the roof of the house was five acres. He counted ten enormous blue and white flags flying from tall poles on various places on the roof. Even in a light breeze the huge flags made a whipping sound.
He heard the murmur of talk.
Jack looked down into a large, square trellised garden heavy with roses red, yellow, white, even blue. He could see no one.
Still straddling it, he walked his bike forward a few steps.
On a bench in the garden sat a man and a woman.
The man was Doctor Radliegh.
As he talked, he held the woman’s hand with both his hands in his lap.
The woman was Shana Staufel.
She looked up at Jack. After a moment, she smiled at Jack.
The man did not appear to notice him.
Jack sat on the bike seat and pedaled on.
In the village of Vindemia, Jack walked through the Recreation Center building. In the main lounge, a teen- aged boy and girl were playing Ping-Pong. Younger children sat along one wall playing computer games. Four teen- agers sprawled in couches looking at a huge television screen playing a music video not loudly.
None of the youngsters seemed to notice him.
Outside, on the veranda, two couples sat together in blue rocking chairs. On a blue wicker table were four tall glasses of what appeared to be iced tea.
They looked at Jack as he passed by them, but did not speak.
He was not sure they had been conversing with each other.
He changed into his swimsuit and alone swam in the huge, lit pool.
11
“You see,” Fletch said to Crystal from his lawn chair, “my father was thought to be emotionally evasive. I guess that mixes up my feelings about Jack, and, you. That you didn’t let me know he existed, that I didn’t know Jack existed until two weeks ago tonight … leaves me uncertain as to how to respond to him.”
“Your father died in childbirth,” Crystal said from inside the handicap van. “So you always said.”
“Not quite,” Fletch said.
“He didn’t?”
“He didn’t.”
It was after dark.
The van was in the parking lot of a motel near the room Fletch had taken for himself.
Inside the van, its side and back doors open to catch the breeze, Crystal sat propped up in her hospital bed.
Outside the van, on the pavement, Fletch sat in a cheap metallic lawn chair.
A few people walking to and from their rooms and vehicles had looked at this odd arrangement of a man sitting in a chair on the pavement having a picnic with a woman propped up in bed in a van but none had said
