I didn’t doubt for a second the accounts of his sadistic upbringing. Still, it seemed that too much of his self-perception relied on being an outsider raised by cruel parents. He also read too many shaky and sordid pop-psych bestsellers such as Sybil. He didn’t realize that most of us are formed by stress and pain, most of us perceive ourselves as outsiders, most of us have suffered major parental failures, most of us have felt crazy or broken down or on the brink of yodeling off into the night, and that most of us lead multiple lives.
I had to slow for an accident up ahead. Shelly stared at the once graceful, now mangled black Lamborghini. The driver, as far as I could tell, was still inside. Five miles down the way, in a dream voice, he said the same thing he always said when we talked about his imaginary girlfriends. “Where do you think I should take her?”
“Does she like the horses?”
“Hmmm,” he said, as if this had never occurred to him.
“Movies are good, too,” I offered. “You don’t have to find out how truly incompatible you are for a couple of hours.”
He raised an eyebrow at me and shook open his Form, squinting at the numbers, then looking down at the radio as if it were transmitting alien signals. He said, “Who you like in the first?”
12.Marvelous Marvelle / Let the Sunshine In
SANTA ANITA WAS THE MOST ELEGANT OF THE THREE MAJOR southern California racetracks. Hollywood Park, with similar purse structures and a nearly identical list of competing jockeys, trainers, and owners, sat in a bad part of town and had none of the glitz of its sister to the north. Del Mar will always be my favorite — intimate, foggy, right on the ocean, its season short-lived as happiness, the ghost of Bing Crosby crooning the rinky-dink jingle “Where the Turf Meets the Surf” before the start of each card. Santa Anita didn’t have the atmosphere of Del Mar, but they’d dumped the cash in: Clydesdales, cobblestone, a panoramic view of the San Gabriel mountains, even a guy with a long-necked bugle announcing the post parade.
Santa Anita, Del Mar, and Hollywood Park were on a circuit in those days (the track at Hollywood Park has since gone dark) and there were many people — jockeys, trainers, clockers, grooms, vendors, waiters, and margarita girls — who followed that circuit to make their livings. The three tracks took turns throughout the year, never running contemporaneously. Many bettors would follow this circuit as well and we’d nod or wave or exchange a few words with a familiar face. Though Shelly was socially facile, he became reticent around those he did not know well or trust, fearing that they might steal and undeservedly benefit from his hard-won knowledge and the fruits of his research. For many years Hollywood Park had a special Thanksgiving card: a free turkey dinner with admission, a sad feast with all the misfit gamblers who sought on this day not those they loved but to wring a few more precious drops from their adrenal glands. Shelly and I had attended three of these cheerless Styrofoam-tray repasts. My father, I would lay heavy odds, never missed a single one.
Shelly and I didn’t look for a place to sit or camp. We had to move, Shelly getting more and more excited as the first post approached. He threw his Form over a concession table, took the pen down off his ear, and made a quick inspection of his previous night’s calculations. A slow transformation began, as if fire ants were replacing the iron molecules in his red blood cells. “Bet some doubles today?”
“Yowp.”
“Who you want in the first?”
“I like ’em all except the favorite and the Chilean shipper from Bay Meadows.”
“Favorite off eight days.” He smacked his program. “Hasn’t won twice in a row for three years.”
“Front wraps, too,” I added. “Digest marked them off last time out.”
Significant eyebrow work of the gambling addict here. Throw out the lame favorite and you’re getting somewhere. Shelly was about to drool. He jerked his head and threw that stray lock back. “And roll some pick threes. You want to split a few?”
“I’m up.”
His eyes flicked wider and wider, the fluid in his joints warming to blend with his saliva. “A pick six?”
“They got the one-handed betting machines in the bathrooms if you want to get rid of your money fast, babe.”
He nodded at me as if he were sucking on a funny-tasting gum drop. He wanted to bet bet bet bet, but he knew I was right. To have a crack at winning a pick six you need a multiple base ticket investment of at least $128, and once you’ve outlaid that much with your actual odds of hitting six races in a row still somewhere around a million to one, it’s a lit match to your cash. The challenge of the game was what mattered to us. Money was simply the method of keeping score.
The bugler came out at twelve minutes to post and I ambled down to the rail to have a look at the horses in the first race, examining coats, eyes, ears, and looking for neck and kidney sweat. As soon as I saw the Chilean shipper, Mata Morose, I knew he would win. His ears were pricked, his coat shone, and he was pumped up and almost nuts that the trainer had given him some M&M’s, the colored shells of which were still stuck in his teeth.
I ran
