Shelly and I stood at the edge of the overhang, studying the oddsboard, waiting for the post parade, watching the track surface go from fast to slow to muddy. A sloppy track is like a fast track because the dirt is near liquid and hooves can find purchase on the hard surface underneath, but a muddy track is like running in mashed potatoes. Mud and slop are two different, nearly opposite, factorial worlds. We waited for the announcement to see whether our decision should be based upon slop or mud. Two minutes before the second race the track was deemed “sloppy.” Shelly and I looked at each other and nodded.
For weeks you lose. You get close, you catch bad breaks, you fall a nose short in a photo, your horse breaks down, the inquiry sign goes up and they take your number off the board. The gods chuckle and it sounds like the wind and the madness and futility of your life. You couldn’t pick a horse if it crawled up your nose. Seagulls shit on your head. You want to tear your program to bits. You want to throw your money in the air. You want to go home and get drunk. You want to crawl back into your hospital bed or shoot yourself in the brain.
But then, without warning, you start hitting winners, and it doesn’t matter if you can hear the horses talk or see two minutes and eighteen seconds ahead of everyone else, or if you pick numbers randomly or eavesdrop on granny or continue to refine faithfully your antiquated system. You are going to win.
Shelly and I knew how to play the primodrome on a gumbo track in the rain. We looked for horses with a little step, those who were not afraid of slipping in the slop. The outside posts were virtually dead. The speed was holding. Shelly knew the complete history of nearly every animal competing. In one glance, as if we were playing a mezzodrome, we could eliminate half the field or more. The harder it rained, the shorter the fields got.
Rain prickled along the asphalt; the sky was low and rumbling gray. Sleek, thundering mud-coated beasts rose out of the mist, and each time, though you could barely read the numbers on the twisted and splattered saddlecloths as they streaked past, it was the right number. It was magic time. Shelly and I shouted and danced and slapped the high flesh, sharing the sweet endocrine blossom of victory.
We hit our first pick three and split the cash, eighty-six each. The cameramen up in the press box taping for the TV recap tonight had already cut to us twice. Shelly became so transported, so ecstatic, he drifted away, standing in the deluge, shouting like Brando in Streetcar, boots steaming, face raised to the sky, completely ignoring the wet hillbilly in the red-heart blouse who adored him. Come on, Laffit, bring it on, Laffit Baby, atta baby.
My father’s horse, a bay gelding named Chiquilla Vanilla, got the four hole in the sixth race at six to one. Everything on grass had been moved to dirt. Normally a turf horse, Chiquilla Vanilla was the longest shot on the board, even if there were only four horses in the field. I knew what a nightmare this was for my father, who loved and took care of his animals better than the people in his life. He had enough money that he could’ve scratched all his entries and not risked injury to them, but even he wouldn’t admit that he was a gambler too. Chiquilla Vanilla won going away. Shelly and I slammed the high fives and toddled off to buy another round.
At the beer booth Shelly made a joke to the girl who drew our two jumbo Michelobs. He flashed his mangled smile and said to me as he handed me my cup, “I oughta ask her out. She’s a margarita girl at Del Mar.”
And he would’ve asked her out, too, he really would’ve, right there on the spot, lived happily ever after with a margarita girl — maybe she could’ve gotten me a date too and we could have had a double margarita marriage — but the seventh race was coming. There were only three races left and when would the magic come again? We needed to bear down. Shelly threw his Form open across a concession table and commenced to decipher the next race, nearly panting as he worked the numbers, the pages so wet they should’ve torn from the point of his pen, but he was in a trance state, invincible, still speaking in the angry immigrant voice. “I’m like Marilyn Monroe, baby,” he crowed. “Get on me while I’m hot.”
It was still raining hard at the end of the ninth race. The park was almost empty. Soaked to the skin, we scurried across the empty parking lot toward my truck. “Goddamnit,” he said. “I toldya we shoulda bet the pick six. We woulda won!”
I was about to remind him that the pick six had been canceled when a woman called to us.
We turned. It was the mountain girl in the heart blouse. “Can y’all give me a ride home?” she called.
“Where you live?” I yelled back.
“Downey,” she said, moving toward us, her breasts lifting and falling splendidly against all those wet and shiny hearts. “It’s just down the road apiece.”
Despite being slack-jawed and wearing a baffled expression, she was a luscious looking creature, especially now with her hair flattened by the rain and her makeup washed away. She wore a jeweled anklet and her white knee-length skirt was so wet you could see straight through it. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. “Come along then,” I
