They walked from corral to corral, checking on the horses. They all seemed fine, ghostly in the starlight, whuffling to her, hoping for a slice of apple or a carrot. Billie stopped in front of Starship’s gate and whistled for him. Almost invisible in the dark, the gray horse moved in next to her. She scratched his withers, pressed her cheek against his, breathed into his breath.
How could anyone deliberately hurt these sweet, gentle creatures? She didn’t mean the question literally. She knew better than most that people would do anything they wanted. She could consult any part of her being for reminders of that. But standing with her horse’s head against hers, their breaths mingled, she asked it as an expression of outrage. Not “how could” but “how dare.”
Without wanting or even meaning to, she started thinking about an article, using the same techniques she used for exposés for Frank. She asked the five W questions and how: Who was doing this? What was being done? Where was it happening—at the horse show here, but where else? When did it start, and why do it? And lastly how far did the problem reach? As she climbed back up the hill to her casita, the questions flopped around in her head.
Back in her kitchen, she rescued a moth from her wine and poured herself a little more. The tub had drained itself halfway while she was out, so she turned on the tap and added hot water. This time she tossed her clothes into the wicker basket she used as a hamper, and without thinking, stepped into the tub. Too hot. Much too hot. The burn started in her instep and spread up her leg. She pulled back out as fast as she could and turned on the cold water, but after a month of hundred-degree days, there wasn’t any cold water in the pipes. She sat on the toilet to wait, looking at her reddened ankles and feet that still burned. Once, in some awful tabloid she had picked up at a supermarket, she’d read a story about two men captured by savages who boiled them alive. The description of their agonies had horrified her, but she couldn’t stop reading. Now, a decade later, the story came surging back.
What if she couldn’t have stepped out of the tub? What if her legs were being smeared with chemicals, wrapped to make the pain worse, to force the burn deeper? What if she then was tied to a wall and left to suffer?
She flicked the inside of her arm with her fingernail, hard, harder until the small sharp stings pulled her back from her imagining. Stay present, she ordered herself with each little flick. Stay right here. Between the nails of her thumb and index finger, she pinched soft skin then twisted.
Her wine glass sat on the floor beside the tub, just within her reach. She wanted to let go of the day, drink it away, until the sight of the tortured horse, the feel of Charley grabbing her shoulder, floated away. She wanted to take a pill, sleep a dozen hours, wake rested and solvent and sure that what she had seen today wasn’t real. But her horses might need her tonight; she couldn’t just let go. At least not all the way. She slid into the bathwater, tolerable now, until it lapped at the nape of her neck. Then she closed her eyes and relaxed.
After the bath, Billie played the messages on the answering machine: Bank of America, the insurance company, and a hang-up. She checked the caller ID and recognized her ex-husband Frank’s number. Billie ran her tongue around the lip of the wine glass.
She chose old cotton pajama bottoms and a loose tank top from one of the baskets where she kept her clothes. She lay down on the futon and pulled a thin sheet over herself. Gulliver hopped onto the bed and nosed underneath the sheet to curl against her belly.
The phone wakened her. Two rings, a pause, three rings, a pause. She picked up on the next ring.
“It’s late,” she said.
“Not really.” Frank’s voice sounded lively, energetic. “Not even one yet here.”
That made it almost ten Billie’s time. “I thought it was later. I was asleep.”
Gulliver had shoved deeper under the sheet, his chin now resting on her foot.
“What are you wearing, sweetheart?”
What was she wearing? She glanced down at her tank top and pajama bottoms. “Clothes.”
“You went to bed in your clothes?”
“Frank,” she sighed, “why are you calling?”
“I’m coming to Tucson for an editors’ conference. I’d love to see you, Billie.”
She felt the pull back toward him, his voice so familiar. She heard the way he used to talk to her when they made love, felt the way he had held her.
“Not a good idea,” she said.
He didn’t say anything. Her eyes closed and she listened to him breathe. They used to talk like this every night when they were married if either of them was away from home. After the divorce, they had hardly spoken at all, but then they had drifted back into the habit. He would call. If she were alone, she’d answer. Old friends, she told herself. Good old friends.
“Come back to work for me, sweetheart. You’re the best writer I ever had. No one could go after the ugly stuff better than you. You won’t spook again. You’re tough as they come. And I’ve got this great lead…”
The tug she felt turned into a tidal wave of longing for her career, the thrill of getting a new assignment and starting to dig into the worst forms of cruelty—hours that turned to days and weeks when she
