“No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it, think about it, remember any of it. No.” She listened to the silence that followed, then to a subtle shift in his breathing. She still knew him so well that she knew what this meant. He was finished with her. For now…
“Good night, Billie.” He hung up.
She replaced the receiver, turned on her side, and slipped her hand under the elastic waistband of her pajamas.
She woke in the morning to the taste of Frank. Not the taste of his body, although that remained as vivid today as when she’d left him. She had tried to erase it with other men in the same way she had cleansed the casita when she’d moved here, blasting it with air fresheners and scrubs, scented candles and incense, and burning cedar, sage, and sweetgrass. Despite her efforts, the little building kept its own flavor, especially pungent during monsoon season when every year the late summer rains freed the scents of those who had lived there before her: migrants and outlaws, ranch hands and fugitives. But summer had barely started. The rains wouldn’t come for weeks.
The taste in her mouth was of her work back in New York, the career she’d once had, the metallic rain, the stench of gasoline on pavement, the scream of sirens.
She stretched, realized she’d been waiting for the screech owl who lived in the juniper outside her window and woke her each morning before dawn. She hadn’t heard it this morning, or maybe she’d slept through it. She lay under the sheet, watched the sky turn opalescent then pink, felt the air in the room heat up, listened for something she couldn’t hear.
She got up and, chilly in the thin pajamas, walked down the snaking driveway to the barnyard. Gulliver skittered around her, just beyond her footfall, almost tripping her then bounding away. She could feel Frank still with her, as though he’d preceded her down the hill, as if, when she reached the bottom, he’d be there, his iPad in one hand, cell phone pressed to his ear, telling her where to go, what to do, what to write about. “By Tuesday, by God!” he’d shout, and she would have her assignment and her deadline.
The horses nickered as she approached. She fed them thick flakes of alfalfa, all except Starship. He got a scoop of pellets—a quick nourishing meal. Billie leaned against the gate to his corral as he ate. Tire marks in the dirt—not hers—caught her eye, and she followed them a few steps. Someone had driven in, followed the fence line past the corrals, circled the barn, and then left. Those must have been the lights she’d seen from the casita. Sam and Josie or Ty might have driven in to check on something. UPS and FedEx left parcels for her neighbors in Billie’s feed shed rather than drive the rutted mile to their place. But when that happened, Billie would call to alert them of a delivery, or if they checked first, they would call to let her know. People didn’t just stop by out here. If her neighbors had driven into her barnyard, they would have told her.
She slipped a halter onto Starship’s head, climbed the fence, and from there slid onto his smooth back. In no way did he resemble the starved creature he was that day she had seen him in a herd at the local auction, bones all of them, being whipped into the van of the kill buyer who had bought them to sell to slaughter in Mexico.
“How much?” Billie had asked him. The price he quoted her was for the horse by weight, as meat. “How much for the others too?” she had asked.
He had laughed at her, refused her check, and only when she paid with cash, plus extra for delivery, had he agreed to unload the eight breathing skeletons at her ranch. That had been three years ago. She’d planned to find homes for them all, but they were still with her, still eating her hay.
Starship carried her out the gate and down the road for a half mile while she followed the tire marks until they disappeared in a deep sand wash crisscrossed by the wheels of every rancher out here.
Feeling the soft morning air, breathing Starship’s warm scent, Billie wanted to ride all day with no destination, safe from bills and money worries, her cell phone turned off. She wanted to ride until she was exhausted and hot and dying to go home, but she couldn’t. Images of the horse show intruded along with the taillights she’d seen last night, the tire marks, and the filly’s scream. She needed to figure out who had trespassed into her barnyard in the dark. Was it someone from the show? Charley, the man who threatened her? She turned Starship around, dread in her gut, and headed back home along the dirt road.
A faded blue pickup raced toward them, braked and skidded. Billie hadn’t noticed it approach. Startled, she saw Sam and Josie gaping at her through their filthy windshield. Both had cigarettes between their lips and wore bandanas around their turkey necks. As the truck fishtailed, Starship spooked sideways and Billie fell, landing in a mound of dirt and sand. The reins pulled out of her hand, and her horse sidestepped away from her.
“Sorry!” Sam leapt out and stood over her, his hand stretched down, and pulled her to her feet. “Didn’t see you.”
“No problem, Sam. I didn’t see you either.”
She reached for Starship’s reins, but he realized he was on his own, flagged his tail over his back, and snorted. He galloped, farting, for home and the hay pile. Gulliver chased him, yipping.
“Never thought much of a horse that wouldn’t wait
