Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

“What’s your guy’s name?” I ask him.

“Black Dragon.”

“So he’s like a ninja?”

“Bingo, brainiac.”

Shadows are creeping up the foothills just beyond the track, and it’ll get chilly as soon as the sun sinks a bit lower. We should leave now, while I still have enough cash to buy us a couple of Big Macs. I’m trying to figure out how to suggest this to Lupe without sounding as lousy as I feel when she jabs her program with a bright pink fingernail and says, “I want this one: Divalicious.”

Fifty to one. The girl is throwing away her pennies, but, hey, I don’t have any room to talk. She roots around in her purse, hands me two dollars, and says, “What happened with you and your wife?”

It’s only fair. She told me about her marriage. But which story does she want to hear? How Christine and I met at a casino where she was a waitress and I was on a winning streak? That’s a good one. Christine thought it was always going to be like that, the high life, and that’s why she said yes when I asked her to marry me two weeks later. She’d never been with a gambler before, though, never ridden that roller coaster.

Or how about the one where I had to sell everything we owned to pay off a loan shark, and we lived out of our car until I could pilfer enough from the cash register at the liquor store where I was working to get a room at a motel?

Or how about how I promised again and again to quit gambling but didn’t, and when the truth finally dawned on Christine, she texted her good-bye while I was sitting at a poker table— Thx 4 ruining everything —and disappeared into outer space?

No, Lupe doesn’t want to hear any of those, and I don’t want to tell them.

“We made mistakes,” I say. “There was love there, but not enough.”

Lupe frowns. “What does that mean? Did you leave her, or did she leave you?”

“Me,” I say. “She left me. And the man I was then, I don’t blame her.”

“But you’ve changed, huh?”

“I get a little better every day, I hope.”

“You’re full of s-h-i-t,” she says with a laugh.

“I know what that spells,” Jesse says.

THEY’VE BOTH GOT to use the restroom, so I lead them back under the grandstand and thread them through the crowd. We avoid the old woman picking through the trash, the drunk screaming in Spanish into his phone, the dude with crazy eyes who’s telling security he’ll smoke anywhere he fucking wants. A pigeon has found its way inside and flies frantically from one end of the room to the other, just above everyone’s heads.

“Can you go with him?” Lupe says, nodding at Jesse when we get to the door to the women’s room.

“Sure,” I say.

I take his hand and walk him to the men’s. He steps up to the one urinal that’s set lower than the others and unzips his pants.

“Need any help?” I ask

“No,” he replies, like that’s a dumb question.

He can’t reach the sink, so I pick him up and hold him around the waist while he soaps his hands and rinses them thoroughly, the way someone somewhere taught him.

“Do you like war?” he asks me while drying each finger separately.

“You mean like war war?”

“Like war movies.”

“Sure,” I say.

“Me too.”

We meet his mom at the snack bar, and the two of them wait there while I make our bets. It’s going to be the favorite this time: Blue Moon. The guy in front of me puts money on him, and so does the guy in front of him. What I should do is lay down ten of my last twenty on the horse and save ten for Willy and Leon’s pick in the next race. But of course the wheels start turning: Lose the ten, and you’ve got nothing, not enough to make a decent bet on the next race, not enough to buy Lupe and Jesse dinner. Bet the whole twenty, and if you lose, you’re still fucked, but if you win, at two to one, that’s forty bucks, enough to bet on Willy and Leon’s horse and get a pizza, thus tiptoeing out of trouble once again.

By now I’m at the window, and the clerk is waiting, and so is everybody in line behind me. There’s no time to double-check my logic, so I do what I always do in this situation: close my eyes and jump.

LUPE SCREAMS LOUDER as the horses come into the stretch. Blue Moon has been in front all the way, but now Divalicious is moving up. I don’t want to root against Lupe, not even silently, but I do, fists clenching and unclenching at my sides. Run, run, run.

The crowd is in a frenzy as the horses approach the finish line. It’s strange to see people act like that, shouting and sweating and jumping up and down. They look more angry than anything else, and I’ve had dreams where they turn on me.

The madness continues until Blue Moon and Divalicious cross the line neck and neck at the front of the pack. Silence descends over the grandstand. It holds for three seconds, four, five, and then the word Photo flashes on the tote, and a collective groan rises. Everybody begins to speculate on what the officials will see in the pictures. It looked like Blue Moon to me, but I don’t want to jinx it by hoping.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Lupe whispers. She closes her eyes and crosses herself, moves her lips in prayer.

A minute later, the results come up.

“I won?” Lupe asks, her voice rising to a screech.

“You won,” I reply.

The old man behind us rolls his eyes as she yells and stamps her feet and waves the ticket over her head. She’s got a lot to learn, like how you shouldn’t gloat when you win, how you should think about all the losers around you, all those broken hearts.

But, hey, maybe she’ll pay for dinner now. I’m down to four bucks and change. I keep reaching into my pockets, hoping to find more, because Leon and Willy’s horse, Rocket Man, is starting to look really good. Top jockey, top trainer. He hasn’t done anything in his previous races, so that means he’s due. And I’m not the only one who thinks so: He’s gone from five to one this morning to three to one now. I smell a winner, really and truly.

Jesse drops his Spider-Man sunglasses under his seat, then bumps his chin trying to retrieve them. You’d think he was dying, the way he bawls. The littlest bit of a headache is throbbing at the base of my skull, and it’s like the kid is back there kicking it.

“What’s wrong?” Lupe asks Jesse.

He cries even harder.

She grabs his arm, yanks him onto his seat, and takes a quick look at his chin. “Stop showing off,” she says. “You keep it up, and I’m not buying you a present with this money. I’ll spend it all on myself.”

The sobs subside into whimpers.

“Should we go?” I ask Lupe, hoping she’ll say yes.

“Nah, he’s just tired. He’ll be fine,” she says. She starts to tell me another work story, something about a man crying while getting a molar pulled, but I’m barely listening. I’m too busy beating myself up for not being able to hold back any money for this race, the one where I actually have a decent tip. I can’t make the right move even with someone holding my hand.

“Hey,” Lupe says, distracted by something on her program. “Did you see? The Tooth Fairy? I have to bet on him.”

Seventy to one. One lucky pick, and she thinks she’s magic. I could use this as my excuse for what’s about to happen, claim she’s gotten too full of herself, showed her ugly side, but that would be unfair. She’s just a girl who hit a winner and liked how it felt. I’m the one who’s rotten through and through.

I STEP UP to the window at two minutes to post. The clerk has a thin gray mustache and a mop of curly gray hair that might be a wig. A big ring shines on his pinkie, and a diamond stud glints in his ear. With his black vest and white shirt, he puts me in mind of a riverboat card shark.