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Rachel Baron

March 2006

"Come on numba six. Come on you fuckin’ hawse," yelled Irwin in desperation as he stood in front of his stadium seat at Belmont. Number six, Apple Pi, fell short by two lengths to capture third.

"Aw shit."

As usual, Irwin lost win and place, but he was always a show. He turned to the degenerate on his right to complain about the results of the race.

"You believe dis?" Irwin extended his right elbow and touched the man’s dirty sleeve covered in a colorful stain of green, red and brown.

"You just touched me," deadpanned the filthy man.

"What’s it to ya? I’ll touch ya again you fuckin’ dick." And he did.

"You’d better change seats or there’s gonna be a problem." The man squared up his shoulders and widened his stance. Irwin was a big talker, but a fighter he wasn’t.

"It just so happens I have a bet to make." Irwin cockily walked in front of the man, stared him down and continued out to the aisle.

At the betting window he looked at the colossal-sized clock in the center of the betting room: 3:10 pm. There were only two races left. Irwin couldn’t believe how fast the day was going. He opened up his tattered brown wallet, found three, one-dollar bills and a ticket for a free car wash and dashed to an open teller window.

"How long I got till the race closes?" The teller didn’t look up from her tabloid-sized newspaper.

"Yo! You hear me or wha?"

The woman looked up and revealed a face fraught with growths of different sizes. Small pimples scattered among larger welts. Her hair resembled a motorcycle helmet, perfectly coiffed and held in place by a full can of Aqua Net industrial-strength hairspray. She thought about Irwin’s question by scratching her head with a pencil. When she opened her mouth to speak, it was clear the pencil was stuck.

"Uh, you’ve got, uh, ten minutes."

Irwin looked for a moment at the woman’s hair and said, "You got a fuckin’ pencil in your fuckin’ head." He then frantically ran for the staircase to get down to the parking lot.

Irwin always arrived at the track early so he could get a parking spot right in front. He took pride in how close he parked, feeling victorious before ever even placing a bet. A winner indeed. When he arrived at the ground level, he saw his yellow taxicab, Cloverdale 6D59.

He lifted the handle to the back right door, and with a few tugs, it opened. He swore he’d find the time to oil up the door, as most everything else in his life, he forgot. The floor mats were sticky from passengers who spilled their drinks. They didn’t care about his cab, and he didn’t care enough to clean it. And that was the way his relationships went. Irwin reached down to the mat and pried it up. He grabbed the crushed, business-sized envelope, stood up, and slammed the door. Hard. He had five minutes left to place his bet. A race to the window was one he refused to lose.

"Numba two. Downtrotter. Hundred dollahs." He removed five, twenty-dollar bills from the envelope, leaving five more twenties for the last race.

This teller, an elderly man in his early seventies, put down his crossword puzzle book and made Irwin’s bet. He then held out the ticket as if dangling a biscuit in front of a salivating dog.

"I see you here a lot."

"And..." Irwin said with his hand extended, pleading with his eyes.

"And...Good luck." The teller handed him ticket, holding on to one end of it a moment longer than necessary. Irwin ran back to his stands to catch the call "...and they’re off!"

He ran so fast, his racing record and a black Ace comb fell out of his back right pocket. Irwin was like a 1950’s greaser, always combing his thin, oily hair back and to the left. When he reached a seat close enough to see the tiniest dust kicked up by the thoroughbreds, Irwin was sweating and disheveled. He immediately reached into his pocket and realized his comb was gone.

"Come on two." The thoroughbred galloped down the soft, moist track, kicking mud behind him, hitting nothing but empty space. As the lead horses were approaching the finish line, Irwin pleaded, "Two, ya bastard. Come on!" Then, as if the prized equine heard his cry, he steadily gained speed. He ran faster and faster, panting as the jockey whipped his soft, brushed skin. Number two, shook his flowing mane to the roaring crowd, signaling his arrival from the back of the pack. He didn’t get very far.

Downtrotter finished second to last.

"What else is new?" thought Irwin, not the least bit surprised. He settled into his seat, stretching out his long lefts over the empty chair in front of him. Irwin then tipped his head up to the gambling Gods in the cerulean blue sky, closed his eyes, and prayed for an even tan and nothing else. His thoughts were always so vapid, until the ponies were released from their stalls. It was only then that Irwin felt electric.

It was fifteen minutes until the next race. Irwin hailed down a vendor in the stands selling hotdogs as he pushed his hair back and to the left with his hand. He sat down, chewed his lunch and took out his crumbled, white, business-sized envelope. He swallowed. He swallowed hard when he saw the small words written in faded blue ink at the bottom left corner.

In the mid-afternoon the day before, Irwin was home alone, which was quite rare. Roberta and Madeline were at the supermarket. He waited ten minutes after they left to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything. When he was certain they were gone, he looked around the living room as if he were wearing x-ray glasses. Instead of removing clothing, he used his powers to uncover money. For eleven years, he and Roberta played this game. She would hide bills and he would seek them out in the most random of spots around the apartment. Finding the money meant working on his tan at the track. Roberta cried, yelled, pleaded with him to stop gambling.

"Go to GA," shouted Roberta time and time again.

"I got no problem," he would always answer. Eleven years of the same dialogue.

Irwin began his search in the kitchen by opening the freezer door. A cloud of icy air escaped and for a brief moment Irwin couldn’t see. He reached around the TV dinners and the ice trays. He reached under the sticky box of all-natural vanilla ice cream. He opened a brown paper bag filled with week-old bagels. When he was through he closed the freezer door and went on to the refrigerator. The crisper, the fruit bin, both yielding nothing.

Cereal boxes, the toaster, the coffee filter...all empty.

Under the bed...

Under the couch cushions...

In the armoire and in old, Nat King Cole record sleeves...

Irwin was out of breath and empty handed. He sat on the couch and gathered his thoughts until he had one.

After a few minutes, he ran to the radiator and opened the front flap. It was a small space to fit his large hand, but he did his best to maneuver around. Irwin ran his long fingers along the cold, dusty pipes and felt paper stuffed into a small crack. He grabbed a hold of it as if grasping onto life by a rock at the edge of a cliff. The paper was an envelope, sealed tight and thick with money. Irwin’s heart beat wildly as he licked a drop of sweat from his upper lip. How sweet it tasted.

"I’m dead," Irwin said aloud. The envelope read, "Blue Cross" and it didn’t surprise him that he hadn’t noticed the words before, because he generally didn’t care. The two hundred dollars in the envelope was to pay for his daughter’s medical insurance. Madeline was a healthy six-year-old girl. Vibrant and strong and wonderful. She was Irwin’s second love.

It was five minutes until the last race, and Irwin knew what to do with his five, twenty-dollar bills.

"Numba One. Reliable Nathan."

It was a reliable horse. It finished dead last.

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