Rules of Civility (15 page)

The painting, which was obviously by the same person who had painted the assembly of longshoremen in Tinker's apartment, showed the loading dock of a butchery. In the foreground were trucks parked in a row and in the background loomed a large neon sign in the shape of a steer that read
VITELLI'S
. While figurative, the colors and lines of the painting had been simplified in the style of Stuart Davis.

Very much in the style of Stuart Davis.

—Gansevoort Street? I asked.

—That's right, said Hank, a little impressed.

—Why did you decide to paint Vitelli's?

—Because he lives there, said Johnny.

—Because I couldn't get it out of my mind, corrected Hank. Neon signs are like sirens. You've got to tie yourself to the mast if you're gonna paint em. You know what I mean?

—Not really.

I looked at the picture.

—But I like it, I said.

He winced.

—It's not a decoration, sister. It's the world.

—Cézanne painted the world.

—All those fruits and ewers and drowsy dames. That wasn't the world. That was a bunch of guys wishing they were painters to the king.

—I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure the painters who curried favor did history paintings and portraits. Still lifes were a more personal form.

Hank stared at me for a moment.

—Who sent you here?

—What?

—Were you the president of your debating society or something? All that may have been true a hundred years ago, or whatever, but after being soaked in admiration, one generation's genius is another's VD. Have you ever worked in a kitchen?

—Sure.

—Really? At summer camp? The dorm dining hall? Listen. In the army, if you draw KP, you might chop a hundred onions in half an hour. The oil gets so deep in your fingertips, for weeks you can smell it every time you take a shower. That's what Cézanne's oranges are now, and his landscapes too. The stink of onion in your fingertips. Okay?

—Okay.

—Yeah, okay.

I looked over at Fran thinking maybe it was time to go, but she had moved on to Grubb's lap.

Like most belligerent people, Hank was getting tiresome fast, so I had good reason to call it a night. But I couldn't stop wondering about Tinker's instincts. I mean, how should I take it that he thought Hank and I would hit it off? I decided to take it badly.

—So, I gather you're Tinker's brother.

I definitely knocked him off the rails with that one. You could tell it was a sensation he hadn't much experience with and didn't much like.

—How do
you
know Tinker?

—We're friends.

—Really?

—Is that surprising?

—Well, he was never much for
this
sort of back and forth.

—Maybe he's got better things to do.

—Oh, he's got better things to do, all right. And maybe he'd get around to doing them—if it weren't for that manipulative cunt.

—She's a friend of mine too.

—No accounting for taste. Right?

Hank reached over for another one of Johnny's cigarettes.

Where did this hack get off running down Evelyn Ross, I thought to myself. Let's throw
him
through a windshield and see how he holds up.

I couldn't resist observing:

—Didn't Stuart Davis paint a pack of Lucky Strikes?

—I don't know. Did he?

—Sure he did. Come to think of it, your paintings remind me a lot of his—what with the urban commercial imagery and primary colors and simplified lines.

—Nice. You should dissect frogs for a living.

—I've done that too. Doesn't your brother have some Stuart Davises in his apartment?

—Do you think Teddy knows the least thing about Stuart Davis? Fuck. He would have bought a tin drum if I told him to.

—Your brother doesn't seem to think so poorly of you.

—Yeah? Maybe he should.

—I bet you drew a lot of KP.

Hank laughed until he coughed. He picked up his glass and tilted it at me with his first smile of the evening.

—You got that right, sister.

When we all stood to go, it was Hank who covered the check. He took some wadded bills out of his pocket and tossed them on the table like they were candy wrappers. What about their colors and shapes? I wanted to ask. Didn't they have purpose? Weren't they things of beauty?

If only his trust officer could see him now.

After the drink at that Irish bar, I figured I'd seen the last of Fran. But she got hold of my number and called one rainy Saturday. She apologized for having ditched me and said she wanted to make it up by treating me to the movies. She took me to a string of bars instead and we had a gay old time. When I got around to asking why she had bothered to track me down, she said it was because we were so simpatico.

We were about the same height with the same chestnut coloring and we were both raised in two-room apartments across a river from Manhattan. I guess on a rainy Saturday afternoon, that was simpatico enough. So we trooped around a bit and then one night in early June, she called to see if I wanted to go to the runarounds at Belmont.

My father abhorred wagering of any kind. He thought it the surest route to relying on the kindness of strangers. So I had never played penny-a-point canasta or bet a stick of gum on who could throw the first rock through the principal's window. I certainly had never been to a racetrack. I didn't know what she was talking about.

—The runarounds?

Apparently, on the Wednesday before the Belmont Stakes, the track was opened to the horses on the card so that the jockeys could give them a feel for the course. Fran said it was much more exciting than the race itself—a claim so unlikely that the runarounds seemed certain to be a bore.

—Sorry, I said. On Wednesdays I happen to work.

—That's the beauty of it. They open the track at daybreak so each of the horses can get a run in before it gets hot. We zip out on the train, watch a few ponies, and still punch the clock by nine. Trust me. I've done it a million times.

 

When Fran said that they opened the track at daybreak, I imagined this was a figure of speech and we would be heading out to Long Island some time after six. But it was no figure of speech. And this being early June, daybreak was closer to five. So she came knocking at 4:30 with her hair coiled in a tower on the top of her head.

We had to wait fifteen minutes for a train. It rattled into the station like it was coming from another century. The interior lights cast a halfhearted glow over the nocturnal flotsam in its care: the janitors, drunkards and dance-hall girls.

When we got to Belmont, the sun was just beginning to heft its way over the horizon as if it needed to defy gravity to do so. Fran was defying gravity too. She was perky, bright, annoying.

—Cmon, Patsy, she said. Hustle your bustle!

The sprawling race day parking lot was empty. As we crossed it, I could see Fran carefully scrutinizing the edifice of the track.

—Over here, she said without much confidence, heading toward the service gates.

I pointed toward the sign that said ENTRANCE.

—How about over here?

—Sure!

—Wait a second, Fran. Let me ask you something. Have you ever been here before? I mean ever once?

—Sure. Hundreds of times.

—Let me ask you something else. When you're speaking, are you ever not lying?

—Was that a double negative? I'm not too good with those. Now let me ask you something.

She pointed at her blouse.

—Does this look good on me?

Before I could answer, she tugged on her neckline to expose a little more cleavage.

At the main gate we passed the unmanned ticket booths, pushed through the turnstiles and headed up a narrow ramp into the open air. The stadium was eerie and still. A green mist hung over the track like you'd expect to see over the surface of a pond in New England. Scattered across the empty stands, the other early risers were huddled in groups of two to four.

It seemed unseasonably cold for June. A few feet from us a man in a quilted jacket was holding a cup of coffee.

—You didn't tell me it was going to be so cold, I said.

—You know what June is like.

—Not at 5:00 A.M. I don't. Everybody else has coffee, I added.

She slugged me in the shoulder.

—What a whiner you are.

Fran was scrutinizing again, this time the people in the middle of the stands. Off to our right a tall, thin man in a plaid shirt stood and waved. It was Grubb in the company of hapless Johnny.

When we got to Grubb's seat, he put his arm around Fran and looked at me.

—It's Katherine, right?

I was vaguely impressed that he knew my name.

—She's cold, Fran said. And mad she doesn't have coffee.

Grubb grinned. From inside a knapsack he produced a lap blanket that he tossed to me, a Thermos that he handed to Fran, and then like a hack magician he felt elaborately around the bag until he brought out a cinnamon donut perched upright on his fingertips. Which, as it turns out, is all it takes to secure a place in my affections.

Fran poured me a cup of coffee. I hunched over it with the blanket on my shoulders like a Civil War soldier.

Having come to the track with his parents when he was in shorts, the whole excursion to the runarounds was like a return to summer camp for Grubb, full of sweet nostalgia and youthful fun. He quickly gave us a lay of the land—the size of the track, the qualifying horses, the importance of Belmont versus Saratoga—then, lowering his voice he pointed toward the paddock.

—Here comes the first horse.

On cue the motley assembly rose.

The jockey wasn't wearing one of those brightly colored checkered outfits that helps the track pretend it's festive. He was wearing a brown jumpsuit like a diminutive garage mechanic. As he walked the horse from the paddock out onto the track, steam rose from the horse's nostrils. In the stillness, you could hear it whinny from five hundred feet. The jockey talked briefly to a man with a pipe (presumably the trainer) and then swung onto the horse's back. He cantered a little so that the horse could take in its surroundings, circled and positioned for a start. A hush fell. Without the shot of a gun, horse and rider took off.

The sound of the horse's hooves drifted up into the stands in muffled rhythm as clods of turf were kicked in the air. The jockey seemed to take the first lengths at an easy pace, holding his head about a foot above the horse's. But at the second turn he urged the animal on. He drew his elbows inward and squeezed his thighs around the horse's barrel. He tucked the side of his face against its neck so that he could whisper encouragements. The horse responded. Though it was getting farther away, you could tell it was running faster, thrusting its muzzle forward and drumming the ground with rhythmic precision. It turned the far corner and the beat of its hooves grew closer, louder, faster. Until it bolted through the imaginary finish line.

—That's Pasteurized, Grubb said. The favorite.

I looked around the stands. There were no cheers. No applause. The onlookers, most of them men, offered the favorite silent recognition. They reviewed the time on their stopwatches and quietly conferred
.
A few shook their heads in appreciation or disappointment. I couldn't tell which.

And then Pasteurized was cantered off the track to make way for Cravat.

 

By the third horse, I was getting a feel for the runarounds. I could see why Grubb thought them more exciting than the Stakes. Though the stands were occupied by only a few hundred people (instead of fifty thousand), to a man they were aficionados.

Huddled at the rail—the innermost circle of the stadium—were the gamblers with unkempt hair who in refining their “systems” had lost it all: their savings, their homes, their families. With fevered eyes and rumpled jackets, looking like they'd slept under the stands, these inveterates leaned on the rail and watched the horses with an occasional licking of the lips.

In the lower stands sat the men and women raised on racing as a great entertainment. They were the same sort that you'd find in the bleachers at Dodger Stadium: the sort who knew the names of the players and all the relevant statistics. They were men and women who, like Grubb, had been brought to the track as children and who one day would bring their children, with a sense of loyalty to an idea that they might only otherwise display in a time of war. They had picnic baskets and racing sheets and formed fast friendships with whomever they happened to sit.