Wild Horses (46 page)

“Sally and May?” Kai gasped, embarrassed at his inept state.

“Sally got kicked yesterday and will be out for a while. I really need to go.”

Kai saw Attila turn his back and leave without much ceremony. There was nothing but worry and stress in his body language, and Kai felt sudden pangs of guilt, because it occurred to him that not only was Attila still sick and on antibiotics, but also a lot of the load on Attila’s shoulders was his own doing. For starters, he should have not accepted that one, ill-fated drink from Larry.

Lesson learned.

Moving his legs and twisting his trunk hurt, especially being vertical again. Blood rushed from his head and Kai stumbled, catching himself against a doorjamb. He shuffled on the slick bathroom tile with care, making his way to the sink.

Teeth.

Shower.

Dress.

When he looked in the mirror, a bizarre stranger was staring back at him, a man with girly braids falling down the sides of his face and bloodshot eyes. His facial hair looked as though he’d been trying to grow a beard, and suddenly he panicked, not knowing the day of the week or the date. All he knew was his loading dock turned pretty damn cold as nights were becoming longer and cooler, and the autumn air intruded from the lakes up north. Kai shivered. The memory of river fog rose up in his mind, repulsive and twisted. How could he have ever even thought such a thing? Kai was appalled at the thought that he could have even contemplated jumping into the river because Attila was mad and did not return his calls. Drugged or not, Kai reflected that his train of thought showed how insecure he felt deep down. Hell, it was so deep down, he covered all that with a smile until somebody drugged him stupid and rendered him incapable of censoring his innermost thoughts.

Kai’s words outside of Frankie’s had been harsh, and he wished he could rewind time itself and take them back. Still, Attila showed no indication of animosity or indicated Kai was no longer welcome. Maybe Kai should have more faith in a man that had shown him nothing but generosity and goodwill. Maybe Kai should
trust
him. He stood there, motionless, as he rolled the word around in his mind.

Trust.

It felt strange, being treated well with such consistency. He kept waiting for Attila to change his mind, but Attila was steadfast.

“Trust. Trust. Trust.”

Kai repeated the word slowly, getting used to the sound, to the feel of it. It was a solid word, a good word. It was like a brick, compact and hard and easy to comprehend. He could build something solid with bricks like that.

He brushed his teeth and drank minty water from his cup. He showered, got dressed, and brushed his teeth again. The headache had reasserted itself when Kai began to brush his hair. It was wiry in texture and it tangled with ease. Attila seemed to be fascinated by it and had even bought Kai a detangler spray for it. Kai used it for the first time as he worked himself up to reassess his situation.

He padded to the kitchen in his socks, assessing what he might be able to eat and drink and actually keep down. He took his toast and cold tea to the living room where it was a little darker, when something not quite right stirred in his thoughts.

This room.

What is wrong with this room?

Oh….

Attila’s pillow and a spare blanket were strewn on the sofa, apparently having been used.

Attila chose not to sleep with Kai.

The realization hit him hard and his appetite vanished instantly. He hoped it had been just because he smelled of vomit that night, but he began to wonder just how long ago “that night” had been and how long, exactly, he had been unconscious. Shaving all that growth off his face had been pretty darn hard. Ignoring pains and aches, he strode back to the kitchen. One whole wall was dedicated to the calendar and notices from various horse shows, business cards, and takeout menus.

Kai peered at the calendar, forcing his blurry eyes to focus on the lesson schedule and the crossed-out days. He saw his birthday marked with a red star. Then there had been the day after, when he and Attila drove down to Pittsburgh with Hal. They saw lots of people—Kai chose to skip over that part for now—and Attila and Hal left him with a goose egg on his forehead and barely mobile at Theodore’s flower shop. He remembered being told that he was drugged. Thinking back, he remembered feeling left behind, lonely and abandoned and ashamed of his actions. He remembered throwing up in Tibor’s car, and Attila coming in and out of the room with iced electrolyte drinks for Kai to drink. He must have slept through, what, four days? And now, here he was, back at the stables.

Back home.

Kai’s keening wail sang of loss and despair. He wasn’t sure this place was his home anymore—

Trust.

Kai halted his negative train of thoughts and pushed away his concern that Attila might still be angry under his stoic demeanor.

“I
SAID
stretch their necks! Julie, keep your right foot on him and keep light tension on the right rein! RIGHT rein!” Attila felt like his head would split open as he watched the confused horse try to go sideways. The exercise was elementary. His intermediate students all knew how to stretch their horses’ necks, both while walking and trotting, yet it seemed they forgot everything they were ever taught in the space of one week. The horses fretted, picking up the tension generated by the struggling efforts of their riders.

“Reverse!” Attila called out, hoping to reset the class’s mood as they all turned around, going from clockwise to counterclockwise. When he was done with this class, his two ten-year-old students, more advanced than many adults, would help the older class untack and put the horses away for the night.

Shit.

I didn’t muck the stalls.

And May’s home with her sick kids.

Yet another task slipped by him as he juggled telephone calls, taught lessons, took care of the horses, and fussed over Kai. The last task was the worst of them all—the worst, because it felt so futile. He must have shocked Kai down to his toes when he appeared in his Master Attila the Hun persona. The fact that Kai seemed to have a history at Frankie’s surprised him, but then again, it shouldn’t have, knowing that people from all walks of life put on their alter egos in order to play out their fantasies. He did. Or at least, he used to. Once he found Theodore, Frankie’s became superfluous to him, but not so to his former boyfriend. Theodore wanted those games, craved them, missed them. Kai, to the best of Attila’s knowledge, had ventured into rougher waters only once. There was no way to tell how comfortable or awkward Kai had felt in his role up in the hayloft, with the rain drumming above their heads and the horses breathing below, warm and
fragrant. Everything seemed different in the hayloft. Cleaner,
somehow. More immediate. More real.

Attila observed his charges, directing them over a series of jumps. The lesson couldn’t end fast enough. He wanted to get back to Kai. Attila did not dismiss the fact that Kai preferred an easy escape when he found himself falling short of what he imagined other people might expect of him.

K
AI
breathed hard, his pale face drenched in sweat. He had refilled his water bottle once already, but his body seemed to be soaking up liquids as fast as he could supply them. He leaned into his pick again, working the tines under a dark pile of horseshit. He lifted the load and shook out the clean sawdust, then dumped the manure into his empty wheelbarrow. Two more loads, and the stall would be clean. One down, twenty-three more to go.

Tired as he was, the physical exertion seemed to have jump-started his brain. The events of their Pittsburgh trip started to return to Kai as the hazy disorientation of his drugged state had passed. The memories returned snapshot by snapshot and situation by situation. The recollection was disturbing in its sequential precision.

They had parked in the Strip, and Kai had shown his odiferous loading dock to Attila. The look and the smell of the place had seemed remote then, like an inconceivable part of Kai’s past, but when the day was done, the hard concrete under his butt was all too real. He was cleaning the fifth stall when it occurred to him that he had felt abandoned and betrayed that night. All those texts to Attila, and his lover—partner, even—never called, never replied. Kai was dumped, abandoned, ignored, cold, hungry, and miserable, and he vaguely remembered having drowned in the Allegheny River. Or at least he had intended to do that—

Intended?

A ghost of a memory washed over him along with the cold, suicidal despair and the inability to fully control his limbs. Kai shivered. A sudden urge forced him to bend over like a giant, iron hand was pushing down his shoulders. He bent over and threw up. This time, however, was different. This time he didn’t run.

He still had a lingering headache and the time he had lost was being revealed to him slowly, but he knew one thing. In the past he would have run, but this time he stayed.

He wanted to stay.

Leaning against the dark wooden wall of the stall, he rubbed the scabbed, nearly healed knuckles of his right hand; it had been four days altogether and the bruising was but a faint trace of yellow. Another memory resurfaced.

I almost hit Attila.

Kai lifted his chin and straightened his back. He wanted to stay more than he had ever wanted anything in the world, and he had something to atone for. When he thought of Attila here, at Blue Heron Acres, a man in riding breeches and boots came to mind: black hair in a ponytail and a hint of a smile tugging on his serious lips. His Attila was the one whose kisses tasted of mint chocolate shakes; his Attila rubbed his shoulders and braided his hair. The vision of a stern, black-clad man with a coiled bullwhip in his hand was but a wavering, diaphanous image on the very edges on his memory. It did not belong to this world, to this place. It manifested only in Pittsburgh, at Frankie’s. Kai knew where to stay and where not to ever set his foot again.

Determined to earn his place by Attila’s side, he shoveled his vomit away along with the horse manure, leaving the stall clean for its equine inhabitant, and moved on to the next one.

A
TTILA
weaved his way through the barn, ducking under cross-ties and trying to stay away from students who were untacking their mounts with much care, but not a lot of efficiency. “Julie, you can take Chicago outside and hose him down. Have you ever done that before?” His voice cut through the murmur of voices and the shuffling of feet and hooves on the concrete floor.

“Um, no….”

The sixteen-year-old didn’t have a great ride, and Attila felt he had shorted her on patience that day. Guilt kept him from foisting the simple instructional task onto one of the helpers. “Come along, I’ll show you how,” he said. He watched her slip Chicago’s halter on and put the white horse in the cross-ties as she returned the saddle and all other accoutrements into the tack room. Attila then handed her a lead rope and watched Julie lead Chicago outside, tie him to the post, and turn the water on. The spray nozzle was the fancy trigger kind, as good for horses as it was for plants. “Spray the ground around his feet first,” Attila said, directing her movements. “That way he won’t startle. Good….”

Julie’s young face was a study in focus and concentration.

“Now start on his feet and work your way up. Avoid his head, though—most horses don’t like that.” Attila observed the girl hose down the short Appaloosa and he almost relaxed, until she piped up.

“Mr. Keleman, where is everyone today?”

He sighed. Answering a question was not always a pleasant task, especially considering his aversion to lying. “Sally got kicked a few days ago, May is home because her kids are sick, Hal and Lindsey went to their colleges, Mrs. Putney no longer boards her horses here, Brent would come but he only has a learner’s permit and there is no one to drive him, and Kai is sick.”

“Wow.” Julie hosed off Chicago’s rump, angling the water on a slant to take the sting out of the stream. “That’s a total calamity. Do you want me to stay and help?”

Attila’s felt his eyes widen in surprise. “You would?”

“Sure! If… if it’s okay with my mom. I could stay and help with feeding, but you’d have to wash Chicago because I’d have to call her right now.” She stressed the last two words, almost stomping her heel into the pavement.

“Alright. Go ahead, then.” His heart was close to melting. Kai had been right, all those months ago—Attila was unaccustomed to accepting help from others. Every time someone offered assistance of their own accord, it surprised him.

A few minutes later, Julie skipped back, a grin on her face. “Mom says yes. She’ll pick me up an hour late, and she’s bringing a pizza so you don’t have to cook.”

“But you don’t have to… she doesn’t have to do that.”

Ignoring his feeble protestations, Julie took the hose back and attacked Chicago’s other flank. “Look, he really likes it! Do you think it tickles?”

Attila answered her questions with a professional smile, wondering whether Kai would wake up soon and whether he should call Dr. Russo back.

A
TTILA
picked up a basket pick and pushed the wheelbarrow to the nearest stall, steeled for the necessary task. He was faced with Zippy’s big brown butt, Zippy’s face gainfully occupying the hay manger. There was nothing to clean up off the floor. Surprised, Attila pushed the wheelbarrow to the next stall, and the next stall again. He scrunched his eyebrows up in confusion: the stalls were all clean. Attila didn’t know who did it, but he couldn’t ask because Julie was gone, along with the other students who stayed to help. He had a large, kitchen-sink pizza sitting on a hay bale on the barn floor. The horses were all back, except for Sen and Cayenne. Attila sighed, climbed up to the hayloft, and tossed three more hay bales down, careful not to ruin his dinner. He looked behind the wall and, drawn by what he might find there, he followed the thin light from the small skylight to his lair.