Queens Noir Page 2

  I got into the shower and scrubbed myself raw, then shampooed my disgusting oily head. I took clean clothes out of the closet instead of foraging through the huge pile in the hamper the way I'd been doing for weeks. I put on black jeans and a fuzzy green sweater. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My semidry hair looked okay and my facial puffiness had gone down. Even my zits weren't so visible. I looked vaguely alive.

  I took my coat off the hook, put Candy's leash on, and headed out for a walk along the East River, near the condo high-rises that look over into Manhattan. My dead father loved Long Island City. He moved here in the 1980s, when it was almost entirely industrial, to shack up with some drunken harlot, right after my mom kicked him out. Long after the harlot had dumped my father-all women dumped him all the time-he'd stayed on in the neighborhood, eventually buying a tiny two-story wood frame house that he left to me, his lone child, when the cancer got him last year at age fifty-nine. I like the neighborhood fine. It's quiet and there are places to buy tacos.

  "Looking good, mami," said some Spanish guy as Candy and I walked past the gas station.

  I never understand that mami thing. It sounds like they're saying mommy. I know they mean hot mama and, in their minds, it's a compliment, but it still strikes me as repulsive.

  I ignored the guy.

  As Candy sniffed and pissed and tried to eat garbage off the pavement, I smoked a few Marlboros and stared across at midtown Manhattan. It looked graceful from this distance.

  The air was so cold it almost seemed clean and I started thinking on how I would rid myself of Clayton. I'd tried so many times. Had gotten him to agree not to call me anymore. But then, not two days would go by and he'd ring the bell. And I'd let him in. He'd look at me with those huge stupid brown eyes and tell me how great I looked. Alice, you're fantastic, he'd told me so many times I started thinking of myself as Alice Fantastic, only there really wouldn't be anything fantastic about me until I got rid of Clayton. When he would finally shut up about my fantasticness, I'd start in on the This isn't going to work for me anymore, Clayton refrain I had been trotting out for seventeen weeks. Then he'd look wounded and his arms would hang so long at his sides that I'd have to touch him, and once I touched him, we'd make a beeline for the bed, and the sex was pretty good, the way it can be with someone you are physically attracted to in spite of or because of a lack of anything at all in common. And the sex being good would make me entertain the idea of instating him on some sort of permanent basis, and I guess that was my mistake. He'd see that little idea in my eye and latch onto it and have feelings, and his feelings would make him a prodigious lover, and I'd become so strung out on sex chemicals I would dopily say Sure when he'd ask to spend the night, and then again dopily say Sure the next morning when he'd ask if he could call me later.

  But enough is enough. I don't want Clayton convincing himself we're going to be an everlasting item growing old together.

  Right now Clayton lives in a parking lot. In his van. This I discovered when, that first night, after I picked him up in the taco place and strolled with him near the water, enjoying his simplicity and his long, loping gait, I brought him home and sucked his cock in the entrance hall and asked him to fuck me from behind in the kitchen, and then led him to the bedroom where we lay quiet for a little while until he was hard again, at which point I put on a pair of tights and asked him to rip out the crotch and fuck me through the hole. After all that, just when I was thinking up a polite way of asking him to leave, he propped himself up on his elbow and told me how much he liked me. "I really like you. I mean, I really like you," looking at me with those eyes big as moons, and even though I just wanted to read a book and go to sleep, I didn't have the heart to kick him out.

  All that night, he babbled at me, telling me his woes, how his mother has Alzheimer's and his father is in prison for forgery and his wife left him for a plumber and he's been fired from his job at a cabinet-making shop and is living in his van in a parking lot and showering at the Y.

  "I've got to get out of Queens soon," he said.

  "And go where?"

  "Florida. I don't like the cold much. Gets in my bones."

  "Yeah. Florida," I said. I'd been there. To Gulfstream Park, Calder Race Course, and Tampa Bay Downs. I didn't tell him that though. I just said, Yeah, Florida, like I wasn't opposed to Florida, though why I would let him think I have any fondness for Florida, this leading him to possibly speculate that I'd want to go live there with him, I don't know. I guess I wanted to be kind to him.

  "Just a trailer is fine. I like trailers," Clayton said.

  "Right," I said. And then I feigned sleep.

  That was seventeen weeks ago. And I still haven't gotten rid of him.

  Candy and I walked for the better part of an hour and then headed home, passing back by the gas station where the moron felt the need to repeat, Looking good, mommy, and I actually stopped walking and stared at him and tried to think of words to explain exactly how repulsive it is to be called mommy and how it makes me picture him fucking his own mother, who is doubtless a matronly Dominican woman with endless folds of ancient flesh, but I couldn't find the words and the guy was starting to grin, possibly thinking I was actually turned on by him, so I kept walking.

  Once back inside my place, I gave Candy the leftovers from my previous night's dinner and sat down at the kitchen table with my computer, my Daily Racing Form, and my notebooks. I got to work on the next day's entries at Aqueduct. No matter how much I planned to change my life in the coming weeks, I still had to work. It wasn't much of a card, even for a Wednesday in February, so I figured I wouldn't be pushing a lot of money through the windows. But I would watch. I would take notes. I would listen. I would enjoy my work. I always do.

  Several hours passed and I felt stirrings of hunger and glanced inside my fridge. Some lifeless lettuce, a few ounces of orange juice, and one egg. I considered boiling the egg, as there are days when there's nothing I love more than a hardboiled egg, but I decided this wasn't one of those days. I would have to go to the taco place for take-out. I attached Candy's leash to her collar and threw my coat on and was heading to the door when the phone rang. I picked it up.

  "Hi, Alice," came Clayton's low voice.

  I groaned.

  "What's the matter? You in pain?"

  "Sort of."

  "What do you mean? What hurts? I'll be right there."

  "No, no, Clayton, don't. My pain is that you won't take No for an answer."

  "No about what?"

  "No about our continuing on like this."

  There was dead silence.

  "Where are you?" I asked.

  "In the parking lot."

  "Clayton," I said, "I know you think you're a nice guy, but there's nothing nice about coming around when I've repeatedly asked you not to. It's borderline stalking."

  More silence.

  "I need my peace and quiet."

  After several moments: "You don't like the way I touch you anymore?"

  "There's more to life than touching."

  "Uh," said Clayton. "I wouldn't know since you won't ever let me do anything with you other than come over and fuck you.

  Clayton had never said fuck before. Clayton had been raised in some sort of religious household. He wasn't religious himself, but he was reserved about cursing.

  "My life is nothing. Clayton, I go to the racetrack. I make my bets and take my notes. I talk to some of the other horseplayers. I go home and cook dinner or I go to the taco place. I walk my dog. That's it. There's nothing to my life, Clayton, nothing to see."

  "So let me come with you."

  "Come with me where?"

  "To the racetrack."

  "I'm asking you to never call me again and get out of my life. Why would I want to take you to the racetrack?"

  "Just let me see a little piece of your life. I deserve it. Think of it as alimony."

  I couldn't see why I should do anything for him. But I agreed anyway. At least it got him of
f the phone.

  I took the dog out to the taco place. Came home and ate my dinner, giving half to the dog.

  I'd told Clayton to meet me the next morning at 11:00 and we'd take the subway. He offered to drive but I didn't trust that monstrous van of his not to break down en route. He rang the bell and I came downstairs to find him looking full of hope. Like seeing each other in daylight hours meant marriage and babies were imminent. Not that he'd asked for anything like that but he was that kind of guy, the kind of guy I seem to attract all too often, the want-to-snuggle-up-and-breed kind of guy. There are allegedly millions of women out there look ing for these guys so I'm not sure why they all come knocking on my door. I guess they like a challenge. That's why they're men.

  "Hi, Alice," he beamed, "you look fantastic."

  "Thanks," I said. I had pulled myself together, was wearing a tight black knee-length skirt and a soft black sweater that showed some shoulder-if I ever took my coat off, which I wasn't planning to do as I figured any glimpsing of my flesh might give Clayton ideas.

  "I'm just doing this 'cause you asked," I said as we started walking to the G train, "but you have to realize this is my job and you can't interfere or ask a lot of questions." I was staring straight ahead so I didn't have to see any indications of hurt in his eyes, because this was one of his ruses, the hurt look, the kicked puppy look, and I was damn well sick of it.

  "Right," said Clayton.

  We went down into the station and waited forever, as one invariably does for the G train, and all the while Clayton stared at me so hard I was pretty sure he would turn me to stone.

  Eventually, the train came and got us to the Hoyt- Schermerhorn stop in Brooklyn where we switched to the far more efficient A train. I felt relief at being on my way to Aqueduct. Not many people truly love Aqueduct, but I do. Belmont is gorgeous and spacious and Saratoga is grand if you can stand the crowds, but I love Aqueduct. Aqueduct is down-on-their-luck trainers slumping in the benches, degenerates, droolcases, and drunks swapping tips, and a few seasoned pro gamblers quietly going about their business. My kind of place.

  Thirty minutes later, the train sighed into the stop at Aqueduct and we got off, us and a bunch of hunched middleaged white men, a few slightly younger Rasta guys, and one well-dressed suit-type guy who was an owner or wanted to pretend to be one.

  "Oh, it's nice," Clayton lied as we emerged from the little tunnel under the train tracks.

  The structure looks like the set for a 1970s zombie movie, with its faded grim colors and the airplanes headed for JFK flying so low you're sure they're going to land on a horse.

  "We'll go up to the restaurant, have some omelettes," I told him once we were inside the clubhouse. "The coffee sucks but the omelettes are fine."

  "Okay," said Clayton.

  We rode the escalator to the top, and at the big glass doors to the Equestris Restaurant, Manny, the maitre d', greeted me and gave its a table with a great view of the finish line.

  Then Clayton started in with the questions. He'd never been a big question guy, wasn't a very verbal guy period, but suddenly he wanted to know the history of Aqueduct and my history with Aqueduct and what else I'd ever done for a living and what my family thought of my being a professional gambler, etc., etc.

  "I told you, I have to work. No twenty questions. Here's a Racing Form," I said, handing him the extra copy I'd printed out. "Now study that and let me think."

  The poor guy stared at the Form but obviously had no idea how to read it. Sometimes I forget that people don't know these things. Seems like I always knew, what with coming here when I was a kid when Cousin Jeremy still lived in Queens and baby-sat me on days when my father was off on a construction job. I'd been betting since the age of nine and had been reasonably crafty about money-management and risk-taking since day one. I had turned a profit that first time when Jeremy had placed bets for me, and though I'd had plenty of painful losing days since, for the most part I scraped by. I'd briefly had a job as a substitute teacher after graduating from Hunter College, but I hated it. So I gambled and supplemented my modest profits with income from the garden apartment in my house. Not many people last more than a few years gambling for a living but, for whatever reason, I have. Mostly because I can't stand the thought of doing anything else.

  I was just about to take pity on Clayton and show him how to read the Form when Big Fred appeared and sat down at one of the extra chairs at our table.

  "You see this piece of shit Pletcher's running in the fifth race?" Fred wanted to know. Big Fred, who weighs 110 pounds tops, isn't one for pleasantries. He had no interest in being introduced to Clayton, probably hadn't even noticed I was with someone; he just wanted confirmation that the Todd Pletcher-trained colt in the fifth race was a piece of shit in spite of having cost 2.4 million at the Keeneland yearling sale and having won all three races he'd run in.

  "Yeah," I said, nodding gravely. "He'll be 1-9."

  "He's a flea," said Fred.

  "Yeah. Well. I wouldn't throw him out on a Pick 6 ticket."

  "I'm throwing him out."

  "Okay," I said.

  "He hasn't faced shit and he's never gone two turns. And there's that nice little horse of Nick's that's a closer."

  "Right," I said.

  "I'm using Nick's horse. Singling him."

  "I wouldn't throw out the Pletcher horse."

  "Fuck him," said Fred, getting up and storming off to the other end of the place, where I saw him take a seat with some guys from the Daily Racing Form.

  "Friend of yours?" asked Clayton.

  I nodded. "Big Fred. He's a good guy."

  "He is?"

  "Sure."

  I could tell Clayton wanted to go somewhere with that one. Wanted to ask why I thought some strange little guy who just sat down and started cursing out horses was a good guy. Another reason Clayton had to be gotten rid of.

  One of the waiters came and took our omelette order. Since I'd mapped out most of my bets, I took ten minutes and gave Clayton a cursory introduction to reading horses' past performances. I was leaning in close, my finger tracing one of the horse's running lines, when Clayton kissed my ear.

  "I love you, Alice," he said.

  "Jesus, Clayton," I said. "What the fuck?"

  Clayton looked like a kicked puppy.

  "I brought you here because I thought it'd be a nice way to spend our last day together but, fuck me, why do you have to get ridiculous?"

  "I don't want it to end. You're all I've got."

  "You don't have me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Clayton, there's no future. No mas," I said.

  "No who?"

  "No mas," I repeated. "No more. Spanish."

  "Are You Spanish?"

  "No, Clayton, I'm not Spanish. Shit, will you let me fucking work?"

  "Everything okay over here?"

  I looked up and saw Vito looming over the table. Vito is a stocky, hairy man who is some kind of low-level mafioso or mafioso-wannabe who owns a few cheap horses and fancies himself a gifted horseplayer.

  "Everything's fine," I said, scowling at Vito. Much as Clayton was pissing me off, it wasn't any of Vito's business. But that's the thing with these Vito-type guys at the track: What with my being a presentable woman under the age of eighty, a real rarity at Aqueduct, these guys get all protective of me. It might have been vaguely heartwarming if Vito wasn't so smarmy.

  Vito furrowed his monobrow. He was sweating profusely even though it was cool inside the restaurant.

  "I'm Vito," he said, aggressively extending his hand to Clayton, "and you are ... ?"

  "Clayton," said my soon-to-be-ex paramour, tentatively shaking Vito's oily paw.

  "We all look out for Alice around here," Vito said.

  Go fuck yourself, Vito, I thought, but didn't say. There might be a time when I needed him for something.

  "Oh," said Clayton, confused, "that's good. I look out for her too."

  Vito narrowed his already small
eyes, looked from me to Clayton and back, then turned on his heels.

  "See ya, Vito," I said as the tubby man headed out of the restaurant, presumably going down to the paddock-viewing area to volubly express his opinions about the contestants in the first race.

  A few races passed. I made a nice little score on a mare shipping in from Philadelphia Park. She was trained by some obscure woman trainer, ridden by some obscure apprentice jockey, and had only ever raced at Philadelphia Park, so, in spite of a nice batch of past performances, she was being ignored on the tote board and went off at 14-1. 1 had $200 on her to win and wheeled her on top of all the logical horses in an exacta. I made out nicely and that put me slightly at ease and reduced some of the Clayton-induced aggravation that had gotten so severe I hadn't been able to eat my omelette and had started fantasizing about asking Vito to take Clayton out. Not Take Him Out take him out, I didn't want the guy dead or anything, just put a scare into him. But that would have entailed asking a favor of Vito and I had no interest in establishing that kind of dynamic with that kind of guy.

  The fifth race came and I watched with interest to see how the colt Big Fred liked fared. The Todd Pletcher-trained horse Fred hated, who did in fact go off at 1-9, broke alertly from the six hole and tucked nicely just off the pace that was being set by a longshot with early speed. Gang of Seven, the horse Big Fred liked, was at the back of the pack, biding his time. With a quarter of a mile to go, Gang of Seven started making his move four wide, picking off his opponents until he was within spitting distance of the Pletcher horse. Gang of Seven and the Pletcher trainee dueled to the wire and both appeared to get their noses there at the same time.

  "Too close to call," said the track announcer. A few min utes later, the photo was posted and the Pletcher horse had beat Big Fred's by a whisker.