Local high-school students, hired for this show weekend, served with enthusiasm, if not efficiency. Rafe ignored the waiter’s suggestion of a cocktail, though I’d somehow thought he was a drinker. Maybe he still had trouble getting service? No, besides the lines on his face, he had much too much easy assurance to be mistaken for a callow youth, of any age.
“Rare, medium, or destroyed?” Rafe asked. “Remember, I did promise steak.”
“Medium, please.”
“The minestrone here is first-rate.”
That suited me. I could go without lunch with such a full dinner in me.
“Tell Brown that Mr. Clery is here and doesn’t want the tough steaks he’s been saving for his wayward cousin.”
The boy looked startled but grinned as he hurried off.
We got such astonishingly good service, judging by what the other tables didn’t get, that Mr. Brown must know Mr. Clery very well. The fillets were definitely well aged, and tender enough to be cut with a fork. I was used to Daddy’s silence at meals, but Rafe Clery liked to talk anytime. Which was fine by me. I could concentrate on the first meat I’d had in several weeks. He had a thousand and one anecdotes about circuit shows. He must know everyone. He certainly could sketch out characters, raising images in my mind that would let me identify everyone I’d be likely to meet.
By the time coffee and a very good rum cake had arrived, I realized that Rafe Clery had adroitly handed me years of experience in capsulated form. He had given me pointers about every fairground and show meet I’d be likely to enter this summer. I only hoped that I could remember the half of what he’d said when I needed it.
“I’m talking too much,” he said abruptly, with a self-deprecating smile.
“I’ve listened to every word. So help me! You promised we’d rap professionally…”
“Rap, not bludgeon.” And he grinned. “You need some fresh air.”
The night was sweet and rich with the summer and the sun-baked woods beyond the restaurant. He took a deep, appreciative lungful, and I did too. The restaurant had been smoky.
“Did you ever have the feeling that you were smelling the same scent on the air as you did somewhere else… totally different?” I asked him.
“Indeed.”
“Memory isn’t supposed to be smell-oriented.”
“Who says?”
“Well, colors are hard to remember, and smells are infinitely variable.”
He held the door for me, and again I was intensely curious about him. Hold it, Nialla. He’s not for you, girl.
“What does the air tonight remind you of?” he asked as he settled himself, checking the car’s many dials by the dashboard light. I could see there was plenty of gas in the tank. He grinned as if he’d seen the line of my glance.
“Oh, a May night, as warm as this,” I replied with as much poise as I could muster. “The night Phi Bete was born.”
“Don’t tell me you named a wee tiny wobble-legged filly Phi Bete? How in hell did you know she’d have brain one in her skull?”
“I’d picked the name, whatever the foal. Her dam was Smart Set, and her sire Professor D.”
“Professor D? He’s a West Coast stud. Doesn’t Lou Marchmount still own him?”
“Yes.”
“‘Yes,’“ he mimicked me. “Cold flat ‘yes,’ just like that, huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” And that was said in as flat and cold a voice as he used in my company. “You apologized, and I’ll clue you,” he went on in a kinder tone; “I don’t get them very often.” He flashed me that grin. “I don’t often deserve them, come to think of it.”
When we approached the fairgrounds, I found myself in still another quandary. He probably would insist on escorting me to my “room”-only I didn’t have one.
“Could you turn in at the barns?”
“Tuck your babies in bed, huh? I’ll tag along, in that case.”
Well, you can’t win ‘em all.
He pulled into the main exhibitors’ parking lot and guided me over the cattle grate.
“Some enterprising locals were charging ten cents a shoe to fish ‘em out of the stream or prize the heels out of the gratings,” he said as we crossed it, his heels ringing. I was glad of my sandals, flat and safe. “Shouldn’t wonder. Worse than subway grates.” Pete was snoring magnificently when we reached the horses. He rolled over the next moment, looked at us, hawked, and spat deftly in the gutter. Then he turned over and fell right back to snoring again. In the cool dark barn I could barely make out the horses’ bulks, but Dice, ensconced on Orfeo’s rump, turned his white-accented face to us, and his eyes gleamed, blinked, and were obscured.
“Except that he doesn’t chaw, do you notice a slight resemblance between watchmen?”
I giggled, but muffled it, because Pete’s snoring rhythm halted and then resumed. I moved away from the sleepers, into the center of the barn’s aisles, and extended my hand to Rafe.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound ungracious as well as stilted. “That steak was heavenly.”
“The pleasure was mine,” he replied automatically, taking my hand. Then he brought it to his lips, clicking his heels in stalwart Prussian style. “All mine, modom,” he added in a guttural voice.
He did a precise about-face and goose-stepped down the aisle.
I stood for a long time, reviewing that departing figure, half-wishing many impossibilities, all of them involving Mr. Rafael Clery. The bubble of illusion was shattered by a raucous snore from Pete.
Well, I couldn’t bed in the barn tonight. I’d never get to sleep with that cacophony. And I did have an air mattress to cushion me against the load bed of the station wagon.
3
Some people don’t realize that show exhibitors have usually been up six or seven hours before the fairgrounds open or the first class has been announced. At five-thirty I was wide-eyed and dressed. Old Pete had left his straw and gone about whatever duties earned him bread and coffee. Dice had successfully concluded a hunt, for he was cleaning his paws fastidiously, an operation that always fascinates me. (I’d save the doggie bag of steak remnants for later.) I often wondered how he kept from snagging his tongue on his claws when he laved so carefully between them.
I curried Phi Bete and grained both animals, because I planned to work Orfeo out on the development roads beyond the fairgrounds. The roads were all laid out; the level dirt surfaces were perfect for breezing a horse. There were even some oddments of old foundations for jumping. I’d inspected carefully when exercising Phi Bete the previous morning. There’d be few to observe us, and none to spook at the sight of Orfeo.
Somewhere someone had brewed coffee, and my belly rumbled hungrily at the smell. The steak dinner had primed the pump, so to speak, and I was far too hungry to be sated by another mouthful of peanut butter. Woman-fully I ignored my inner rumblings and vain cravings; there couldn’t be a stand open at this hour, could there?
By the time Orfeo had munched down all his grain, I had to find that coffee source. The aroma was too pervasive to have issued from a cup of instant or a fireside pot. Looping the hackamore reins over my arm, I led Orfeo and followed my nose.
One of those snack trucks you see everywhere nowadays had drawn into the main barn parking lot. Exercise boys were taking advantage of it, their mounts tied to the hitching rails, heads down, hips cocked under their summer sheeting.
As always, Orfeo’s massive black bulk attracted attention. This time, at least, it proved to my advantage, for when it was apparent I wasn’t tying him anywhere, way cleared magically right up to the surprised vendor. I got coffee, a Danish fresh and still warm from its bakery oven, and a banana. A gentle sufficiency, as Mrs. du Maurier’s cook would have said., I moved away, and the mob surged back. Orfeo, you extract certain perquisites I could never obtain without you.”