by Ben Rogers

I always wanted to be a racehorse. You probably won’t understand. Maybe when you were in elementary school you used to dream of being a cheetah or something. Oh, they’re so fast! Seventy miles an hour and all that. Only in bursts, my friend, only in bursts.

I don’t do bursts. I’m 290 pounds. Racehorses go the distance. Forty-five miles an hour for a mile. The whole time. Cheetah’s sitting over there on the sidelines, unzipping his warm-ups, doing calisthenics in front of the crowd. Sure, sprinters get the shoe sponsorships, the photo ops. Fine. But racehorses, they only pose for photo-finishes. That’s because they have heart. When Secretariat died they cut him open. He had the heart of a whale.

Cheetahs, they got spots. Oh, super!

My penis is twenty inches long, lady. Well, not my penis, per se. I’m not a racehorse.

I just think, wouldn’t it be grand to be out in a big pasture? Finish up a distinguished racing career and be put out to stud? I’d fill fillies till the day I fell over dead. I’d rub the tastiest hay around on my huge teeth. Apples. Sugar cubes. All that. Not to mention all the running. And the big fields squared off with split-rail fences. I’d make up stories for the rookies in the barn. Tell them about the time my buddy broke a leg on that clubhouse turn and they put a pistol in his ear and bang! Glue. Racehorses are only kept around to pay other people’s bills.

I got bills. So I go to work. But lately there’s a better reason to go. To see Julie. Julie is smarter than me, I think. I know she’s better looking. If I’m a 7, that would make her like a 9. Even though I’m a 2 1/2. Whatever. I love it when she walks next to me in the hall. Her perfume smells like flowers and I really like it, even though my favorite smells are gasoline, rain, and food. One time she put her hand on my arm and it was warm because she was holding copies fresh off the machine and it made me aroused.

Her perfume makes me wish I had horse nostrils. I’d take it all in. But usually I just peel back my lips and show her my teeth, gums and all. I used to think she didn’t like me one bit. She’s a cat person. Got like a dozen of ’em. Knows all their names. None of them cheetahs as far as I know.

Last night I got up the courage to call her. I got her answering machine, which, frankly, was a bit of a relief. It said something funny like, hey, this is Julie, the cats and I are busy so leave a message. I guess it wasn’t so much the message that was funny as it was the way she said it. A lot of times I think a thing is funny or great while other people consider the same thing neither funny, nor great.

Last night my supervisor had this barbecue for our department. Pretty fun. We all went over to his house and drank alcohol. Everyone seemed kind of nervous at first. That’s the impression I got. But pretty soon people stopped complaining about work and started laughing about it. This one guy, Peterson, he barfed while he was swimming in the pool. I helped him climb out and I got him a towel and everything. I let him hang over my shoulders all wet and we went into the bathroom where, in exchange for my loyalty in his darkest of hours, he passed along an interesting tidbit: Julie had asked about me. Specifically, she had asked whether or not I had a girlfriend; or, more specifically, whether I was quote-unquote gay. I told Peterson I didn’t, wasn’t. I told him I liked Julie. Everyone did.

I felt 16 hands high. And racy. No. Giddy. Giddy is the word. I felt giddy.

Julie was sitting on a chair when I went back outside, having a conversation with a couple fellow staffers, so I waited politely for her to notice me while I sipped on a beer. Pretty soon I’d finished it and had nothing left to occupy myself and she still hadn’t turned around so I started to walk away, at which point she turned to me. She turned to me and she said, where are you going, Edward?

My name is Ernie, but still. I’d thought she hadn’t even noticed me.

Okay, so that was last night. Now I’m back at my desk. I’ve got two hours worth of work left to do and it’s 4:00. I don’t care, I’m leaving at 5:00. I’m no workhorse. Peterson, he’s a Clydesdale. Works so hard, poor guy’s got to party even harder just to stay balanced. That’s why he puked in the pool. You know the type.

I go to his office. I ask him: how much you want to bet I can land a date with Julie before quitting time? Hundred bucks? Well, that’s pretty steep. Fifty, you say? Sure. I’ll take that bet. Fifty. We shake on it.

Let’s go, he says.

Now?

Now.

Suddenly, I envision myself at the track. I’m drinking mint juleps in the shade. I’m betting on Me, that beautiful racehorse down there with the stand-in jockey on his back. (The original jockey refused to ride longshots.) They call jockeys that fill in for other jockeys ‘bugs’ because there’s an asterisk next to their name in the program. The asterisk looks like a squashed bug. My horse, Me, he’s 50 to 1 odds. I grin to myself. No one sees me because I’m in the back row. Plus, I have on Ray Ban sunglasses and a big Panama hat.

Julie works on the second floor. We’re on the fifth. I don’t want to take the stairs because I get all sweaty. I think I mentioned that I’m overweight. My mom tells me I’m just big-boned, but she hasn’t seen me with my shirt off in a decade. I have full-blown tits, Mom.

When we get off the elevator, no one is around. All the cubicles are empty. We can hear voices coming from the conference room. We wander over there together. Everyone who works on the second floor — the accounting department and a few others — is gathered in the conference room. There’s balloons and cake. Everyone is wearing cone hats and the guys have loosened their ties. One lady has her shoes off. She’s wiggling her toes inside her nylons. There’s a table where champagne flutes are arranged in a pyramid. We better come back, I tell Peterson, but he says we should try and get our hands on some of that cake, and I’m not adverse to this proposition.

But still, it’s not our cake to have, you know? There’s just something that feels wrong about barging into this big party when we don’t even know what it’s about. But we head on in there and nobody really takes notice and that’s what makes me feel more comfortable about the whole thing, even though I still don’t feel as comfortable as Peterson must feel because he’s already slicing himself some of the cake. It looks like ice cream cake.

Julie is right there. She is so close I can taste her and I’m pretending like I haven’t seen her. I pretend like there’s something really important I’ve got going for me and I’m distracted by it. I make that distracted face as long as I can. I move my eyes around. Everyone is swallowing cake. There’s a banner strung up: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! It helps me figure out what the party is for.

My stomach begins to feel like I drank too much soda. Girls have always done that to me. Girls like Julie, they seem to go for more of a cheetah physique. But twenty inches, I keep reminding myself. Heart. The little bug on my back starts whipping me lustily. Faster! Eventually Julie is going to see me.

Eventually she’s going to see me.

But Peterson gets to me first. Gotta try this cake, he tells me; here, hold this. He hands me his paper plate. His piece of cake — what’s left of it — looks like someone put a firecracker in it. I feel guilty holding it. One of the head accountants sees me, which is good because he’s talking to Julie. Wilson is his name. He looks over at me. Enjoying the cake, big guy? he asks. Some of the other accountants laugh about that, but I don’t see the humor. Like I said, I don’t always agree with people about what is funny.

All of a sudden, Peterson is nowhere to be found. It’s just me and a bunch of second floor people, including Julie. I tap her on the shoulder and she turns away from the group she’s with. She takes her hand off the arm of another guy and puts it on my arm. That’s the way Julie talks to people. Even other girls. Aren’t you gonna wish me happy birthday? she wants to know. No problem, I say, and I do.

Now we’ve all seen the movies where two fellows make some bet about scoring with a girl and we all know what happens: the guy ends up falling in love with her and she finds out about the bet, and he spends half the movie apologizing. I figure I’ll tell Julie right up front about my wager. I’m glad, too. Because she’s flattered. She gets up on her tiptoes and puts a kiss right in the middle of my forehead. I’m standing there, letting the feeling of her lips on my skin last as long as I can, and when I come out of my little trance the crowd has gobbled her back up.

Eventually, she looks back at me. I peel back my lips and show her my teeth. She takes her hand and, with her thumb and her pinky finger extended like antennae, holds it up against her head like a phone. I know exactly what she means. That’s easy. She means it’s time to go upstairs and collect my fifty bucks. I eat what’s left of Peterson’s cake in the elevator. It tastes as delightful as you’d expect at a moment like that.

You should see me. There are so many people like icebergs to maneuver around but I steer clear. All the way back to our little spot outside without spilling a drop. Julie’s is a Mai Tai, with a pineapple triangle and a Maraschino cherry and a lime wedge all shish-kebabbed on a miniature red plastic sword that teeters on the lip of the glass. It even has a toothpick umbrella, and we all know that a cocktail with so many decorations costs a lot more than a beer, so I just get a beer, which is fine with me.

It’s her decision to blow my winnings at her favorite restaurant. I can understand why it’s her favorite. Everybody there is tan. Tan and slim. Tan and slim and chatty. They all like to stand at the bar and drink and I bet if the hostess never calls their names, they’ll forget they even came to sit and eat. We’re standing outside on the patio. Our arms are bent at the elbow. Our hands hold our drinks. The sun is going down over the parking lot and everything starts looking pink.

Thanks for the Mai Tai, she says.

You really should see me. I’m wearing an awesome shirt. It’s black. That way she won’t be able to notice if my armpits get sweaty. She’s wearing a dress. Her armpits are not covered and neither is anything above them.

I ask her how old she is and she says 27 now. Talking with her is not as hard as I had expected. I don’t know why I expected it to be hard. Actually, that’s not true. I do know. Yeah, I know. But anyway, we talk about work at first. I have a lot of funny takes on the characters in our office — ones I’m sure the accountants she’s always hanging out with don’t have. I make fun of some people and she laughs really hard. One time she has to set down her drink to laugh. When they say my name over the intercom, we meet up with the hostess, and then we walk in single file to a table. I’m the caboose in our little train.

There’s a menu in my face and everything on it looks like salvation. I’m imagining all these wonderful dishes in my mouth when I see Julie’s hand grab the top of my menu and pull it down so she can see me. I get the feeling she’s been looking at me for a while. Being with you is refreshing, she says. You’re a special one, Ernie. You’re all the things my mother keeps telling me to find in a man. That’s what Julie tells me, word for word. She looks at me, really deep, and I feel like a mirror. I’m sure she’s about to cry but she doesn’t, and I can tell it’s tickling her behind her face like a sneeze. She smiles and puts her hand over my hand on the table. Then she looks around the restaurant.

I see myself at the racetrack, somewhere in the back row, setting down the julep as I bring binoculars up to my Ray Bans. I’m standing now. I look kind of stupid because my mouth is hanging open. All the horses are running. My horse, Me, is running. He is really running.

Julie says she has to pee, and her chair scrapes on the floor as she scoots back. She takes her purse with her and drags her hand across my shoulder when she walks away. The waiter comes by a little later and asks if we need a little more time to decide. He refills my water. I drink it. The angles on the bottom half of the glass are cold and wet and they feel like a good fit in my hand. I sit there and think and smile at the other happy couples who are eating around me.

A racehorse, I. Eager to give any willing bug the ride of his life, or at least a ride. Move in alongside the rail, homestretching. The track is muddy, cuppy, but I get a grip somehow. Somehow. That’s how long shots win. Somehow.

When the waiter comes back, he asks if my friend is planning to stay for dinner. She went to the bathroom, I say. He smiles and refills my water. I drink it and pretty soon I have to pee, too. I get up and follow the signs to the bathroom, where I use the hand dryer to blow air up my shirtsleeves at my armpits.

When I get back to the table, she’s still not there. The waiter doesn’t come back for a long time, but when he finally does I tell him, thank you, but I don’t need any more water. He nods understandingly.

I see myself taking a final sip of my julep and letting the ticket flutter to the ground. Longshot, I mutter to myself.

The check comes to 9 bucks because of the fancy drink. I pay, leave.

One time I took this fat girl on a date. I can call her fat because she was actually fatter than me. She told me that if she could be any animal, any animal at all, she’d be a goddamned duck. They can fly, she said. They can swim. They can walk. Not many animals have it so good, she said.

Well they just have it all, don’t they?

When I get back to my house, I’m thinking about that girl. I come to see how well thought out her answer had been. I appreciate her answer. I didn’t at the time, but now I do. The reason I say this is I got the same feeling about Julie before she got up and went to the bathroom. I felt like I met her needs like the fat girl’s duck.

My answering machine light is blinking. It’s Peterson. He wants all the juicy details, especially since he paid for the whole thing. His message is still playing when I go into the other room and get in bed with all my clothes and my shoes on. I smell like the restaurant. There’s a full moon, so I have to shut the blinds or it feels like noon. I want to be a pussy about the whole thing and call my mom. And I don’t. I just wait there for a long time with my eyes closed and then I start crying even though I don’t want to. I dispose of the tears as fast as my eye makes them—get them off my face. My fingers get all wet.

The next day is Sunday. I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner by myself, then go to sleep again. Monday, I go to work. At my desk there’s an envelope. It’s not an office kind of envelope: it’s not an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven manila envelope and it doesn’t have typing on it. It’s handwritten, pretty letters, curly. I rip into it. Dear Ernie, it opens. Love Julie, it closes. And in the middle, it’s two pages of personal stuff she probably would prefer I not share with everyone, although I think it’s safe to say that, in general, it dealt mostly with her luck with men in the past. Or complete lack thereof. And sorry. She said she was sorry about leaving me at the restaurant. PS: She wants to meet for lunch.

The building’s got a great cafeteria and outside are tables in the shade where people like to sit. That’s where we sit. I’ve got an egg salad sandwich, sour cream and onion chips, and a Coke. And a couple chocolate chip cookies. They’re only a quarter.

I’m really, really sorry, she says eventually.

I know, I say, which isn’t easy.

Wanna take a walk?

Okay.

We start walking. We keep walking. We keep talking, her hand always on some part of my body. There’s this concrete path and we pretty much stay on it. The path meanders through corporate lawns with small trees planted here and there. The grass has just been mowed and there’s stray clippings on the path and dumploads in the garbage cans. The grass smells nice, she says, and taking off her shoes, she steps onto it. I follow. Pretty soon we sit down by this big manmade pond with a fountain in the middle. Some ducks are trundling around on the shore. You’re sweet, she says.

You’re sexy. That’s what I say back. She laughs and I sort of turn away smiling and when I turn back she leans over and kisses me. Gently at first, but then she opens her mouth up and we’re really going at it. It tastes like a spoonful of warm vanilla pudding and the spoon never glances my teeth. The ground swells and I can feel a pressure rising from deep within the earth. The lawn seems to come alive. A mounting murmur, then a hissing of some kind. A sprinkler down by the pond pops up. Then another. They’re the little whirly-bird ones that squirt knee-high arcs. The ducks are just standing there like imbeciles, getting soaked. All the while we’re kissing but then she stops and, laughing like a sprite, says: I can’t get all wet! I have to go back to work!

We stand up. The sprinklers near us are starting to hiss. We take off running but there’s too much grass to cover—hell, a cheetah couldn’t make it back to the path dry.

I see myself grab her and boost her onto my back. She wraps her arms and her legs around me and I dash for the concrete path where it’s dry. The sprinklers splatter my khakis but my stride is steady. My stride is steady. She is dry. And me, the one sitting in the back row at the race, well he nearly wets his pants. There’s mint julep all over the guy in front of him, who’s muttering something about odds. The ticket is back up off the ground and safe inside a breast pocket, ready to be cashed in.

But I don’t do any of that. I pretty much just run to the concrete path as fast as I can. She beats me there because I’m fat as hell. Which is funny. Right? It’s kind of funny.

At least Julie thinks so. When I catch up to her she’s tossing her head, laughing.

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Ben Rogers can be found in Reno or at Read Rogers.

Tagged as: New Literature Online, Short Story

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