The next day, at eleven, Cricket was at home when he saw a boxy compact car, painted a burnt orange, pull into the driveway. His mother was out front getting the newspaper when Olympia swept out of her car and strode fearlessly toward her, hand extended. Olympia was wearing a loose sunflower-yellow blouse and a flowing white skirt. Cricket stepped outside to intervene but wasn''t quick enough. "I''m Olympia," she said, and shook his mother''s hand firmly. "We''ve met. At the Romanians''. I took piano.
" No friend of his had ever introduced themselves this way, so directly, so professionally. "That was you!" his mother said. "Now look at you. You''re a woman!" Olympia smiled, clearly accustomed to comments like this. "We''re heading to the track," Olympia said. "Want to come?" There were a hundred responses possible, most of them shocked or displeased, but his mother laughed. She was disarmed, rendered mute. "The track? Like the racetrack?" "Don''t worry, I never gamble," Olympia said.
"It''s just to watch the colors in motion. You should come! It''s such a nice day." His mother was struck dumb again. She looked to the front porch, where she found Cricket; he had no idea what to do or say. "Well," she finally said. "That is a tempting invitation, Olympia. You guys go. Have fun.
" Olympia tapped the roof of her car and Cricket got in. "When will you be home?" his mother asked. She was frozen in the driveway. "Last race is at three forty-five," Olympia said from the driver''s-side window, while backing away, "so an hour after that? But we might have dinner. Do you need him at a certain hour?" Cricket''s mom shook her head and waved her hand listlessly. "You enjoy the day now!" Olympia said. She left the driveway and was soon on the highway. The car smelled of spicy deodorant and watermelon gum and something old and stale-- a stain somewhere that hadn''t come out.
Her car was a stick shift, and Olympia shoved the wood-topped shifter around with authority, occasionally brushing Cricket''s knee when she did. "It''s so hot today, right?" Olympia said, and took the hem of her skirt and flapped it like a sparrow''s wing. He caught a flash of her pink, freckled calf. "Are we really going to the track?" he asked. "You''ve never been?" Olympia asked. "I like your mom. She seems sweet. You got your braces off.
Didn''t you have braces? Have you been doing this?" She ran her tongue over the bright surface of her teeth. He told her about Dr. Talmadge as the landscape flew by. "What a dick," she said. "You want me to kill him for you?" The day was bright and warm and he stole glances at her when she spoke, trying to find any part of her that resembled the girl he''d known before. "You look different," she said. "Your hair was longer before. And you were this tiny little kid.
You''re almost grown up. Will you keep growing?" He felt obligated to say yes. "I can''t believe I''m back in Indiana," she said, looking at the fallow fields and strip malls. "It''s so fucking flat. Sorry we stopped writing letters. I have all yours in a box back in Connecticut. Do you have mine?" "I do," he said. "You''re a romantic," she said.
"I guess I knew that." "You look different but the same," she said. "A lot like your mom. You have an innocent face. Have you heard of the ''innocent eye''?" "No." "Well you need that!" she said, and laughed a thundering laugh. "That''s the whole thing, right? To be able to see everything, like, anew?" They arrived at a vast white structure, ornate like a wedding cake. "This is it.
" Olympia put the car in neutral and coasted into the lot without slowing, sending a couple scurrying. She threw her bag, crocheted and enormous, over her shoulder and locked the doors. "Sorry!" she sang to the couple. "Ready?" she asked Cricket. "Do I need an ID?" "Not to get in," she said. "You don''t need a ticket or anything. It''s free." They entered the gates and found a trio of horses in a round pen dense with flowers and garlands.
A jockey in pink and black sat atop the shimmering burgundy hide of an enormous horse wearing a white headdress. "The colors!" Olympia said. "Can you believe it? Look at that one!" A silky black horse was led into the pen, a jockey in polka dots standing in his stirrups. "This is so the bettors can inspect them before the races. See how that coat shimmers? What would be the evolutionary point of a shimmer like that? I''m thirsty. Are you thirsty?" She led him through the turnstiles and into a dim corridor smelling of urine, bleach and cigarettes. She stopped when she saw a concession counter. "You wait here," she said.
"Actually, over there," she said, and pointed to a dim corner. "Do you have a ten?" Cricket gave her a ten. He''d brought fifteen. "I''ll be back," she said. He watched her disappear into the corridor under the grandstand, men stepping aside as she approached. One elderly man took off his baseball hat in a most formal way and closed his eyes as she passed. She returned with two clear plastic cups full of yellow beer. He reached for one.
"Not yet," she said. "Follow me." She led him through the cool concrete corridors until she turned quickly and they walked into the bright light of the fairgrounds, a sea of green grass, bursts of rosebushes, red and white and yellow, and carnations, and in the center of it all, a silver fountain spraying white water. He''d never seen anything more beautiful. They sat down and she handed him one of the cups. "You''re fine now," she said. "Just don''t walk around with it," and she drank half of hers in one take. She placed her cup between her legs and wiped her mouth with the base of her hand.
"It''s Pabst, so it''s good." They were sitting in the grandstand''s sunny lower seats, and the sun multiplied the effect of the beer on Cricket; he was drunk in minutes. "Wait till you see them run," she said. "Tell me if you think it looks like slow-motion. I can''t figure it out." The bell rang, the chutes opened, and a distant clacking began. Cricket had expected to witness violent speed, noise and chaos, but it was not that. "See how they seem to go in slow motion from here?" she asked.
"I do," he said. "Thank you! I was starting to think I was crazy. They''re moving so fast, I realize that objectively, but from here it''s so incredibly slow. Do you see it that way? I know your way of seeing is unusual. You must like Degas," she said. "The way you draw." "I think so," he said, and took a long sip of the yellow beer. It was already warm and he didn''t know the name she had just said.
Every minute, she uttered a name he didn''t know, a place he''d never heard of. "You think so! When you see horses don''t you think of Degas? He could draw two things especially well--horses and ballerinas. And floors!" She laughed again. "But seriously, he and Manet used to argue about who painted horses first." She took a long sip, almost finishing her beer. "It was Manet, actually, but Degas would never admit it. Now you know who I''m talking about? Ballerinas onstage, floors and bassoons in the foreground? Degas?" Now he knew. "I know it," he said, and he closed his eyes, feeling he was evaporating, becoming one with the sun and grass and flowers.
"How are you with hands?" she asked, and he pictured his hands around her waist, slow dancing like he''d done with Inés Herrera in middle school, feeling her chest expand against his. "I don''t like my hands. Stuart says they''re stubby. What do you think?" She presented them to him, placing one squarely on his knee. Then it was gone, hidden under the folds of her skirt. "Actually, don''t answer that. But Degas made all hands look dainty. He was good at that.
" All Cricket wanted in the world was to have her hand again on his knee. How could he ask? He couldn''t ask. "And women getting into bathtubs," she said, and laughed till she coughed. "I think he did about fifty of those. Can''t you just picture him getting excited about his next painting? ''Hm, what to do? What. To. Do? I know! How about another chick in a tub?'' And always from behind. But does the world need another picture of a woman stepping into a tub? On the one hand, no.
On the other hand, he gets to paint a naked lady in a bathtub. Then there''s Tolstoy." She finished her beer and got up. "Another?" Cricket downed the rest of his first cup and closed his eyes again. Red rings pulsed against his eyelids. Another race began and he fell briefly asleep. Soon Olympia appeared with two more cups of yellow beer. She leaned across his lap to place it in the cup holder to his right.
The cup holder to his left was empty but she''d chosen this lap-crossing and he was deeply grateful for this choice. She conveyed her ownership fluently and he loved her madly. "I''m not saying Degas was some perv," she said, picking up where she''d left off. "Even though a lot of people assume that now. This old man drawing pubescent ballerinas and all. Wasn''t I talking about Tolstoy? Did you read his What Is Art? He starts out so strong, talking about how unfun and self-serious artists have become, how art needs to be joyous. I liked that. Made sense.
Then he spends another hundred pages writing the most boring, academic crap, like with footnotes and all. Very.