THE HEALING WATERS OF CALIENTEThe springs were here, once, a destination for the sick or weary. An oasis for the bereft of spirit, perhaps. Rising Tam, the first-timer, opened at 3-1 in a maiden claimer at Turf Paradise. I put a twenty on him, the expected dividend enough to get me through till payday. Before cars were invented, Caliente was a short day's ride from Phoenix. It is said broke horseplayers would go to find inspiration in the hot springs. My benefactor—someone I will never see—placed ten thousand on the entry to win. Both were pretenders, who had run this stretch too much, and Rising Tam was ninety-nine to one, or more; tote boards don't go that high. Caliente is dry now. Irrigation drained the waters, the legendary once again replaced by the practical; now only the remains of its grand hotel jut from the sand, reach up to an empty sky. The Arizona crowd knows a good thing when it sees one, and Rising Tam was sent off at 20-1. Never asked, he crossed the line three lengths to the good of the entrymates. I pocketed my four hundred twenty-two dollars and walked into the chill night, hand and pocket wet with belief. THE PAINTED BLONDE What would it take to be young again? So young that the word cancer has no meaning so young that every girl in the world is a stunning beauty another gorgeous blonde with deepgreen eyes passes the window in skintight leather and you know you can never have her but, you think, it's no harm if I try even the cockroaches and the rats in the walls sing her gorgeous praises when she passes, the Painted Blonde. She is the beauty you have dreamed of all your life in your little cabin by the lake miles from the nearest road she is the beauty you have dreamed of all your life in your little apartment above the street in the slums of Paris she is the beauty you have dreamed of all your life in your attic chamber above the harlots in the brothels of Nevada and you wish that in her dreams she would wish of you RED RIBBONS/RED WINGS the car alarm goes off and you hit the button on the remote control then you stick your keys back in your pocket and beep, beep, beep, here we go again. A safety feature that draws attention to the vehicle at all times may, one consider, be ill- thought. You ask yourself: after this is all over, will vehicles still have alarms? Or will we have moved on to something newer, improved, sophisticated, even more prone to being rubbed the wrong way in the pocket of too-tight jeans? A question to be pondered later, because now, once you get this infernal beep to go away, you must get back to your edits on Chinese Ecology in the Middle Ages. SET IN STONE |
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