Grand Theft Equine - Chapter Ten: Head to Head

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As Cailen drove away from the curb in front of Cinda’s house Joan asked, “Do you know your way back from here?”

“To the track, but you’ll have to direct me to your place.”

“No, go to the track. I’ll put on a pot of coffee and drive myself home later.”

“I’m not taking you to the track.”

“But my truck’s there.”

“Precisely the point.”

“Without my truck, how am I supposed to get to the barn tomorrow morning?”

“Tell me what time to pick you up, and I’ll be there.”

“Cailen, be reasonable.”

Cailen smiled in the condescending manner of a sober person dealing with an inebriated one. “You be reasonable. Your little drinking buddy and you had four of those things each. Would you approve of Brie driving after that?”

Joan’s legs were extended out as straight as she could get them and she punched her hands deeply into her jeans pockets as she sighed defeat. “I suppose not.”

“And put your seatbelt on, please.”

Joan had moved over to Brie’s vacated spot. Looking down at herself, she was surprised to see that the belt, indeed, was not fastened.

“Brie and I are drinking buddies, you know.”

“Really?” You’re reaching a really cute phase of your buzz, now. Please let it be over soon.

“Yes, I’d call us that, as we only drink to intoxication, as a rule, once a year and that is with each other.”

“Christmas eggnog?”

Surprise spread across Joan’s features. “She told you about our Christmases?”

“The eggnog part—and the marriage proposal part.”

Joan rocked her head back in tender recollection. “It’s always very romantic.” Then she sat up straighter and got more serious. “Okay, no fair. You know a lot about me, especially after all these tales Brie initiated today. I know almost nothing about you. Tell me things about you.”

“You know lots about me.”

“Not really. You told me you’ve been friends with Brie for thirteen or fourteen years, I know you ride like a dream and have a rare, deep affinity with horses and there’s a ‘complicated’ girlfriend tucked away somewhere.”

Cailen was so happy to be alone with Joan that she set aside the hopelessness of the situation to simply revel in her company for these few minutes.

“That’s a lot, isn’t it?”

“But it’s not stories like the Sassy at the gym story and the frozen water pipe story.”

“You want a story. Okay, does it have to be funny like those?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Does it have to involve nudity like those?”

“Optional.”

“Let me see, then.” Cailen stared at the road ahead briefly before coming up with, “Okay, that friend whose house we left Brie at, Cinda? Do you know her?”

“No, but I gathered that you both have for a while. Where do you know her from?”

“Racetracks all over. Arlington, Hialeah, here. Anyway, Brie ruined a car of mine once delivering a baby in the back seat, Cinda’s first little girl. You wouldn’t believe the mess that makes.”

Joan scootched around beneath her seat belt, fidgeting with interest. “Brie actually delivered a baby? Tell me how that happened.”

“Well, the three of us, or four depending on how you count, had the afternoon off and for some reason, even though Cinda was about due, we drove way out of town to a deserted quarry, just exploring. So, of course,” Cailen made a dour face, “Cinda’s water broke all over that gray quarry stone and we had to help her back to the car and onto the rear seat where she could lie down and, did you hear Brie say Cinda has four of them now?”

“Four children? Yes.”

“Well, she drops them like calves in a field or whatever drops its babies really fast, at least the first three, which are how many I knew about. So, she went into labor there in my car and Brie just hopped over the seatback and improvised everything, but delivered it safe and perfectly healthy.”

Joan’s eyes were alight. “That’s amazing. And Brie’s so crazy about kids. Was she ecstatic? Or in shock?”

“You’d have thought she was the daddy or something. Did I mention that the car was useless after that?”

Joan laughed hard. “Yes you did, and I have to say I’d have felt the same way. Gruesome business, birth. Joan stopped laughing at a thought, and said very seriously, “I’m sure you know Brie fully intends to have children.”

Cailen winced. “Yeah, she’s obsessed.”

“Some women simply cannot ignore the tick of that biological clock.”

“Brie’s chimes on the hour, I think.”

Joan clapped her agreement. “What a great story! More.”

“More?” Cailen was laughing too now. “That one was hard enough to come up with. Help me out, ask a distinct question.”

Before she could catch herself, Joan said, “What’s her name?”

“Whose?”

“Your lover’s.”

All the lightheartedness evaporated from their mood and Cailen chose her words carefully. “Joan, in trying to spare you some unpleasant details I might have given the wrong impression of my circumstances at home.”

Joan remained silent, weighing the words.

Cailen’s finger tipped the heater fan switch. “Brie really craves tropical conditions. Mind if I turn this down?”

A bemused grin settled on Joan’s face. “You’re aware of my abnormal metabolism, yes, please do.” She had carried her vest to the truck in anticipation of an overly warm cab with Brie aboard, and with Cailen’s mention of temperature, rolled up her shirtsleeves.

Because of driving in unfamiliar territory, Cailen was able to steal only brief, unsatisfying glimpses of Joan. She saw that last smile dawn though, and continued to tease herself with single-frame shots of Joan’s jacketless figure. “You look great in that shirt.” I can’t do this. I can’t help myself.

“Must be one hell of a shirt. Brie made a point of requesting that I wear it.”

That confirmed Cailen’s hunch. Even before the afternoon’s machinations, seemingly designed to throw Joan and her at one another, Cailen had been suspicious about Brie’s discontinuation of afternoon invitations to the room. Not that Cailen could have accepted while feeling the way she did about Joan.

“Brie’s a special girl.” Cailen meant it in a variety of ways.

“Yes, Brie is special. Funny you should mention there could be a miscommunication between us concerning your girlfriend. For some reason, Brie suggested we revisit that topic.”

Cailen snickered at Brie’s acumen. “And how did she happen to be on the topic?”

“You aroused her attention when you mentioned I had gone to lift weights several nights ago.”

“I don’t get it.”

Joan rolled her eyes, an exaggerated expression that betrayed the lingering tequila effect. “Brie knows me so well it’s frightening sometimes. When suffering from a romantic disappointment, not an unusual occurrence, I lift weights at night to exhaust myself before going to bed. Brie knows that, and it didn’t take much for her to deduce that you are the source this time.”

“Joan, you can’t convince me you’ve had that much romantic disappointment in your life. You’re criminally attractive and you know it.” Shut up.

“Well, Cailen, thank you but as it turns out, I am eminently leavable.”

Smiling, Cailen countenanced herself to just ease back and let the conversation bump harmlessly along. No sense in spoiling Joan’s high.

“Eminently leavable.” Cailen flattened the pitch of her voice. “Would that be a reference to Justine?”

With no trace of self-pity, Joan recounted, “Justine. And Kate, and Amanda, and Cheryl.”

Cailen performed a shallow but reverent half-bow from behind her steering wheel. “Your Eminence,” she intoned respectively.

Joan cordially accepted the accolade with a regal hand flourish.

Cailen added, “So, what’s your main defect? Bad temper?”

Now it was Joan’s turn to choose words carefully. “Cailen, I meant to thank you for being so amiable throughout lunch, considering how you feel about what I did to Bean today.”

“Really? How do I feel about that?”

“The specifics I can only speculate over. Disappointment, disgust, disapproval. Something along those lines. I couldn’t help noticing how abruptly you left after the festivities this morning.”

Cailen slowly nodded understanding. “I did have to leave, but you’ve got the reason all wrong, trust me.”

Joan’s descent to clear and perfect sobriety had been steep and she was silent for a few moments, absorbing the landing.

If not for the mess waiting back in Chicago and the unfairness of drawing Joan into her life before attending to that, Cailen would have stopped the truck and admitted she had not been able to endure the sight of another woman holding Joan so intimately, even Brie, even in jest. She would have explained about needing to get far and fast away from that to keep from making a fool of herself. But for the present, bringing those feelings to light was a disclosure Cailen considered beyond the bounds of selfishness.

“Know what, Joan?”

“What?”

“One of the spices they use in that Tex-Mex always makes me want doughnuts an hour or two after eating it. Let’s take a dozen back to the barn and have them with Penny. By the time they’re all gone and she’s finished eating I might even let you drive yourself home.”

“I shouldn’t, but thanks.”

Desperate to dispel the dejection she’d sensed in Joan since bringing up the morning’s unpleasantness, Cailen pleaded, “Come on. I’ll tell you about Lara and me.”

Lara. Shit! Great name. “You will?”

“Guess I just said I would.” At times, Cailen could not believe her own lack of good judgment.

“Get the doughnuts.” Joan sincerely hoped that learning some details about Lara would make her more real, would somehow ease the preoccupation with Cailen, once and for all.

Cailen declared seriously, “There’s one very important piece of information I need from you first though, and I’m terrified of what you’ll say.”

Joan answered Cailen’s gravity by sitting straighter and turning a notch more sideways. “Please, anything, ask me.”

“Do you harbor any, and I mean any inclinations toward washing down doughnuts with beer?”

Joan suddenly understood exactly why Brie could so often be seen bopping Cailen in the head. “Never previously, but if you continue to be such a brat I might make you try it.”

*****

There was no mistaking Penny’s approval of Joan’s dinnertime return, to say nothing of the mints.

As she affectionately watched Joan’s attentions to the filly, Cailen said, “We haven’t spoken much lately, but I’ve been meaning to tell you how much fun Penny and I are having on our jogs after training. We jog a bit then we take little tours of the barn area that she seems to relish. She’s such a character, Joan. And smart? If she had a bigger body she’d make a heck of a lead pony.”

Joan turned happily from Penny’s mint-seeking muzzle, about to comment generally on the sociability and intelligence of horses, but Cailen’s aspect arrested her mid-motion. A sensation, identical to the hot flush of welling tears, filled Joan’s abdomen and pierced downward, a rush remarkable in its fusion of sexual surge and desolate sadness.

For a time, they teetered on a fine-edged fulcrum, Joan flooding with need and the absolute refusal to fill it, Cailen captivated by the unhidden longing in Joan's eyes.

Finally Joan, her voice far off-balance, said, “Cailen, I’m not this strong. I wish so much that I were, but I’m not. I have to go.”

Cailen was as calm as Joan was unsteady as she held her ground in the doorway, barring exit. When Joan tried to slip past, Cailen steered her path back to center, gently guiding her by the shoulders. Through the worn black cotton fabric of Joan’s shirt, her strong triceps, firm and fluid in the way only fit female muscles can be, trembled under Cailen’s fingers.

“Are you actually cold?”

“Maybe. Yes, I guess so. My truck heater is a good one though, and I really need to get out of here, Cailen. Please let me go.”

“You aren’t going to your truck. You’re coming with me to the tack room where it’s already warm.”

“What about Penny?”

Cailen looked past Joan, whom she still held firmly to the spot, toward the gleaming copper filly. “Penny, baby, this is test night for you. I’m taking Joan to the office to tell her a story about my past. It’s your job to eat without having us in the stall with you. We’ll be nearby. Right, Joan?”

Relenting, Joan weakly affirmed, “Right.”

The juices that had rushed to suffuse Joan’s lower regions were trying to reabsorb all at once, leaving her legs rubbery. Feeling as if she’d been stampeded, she gratefully dropped into the familiar comfort of the chair behind her desk.

Cailen pulled a padded folding chair across the desk from Joan and began, “Lara’s a barrel racer, a very good one. Some friends and I were at a rodeo in Cincinnati the first time I saw her. She took top place that night and since one of my friends had gone to school with her, we were all invited out to celebrate afterward. That’s how we met.

“We dated for only a few weeks before moving in together, a little over five years ago. Brie, by the way, never approved of Lara. I had such a hard time understanding at first, how two people I loved so much could possibly not love, or even like, each other.” Cailen put her feet on the desk, since Joan’s were already up there.

The sun had been set for a while and the office’s stark overhead light was on, compounding the headache that was closing in on Joan.

Cailen continued, “Anyway, be careful of ever discounting Brisada’s instincts. I was off the racetrack by then, doing IT consulting for a really nice firm. Not all corporations are greedy and disreputable, I’ve found.” Cailen grinned. “Same as the way all thoroughbred trainers aren’t necessarily heartless egomaniacs. That’s a misconception you’ve divested me of. And thank you.”

“Is that why you were so short with me the first few days you were here?”

“Yes, sorry. Anyway, Lara spent a lot of time on the road without me, since my job kept me in Chicago.” Cailen swung her feet to the concrete floor. “Okay, here’s the accelerated version. I built the house Lara asked for and cleared her way to ride as much as she wanted. Three years ago, I discovered she had been—how can I put this—unfaithful, on a regular basis, since six months after we got together.” Cailen stood and crossed the room to straighten a bridle on its hook. “Brie has a more colorful way of describing the whole thing. Ask her for her version sometime.”

“Yours is the only version I want to hear.” Joan could imagine Brie must have wanted to kill Lara for hurting Cailen like that. Joan certainly could have.

“So, there you have it. I’ve spent the years after finding out about it making vain attempts at breaking up with Lara.”

“Are you still in love with her?”

“No. Honestly, no.”

“Then why three whole years? I don’t understand.”

“At first there were arguments, of course, and I’d tell her it was over, but she’d convince me things would be different.” She sneaked a sheepish look at Joan. “Stupid of me, I know.”

“Not by my standards.”

“So anyway, I’d fall for it and we’d try again, but by that time I was less trusting and she never really tried very hard to cover her tracks.” Cailen was seated again, feet on the desk. She stopped speaking and studied the tips of her sneakers while Joan studied her face.

Cailen looked up. “What are you thinking?”

“Right that second? My instantaneous thought?”

“Yeah.”

“At that second, I had decided on blue as the color of your eyes tonight, in here. Earlier, in the stall, they were green I thought. And definitely gray at the restaurant this afternoon.”

Cailen grinned. “I’m glad you aren’t ignoring me anymore.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you, that was self-preservation and not very courageous of me. I’m sorry if you were hurt by it. We won’t go back to that, okay?”

“Good. Well, there’s my story. Not a very nice one.”

Joan sat forward, her elbows coming to rest on the desk calendar’s edge. “Hold on, I have questions.”

“Like?”

“Like, why are you in Louisville, and are you two still periodically reconciling?”

Cailen shook her head. “The time for reconciliation is over. I originally came here to be out of the way until Lara headed out in mid-November for one of her big rodeo events.”

“But it’s past that now.”

“Yeah, it is. Meeting up with Brie kind of changed my plans. Now I want to stick it out here until the end of this semester, help her through it.”

“Then what?”

“Then go home, sell the house, give plenty of notice to the company I do consulting for.”

“And Lara?” Joan girded herself for the answer, but needed to know.

“This time she can throw all the fits she likes. It’s really over. It has been over for a long time.”

“Are you being honest with yourself about that, Cailen? Not too many days ago you pushed me away because of her.”

Cailen shook her head again, “No, not because of her, because of me. I told you I’m not free, which is true, and then let you fill in the blanks as to the reason.”

God, you’re exasperating. “Then tell me what ‘not free’ means.”

“Joan, I loved Lara so much. I promised, many times, that I’d always love her. I was absolutely sure I’d always love her. And now I don’t. Now there’s none of that left.”

“Cailen, that happens. And it sounds as if you’ve been given good cause for your feelings to change.”

Cailen waved her hand dismissively, “The reason is incidental. What I can’t get over is the certainty I had about loving her and staying with her no matter what happened. Now I don’t love her and am not going to stay with her. How can I ever trust that feeling again? If I ever said those things, felt those things again, how could I believe myself, knowing I’ve said and meant them before, yet did leave her and did stop loving her? I’m not free until I sell that house, leave by the front door, and figure out the answers to those questions. To me, that’s equivalent to being bound by fidelity.”

Something about Cailen’s reasoning wasn’t quite washing with Joan. “Not a bit tough on yourself, are you?”

A visibly pleased Brie opened the door on their conversation. “Do you two have any idea what time it is?”

They looked up at the wall clock. Ten-thirty.

Joan jumped to her feet. “Shit! I still have to figure out tomorrow’s schedule.” She collected the morning’s workout times from the top drawer and extended an open palm to Cailen. “My keys, please.”

Cailen laughed. “How did you know?”

“Saw you pilfer them from the hook before we left this afternoon. She probably stole yours too, Brie, if she could get to them.” Joan’s eyes bore into Cailen’s.

Cailen returned both sets of keys. “I take my designated driver duties very seriously.”

“Apparently.” Joan was fully mobilized, organizing her mind around the next day’s demands. “Did you eat supper, Brie?”

“A little, at Cinda’s, but I’m still full from lunch.”

“Bull. Cailen bought doughnuts and we had plenty left.”

“Doughnuts?”

Cailen headed for the door, saying, “They’re still down by Penny’s stall, let me get them for you.”

Joan rounded her desk, heading for the door too. “Goodnight, Cailen, I’ll be out of here in thirty seconds. See you in the morning.”

Brie enjoyed a ringside seat from which to watch their eyes find each other again and linger briefly before Cailen smiled and said, “See you in the morning, then.”

© 2006 Margo Moon