The Big Horse by McGinniss Joe

Author:McGinniss, Joe [McGinniss, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

11

On the afternoon of Thursday, August 14, a massive power failure struck the eastern United States. Racing was disrupted for only half an hour, but elsewhere in Saratoga Springs electrical service was not restored until late that night.

With my cottage stifling from lack of air-conditioning, I went out in search of an open restaurant. The first place I found still operating was Bruno’s, the old bar and grill across from the track’s main gate on Union Avenue. Given that its location would have enabled it to thrive in August even if it served only oats and hay, Bruno’s wasn’t bad for simple fare, and the atmosphere was always cordial. I went in for a couple of beers and a burger and a hard blast of air-conditioning.

Sitting, apparently unnoticed, at a small table along the wall were P.G. and Mary Kay. He motioned for me to join them.

“Don’t order the ribs,” he said, pushing a nearly full plate to one side.

Like Allen Jerkens, P.G. was a man who knew his restaurants, and he dined most frequently at Sergio’s and the Wishing Well north of town. (Jerkens and his wife, along with many other track insiders, favored Il Paradiso on South Broadway,while jockeys tended to bring family and friends to Leon’s, a Mexican restaurant owned by former rider Filiberto Leon. The bustling and price-gouging Siro’s, a short walk from the racetrack clubhouse, drew mostly tourists with a high tolerance for overcrowding and earsplitting din.)

“This is kind of a drop in class for you, isn’t it?” I said.

“It’s open,” P.G. said. “And it’s nice people. Just don’t order the ribs.”

“I was going to cook at home,” Mary Kay said, “but we have no power at all.”

I had dined with the Johnsons under slightly more formal circumstances (i.e., I’d been invited) earlier that summer, and it had been a fine occasion. Although hampered by his failing voice,P.G. had been a gracious host, and I’d found Mary Kay’s acerbic candor bracing.

At Bruno’s, we quickly established the almost giddy camaraderie that tends to arise among those thrown together by blackouts, blizzards, and other such disruptive events. P.G. and Mary Kay lingered over an after-dinner drink while I ordered.

“Is it true,” I asked P.G., “that you met Mary Kay at the racetrack?”

“Washington Park, in Chicago,” he said, “although the Disney guys are going to change it to Arlington because of Volponi. They think it’s more sentimental if I won the biggest race of my life at the same track where I met my wife fifty years before.”

“Fifty-eight years, Phil,” Mary Kay said. “Remember, we’ve been married fifty-seven.”

“But why would a beautiful Irish Catholic girl from a fine South Side family like the McMullens take up with a struggling Jewish racehorse trainer?”

“Go to the movie,” P.G. said. “You’ll find out.”

“It was strictly a matter of sex appeal,” Mary Kay said.

She saw me glance at P.G., trying to imagine.

“Oh, you’d never believe it to look at him now, but at one time I think Phil was the handsomest man in America.

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