The Head and Not The Heart (Alex and Alexander Book 1) by Reinert Natalie Keller

Author:Reinert, Natalie Keller [Reinert, Natalie Keller]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: horses, new york city, Horse racing, ocala
Publisher: Scrawl Books
Published: 2015-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Religion and Politics

“So what you’re saying,” Ryan said to me, setting down his beer on the bar and raising a hand to the bartender for another, “Is that you think you could be a writer if only you left everything you ever knew and your boyfriend of several years and moved here.”

We were sitting at the bar of a very loud, very small club somewhere near an elevated expressway in another part of Williamsburg. I had four hours until my appointment at Aqueduct, another hour before the bars closed. I was in a weird haze, not quite sober and not quite drunk, somewhere closer, it must be admitted, to regaining the buzz I’d acquired at the warehouse back by the river. “You have a way of making it sound foolish,” I said morosely, studying the dying suds in my beer. “And selfish.”

“Well, it is!” he laughed. “Forgive me for saying it, but it’s both. Listen—everyone you met tonight is an artist or a writer or a musician. We’re all practically the same person. We eat the same food and wear the same clothes and listen to the same music. We read the same books. The bookmarks on our computers are all the same, for god’s sake. And let me tell you something else—none of us are from here, and none of us, or very few of us, will stay here. Because after a while, it’s very tiring being the same as everyone else.”

I thought I could commiserate with that. “It’s the same in Ocala, though!” I protested. “We’re all horsemen, all we ever think about are horses, we go to Starbucks and there are pictures of horses on the walls, we go to the bookstore and look at books about horses—”

“You don’t, though, do you?” he asked. “You read other stuff. You think about other stuff. That makes you different.”

“No one really knows that.”

“Well,” he said, sitting back and smiling at me. “That’s on you. But I bet someone knows.”

“Alexander.”

“He must know, or he wouldn’t choose to spend all his time with a girl twenty years his junior, am I right? I mean, a sexual attraction is one thing. But he spends all his time with you. He must like your brain, too, Alex.”

I let my mind run back over the things we talked about. Just horses, right? All I could remember was horses, horses, horses. But no. Wait. Just two days ago, but a million years ago, in the broodmare barn, we’d talked about the last couple of books we’d read, while I held the tail of a pregnant mare over my shoulder to keep it out of the vet’s way while she leaned, shoulder-deep, into the mare to check the foal’s progress. Last Sunday, we’d read the paper and drank coffee and sat in a deep, content silence. A few days before, he’d asked if I wanted to join the museum of art’s membership program, so that we could attend their parties and talks. We hadn’t been

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