Jeff Harrison does not gamble in Reno, which tells him that he is in control and does not have an addiction as his ex has described his proclivity for the ponies. Of course, he already knows this, but he has, sometimes, not often, but sometimes felt the least bit of doubt in this regard. It’s the nature of the animal, he tells himself, of the line and the heart, the poetry of motion in harness, how they move in their traces, how they respond to, to almost the suggestion of thought a driver might have in their handling. It’s the sweat. The smell of the sweat, the lather and drool after a race well run, the heart-pounding finish, regardless of where some filly may place. He does not gamble in Reno, but takes long drives in a rental car after each day’s conferencing on the various aspects of nationwide Public Works facilities, driving far into the desert and night on one occasion, and over into the Sierra foothills and California on another occasion, driving all night and stopping in Susanville at a small bakery on his return trip to Reno. The baker was small and Korean and the counter was fingerprinted all over with smudges from what had to be a week or a month’s worth of other people’s touching and taking and, although he purchased the bran muffin from the short man behind the counter, even shorter than he was, he did not eat it, nor did he drink the latte, but deposited them in the first trash bin, out of sight from the baker’s window. And if he yawned through the meetings that day at the Hilton, he was pretty sure nobody noticed.
At home again, he is pleased with himself, more so than he sometimes is and he takes the time on Tuesday morning to not only move the plastic-wrapped banana-nut or zucchini-nut or whatever-nut loaf from the hall outside his door to inside his apartment as he leaves, but he takes the small offering into his kitchen and makes a place for it inside his cupboard where two full shelves are stacked with small offerings. Sometimes he thinks he will throw all the offerings away, but instead he buys a new trio of ant traps and places them on each of the three shelves-the two that are full and the one that he begins to fill, today.
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