Ben finished the third of a six pack of Bud cans and decided calling the boss a "corporate fucking whore" was probably the wrong approach. He was sitting on the gray carpet of the empty living room in his completely empty house. A perfect ending to a perfect day, he thought. Janet's forwarding address was still taped to the door of the empty fridge. She'd probably get the house he realized, and decided it didn't matter.
Ben locked things up as he went out. He'd deal with the house later. All his stuff was in the garage, piled in the corner next to the tool box. Ben grabbed what he thought he'd need, and stuffed it into the worn leather saddlebags that were already strapped to the Harley. The machine fired on the first stroke and without looking back he was gone.
Four days later he dropped the shovelhead on it's kick stand in an almost empty parking lot in Wyoming. He checked his face in the tiny mirror, knowing he was already sunburned. The sun, wind, and his shades had conspired to give him that raccoon appearance the road always created. Riding across Texas had been a grueling affair and he was ready to be out of the saddle for a while.
Ben dragged out a barstool, second from the end of the bar, and sat down. A small oriental woman came from the far end of the slab and asked what he wanted. The beer was cold. She laid the change from a twenty down beside the Bud he'd ordered and, without another word, went back to her cleaning chores.
As he drank he stared past the twin spires of smoke rising between him and the stranger that peered back from between the bottles behind the bar. It amazed him that four days in the saddle could change him from the neatly groomed, white coated, corporate research specialist to the wind and sun hardened biker type that stared back through the smoke. The folks in the lab probably wouldn't even recognize him. There was little left of his former self, even in the eyes of the stranger.
It was almost one. He was working on his second beer and thinking about food when the daylight from outside hammered into the mirror behind the bar. Three young women came bouncing in. They were all dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes, as if they'd just come from a softball game in the park. They laughed and joked as they seated themselves several seats to his right near the middle of the bar. He understood them to be regulars when the oriental woman set up their drinks without asking what they wanted, and began chattering and joking with them as if they were all good friends. They spoke for just a few minutes before the bartender came down the bar to see if he was ready for another beer.
"We turn on television, you don't mind." It was a statement and not a question. The power came on and she immediately rolled down the channels until Hollywood Park came on the screen. "You do me big favor and move down here, much better seat, closer to beers," she laughed. She grabbed his cigarettes and beer and slid them down the bar..
"Do you mind if we join you? We like to sit close where we can see the horses better. My name is Sandy, that's Bonnie and Maggie."
"Pleased to meet you Sandy. I'm Ben." He reached to shake her outstretched hand.
"Do you mind if we join you?"
"I'd be offended if you didn't." Sandy took the seat next to him and the other two moved their drinks to their appropriate places as Maggie handed out forms and they all turned to the first race. Then began what seemed to Ben to be a ritual of handicapping by committee. Maggie, a petite blonde with dazzling eyes and an hourglass waist, began the process by reading the conditions of the first race.
"Race one, thirty two thousand maiden claimers, three year olds at six furlongs in the dirt. The one horse is a first time lasix user."
"The three and the six add blinkers for the first time," Bonnie noticed, and Sandy added the observation that the four horse had raced three times and was dropping out of maiden special weight class. The three women went down the page making notes and marks beside each horse as they took turns calling out things they'd noticed in the program. The number three had a bullet work at four furlongs since his last out. The seven horse was getting an apprentice jockey and the appropriate weight break. Ben listened intently to their handicapping insights as he watched the horses for the first race getting their jockeys aboard.
"Do you play the horses?" Ben's eyes came away from the screen to find Sandy watching him in the mirror.
"Only what my mom taught me," Ben laughed out loud. Sandy laughed with him and repeated his comments to the other two. The three women cheered and shouted their horses down the stretch, and howled with delight when the race finished seven, four, five. Maggie jumped up and did an end zone dance waving the ticket above her head, as the four women high-fived all around. When the race went official the prices were better than any of them had expected. The one dollar exacta had paid them almost sixty dollars. The five had gone off as the longshot of the field, and with the favorite finishing out of the money the trifecta paid one hundred thirty seven."Were you on the seven?" Sandy asked. Ben nodded and smiled. "May I?" she asked reaching to see his ticket. He nodded again. While they had converted twelve into sixty, his ten dollar trifecta key wheel had turned his twenty dollar bill into almost fourteen hundred dollars.
