NINETY-EIGHT
Daniel
DANIEL MADE THE SHORT WALK with Coronado to their barn, the shortest walk he had ever made there after a class. Thinking as he did what a crazy sport this was, how complicated the act of riding a horse and jumping it could be, losing making Maggie feel as good about herself as she had in weeks.
It wasn’t how much she had wanted to go clean today. She had needed to go clean, even over what looked like baby jumps. Needed to get around without putting a rail on the ground. She didn’t care how low the bar had been set. In all ways. She didn’t care about the level of competition. Daniel, being from Mexico, was a huge soccer fan. Football, they called it in his country. There were three tiers of football in the Mexican league. Maggie had to feel today as if she had competed in Liga Premier. The lowest tier.
But she had done what she needed to do. What she had set out to do. Just as Daniel’s sports psychology books explained, process over result. And this: sometimes doing more is accomplished by caring less. Really today she had only been competing against herself, not the clock.
When he had Coronado back in his stall, Seamus having fed him a carrot before washing and cooling the horse down, Daniel took the long walk back to the front entrance of the show grounds to avoid the traffic crawling out to Pierson Road after the last event of the day. But he had driven Maggie over here and used her VIP pass to park so that she would have a much shorter walk to the tent for lunch with Caroline.
Even on a weekday, cars were backed up to make the left out to Pierson.
Daniel sighed as he saw that Steve Gorton was in one of the cars, an obviously expensive convertible.
Gorton pulled over to the side, into a handicapped space, allowing the cars behind him to pass.
He waved Daniel over.
“Hey,” Gorton said. “Come here.”
As if Daniel were a parking attendant.
Daniel stopped. Technically, though he and Gorton had exchanged barely more than a few sentences, Daniel knew he worked for him. As mean and obnoxious as he was, Gorton was still the majority owner of Maggie’s horse.
In that way, she worked for him, too. Daniel had to show respect even if he did not feel respect.
Gorton got out of the car, leaned against the driver’s-side door, and crossed his arms in front of him.
“So now she loses to losers?” he said.
Maggie had made it around the course in 74 seconds. Two seconds over the time allowed. Two time faults. But she had gone clean. Daniel tried to explain the reasoning to Gorton.
“Today’s round was really just a glorified workout,” he said finally.
“Were they keeping score?” Gorton said.
“Excuse me?”
“Were they keeping score?” Gorton said.
“Well, yes.”
“There were fans at that ring in East Cupcake, right?”
“I saw you there,” Daniel said. “You know some people were watching.”
“Then it wasn’t a workout,” Gorton said.
“She rode well,” Daniel said. “That is the most important thing.”
“She rode like crap,” Gorton said.
“I tried to explain,” Daniel said patiently. “She wasn’t here to go fast.”
You’d know that if you knew anything about the sport.
“Stop making excuses for her!” Gorton said. “I know what I saw.”
Daniel did not want to be here, trapped into talking with this man.
“She was nearly five seconds slower than the goddamn winner!” Gorton said.
“She rode today the way she needed to ride,” Daniel said, stubbornly refusing to be lectured by someone who wouldn’t know how to saddle a horse if his miserable rich-man life depended on it.
Feeling as if he were talking to a child.
“You know as well as I do,” Gorton said, “the way the bitch is dropping like a rock in the rankings.”
Daniel took a deep breath, then another, trying to calm himself.
Bitch.
Could not stop what came out of his mouth next.
“She deserves more respect than your name-calling, Mr. Gorton,” he said. “She is a great rider still. And a better person.”
“Says who?” he said. “You?”
Daniel thought, I have to get out of here before I say something that gets me fired.
“We’re all supposed to be on the same team,” Daniel said, “that is all I am trying to say to you. And please lower your voice.”
“She’s running out of time, and I’m running out of patience,” Gorton said. “For a month, she’s ridden no better than average. Everybody can see it. Maybe the only one who won’t admit it is you, chico.”