Paper Lantern: Love Stories by Stuart Dybek

the sparkle horse across my eyelids as the buggies make the turn home, and Frank’s yelling in his clear tenor voice. It always surprised me when he’d let it loose. I got no idea even what horse we’re cheering. Some long shot maybe I picked at random. One thing Frank never could figure was a long shot.
    By the middle of summer the special bank account we opened together for the Four Deuces is up eight grand.
    I go, Frank, we got the down payment, let’s quit ahead of the game.
    See, I don’t wanta be responsible if we lose it and he realizes there never was psychic powers. But he was a greedy sumnabitch. Then, who ain’t?
    There ever something beyond what you could afford you hadda have, Rafael? Not just something you wanted, something you couldn’t live without. Maybe angels don’t have desires like that. You paint, right? Nah, I’m no mind reader—I noticed the colors spattered on the hair of your arms. You a painter like houses or like an artist? You do any of them murals of the Virgin along Eighteenth? The Virgin-of-the-El on Halsted or the Virgin-of-the-Lavanderia on Ashland? My favorite’s the wall by Nuevo Ramon, you know, the giant blue taco Virgin shooting light rays, and hovering beside her’s a two-story-tall bottle of Corona shooting the same rays. I told Frank, Maybe we need a Virgin-of-the-Four-Deuces. And Frank says, Way this neighborhood’s gone, people see Virgins everywhere—cracks in the plaster, rusty water stains under a viaduct, and, Mira! A miracle! And they’re kneeling, lighting candles. What’s next? The Virgin-of-the-Porta-Potty?
    Frank could be one irreverent sumnabitch, but a hoot.
    That me you’re sketching on that racing form? Let’s see. I won’t be offended. Okay, I’ll wait till it’s finished. You ever paint nudes? Tell you, I had a figure that made men ask would I pose. I might have, too, if they was artists, you know, classy, instead of some jerkoff with a Polaroid who thought he was Hugh Hefner. The real question in life ain’t What would you do? It’s What wouldn’t you? Where do you draw the line?
    Tak. Salute!
    So, that August there’s a heat wave killing senior citizens, and on Friday, Frank leaves work like a kid ditching school, changes into his lucky track clothes in the car, and we make Sportsman’s early. I’m wondering will the horses run? How can they breathe in a furnace? Right off, Frank that sumnabitch blindfolds me with the sparkle-horse tie and I hit the Daily Double, which we never play. The blindfold’s smothering me, I’m like faint, and I hear them voices in the crowd. That creepy voice is right against my ear—I don’t believe what it’s whispering—use your imagination—and I rip the blindfold off, but there’s no one there but Frank and Lester.
    You all right? Frank asks.
    Who was just here? I ask him, and he looks at me like I’m crazy.
    I’m getting heatstroke, I say, and Frank goes, Cool it, Rosebush, I got the next race figured, anyway.
    When he comes back from the window, he’s got cold brewskies for me and Lester. It was that sumnabitch’s way of showing he can win without my dramatics. He bets the whole four bills from the Daily Double on White Owl, a long shot, and loses our wad.
    After all his crap about playing names, I can’t help blurting, Who’d play a pony named after a cigar?
    Frank says, They named him after the bird of prey, not the cigar.
    Bird of prey! That sumnabitch and his bullshit vocabulary. Maybe it was the heat, but every time I thought about “bird of prey” I’d laugh until I was like hysterical. Still breaks me up. Lester bets White Owl with him and there goes all his food stamp money, so neither of them are finding it too funny. I go, Shit, nothing like a healthy laugh to make you feel better, go ahead blindfold me. That cheers Frank up. Hot nips time, Rosebud, he says, hot silver-dollar nips. I can’t win without my Rosebud.
    Only time I ever heard that sumnabitch actually admit it.
    He