Freedom полностью

“That’s a lot,” he agreed politely. “That would be a million dollars for every person in the country.”

“Exactly. It’s outrageous, don’t you think? How much they owe us.”

He considered pointing out how difficult it would be for the Treasury to refund, say, the money that had been spent on winning World War II, but Ellen didn’t strike him as a person you could argue with, and he was feeling carsick. He could hear Jenna speaking Spanish excellent enough that, having taken it only through high school, he couldn’t catch much beyond her repetition of caballos this and caballos that. Sitting with his eyes closed, in a van full of jerks, he was visited by the thought that the three people he most loved (Connie), liked (Jonathan), and respected (his father) were all at least very unhappy with him, if not, by their own report, sickened by him. He couldn’t free himself of the thought; it was like some kind of conscience reporting for duty. He willed himself not to barf, because wouldn’t barfing now, a mere thirty-six hours after a good barf would have been very useful to him, be the height of irony? He’d imagined that the road to being fully hard, to being bad news, would get steeper and more arduous only gradually, with many compensatory pleasures along the way, and that he would have time to acclimate to each stage of it. But here he was, at the very beginning of the road, already feeling as if he might not have the stomach for it.

Estancia El Triunfo was undeniably paradisiacal, however. Nestled beside a clear-running stream, surrounded by yellow hills rolling up toward a purple ridgeline of sierras, were lushly watered gardens and paddocks and fully modernized stone guesthouses and stables. Joey and Jenna’s room had deliciously needless expanses of cool tiled floor and big windows open to the rushing of the stream below them. He’d feared there would be two beds, but either Jenna had intended to share a king-size with her mother or she’d changed the reservation. He stretched out on the deep-red brocade bedspread, sinking into its thousand-dollar-a-night plushness. But Jenna was already changing into riding clothes and boots. “Félix is going to show me the horses,” she said. “Do you want to come along?”

He didn’t want to, but he knew he’d better do it anyway. Their shit still stinks was the phrase in his head as they approached the fragrant stables. In golden evening light, Félix and a groom were leading out a splendid black stallion by its bridle. It frisked and skittered and bucked a little, and Jenna went straight over to it, looking rapt in a way that reminded him of Connie and made him like her better, and reached up to stroke the side of its head.

“Cuidado,” Félix said.

“It’s OK,” Jenna said, looking intently into the horse’s eye. “He likes me already. He trusts me, I can tell. Don’t you, baby?”

“¿Deseas que algo algo algo?” Félix said, tugging on the bridle.

“Speak English, please,” Joey said coldly.

“He’s asking if I want them to saddle him,” Jenna explained, and then spoke rapidly in Spanish to Félix, who objected that algo algo algo peligroso; but she was not a person to be gainsaid. While the groom pulled rather brutally on the bridle, she grasped the horse’s mane and Félix put his hairy hands on her thighs and boosted her up onto the horse’s bare back. It spread its legs and pranced sideways, straining against the bridle, but Jenna was already leaning far forward, her chest in its mane, her face near its ear, murmuring soothing nothings. Joey was totally impressed. After the horse had been calmed down, she took the reins and cantered off to the far corner of the paddock and engaged in recondite equestrian negotiations, compelling the horse to stand in place, to step backwards, to lower and raise its head.

The groom remarked something to Félix about the chica, something husky and admiring.

“My name’s Joey, by the way,” Joey said.

“Hello,” Félix said, his eyes on Jenna. “You want a horse, too?”

“I’m fine for now. Just do me a favor and speak English, though, OK?”

“As you like.”

It did Joey’s heart good to see how happy Jenna was on the horse. She’d been so negative and depressive, not only on the trip but on the phone for months before it, that he’d begun to wonder if there was anything at all to like about her besides her beauty. He could see now that she at least knew how to enjoy what money could bring her. And yet it was daunting to consider how very much money was required to make her happy. To be the person who kept her in fine horses: not a task for the fainthearted.