The world immediately seemed to slow down and steady itself, as if it, too, were settling into a new necessity. The first, spirited horse that he was given at the stables shucked him onto the ground almost gently, without ill will, employing no more violence than was strictly necessary to dislodge him from the saddle. He was then put on a twenty-year-old mare from whose broad back he watched Jenna quickly receding on her stallion down a dusty trail, her left arm raised in backhanded farewell or perhaps just good equestrian form, while Félix galloped past Joey to join her. He saw that it would make sense if she ended up fucking Félix instead of him, since Félix was the vastly superior horseman; he experienced this as a relief, maybe even as a mitzvah, since poor Jenna certainly needed fucking by somebody. He himself spent the morning walking, and eventually cantering, with Ellen’s young daughter, Meredith, the novel reader, and listening while she delivered herself of an impressive store of horse lore. It didn’t make him feel soft to do this; it made him feel firm. The Andean air was lovely. Meredith seemed a little sweet on him and gave him patient instruction in how to be less confusing to his horse. Jeremy, when the group collected for midmorning snacks by a spring at which there was no sign of Jenna and Félix, was more viciously instructive to his quiet, red-faced wife, whom he apparently blamed for falling so far back behind the leaders. Joey, cupping his clean hands to drink spring water from a stone basin, and no longer caring what Jenna might be up to, felt compassion for Jeremy. It was fun to ride horses in Patagonia—she’d been right about that.
His feeling of peace lasted until late in the afternoon, when he checked his voice mail from the room phone, at Jenna’s mother’s expense, and found messages from Carol Monaghan and Kenny Bartles. “Hi, hon, it’s your
“What the fuck, man?” Kenny Bartles said. “Where the fuck are you? I just sent you like ten e-mails. Are you in Paraguay? Is that why you’re not getting back to me? When the contract says January 31, DOD fucking means January 31. I sure the fuck hope you’ve got something in the pipeline for me, because January 31’s nine days from now. LBI’s already all over my ass because these fucking trucks are breaking down. Some bullshit design flaw in the rear axle, I hope to God you got some rear axles for me. Or whatever, man. Fifteen tons of fucking hood ornaments, I would thank you very much for that. Until you get me some kind of weight, until we can see a date of confirmed delivery of full weight of
Jenna returned at sunset, all the more gorgeous for being dust-covered. “I’m in love,” she said. “I’ve met the horse of my dreams.”
“I have to leave,” Joey said immediately. “I have to go to Paraguay.”
“What? When?”
“Tomorrow morning. Tonight, ideally.”
“Good Lord, are you that pissed off with me? It’s not my fault you lied to me about your riding skills. I didn’t come here to
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’ll pay my half of it back.”
“Fuck paying it back.” She looked him up and down scornfully. “It’s just, do you think you can find some other way to be a disappointment? I’m not sure you’ve checked every conceivable disappointment box yet.”
“That’s a really mean thing to say,” he said quietly.
“Believe me, I can say meaner things, and I intend to.”
“Also, I didn’t tell you I was married. I’m married. I married Connie. We’re going to live together.”
Jenna’s eyes widened, as if with pain. “God, you are weird! You are such a fucking weirdo.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I thought you actually understood me. Unlike every other guy I’ve ever met. God, I’m stupid!”
“You’re not,” he said, pitying her for the disability of her beauty.
“But if you think I’m sorry to hear you’re married, you are much mistaken. If you think I thought of you as
“Then I don’t want to have dinner with you, either.”
“Well, great, then,” she said. “You are now officially the worst travel companion
