Free Long Shot by Paul Monette

crowd the people up front,” he went on in a rueful way. “You and I would never have talked the way we have. Not out there.” He nodded down the canyon and over the dam. “I’m sorry, Viv.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œI just couldn’t keep him from being alone.”
    They were coming up to a length of level ground. The horses would break to a trot for a hundred yards along the water, on a beach of broken stones. They had, perhaps, a couple of minutes more before they could not hear above the beat of hooves. Five minutes after that, they would lay out breakfast on a jut of land in the reservoir—shaded by an orange tree the rising water hadn’t ever reached. They must have known there were certain things they would only say today, at this one moment. That is really all she needed—just to know there wasn’t time to waste.
    â€œYou thought I left? Is that what you thought? Let me tell you something, Artie. This whole last year, I’d look at Jasper and start to think: What if you stay and he pulls you down? So I took off. I had to get away from it. But listen: I would have come back. Jasper knew that. God damn it, I was on my way.”
    Though she hoped it would answer the question he said she was avoiding, she couldn’t be certain now she knew what the question was. When she spoke again, her voice was a good deal smaller.
    â€œDid Jasper say I left him?”
    â€œYes. But I told him he was wrong.”
    They must have used up half their time, just letting that sink in. She supposed that Artie knew he was staying on at Steepside. He lived there, didn’t he? Why, therefore, did they talk as if things between them were in the past tense? They acted as if it wouldn’t work straight on. The pretext had been removed. Perhaps they’d gone on too long devoid of ulterior motive, without a word like friend or lover to neatly wrap them up. Perhaps they couldn’t make it all alone.
    â€œWell, maybe he was right,” she said, as if Jasper’s guess was as good as hers. “I suppose I never got used to his fans. They’re too damn loyal. Mine don’t love me at all.”
    â€œHe used to love them back,” said Artie. “But that stopped too. He didn’t love anyone anymore.”
    They were two steps short of the straightaway. Artie’s fat-assed mare slid down the last few feet and scrabbled forward. Vivien called out louder than she liked, for fear he would get away before she got it right.
    â€œExcept for Harry Dawes,” she said.
    â€œNo, no,” protested Artie, “not even him.” The horse shot off along the stony track. The rest of what he said he had to shout out over his shoulder. “I already told you,” Artie bellowed, sending an echo round the canyon, “Harry Dawes was just a fantasy.” The name repeated again and again, till it didn’t mean a thing. Just then, she reached the flats herself. She hurried along in Artie’s wake. He shouted one last time: “There was no Harry Dawes.”
    And that was the way they left it.
    It was eight years past that Jasper Cokes arrived in the town that made him, straight out of two years in the army. Passed out cold in the bed of the truck he’d driven east from Cleveland years before, when he left to go to college in Vermont. He woke up squinting at the morning sun, just as they made the downhill turn off the freeway and passed the Hollywood Bowl. Hung over on Napa red, he wasn’t in much of a mood, but he liked the palms and the stucco right off. He rapped his knuckles on the rear window, as if to knock on wood.
    Up front in the cab were his college pals—Carl Dana and Art Balducci, mismatched as a two-man stand-up team—and much too busy arguing maps to turn around just now. And anyway, Jasper’s first impressions were not of any real consequence, not to what they were after. The master plan for this career had been