Free Suite Dubai (Arriving) by Callista Fox Page B

bad life.”  

    Wilder knew everyone at Churchill Downs, the valet; the red-headed boy about her age who checked IDs to get into the suites; and the gaunt-faced man, shirt-sleeves rolled up to his forearms, who put sprigs of mint in their Juleps at the clubhouse bar. He left Miss Patti in charge of the guests mingling in their suite and took Rachel and her mother to the stands. “The only way to watch the race as far as I’m concerned.” They sat on benches and sipped their drinks and watched the crowd gather up. “Now that I have your attention,” her mother said, “Can we discuss the board’s role in changing the bylaws. There’s something...” Rachel took this as her cue to get up and explore. Her mom and Wilder could easily spend the next 45 minutes discussing organizational blah, blah.

    She made her way back to Wilder’s suite and found a cold bottle of water in the refrigerator behind the bar. Even in the shade of her massive hat, she was hot. She drank half the bottle and watched Miss Patti buzz around the room, the hat she wore, a pink one piled high with peonies made her easy to spot. Rachel wondered if she got a little sad after the race was over and she had to wait year for the next one. Miss Patti spotted her, gave her a quick wave and then rushed across the floor with her arms wide. She was a hugger. “You look darling,” she said, kissing Rachel on the cheek.   “I hope you’re staying cool out there.”

    “This helps,” she said holding up her bottle of water. “Mom and Wilder are talking shop so I thought I’d walk around a little.”

    “Well I don’t blame you one bit,” she said. “You know where you should go, down to the stables. There’s some real beauties down there. If it weren’t so hot I’d go with you myself. Now, if anyone tries to shoo you away, just tell them Miss Patti sent you.”

    Rachel found the stalls and talked her way past two guards. Invoking Miss Patti’s name was quite effective. “Mind you don’t get yourself kicked,” one of them told her.  

    She started at one end of a long row of stalls and walked slowly, peeking into each, hoping to see a horse. Most were empty but sometimes one would come to the door and put its downy nose in the palm of her hand, breathe its moist breath on her fingers. She loved their names. Sea Charm. Thunder March. Juxtapose. Sound Decision. She took out the pocket-sized, spiral notebook she’d managed to fit into her tiny beaded purse and with the short stub of a pencil wrote them down.  

    When she reached the end of the row she turned left and left again intending to work her way up the other side. A man was there, leaning against the first stall door. He put his arms out to keep her from running into him. “Excuse me, he said, catching her by the shoulders. He let her go and took a step back.  

    He was an older man, the wrinkles around his eyes and the grey in his neatly trimmed made him look around her father’s age, perhaps a few years older. His skin was dark and his accent confirmed he wasn’t from Kentucky. “No, it’s my fault,” she told him.   “I wasn’t looking.”  

    “And I always get nervous before the race. My mind goes somewhere else.” The stall behind him was empty but a wooden sign hung from a nail announced War Cry .  

    “You have a horse in the race?” She asked him.

    He looked at her notebook and his expression changed. “Your a reporter?”

    “No,” she said. “I just like the names. I was writing them down.” She didn’t blame him for looking confused. It was a strange habit of hers, to write down words that pleased her, not because she didn’t know them already but because she wanted to see them in her own handwriting. When she wrote them on paper it felt like she was inscribing them into her brain tissue. More than once she’d found a piece of paper with a word like “crisp” or “undulate” and wondered what had inspired her to write it down.  

    “Your