BB Grey–musings

The market was sliding and gold with it. If there were rules once, they weren’t working.

Jack crumpled a Post-it. A buddy’s buddy said Go West Young Man in the seventh. Go West went south. Jack lost his reserve.

He knew better. He didn’t.

He scratched the bottoms of his front pockets—jeans worn thin at the knees—and got sawdust under his nails. He didn’t check the wallet in his back pocket. He already knew.

Rain in the forecast filled Santa Anita with pickups and tired sedans. When clouds threatened, that counted as rain, and blue-collar, frayed-collar, no-collar stiffs like Jack went to try to make the day’s pay another way.

He was down a week before the day was done. Heading for the gate, drifting past the paddock, he stopped. A golden mare with a chestnut mane—legs and attitude. He hunted for a discarded form, found none, leaned too close to a stranger’s. Jessica Rabbit. Five-to-one in the morning, now three-to-one. Not much juice; if he played her, it had to be to win.

He remembered the cash in his truck—the failsafe that kept him from torching everything at once.

He lengthened his stride. Halfway through A-2 an older woman, half his size, split her face with a smile.

“With that speed, you ought to be on the track,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Feels like a sure thing.”

“The only sure thing is that nothing’s for sure.” She turned toward the saddling ring.

The line hung in the damp air. Jack let it. Little hauntings gathered—his father, kids scattered to the edges of the map, friends gone quiet, the slow undoing of a life that once felt tougher than luck.

At the truck he rolled the window down, slid into the seat, opened the glove box. The last bill lay there, crisp. He closed the box.

Key, half-pedal, turn. The carb coughed black and caught.

Clutch in. His hand closed over the shifter—an eight ball his kids gave him one Christmas. So you always know where the eight ball is and don’t get behind it, the card had said, and they’d laughed.

He sat with that—money that was never there, advice that might be, winners who weren’t, losers who kept breathing. The more things changed, the more they didn’t.

The engine hiccupped, then died. Needles dropped flat.

Jack smiled.

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