“Brightwall only loves it! He feeds on it! Say it louder!” his jockey jeered.
The crowd obeyed with enthusiasm.
“BRIGHTWALL’S A BASTARD! BRIGHTWALL’S A BASTARD! BRIGHTWALL’S A BASTARD!”
A panicked Mr. Delacorte attempted to clamp his hands over Dot’s ears.
It was one of the funniest things Alexandra had ever seen or heard.
“BRIGHTWALL’S A BASTARD! BRIGHTWALL’S A BASTARD!” She joined with reckless glee.
She intercepted her husband’s askance look with one of unapologetic mischief.
“They make it sound like a compliment,” she explained.
His smile was fleetingly brilliant against the dark. He glanced down.
Which is when Alexandra realized she’d reflexively gripped his arm in excitement, and his tensed bicep felt like a boulder beneath her fingers. A thrill shot through her: he was more powerful than her in every way. She didn’t understand why it felt wildly unjust and infuriating and erotic all at once.
He’d gone utterly still, as if he was loath to frighten off a wild creature. She could feel the tension humming in his body beneath her hand.
And she let her hand linger longer than seemed wise, simply to revel in his stillness, his fixed expression, the proof of her power to move him.
She uncurled her fingers slowly, and looped her arm through Dot’s. Her heart was hammering with a different sort of portent now.
“Shillelagh’s not a lady! Shillelagh’s not a lady!” someone else tried.
This chant was less successful, as a good portion of the crowd was already drunk and all those syllables tripped everybody up. It eventually devolved into jeers.
Shillelagh lunged to try to snap the hand of someone reaching out to pet her.
“Oy! Keep yer ’ands to yerself!” her jockey warned. “She eats ’ands fer breakfast.”
Another compact, nimble young man leaped into the middle of the track. The crowd surged to the railing. His job, it seemed, was to start the race.
“On your marks... get set... GO GO GO!”
And Brightwall and Shillelagh were off.
The crowd roared.
The little donkeys were nearly blurs, their churning hooves kicking up clods of earth and dust, their ears thrown back, their teeth bared. Their jockeys clung to them manfully. SoonAlexandra’s view was four little rumps—two human, two donkey—bobbing along, nearly airborne. They were neck and neck as they rounded the first curve of the track.
Alexandra and Dot screamed, “GO SHILLELAGH! GO!”
While Brightwall and Delacorte bellowed, “GO BRIGHTWALL!”
After long suspenseful seconds, Shillelagh was ahead by the tip of her silvery nose. It was absurdly unbearably exciting.
And then the donkeys rounded the bend and a cluster of people pushed in front of her and Alexandra could no longer see them at all.
“I can’t see!” she shouted. “Aaaahhhh I can’t see! Down in front! I—”
She was suddenly airborne, seized by the waist and launched up like a bird taking flight, hoisted effortlessly by her huge husband.
She gasped in delight and laughed joyously. “Go go go, SHILLELAGH! GO!”
Everyone behind her shouted, “DOWN IN FRONT!”