The Horses of the Night by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page B

own cabernet label. I can live without thoroughbreds. I cannot live without money.” He made a gesture, a man throwing something away. That imaginary object being flung into the silence represented the things he loved.
    He continued by changing the subject. “Don’t you mind, living in your father’s shadow? It might bother me.”
    â€œHe was a good man. He cared for people.”
    â€œAnd so do you.”
    Nona had always said that she believed me to be “healthy in mind and soul.” Does a man with a healthy soul want to risk his life? Even here in the club, snugly outfitted in cashmere and worsted, it seemed that I could still feel the chill in my bones.
    â€œI look at you,” Blake was saying, “and I see a man like myself—the way I used to be.”
    â€œI would never dream of comparing myself to you.”
    â€œI was a man of taste. But I wanted more of life. I wanted something grand,” he said, working to keep his voice down, but failing. Someone stirred in a corner, a newspaper rustling.
    â€œTell me what’s wrong,” I said.
    He gazed around the room for a moment, studying the shadows. This was a San Francisco copy of a London sanctuary for men, but unlike its British counterparts this place had always seemed pleasant to me. My father had brought me here often. I had first tasted scotch here. My father had not approved of the “pretentious old men of thirty,” but he had taught me that a wealthy man had to be comfortable around all kinds of people, even the wealthy.
    The last time I had seen Blake had been some months before, on the steps of Saint Paul’s in London. It had been the memorial service for David King, the producer, and Blake had been there because everyone in film wanted to have a look at Blake, everyone wanted to be close to him. Movie people have ersatz respectability. Blake Howard was the real thing. He had paused on the steps as photographers’ flashes in the gray day made his eyes spark, giving him a look both knowing and hungry. He had turned to lift a finger to Sarah Miles, a gesture courtly and familiar, and he had winked at me as he passed me. I was there because my father had known David King long ago, and because I was, for an American, old money, with just the extra zip of glamour for being a Californian whose father had seemed to endow every museum and hospital in the Northern Hemisphere.
    Blake had returned to San Francisco to help judge the design competition and, the gossip columns said, “support the ballet company.” We had not had a chance to meet since. Now I sat across from a virtual stranger. In these months Blake had altered. He had been robust that day in London, escorting a woman in a sable, a constellation of diamonds, grotesquely overdressed for a daytime ceremony of mourning but so freshly beautiful no one would dream of complaining. She was evidently one of those actresses who will never go anywhere in films but don’t have to because they are already at the top, in London with a famous man.
    Now he looked into the shadows around us, a fire just beginning its dance in the fireplace. I could think only one thing: He was no longer my friend.
    I decided to be direct. “What happened to you?”
    â€œYou mean: to my money.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œBad judgment. Bad luck. Worse advice. This façade of ease, this role I play, is not cheap. You know all about that.”
    I knew.
    Even in the muted lighting of the club, quiet drinkers and distant white-coated waiters all hushed, nearly silent, Blake was only a copy of himself, a reproduction with new lines around the eyes, and a hard glance.
    â€œI don’t expect you to forgive me,” he said. “DeVere left me no choice.”
    Perhaps Blake had always been like this, and I was just now able to see him as he was. It was a painful thought. “You remember my fiancée? Nona Lyle?”
    â€œHow could I