Now, weeks after that moment at the hospital, Anna pulled up to the stables and cleared her head of the confrontation with Eleanor. She tapped the WWF app, selecting the only game she had going. Without even glancing at the board (which had built up to a crisscross of low-scoring words: US, YOU, LOVE, ME, SEXY…), she went right to the messages. But before she had tapped out even two words there was a knock on her window. Startled, she looked up at Vronsky smiling down at her through the window.

IV

Vronsky and Murf hung out in the stables while Anna rode Mark Antony, but every few minutes he checked his phone to look at the time.

“Maybe you should get a little practice in,” Murf said. “Or are you cocky enough to assume that riding a horse is like riding a bike? Bicycles can’t sense nervous energy, and real talk: every horse in here is buggin’ out with all your pacing.”

“Okay, okay,” Vronsky replied, trying to sound casual but failing. “Beatrice promised me Bunny Hop is the calmest of her mom’s horses, so I’ll be okay.”

“You better be, ’cause the last thing that girl needs is to run around having to take care of your skinny ass, too.” Murf walked out of the stable into the afternoon sun, waiting for his friend to follow. As the two of them walked to the next stable where Beatrice’s mom kept her horses, Murf whistled a tune that Vronsky couldn’t place.

“What song is that?” he asked. “Sounds too upbeat for the likes of you.”

Murf shook his head in embarrassment then admitted it was the new single from LiviX2. Daler and Rowney had gifted it to him on iTunes, and he was surprised by how much he liked it. “When I asked Mr. Staugas if I could take Spring Break off to go to Coachella, he faked a heart attack, then laughed his ass off at me when I was about to dial nine-one-one. In all the years I worked here, I never asked for days off.”

“He said yes?” Vronsky asked, pleased to hear about someone else’s less complicated love life.

“He not only said yes, he told me he wanted to pay for my plane ticket. It’s hard to see a black man blush, but I did when I told him it wasn’t necessary because I was flying private. You’re coming, right?”

“Don’t know yet,” Vronsky replied. He wanted to join, but there was no way he was going unless, by some miracle, Anna was able to go, too.

“Look, I know it’s coldhearted to kick a dog when he’s down with a broken pelvis,” Murf said. “But all this waiting until he’s better is bullshit. He’s not gonna be cool either way, at least if she kicked his ass to the curb now he’d have Percocet to ease the pain.”