Frank had a cup of coffee, then he had another one, without saying anything. It wasn’t good. He could sit like that all day. He was like a chess player who looks at the board and figures out how every piece got where it was, looks at the board for as long as it takes, with the clock spinning hurriedly beside him, then figures out how to move from there. Frank would think about the horse and the people who were out on the street when we arrived, and then he’d try to figure out where they came from, what they were doing, where they were going, and why. There was no point in telling him that it had nothing to do with us. We saw it, were part of it, Frank would say, so of course it has something to do with us. But what does it have to do with us? That’s what Frank had to figure out. He’d get there, I knew he would, but it could be a while. It was times like this I wished I still drank. Or smoked. Anything to pass the time while Frank figured it out. Until then we were both stuck. Frank drank his coffee and I watched him, trying to stay out of his way as long as possible. But we didn’t have all day.

“We had a plan.”

I knew it was a mistake the minute I said it.

“Every day starts with a plan,” Frank said, “and then it all goes out the window. We think it’s going to behave according to the way we want it, according to our plans, but why should it? Why should we be surprised that there are a lot more things going on in the world than the things we want out of it?”

“We’ve done all right.”

“We have. Which is amazing, isn’t it? Failure should outweigh success, that’s the way the world has to work. You know that. You see that. Just look at today. Most days are nothing more than barely contained accidents.”

On a different day I would have argued with him. I would have told him that it’s not the accident that’s important, it’s the reaction to the accident. You can’t let it affect everything; you can’t let it derail everything. I know what he would say; he’d said it many times before. “Everybody thinks they’re in control, but there are forces in the world that control us. All we can do is try to navigate through those forces.”