Horses

Nina and Eve go driving some Sundays, partly to keep their skills sharp and partly to learn about the mysterious parts of the city that are accessible only by car. This most recent Sunday I took them up on an invitation to ride along, and we drove out to Floyd Bennett Field. Which is to say that they drove, alternating in the driver's seat, while I sat in the back and munched on pastry. It was a cold, gray afternoon. We put Neon Bible on the stereo, and I sat in the back, watching us pass through Kensington and Marine Park, trying not to be boorish and sing out loud along to the record. There's a great black wave in the middle of the sea. Floyd Bennett Field is a former municipal airport that's been turned into a kind recreational area. It's got "nature walks" and a climbing wall and an ice skating rink and even a petting zoo. When we arrived, I got into the driver's seat and drove around the parking lot, a couple of times, haltingly. (I've recently re-obtained my Learner's Permit, having let it lapse in a fit of despair about five years ago.) We ducked inside the hangar, now converted to a kind of neutered, family-friendly video arcade, to use the bathroom, then struck out across the tarmac for the wilderness. The runways are cracked and faded, but you can still see the markings that indicate the landing zone for, say, a helicopter; standing inside it makes the airfield seem even bigger, even emptier. We took one of the hiking trails on the far side of the airfield that lead into what the National Park Service map calls the "Natural Area," a kind of ramble of small trees, thorn bushes, and tall grass that's taken back the northwestern side of the facility.

At first the paths were obvious, dusted with sand and bordered by shrubs and berry bushes offering pale and inedible little berries. The kinds that birds eat or that maybe nothing eats at all. The further we went, though, the thornier and more overgrown the trail became. We saw several buildings and large machines covered over with creeping vines and in some cases with trees growing up through them, despite printed signs insisting that the buildings were still in use and alarmed. We talked about The Magicians trilogy, which Eve and I had just finished, and whether Quentin Coldwater's emotional journey is plausible or resonant. (I say it's not.) At length we emerged into a clearing near the banks of the Mill Basin Inlet and dominated by the skeleton of some kind of warehouse or other functional structure, now overtaken by weeds and graffiti -- the ubiquitous "KUMA" in big, elegant letters on the north-facing side. Peeking inside, I saw drifts of empty aerosols and bottles and takeout containers, and I got the prickly feeling that this might be a place someone would go to get away from the world, and that they might not want visitors. I suggested that to Eve and Nina, but they pooh-poohed the idea and went poking around inside while I stood on the rocks looking out across Island Channel. They were right, I was wrong; the place was deserted. We followed the shore as it curved around to the south and came upon a rocky, trash-covered beach. A guy with some kind of fishing apparatus was picking through a net he'd cast. He looked like he had a very practical interest in the area. He wasn't there to paint or hide out.

As we re-emerged onto the airfield, we came upon a group of middle aged men in heavy coats flying and observing a set of expensive-looking remote-controlled model airplanes. Model planes swooping, carefully landing; Old Dudes impassive with their hands in the pockets of their parkas. Obviously a dad activity, and one apparently with some real precedent: A wooden shed, open to the elements but wired for electricity and phones, displayed a wall full of plaques and crusty laminated photographs of Old Dudes through the decades with their model planes. We watched for a few minutes and then walked back west towards the parking lot.

A pair of newlyweds (or soon-to-be-newlyweds) were taking a photo out on the runway as we neared the hangar. The cold and the wind were fierce, whipping the bride's train like a flag. We got back in the car and drove out to Brighton Beach to buy groceries, picking up a few tubs of eggplant hye from Elza Fancy Foods, and some frozen pierogies (mushroom, cherry) and charcuterie from the Russian grocery around the corner. We passed by the proctology clinic with the distinctive signage; we passed the stretch of Brighton 4th St. with the tiny houses sprouting like cabbages on a tiny grid within the block. It was very dark by the time we were done. Nina drove us back on Ocean Parkway like a total champ, Ben Folds' frustratingly ironic cover of Bitches Ain't Shit playing off an ancient mix CD on the car stereo.

My parents euthanized Ivy, the cat the family adopted after Josephine died and I left for college. She was old (though not as old as Kitty) and had bad teeth, and once they fixed her teeth, she'd stopped eating, probably because of a growth or a blockage in her intestines. My parents had brought her to the St. Marks Veterinary Hospital on 9th St. and 1st Ave., which is where they always bring their animals when they're in trouble. It was a freezing night. I stopped there on my way home from work, and joined them in a tiny exam room. Ivy looked like a sick kitty; bony, weak. My parents talked to the vet about all the things they'd tried to do to get her to eat. The vet agreed that they'd done everything a good pet owner would have done; she gave them permission to put the cat to sleep, which is what they were asking for, in so many words. She gave Ivy the first injection, which, after about a minute, caused her to just sort of keel over. I sat on a metal chair with my jacket and hat on and peered into the cat's unseeing face. "Their eyes stay open," said the vet. "It's not how it looks in the movies." Then she administered the second shot, and Ivy stopped breathing. My sister cried and said that Ivy was "a baby angel," which was sad and funny at the same time.

After leaving the vet, I went to Ted's huge condo on Dean St. to watch I Know Who Killed Me, which was insane; like a fever dream.

Nina and Caitlin and I went out to Kensington Stables on Sunday to ride some horses through Prospect Park. First we had brunch at the Thistle Hill Tavern (close to my old apartment on 12th St. and former home of the second location of The Olive Vine) which was very good and in which none of Fat Mike's influence could be detected. (Certainly not in the house playlist. But maybe the dude really likes "falafel burgers?") We walked around the perimeter of the Park to Caton Pl. where the stables shared a corner at E 8th St. with Calvary Cathedral. Some teenage girls were using a hose to bathe a shaggy brown pony on the sidewalk.

Caitlin announced herself as an experienced rider, and was promptly assigned a large brown horse named Bingo. "You'll be riding Emma," the trainer told Nina. A guy and a girl who'd walked in at the same time as us were assigned horses named Cody and Tinkerbell, respectively. "And you'll be riding Dakota," the trainer told me. (Dakota! Like Dakota Moss from I Know Who Killed Me!") Emma turned out to be a enormous white mare with a sleepy demeanor who stood patiently in the middle of the street while Nina climbed onto her back, using a plastic mounting block to boost herself up. Nina sat in the saddle, taking instructions from the trainer on how to hold the reins and control Emma's speed. Emma closed her eyes, fanning her long eyelashes. Dakota turned out to be a stallion, not quite as big as the other horses, I thought, but still the size of a freight train. I couldn't see how I'd be able to get a leg up over him, but I put my foot in the stirrup and just kind of clambered up. it's a testament to their training, I guess, that they just stand there and let you push and pull them.

"I'd forgotten how weird horse people are," whispered Caitlin, as the procession of riders and horses with ridiculous names filed past us.

Walker, the head trainer, mounted the "boss" horse, a huge coffee-colored stallion named Spider, and led our party in a single-file line around the corner and down E 8th St. onto Ocean Parkway. The horses moved slowly, almost comically so. Dakota and I were behind Tinkerbell, who had a loose shoe that clanked every time she took a step. Brian, the other trainer (I think that was his name; he looked like a "Brian") riding a horse whose name I didn't catch, brought up the rear. He kept giving me pointers on how to handle Dakota and keep him out of trouble, but Dakota seemed like he had no intention to misbehave. He was the best-behaved of all the horses. "Press in with your left leg and tug the reins to the right," called Brian. "He's going to want to eat those bushes." (He didn't.) We crossed the intersection at East and West Drive and entered the park, where we crossed West Drive at the southern end of the lake and walked up the western side of the park in the muddy ravine next to the road. We turned the horses right at Well House Drive and made a slow loop of the southern interior.

The whole time, the horses moved slowly, obediantly. A loose nail in one of Tinkerbell's shoes clinked with each step. Occasionally a horse would stop to pee or take a shit, their tails shifting to reveal their enormous, dark-hued orifices; and every horse behind would stop politely and wait for it to be over before clomping forward. It was good of them to do that, because I felt very little control otherwise and would have been powerless to prevent a horse pile-up, which the trainers were anxious to avoid. ("Dakota shouldn't get too close to Tinkerbell!" called Brian.) We'd only been riding for about an hour, but the effort of sitting straight in the saddle and the continuous, low-grade impacts on my lower parts made my body feel not good. Nina was unaffected. I loped and limped with her back through Prospect Park, anticipating a painful morning.