The Mare

Ginger

She didn’t call me when she got home that night and when I called her she didn’t really want to talk. She sounded happy to hear from me, but she was quiet. She didn’t respond when I mentioned coming to ride on the weekend.

When I called her the following week, her mother talked harshly at me and then handed the phone to her brother. He said, “She’s asleep”; he said it the same way Velvet said “Ahh dunno” at the faculty party. There was cartoon noise in the background; I pictured him in the dark with a flashing television. “Can you ask her to call me when she wakes up?” “Sure,” he said. Then he put the phone down. He didn’t hang up, he just put it down. I thought maybe he was going to wake her right then so I stayed on the line. Cartoons talked, commercials flashed in the gaps, there was running water and Mrs. Vargas talking to someone somewhere in the jumbled distance. I thought it must be Velvet until I heard the boy answer. Still, I waited several minutes before hanging up.