“But dogs don’t know to cheat.”

“You think they can’t be trained?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m surprised the judge didn’t call. No, it was a cheat. But I tell you, Niece, you’re something. Two for two.”

Once Carey and I had gone to Saratoga Springs and I had won two hundred dollars on a long shot who looked good in the paddock. I don’t know how I did it. It’s like falling in love, your eye automatically picks out one in a crowd, you can’t explain why.

In the next race my uncle won seventy-two dollars. To celebrate he bought another beer and a Coke and a sun hat with a visor for me. After that he began to lose steadily. I didn’t even bother to check my tickets. I hadn’t bet on a single winner, although I managed to call them all, four more in a row. I admit, it was some kind of a thrill.

“Jeez Louise, Niece,” Uncle Richard said. “Next time we place our bets right before post time. But you gotta pick second and third too. You practice, we can do superfectas.” My uncle’s face was distinctly gray in the sunlight and noticing this gave me a shock.

“Uncle Richard, maybe we better go home now.”

“One more race, Niece. You like this one, it’s that dog you met.”

So we watched, although I was distracted and didn’t even bother to pick a winner this time. I tried to focus on Shady Lady instead. She didn’t cut a very promising figure, slightly splay-legged, her head bowed down in a deferential manner. Beside her the competition looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger dogs. By the time the starting bell sounded the odds against her had climbed to twenty-seven to one. I was afraid to look, but when I did, she was right in the middle of the pack. At the first curve she slid into third place. I imagined I could see her ribs heaving under her colors, and I wondered what the hell was driving her on, didn’t she know how outclassed she was? As the leaders bounded toward us, it looked like the second-place dog was losing ground. Shady Lady had taken his place when they whipped past. The crowd was on its feet. Someone was screaming louder than anyone else, right in my ear, and I realized, later, that it was me.

She stayed a close second right to the finish. It cut me to the quick, I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I had a lot riding on it. My uncle put his hand on my shoulder. I had completely forgotten that he was there.

“She had the most heart, that’s for sure. Good race.” He coughed and reached up to unbutton the pocket of his shirt. “Hey, Niece, maybe you could help.” I reached in to his pocket and found the vial and unscrewed the top. My uncle opened his mouth and I tried not to breathe in the blast of his breath—cigarettes, beer, Chinese heart medicine, old-man decay—as I slipped the pill under his tongue.

The band was playing “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

“So much excitement.” Uncle Richard’s color was still off but he was smiling. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to be casual. The gesture reminded me of Carey. “Next time we sit upstairs in the air-conditioned part. I take you to the infield because it’s your first time, you want to see the dogs close up.”

“I really think we should go home now.”

“What if I really have a heart attack? Can you drive fast to the hospital? How fast can you drive? Can you break speed limit?”

“Not funny. Remember the boy who cried wolf.”

“I don’t fake, Niece.” Uncle Richard put on his glasses and leaned forward in the plastic seat to scrutinize yet another batch of racers. “Who do you pick this time?”

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

“You with this power, you don’t want to use. Okay, okay. We go home now.” He got up, brushed off the seat of his pants. “How much money you lose?”

I told him.

“Not too bad. You are cautious, like a crab.”

“What about you?”

“I net about what you lose, so we just break even.”

“It was fun.”

“Yeah. More fun make money.”

“Better than losing.”

“You are funny, Niece. You expect to lose. No gambler’s spirit.”

We collected my uncle’s winnings at the window and went back to say good-bye to his friend, who was in a good mood because Shady Lady had performed so well. He let me give her a Milk-Bone and she licked my hand. She was just a normal dog, way too normal to be racing.

In the car I was already beginning to feel like an old hand, easing us around the lot to the arrowed exit. The little Toyota had its quirks, like the way it would slip out of gear between first and second, but I was learning to put that little extra pressure on the heel of my hand while pulling back. At the exit, as I waited for a window in the traffic I told myself, Watch it, Sally. You’re not totally yourself yet. Your reflexes aren’t up to snuff.

As if contradicting my thoughts, Uncle Richard said: “Good driver,” and I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to blur over again. He manipulated his seat back, loosened the parrot tie. “Okay, back to the movie. What happens to the good couple?”

I made the turn out of the parking lot and we were on our way back to town. “Well, they get together, you know, and it’s obvious they’re having an affair and their spouses are furious, but they don’t care, they’re happy. They deserve each other. She cuts his toenails in bed.”

“What?”

“They meet in a hotel room and she loves him so much she says she wants to trim his toenails.”

“Boy-oh-boy.”

“What?”

“So French.” The traffic was getting sluggish, it was four o’clock already, the start of rush hour. “Could you turn up AC, Niece?”

I fumbled around the dashboard. “It’s already cranked up to high. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ll take you to the emergency room. Or we can stop somewhere and I can phone your doctor.”

“I tell you, Niece, I’m fine now. And don’t mention to your aunt, you hear me?”

“Uncle Richard, she’s worried about you.”

“Yeah, yeah, you just see, she die before me, she kill herself with worry.”

I flicked on the radio. Warmer tomorrow, less humidity, and then some news about a guy who had set his girlfriend on fire and stuffed her charred body into the trunk of his car. He was being arraigned on charges of first-degree murder. I turned the radio off and we drove in silence. I thought my uncle had fallen asleep when he suddenly said: “It’s funny, Niece, how you two, you and your sister, both turn out to be artistic type. Everyone always think one of you be a scientist, like your father.”

“I know.”

“You hear what they tried to do in PRC,” Uncle Richard continued. “Remember the Four Modernizations! Everyone in the country is gonna be scientist at the turn of the century. Or businessman.”

“Well, that’s kind of sad. What about the artists and intellectuals?”

“You know your ma-ma always say you’re made to be a surgeon. Because of your hands.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Whatever it was, we knew you were gonna be something special.” My uncle cleared his throat and then he said, “You want to know about your father. I tell you this: if his luck is better he’d be very famous. You should be proud of an ancestor like that. You should live up to inheritance.”

“Uncle Richard, I don’t even like science.”

“That’s not what I mean. You have good genes. Brilliance of your father, tough character of your mother. No reason in the world to waste.”

“Last chance,” I said. We were passing the hospital with the palm trees.

My uncle ignored me. “I waste my life. You see me? I end up in Florida, who knows where this is, live on pension and disability, gamble away my money. But you, you could do anything. What an education you have. What connection. All this American stuff.”

“Okay, okay.”

We drove in silence for a while and then Uncle Richard sighed. “You are a good girl. Your aunt always tells me this, what a good girl you are. No more old-uncle lectures.”

When we got back to the house I realized that there was no point in even trying out our movie story. We hadn’t fooled Aunty Mabel at all. “Ding-ah!” she said, and gave me, what was for her, a dirty look. She made him go to bed immediately. There was already a pot of medicine bubbling on the stove.