[from Chapter 17]
author's note: I used to work with a great guy of the same name.
Back across the Atlantic, or the Pacific depending on perspective, Robert Nielsen stood on the threshold of another wasted day. Nielsen was wrong to put so much hope on one horse. He should have learned by now but he needed a diversion, something to take his mind off of reality once in a while. His reality had included dreams of enlisting to become an elite soldier, only to be dashed by a medically disqualifying pes planus, also known as flat feet. After that, a position in the FBI half of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Task Force seemed a natural fit for him, but his college grades hadn’t matched his efforts. Since the accounting degree became unattainable, he settled for marketing. After a stint in the private sector, he found the pace of government work more suitable and, for the last thirteen years, had occupied a position in a mid-level department assigned to investigate ephemeral crimes against an opaque criminal code.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way,’ he thought. That feisty mare, jumpy and restless in the warm-up, came out like a frickin’ lard ass in the last race of the day, finishing second-to-last. He pulled a stack of tickets out of the pocket of his worn gray windbreaker and reviewed his losses, flicking each one back with a battered thumbnail discolored by smoke and stress. First race, he put $100 on the smallest horse. At 3:1 odds, that win was his first and last of the day. Shoulda stopped there, he thought. Shit. Overconfident, he threw away $900 on the next six races, on horses that didn’t even place.
Not that he really had the money to play. Except for his government job and pension, he didn’t have much. Just an old house with faded siding, a broken A/C unit he couldn’t afford to fix, and, the man scowled, nothing but a jar of strawberry jelly in the goddamned fridge.
