The Horses of the Night Read Online Free PDF

you wouldn’t say that your career has been a success.”
    â€œWell, not exactly a success, no.”
    â€œDeVere watches your work, your bids, pays attention to what you submit, and where.”
    My voice remained easy. “You don’t mean that he’s out to ruin my career.”
    â€œExactly.”
    My voice did not betray my feelings. “Perhaps he’s right. I should resign myself to the pleasures of my class.”
    â€œYour work is very fine. Noble, enlightening—I admire it tremendously. You deserve fame for your designs, Stratton. But listen to me. As long as DeVere is alive, and as long as he pursues you, you’ll have trouble accomplishing anything important as a designer.”
    I reflected, “When DeVere was starting out, designing jeans and earrings, he approached my father for an entrée into what people like DeVere call ‘high society.’ My father was always bored by that kind of ‘society,’ and told DeVere about the fund for the handicapped, one of my father’s pet projects. DeVere thought my father was dismissing him.”
    â€œYou don’t dismiss DeVere.”
    â€œDo you want me to give you permission to accept the award?”
    His voice was tight as he said, “I’d like to say I can’t accept it.”
    â€œI could pursue DeVere legally, sue him. I can pull a few strings and get the award overturned.”
    â€œWhy don’t you?”
    â€œBecause I want to win the award honorably. Really win it, not wrestle it away from you. Because fighting a man like DeVere on his level makes me despise myself.” Because, I did not say, I am a better man. So that it was pride—vanity—that kept me from fighting back. “Because, in the end, it still might not work, and I would be muddy from a struggle against a man—” I did not finish my thought: a man who was not a human being so much as an ambition-beast.
    â€œThe feeling is mutual, isn’t it?” he said.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œYou hate DeVere.”
    I laughed. “Not at all.”
    â€œI think you do. I think you despise him, and you haven’t figured out a way to express it.”
    Like most people, I resent accurate insight into my own personality, but I had the sense to acknowledge this. I managed to laugh again, and said, “You could be right.”
    â€œI’m going to accept the award, Stratton,” he said. “Please don’t try to stop me. I don’t feel proud. I need the money.”
    There was that fluttering light again, like the beginning of a migraine. “You’re honest, at least.”
    â€œDo you realize I’ve spent the last six months designing sandboxes for an arts school in Berkeley? My wife’s been working for the phone company—”
    And I myself, he did not have to say, did not need the money, as everyone knew.
    Except that, in truth, I could certainly use the money. My family had a secret—many secrets.
    â€œI’ve been in therapy lately,” Peterson said. “I’ve been depressed.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that,” I said, worried about this man I found myself liking.
    â€œI’m just a typical emotional wreck. Bad dreams, insomnia. It’s too much to expect you to understand. Your work deserves the award. But I need it.”
    Afterward, out on the street, North Beach was a brilliant study of colors, brakelights, shop windows. The air was cool, and scented with espresso, deisel exhaust, garlic, and the faintest tang of the Pacific.
    Years of suppressed anger, years of careful good manners, were stored in me.
    Margaret had been right. I had always been, in a very ordinary, unremarkable way, superstitious. I had no firm beliefs, in fact I scoffed at seers and psychics, wondering why, if they could visualize the future so clearly, they needed to earn a living reading palms. Certainly a clairvoyant could pick a winning