The Stallion (1996) Read Online Free PDF Page A

butchers for more than thirty-five years, and I’ve outlived most of them. Mostly by not doing what they say I have to do. You know what? I’m ninety-five goddamned years old. Anne, honey, don’t live to be this old. It isn’t worth it.”
    “No?”
    “No. Think of what you lose! Jesus, Anne, do you realize Elizabeth has been gone forty-four years! My son has been gone more than twenty years. Now your mother…” He shook his head. “Sally was a wonderful woman. She was a good wife to my son—”
    “A good mother to me,” Anne interrupted.
    “Yes, of course. That’s why you came to see me, isn’t it? To share memories of—”
    “No,” said Anne with brutal severity. “I came to find out if after all these years you would admit the truth.”
    “What truth…?”
    “You’re not my grandfather, you egregious old liar.”
    “Anne!”
    “You’re my father, damn you!”
    “Anne, for God’s sake—”
    “When people are dying, they tell the truth. Even the law of evidence acknowledges that.” She reached for the bottle and renewed her glass of Tio Pepe. “When she was dying, my mother told me about you and her. Loren Two knew he was not my father, and he never told me. You never told me.”
    “Don’t judge us, Anne,” the old man pleaded. “You know what my son was. You found out during the stockholders meeting, thanks to that rotten goddamned—”
    “Thanks to Angelo Perino,” she interrupted, “whose word is better than yours.”
    “You can’t understand,” said Number One tearfully. “Sally was so beautiful, so wonderful, and Loren Two was so incapable of—”
    “So you solved the problem in the most direct way,” said Anne coldly. “And to be altogether frank, it’s a matter of indifference to me. I made a life for myself outside the orbit of this corrupt parvenu family. But it would have been nice to know I was your daughter and not to have believed all these years I was the daughter of a weakling who killed himself. All these years I’ve had to wonder, and Igor has had to wonder, if there wasn’t something evil in my genes, a predilection for self-destruction. It would have been nice to know I was not his daughter. That would have been nice … Dad.”
    “You must not talk about this,” said Number One. “In the first place, no one will believe you.”
    “I suppose Loren Three doesn’t know,” she said. She smiled and shook her head. “That worthless little man turns out to be my nephew, not my brother.”
    “Loren is not a worthless man,” said Number One, his face rigid with anger.
    “Your male descendants do you no honor,” she said coldly. “You should rely more on your female ones. I’m a far better person than Loren. And so is Betsy. Betsy and I would not arrange to have a man beaten half to death. That’s what Loren did. He’s lucky to be alive. Angelo Perino is connected, you know. He could have Loren swatted like a fly.”
    “Don’t overestimate the wop. And don’t underestimatewhat you call a parvenu family. I built a multibillion-dollar—”
    “And didn’t learn anything in the process, Dad. You’re still a bib-overalls machine-shop tinkerer. And my nephew, as he turns out to be, is a thug.”
    Number One’s face reddened. “Oh? Well, you, my dear Anne, are an ornament. That’s what you are: an ornament purchased by a noble family, in the same way they purchase art and lovely furniture and fast cars. And Betsy is … a nymphomaniac. She’s got a stronger sex drive than any man.”
    “As strong as yours?” asked Anne.
2
    When Number One first saw Cindy in a dress he didn’t recognize her. He hadn’t seen her often, but when he had seen her she had been a racetrack groupie and a test driver, invariably wearing faded, ragged jeans with a sweatshirt as often as not smeared with grease. She had been so fascinated with racing that she had carried a hi-fi around with her and played tapes of Grand Prix cars roaring on straights then lowering to