On the Nature of Exposition

by Nils Peterson

Exposition

He's sitting in the Corner Tavern adding a couple of lonely beers to his tab.  In comes Herb: "Nils, Let's go to the races."  "Got no money."  "Come anyway."  "Got six bucks for the next two weeks." "Come anyway."  "Where are you going?"  "Yonkers."  "Don't know anything about trotters."  "Come anyway."

So, up the pike, through the tunnel, along the Hudson.  For Nils it's two bucks to get in.  Two bucks lost on the first race.  His last two brings back ten, so he bets five and a twenty comes home and he's flying.  Soon bills bulge his pockets.  He's betting tens, then twenties and they come spinning back in a fine English bringing friends.  On the last race he bets fifty to win at 8 to 1 and comes in second by a nose, but he's still three or four hundred ahead.

On the way back, they hit a couple of bars, those jazz bars in the fifties that used to be in the Fifties and Nils is buying for any stranger with a smile.  They need to eat.  Off to the Stage Delicatessen where Herb, a playwright, knows everybody, so, soon Nils is buying champagne and pastrami sandwiches for a swarm of chorus girls.

Next morning, he wakes up in the Village—last night's horses running their races again inside his skull, his mouth their stable—with less than fifty bucks in his pocket.  Later, walking carefully down the sobering street trying not to jog anything, he says to himself: Give me a sign, a token, some real thing to mark this winning.

Passing Barney's Big Men's Town—Bargains—and there on the "plain pipe racks" a seersucker suit in 44 extra-long for $38.75, so he brings it on home, on the bus.

The Action

Summer school. California. 1965. Walking across campus—young teacher in a seersucker suit jacket, unlikely remains of unlikely winnings at the Yonkers Raceway. He wears a dull, striped, polyester tie. He is thinking about the short story, opening paragraphs, the where, who, and what of them. He smokes a cigar, nerves before class.

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