“Check this out—I got you, man.”
He was displaying me his cellphone, which had an image of me photographing him earlier that day. I didn’t keep in mind him, nor did I recall already having stopped to take his image, however he was actually proud he’d “gotten me back.”
A handful of toes from the place we had been standing, a trio was posing for a digicam mounted to a robotic arm at a photobooth sponsored by Ford: a person in a plaid sport coat with a white boutonniere, and a pair of ladies in turbulent neon orange and blue-ombre attire with matching hats and luggage. The purse that went with the blue gown was coated in a form of artificial fuzz, nearly like a Pomeranian’s fur. Derby outfits will be raunchy feats of energy clashing: an ornate, psychedelic reskinning of genteel nation membership prep. I later realized the robotic arm may need been one of many identical ones they use within the Ford Louisville Meeting Plant, just a few miles down I-65.
My dad couldn’t make it to the Derby this yr—he was due at his fiftieth faculty reunion. He usually saves all of his change all year long in an enormous glass jar on his dresser, then cashes it the primary week of Could and bets the sum on the observe. Lately he’s been devising advanced Superfecta bets for the primary race—wagering on which horses will take the highest 4 spots, so as—together with a sequence of backups and hedges.
Final yr we didn’t get fortunate, however this yr one of many mixtures was a success. Counterintuitively, the payout was lower than the entire we wagered within the first place: all 4 of the highest finishers—Sovereignty, Journalism, Baeza, and Last Gambit—had superb odds. We received however didn’t win. I heard this grievance from one other particular person earlier within the afternoon. Regardless of the rain turning the observe right into a sludge pile, generally a recipe for chaos, the favorites stored profitable all day.
