“Check this out—I got you, man.”
He was showing me his phone, which had a picture of me photographing him earlier that day. I didn’t remember him, nor did I recall already having stopped to take his picture, but he was really proud he’d “gotten me back.”
A handful of feet from where we were standing, a trio was posing for a camera mounted to a robotic arm at a photobooth sponsored by Ford: a man in a plaid sport coat with a white boutonniere and a pair of women in turbulent neon orange and blue-ombre dresses with matching hats and bags. The handbag that went with the blue dress was covered in a kind of synthetic fuzz, almost like a Pomeranian’s fur. Derby outfits can be raunchy feats of power clashing: an ornate, psychedelic reskinning of genteel country club prep. I later realized the robot arm might have been one of the same ones they use in the Ford Louisville Assembly Plant, a few miles down I-65.
My dad couldn’t make it to the Derby this year—he was due at his fiftieth college reunion. He typically saves all of his change throughout the year in a huge glass jar on his dresser, then cashes it the first week of May and bets the sum at the track. Recently he’s been devising complex Superfecta bets for the main race—wagering on which horses will take the top four spots, in order—along with a series of backups and hedges.
Last year we didn’t get lucky, but this year one of the combinations was a hit. Counterintuitively, the payout was less than the total we wagered in the first place: all four of the top finishers—Sovereignty, Journalism, Baeza, and Final Gambit—had very good odds. We won but didn’t win. I heard this complaint from another person earlier in the afternoon. Despite the rain turning the track into a sludge pile, sometimes a recipe for chaos, the favorites kept winning all day.
