The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

by Sandra Newman

  “I really want to know. I care about you. Actually, I think I love you.” Tears come to his eyes and he feels triumph. It’s true.

  And, as he’d known it must, her insect nature vanishes. She looks hurt, takes a harsh breath, laughs nervously. “No,” she says, “People don’t say those things to me, you know.”

  He presses it, thrilled: “I love you. Don’t laugh at me.”

  Her manner alters again and she kisses him on the lips. They shut their eyes into a shared long dark pang. When they separate, she takes his hand and vows, with a child’s naive seriousness, trying hard to mean it: “Okay, Jack – I’ll love you, too.”

  7. Perspective: Quito (12 years previously)

  1She is eighteen years old, sitting on a hotel bed alone.

  1.1Urban South America: the armed men in the streets and the bright blue mountains, pollution smelling like beasts in the wet heat.

  1.2In the next room, she hears him humming as he packs.

  2She stares at her chubby, mosquito-bitten arms. A blemish on her knee is clouded maroon; she can smell her sneakers.

  2.1“Oh, you’ll be a heartbreaker someday,” he would say. “Mark my words.”

  3Her briefcase is open, empty, beside her. Although the nightstand drawer is shut, she can picture the unruly pile of dollars there, the chore waiting to be done.

  Her shoulders move, frightened, when he opens the door.

  He stands in the doorway, his face maneuvering. His hand reaches back again for the doorknob. Then he stops and grins as if he’s just now seen her.

  “Whoa, puddytat, we said no long faces.”

  She looks up as far as his open collar, his neck grained scarlet. A plain iron chain there bears a medical tag warning of an allergy to penicillin, and it seems now related to the stifling heat – as if both are components of a term of punishment.

  “I could come with you,” she offers. Her ankle fidgets.

  “Well now. All’s I can say, you sure don’t know my wife.”

  He sits on the bed and takes her briefcase in his lap with studied tenderness, like the toy of a beloved child. She turns away sharply, squints out the window at the sky. A chalky line spreads there where a plane has gone.

  She says, “We’ll work, though, one last time tonight?”

  4She loved that man as teenagers do, too hard, to her cost.

  4.1But he was killed, in the usual way. The blood showing oily against the asphalt, the sirens making the sound of fearful distance: everything grows cold.

  4.2She lay in the grit and could not reach him. She was reaching in her sleep.

  5Her father came to the hospital.

  5.1In him, every gesture was begrudging, suspicious. He was like a tiny, vigilant crab.

  5.2He said, “You’ve had an adventure,” in his dim, couched voice. Her face was bandaged, her jaw wired, she could not answer. She watched him shuffle off and whisper with the nurse.

  5.3“They’d have had you looking like King Kong, had I not come in the nick of time,” he said ever after.

  6Then she went to work with him.

  •It so happened he needed someone suddenly.

  •It so happened his last assistant had died – been shot.

  •It happened in a parking lot, the woman bled to death, it only lacked Denise to lie unconscious at her side.

  Denise would not admit that was strange.

  “You mean it’s not a coincidence,” Dad said to her shut face, laughing.

  6.1They lived and worked twelve years together in that same loveless, bickering vein.

  7When her father was killed, Denise felt a flicker of psychosis.

  7.1Who knows why things happen, everyone knows why some things happen.

  7.2She lay in the grit, in his blood, in the hotel parking lot.

  She cradled him spoon-fashion, like a wife.

  8Eddie would die, too, without learning the above facts.

  17. Dahab: Day Eight

  So they’re sitting at a Fighting Kangaroo spool table, her checkmate of the afternoon spread on the chessboard between them. Empty cans lie on the stacked plates from lunch: somehow they haven’t faced the task of clearing them away. It’s late, and the sun wanes, gentle on the sea.

  She’s watching the queue of tourists at the restaurant shack, frowning as if their beer orders absorb her. Among the usual tanned beach kids is an older man, a myopic geek in unbecoming shorts. Paunchy and dead-white, he stoops and shambles miserably, looking as if he’s stopped here on his lunch break from a software firm. Deesey is captivated, and does not turn or seem to register Eddie’s sally:

  “So, about this you and Dad scenario.”

  It’s something he’s brought up several times: it now has an air of playful ritual. Her previous non-answers have varied from the nondescript (“Perhaps they were office picnics, where I would have met him”) to a detailed recollection of Jack Moffat visiting her childhood home (“It was when we lived in Arizona. I know he came to the house once, he brought us a lobster. He had it in a pail, I do remember, and I was awfully surprised the lobster was green. It had rubberbands around its paws, you know. I think I cried”). This particular episode haunts Eddie because it convinces him on a visceral level that Denise really knew Jack Moffat. His dad was exactly the kind of guy who brought you lobsters in a pail. The little girl would definitely cry and his dad would tell her he was going to set the lobster free in the ocean, or some bullshit, whatever it took. Then God knew what became of the lobster, something frightening.

  Now he’s not after answers, but just fishing for her attention. The prod flops, however: she delivers a Deeseyesque non sequitur:

  “Do you think we could leave?”

  “Leave?” A chill blows through him.

  “I mean, the beach.” She smiles at him, sardonic.

  “No . . . yeah, I mean, I thought you meant . . .”

  “I didn’t mean town.” She adds, “I think I know that man, you see?”

  “Which one?” He turns to look at the bar queue.

  “No, don’t. Don’t stare.”

  “You were staring totally.” He forces himself to look away. “A nerdy guy or a beachy guy?”

  She laughs as if that’s funny, and admits, “Nerdy.”

  “Wow. Is he, like, a goblin? He’s after your liver?”

  “Let’s just say, one of those things where I’d rather not see someone.”

  He thinks about it for a minute, inspecting her expression. That per usual tells nothing. She’s smiling and he almost smiles back, joins her conspiracy, when it hits him with a jolt: the nerdy guy knows her. Ask the nerdy guy, the nerdy maybe-CIA guy knows all about her.

  He has what he’s come to think of as a Benelia Moment, flashing on a spy-movie shoot-out at The Kangaroo. The CIA nerd doesn’t take kindly to detection; draws a gun from his sandal holster. Dashing from spool to spool for cover, Eddie knocks Denise down, takes her bullet, and et cetera. He lets it subside.

  “Why don’t you want to see him?” he says, stalling.

  “Oh, maybe we should just sit tight, after all.”

  “No, honestly, you got to at least tell me that. Or, I’m supposed to cover for you?”

  “Oh, the hell with it.”

  “I mean, maybe I want to meet this gentleman.”

  “Yes,” she says, all tight-lipped, “Yes, I do mean, hell with it.” Then she stands up with such a brisk unequivocal anger Eddie reaches instinctively to stop her, but misses, and she waves and calls: “Michael!”

  Eddie turns sharply, in time to see the pot-bellied geek stagger in the act of opening his beer. He peers first to either side, for other possible Michaels. Then he sees Denise. His face goes strange. He shakes his head and sets out at a precarious trot, making big bug eyes to show his wonderment.

  Denise says to Eddie: “There: you get your wish.”

  Approaching, the geek smirks and holds his beer can up in a clumsy mock-toast. Deesey meets him and squires him back to the spool table, gush
ing: “I was just saying to my friend, what a coincidence. Of all the places.”

  Michael nods, squinting at the chessboard. “It’s such a surprise.”

  His accent is Germanic: he is pasty and narrow-headed. His Las Vegas T-shirt is blotched with sweat. Although he frowns, there is an underlying blankness to his expression. He carries his body, too, with pointed awkwardness, like an embarrassing item entrusted to him by a stranger.

  “This is Jack,” says Deesey. Eddie gets up, but the geek just blinks at him in pained confusion and looks back at Deesey. She carries on, releasing Michael’s arm with a coy shove: “Michael – I didn’t know you took vacations.”

  “Of course I take vacations. But you’re here. It’s strange. Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean . . . you don’t know?”

  She shakes her head. There is a complicated moment in which she glances at Eddie and back at Michael, and her face changes more times than that. Then she says, “Dad’s dead, Michael. He was killed.”

  “Oh, my God. No.”

  “We were playing in Istanbul,” she adds, as if this follows logically. Then her face crumples and at last she begins to cry.

  As soon as she does, Eddie feels the release of some spring in her, all this time tightly compressed. He reaches for her and she lets herself be taken, leans back, slack in his arms. She repeats: “He was killed.”

  “No. How can that happen?” Michael looks down at his feet, in such distress he squeezes his beer can in both hands. “Killed?”

  “Oh . . . muggers, you know. Someone who saw he had a lot of cash. Just like . . .”

  “He was always so paranoid. Yes.”

  “He was right.” Then she begins to shake with laughter. “I was out, and of course I shouldn’t have been out.”

  “Denise, sit down, sit –”

  “Mmm, he used to say, will you be laughing when I’m dead, and I actually, I’m gutted, but – I don’t know what’s so funny.”

  Then Michael too begins to shake with laughter. His eyes remain stubbornly blank, as he jerks and barks, and the sum of this performance is one of such defenceless ugliness that Eddie is chilled. And he feels this somehow justifies him, is a last straw that permits the inapposite question, “Playing in Istanbul?”

  Deesey catches her breath deeply. Michael too falls still and sniffs, looking quizzically at the chessboard. Deesey says, “We’re blackjack players.”

  HOW TO PLAY CASINO BLACKJACK FOR PROFIT

  1Blackjack is the game also known as 21 or Pontoon.

  1.1The aim is to get a hand whose sum is 21, or as near 21 as possible, without going over.

  1.2Each player is dealt two cards.

  1.3You may request as many supplementary cards as you wish.

  1.4However, if the hand goes over 21, you “bust” and lose.

  1.5Picture cards are counted as ten: aces are one or eleven, as the player chooses.

  1.6The combination of a ten card and an ace is called a blackjack and, in most casinos, pays off two to one.

  2In casinos, all the gamblers play against the croupier.

  2.1Croupiers play to predetermined rules.

  2.2This allows gamblers to devise strategies which take those rules into account.

  2.3(For techniques, refer to Appendix A, Pro Blackjack.)

  2.4A skillful player with a suitable bankroll earns in the region of 100,000 dollars a year.

  3All profitable systems are dependent on the ignorance of the casino staff.

  3.1Where law does not prohibit it, gaming clubs will bar skillful players.

  3.2Where law prohibits exclusion on the basis of skill, the casino can make the game unprofitable by various means.

  Disguise and deceit

  4To delay their exclusion, players ape the manners of foolish gamblers.

  4.1They crow about hunches: they agonize pitifully over choices which are actually predetermined.

  4.2“Picture!” they shout with the mob, and “Lucky seven!”

  4.3They have elaborate cover stories: play the oil tycoon, feign alcoholism, flaunt rabbit’s feet.

  4.4Nonetheless, they must play and vary the bet exactly as prescribed, and sooner or later, the security guards swoop.

  5Once a pro has been spotted, his photo goes into a file.

  5.1In some places, all the casinos share information. Thus, by one exposure, the player burns out an entire region.

  5.2After some years of play, the pro must alter his appearance regularly: grow beards, wear hats and specs, dye hair.

  5.3Most of the excitement and the lore of blackjack derives from this amateurish spy routine.

  The Life

  6An average day:

  Waking at noon, the player breakfasts at his cheap hotel. He (profession 90% male) then proceeds to the casino, where he plays cards all day. Lunch and dinner are in the casino restaurant. If there are other players in town, he may meet them after work to discuss blackjack. If not, he plays and plays, until he no longer trusts his judgment. Returning to his hotel, he soon falls asleep.

  6.1Dreams, in the main, center on blackjack.

  7Teams of players take all their meals together, and share rooms: saving on expenses is a crucial part of pro play.

  7.1When the casino finally bars the team, they exhibit hysterical glee.

  7.2In a mood of careless jollity, they fly to a new exotic city, where the identical routine begins de novo.

  7.3Casinos are open seven days a week.

  8It’s a boring job with long hours.

  8.1Professional blackjack players curse and hate their profession.

  8.2“When are we going to be replaced with trained monkeys? Roll on, the trained monkeys!”

  9Still, when pro gamblers leave the game, they will be found:

  •running racetrack betting schemes with computerized predictions

  •playing video poker machines, to an exact system

  •suing casinos which have illegally barred them

  9.1Denise had lived in this environment from age twelve.

  Chat

  Michael stayed through the afternoon, reminiscing about the departed father, Peter Cadwallader, about old times and “powerful” games. Denise dried her eyes, warmed to the theme, became animated. Soon they were discussing the minutiae of blackjack: the spread in Avignon, the riffle in Perth.

  “Well, ace depletion is obviously a fact, but it only means subtracting from the running count –”

  “But this means no true count!”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Oh! I don’t know where you play, to have counts like this!”

  Eddie fetched beer. He cleared the chessboard and took it back to reclaim the deposit. He went for a walk unannounced, but no one asked where he’d been. Finally, he settled down to just, undergo suspense.

  1She would take him with her. They would roam the world, gambling.

  2Denise in Monte Carlo, Vegas, in hotel beds.

  3The roulette wheel spins, gorillas eye Eddie’s stack of chips in impotent rage.

  4“You’re a natural,” Denise whispers, awed by his quick grasp.

  5He would scream, he would beg. She loved him, she had said so. He would hold her to that! She shouldn’t have fucking lied!

  6When is this Frankenstein monster going to get the message? Hello! I want to talk to my girlfriend, alone!

  At last he was emptied. He stared, undone, at the darkening surf.

  At last Deesey too stared impartially at the darkening surf. Michael finished what he had to say about baccarat, fell still, yawned.

  The sunset was purple and dull: The Fighting Kangaroo had closed its shutters. Above, the stars had come out boldly, avid in the absence of rival lights.

  “I guess –” Denise said finally, and stood.

  Michael sprang up after. “It is very good to see you.”

  She took his hand – then kept it for a moment, snagged. “Where are you headed?”


  “Macau. Macau tomorrow!”

  “No, but they changed the rules.”

  “Ah – the rules are back. Ronnie’s playing there. The rules are back!”

  “Well.” She let his hand go. They said brief goodbyes. Michael shook Eddie’s hand and walked off, poring over his steps in the sand.

  Deesey turned to Eddie then, said, “I suppose.”

  And she scowled seeing Eddie’s face.

  And he was cold in his shorts, bereft and weak: as if he’d been opened.

  All she could say was, “I’m sorry, you must have been bored to tears.” She only had to touch him, but she turned to go. He followed her down the beach.

  And they were walking, barefoot in firm sand. The occasional stretch of water ringed their toes, and they talked with estranged, parallel gazes out at the sea, as if what they missed were the few, far, sand-colored lights of Arabia, which rose and gave way with the floating waves.

  Release

  “My father started playing when I was seven or thereabouts. I was at boarding school – not a happy time. Well, finally I coerced him into taking me for the summer, that was in Las Vegas and a bit in Korea. In Korea I started playing, you know, I was only thirteen but I was bigger than most of the croupiers. So, that’s been more or less my life.