Balling the Jack

by Frank Baldwin

  It must have been the hottest day of the summer. I spent three bucks an hour on sodas, and by the time 6 P.M. came around I was a whipped dog. Bone-tired, faint from hunger and the heat, blisters on my hands from the metal bars, I rolled the empty cart back to the warehouse and sat down to count my earnings. After subtracting the cost of the cart, the shirt and tie, and all I spent on liquids, my net take for pushing a cart all day, for chatting up the old grumps, simping for tips, melting in the heat and dodging seagulls was minus twelve bucks. At this rate I’d be broke in a few days. Back at the lodging house, the Irish in the lobby smirked as I dragged myself up the stairs.

  I checked out the next morning with just enough for a bus ticket to New York. Dave and his brother had a pad in the city and put me up on the couch the rest of the summer. I got a job waiting tables at a tourist trap near Times Square. Back at the Oceanside, Lottie covered for me, sending letters from my folks on to me at Dave’s place, and letting me send my answers back through her to get a Jersey postmark.

  I had a lot of time the rest of that summer to think about Atlantic City. No two ways about it, my stint as a gambler had been a failure. But it didn’t sour me on the cards. Because it wasn’t the cards that let me down. When I stuck to counting, and my betting limits, I won money. Even with the disaster of the last day factored in, I won much more than I lost. My free spending and my drunken collapse at the end were what did me in. In short, it wasn’t the system that failed me. I failed the system.

  And as the summer wore on, and I made coffee and bussed tables and listened to one tourist after another tell me their New York stories, I took the logic a step further. If the system was sound, and it worked once, it could work again. I filed that away and promised myself that someday I’d get another chance, and when I did I’d be ready for it, and I’d make some dealer somewhere pay for that last night at the Golden Nugget, and for every penny I’d left in that grim town.

  That day has come.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BACHELOR parties come in two kinds.

  The one is just what the girls think it is. The fellas take the groom out and get him loaded. He gapes at a stripper or two, keeps his hands to himself, gets sick all over from the shots, passes out, and they dump him off at home in the morning. Then there’s the other kind. In a half hour I’m due at one of those. Tank’s brother gets hitched in two weeks and Tank is sending him out in style. What figures to go on? You won’t get it out of me.

  First I have to escape from Carter. Ten o’clock Friday night and he’s got me in the office putting together this affidavit. You should see it. Testimony to Regina Garrett’s culinary skills. Written statements from her friends about what a whiz she is in the kitchen, alongside certificates of cooking classes she took twenty years ago and a few photos of her standing with the top chefs in the city—no doubt snapped at some fashion show. Real Perry Mason stuff. Carter briefs Mr. Garrett on the case first thing in the morning and all this has to be ready when he does.

  My plan is to duck out under the guise of getting some dinner, cab it to the place Tank’s rented, go easy on the beers during the show, then pop back and stay as late as I need to. The phone rings.

  “Farrell Hawthorne.”

  “Show starts in ten minutes.”

  “Damn, Tank. Can you stall them?”

  “Hey, we go back, but not that far. They charge by the hour. Just get your ass in a cab and get over here.”

  “I’m out the door.”

  I stack everything in a neat pile on the desk as Carter marches in, clearing his throat.

  “Um, Tom …”

  Uh-oh. Whenever Carter calls me “Tom,” I can hear the theme to Deliverance starting up.

  “Change of plans, Tom. I just got off the phone with Mr. Garrett and he wants a midnight meeting on this motion. I need it all together, with exhibits, when he gets here.”

  “Sir, I’m due uptown in ten minutes.”

  “Cancel.”

  “I can’t, sir. I can go and come back, but I have to be there.”

  “What is it?”

  I pause.

  “A bachelor party. I can get you in, sir.”

  He laughs. “Sorry, Reasons, but your buddies will have to fill you in on this one.”

  I dig in. “Sir, I really can’t miss it.”

  “Enough. We’re not about to blow off Winston Garrett. What would you rather do, Reasons—win this case, or stare at a bunch of tits?”

  “Actually, sir …”

  “Now get to work.”

  He bangs out of the room. The phone rings again.

  “Farrell Hawthorne.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m fucked, Tank. I can’t make it.”

  “Make it. Miss every other one if you have to, but make this one.”

  “If I leave now it’s my ass, Tank. You guys go on without me.”

  I hang up the phone and sit back down. Christ. Four years of school so I can sit in here on Friday night, dead sober, sifting photos of the Grinch. Twenty minutes later Tank is on the line again. Behind him I can hear music and hollering.

  “Sisters, Tom. Centerfolds. What these girls can do with a dozen eggs you wouldn’t believe.”

  I hang up the line to cries of “Batter up” as Carter enters the room with more pictures.

  “I’ve got a good one here, Reasons—Regina with Wolfgang Puck. Notice how he seems to be looking at her. Pretty convincing, don’t you think? See that it makes it in.”

  I take the picture without a word.

  WE DON’T FINISH UP until almost midnight. I call the club but the manager tells me the party is over.

  “Hell of a one to miss, son. I never seen a man that happy. They shoulda killed him on the spot.”

  I stare at the wall a few minutes, then walk down the hall to Carter’s office and hand him the affidavit.

  “Do you need me for anything else, sir?”

  “No, that should do it.”

  I turn to leave.

  “Reasons, you’re not sore about missing that party, are you?”

  “No, sir. I know how important this case is to the firm.”

  “Good for you. Prioritizing, Reasons—it’s part of growing up. Knowing what’s important and what isn’t. Besides”—he gives a wink—“you seen one bachelor party, you seen ’em all, huh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the elevator I press my head to the cool wall to keep my temper down. If Carter has been to one real bachelor party in his life I’ll eat my wallet. He’s one of these guys who thinks he had a great time in college, though he put in twenty hours in the library for every beer. A night out to him now is a couple of lite beers, then race to Penn Station for the 8 P.M. train back to the Island.

  Like everyone else in this place, he’s got it backward. He thinks the work is what we’re here for and the rest is filler. If that were the case, I’d never make it through the week. This place is the filler, a way to grind out the bucks for the real life that starts the second I’m through those oak doors. What a shot I had at some real life tonight, too. Fifty years from now, when I’m kicking off, I won’t remember this place or anyone in it. But two sister centerfolds in an eggfest. Now just once before my time’s up I’d like to see that.

  In the street I take a breath of night air and curse my luck. There aren’t many things in this world I like more than a bachelor party, and after the week I’ve had I could use the chance to blow off a little steam. Carter’s been riding me into the ground on this Prego case. We’re due in court in two weeks, so the pressure is on to force a settlement. I should be hearing from the INS guy any day now. For Prego’s sake I can’t help hoping Carter whiffs on the green-card angle, though if he does I’ll have to bring a cot into the office to keep up with all the work he’ll lay on me.

  I start to flag down a cab but change my mind. It’s a nice night. Why not get myself an Oil Can and walk home. I can use the air.

  I can use th
e beer, too. It feels like twenty years since my last one, though really it’s been less than a week. Not only have I been too broke to spring for the suds, I haven’t had the time. The few hours I haven’t been asleep or at the office I’ve been at the kitchen table, plugging away at my card-counting. Tomorrow night it’s back to Gino’s to play for real.

  In the deli I pop the top with quiet ceremony for the store-keep, who pulls a flask of his own from under the counter, nods and joins me in a swig. I hold the taste in my mouth—the metal of the can, the rich lager. Man, that’s good.

  I tell you, I can go a few days without a drink if I have to, but damned if I’ll say it’s healthy. A guy’s body knows what it needs, and you can’t tell me that keeping the beer away, when every cell is calling for it, is doing it any favors. I start the long walk uptown.

  When I reach the Lower East Side I cross over to Bowery so as to pass CBGB’s. I’ve always loved the look of the place, the magic in that crummy awning. A bunch of kids mill around outside, getting psyched for this week’s heroes. I don’t recognize any of the names on the marquee. I cross east to First Avenue and keep walking.

  A little ways up First I find myself at the window of Prego’s deli. Without meaning to I chose a route that took me here. I stop and look in. The place is empty now, quiet, a light still on like they do in the city after closing. I cross myself before I realize what I’m doing. Oh well. Giuseppe needs all the help he can get.

  Thinking about the case steams me up all over again. One of the reasons I’m not long for this legal business is the bad habit I have of stripping each case to the truth at the bottom of it. And the whole truth at the bottom of this one is that a Park Avenue hag mixed the wrong spices and poisoned her friends. Then she made up a story to save her ass. That’s it.

  From that truth a lot of things are going to happen, though, and none of them to the right people. Look at the two principals here—Giuseppe Prego and Regina Garrett. Prego did it all just the way they tell you to. Started at the bottom, worked hard, built a business, raised a family. And Garrett? She got her hooks in a good businessman thirty years ago, when she still had a face on her, and she’s been poisoning the social landscape ever since. Literally, it turns out. But who’s going to win? She is. Why? She has all the money.

  What a system. The villain rides off into the sunset and the good guy gets screwed. If you tried to make a movie like that, the crowd would boo it off the screen.

  Good to know there’ll be a happy ending for the firm, though. We’ll make a killing. In the short run there’s the bucks from this case, and once Garrett starts steering business our way we can get ourselves a whole new floor. Carter will make partner and I’ll get a pat on the back, maybe even a little bonus. My reward for tossing Prego’s dream in the coffin and nailing down the lid. Sure, if it weren’t me, it would just be some other paralegal, but it’s still a dirty business.

  And the core truth I mentioned? The one at the bottom of the whole case? Oh, we’ve seen the last of that. It will be buried somewhere under all the affidavits and motions. Once this is all over, Prego’s welcome to it. He can take it home with him if it makes him feel any better. None of the other parties will have any use for it, that’s for sure. Christ. The whole mess is enough to set a guy drinking, and starting uptown again I stop in at a bodega for a refill.

  When I started at the firm a year ago, I sure didn’t think it would come to this. Back then, I was pretty optimistic about the law. I figured I’d get an inside look at it for a year or two, and if I liked what I saw maybe even go that route myself. Just out of college, money in my pocket for the first time, life was a breeze. Come fìve o’clock, the city was one big happy hour, and who was I to worry about the big picture?

  About now, though, it’s sinking in hard that I really don’t do anything. None of our cases ever goes to court—none of them. Sooner or later we settle. Our lawyers know it and their lawyers know it. Before we do, though, there’s the little matter of a hundred hours to bill. A hundred hours and a quarter million dollars to settle some beef we would have hashed out in fìve minutes in the schoolyard. The last thing on anybody’s mind is the truth. Lately, I’m starting to think all we do is see that money changes hands—and for that we keep a lot of it.

  And the lawyers. I rag on Carter, but at least he keeps his mind on the job. Watch some of the others awhile and you think you’re back in junior high. Sending notes ten feet down the hall because they aren’t speaking to one another. Fighting about office size and copying rights. And the same loser who had his hand up all through high school is in at seven-thirty writing efficiency memos, only now nobody hauls him behind the gym and shows him what’s what.

  I never figured this same petty stuff goes on once you grow up. Maybe after a certain age people don’t change. Maybe we get a little smarter—bone up on the law, business, medicine—but no better, because maybe nobody’s looking to improve the heart. And why should we? There’s no money in it.

  Some nights it all seems okay. I’ll put in a week of long hours on a good case, one of the partners will pat me on the back on the way out, and walking home I’ll get to feeling pretty solid about it all. I’ll crack a beer in the pad, sit in the window, and think this isn’t so bad. Then something good will come on the stereo, “All Apologies,” maybe, and it all bleeds out of me. Any desire for law school, any patience for the tricks at the firm. Looking out the window at the city, the lights, I’ll feel the meter in me ticking, feel everything that’s any good in me slipping away, and no idea how to stop it.

  When those moods hit, and they’re coming more and more these days, the only cure is the Friday bet. Only when I hand Toadie the money and settle in at the bar do I feel the life come back in me.

  I bitch about the firm, but the truth is it’s more than that. It’s not just the law firm that isn’t for me. I look around at what my friends are doing and I feel the same panic coming on. Insurance, ad man, CPA—I can’t work up any enthusiasm for any of it.

  The truth is I don’t want to go to law school and be a lawyer. And I don’t want to go to business school and, well, do whatever the hell you do when you get out. And I don’t want to go into advertising, or publishing, or sell insurance.

  The truth is I can’t think of a thing I want to do, except maybe start up a band, and if you ever heard me in the shower, you’d know the chances of that.

  Kretzky would say I don’t have any work ethic, but it’s not that. In two years I haven’t missed a day of work. Sure, I come in a wreck sometimes, but I’m always at my desk by nine. I’m no slacker.

  It’s not a hardware problem, either. Sit me next to anybody and I’ll hold my own. A college prof? How ’bout that Beowulf? Couldn’t put it down. A guy reading Forbes? I’ll talk economies of scale.

  It’s just that … I don’t know. My problem, I think, is that I don’t believe.

  Here’s what I mean. Jimmy’s dad was a big exec over at Coca-Cola. Spent his whole life in the company, right? Worked his way up from line boss to some kind of chairman. Owns a ton of stock, king of his hometown, the works. A success any way you cut it.

  Well, last week they threw him his retirement bash. Here it is, the end of the line for him, and no doubt he’s looking back on it all and feeling pretty good about himself. And why not? He made his mark. When he started out, the company was a couple of bottling plants. Now look at them—one of the giants of the world. And he had a hand in all that.

  But here’s the thing. I put myself in his place and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking I’m seventy years old, my time’s almost up, and how did I spend my life? Selling a soft drink.

  Because you strip away all the BS and that’s what you got. Fifty years spent getting millions of people across the globe to buy one carbonated syrup mixture instead of another one that’s almost exactly the same. And one that rots your teeth, besides. If I’m Jimmy’s dad I’m thinking all that and I’m looking in the mirror and I’m saying to myself, It wasn’
t exactly walking on the moon, now was it? And I’m reaching for the nearest bottle.

  That’s my problem. I just don’t buy in.

  Kretzky’s always saying how easy we have it, and I never know how to answer him. Because he’s right. Next to what he went through, we do have it easy. I’ve never bought the line that our generation has it so tough. Kretzky’s probably right about the world, too, about it being the same pie it’s always been, and it’s up to us to get out there and grab our slice. It’s just that I don’t have any appetite.

  Not for the pie I see, anyway.

  Kretzky, Dad, Grandpa, their lives were all centered around the wars. Everything else fell into place around them. And it made them different. Spend a few months in the mud with shells landing all around you, I guess a steady job and a house of your own look pretty good. You come home so damn glad to still have your ass on you that you marry and set to work and never waste a minute thinking you might have missed something.

  It’s not the same for us. There’s no war around to keep us in line. We come out of school with a million commercials in our head, a million pictures of how it ought to be. A safe job, a family, our own house? I don’t know anybody who dreams about that.

  I can hear Kretzky now. “That’s the problem with you kids,” he would say. “You think your life has to be some kind of quest. Bah. You go to work, you marry, you raise your kids. When you kick off, the neighborhood turns up with flowers. What more do you want?”