Balling the Jack

by Frank Baldwin

  English wasn’t my strong suit, but with seven weeks left in the term I figured just the luck of the letters should be good for a win, and if I could pull off even one, doing her homework for six weeks would be the bargain of the year.

  Beats me why people think college kids get laid all the time. Before Lisa I was lucky to get lucky twice a term, and I might remember one of those. At Ham Tech, like at a lot of schools, the jocks got the lookers—in our case, all ten of them. The rest of us made out the best we could.

  For the guys who struck out on the grounds, there wasn’t a lot of relief off campus, either. If you weren’t up for dipping into the local high school, you could try your luck down the road at Colgate. You had to watch your ass, though. Their guys didn’t take kindly to outsiders trying to work their stream, and anyway, nothing you could land there was worth taking one in the teeth for.

  So Scrabble it was. What I didn’t know was that Claire had been high school Scrabble champ of Long Island. Knew every word in the language that starts with q. When I showed up in her suite for the first match she had another surprise for me—she came to the table in shorts and a T-shirt. For a skinny girl Claire has quite a chest on her, a combo that kills me even today. Back on the Hill, where I was lucky to see a bare arm between October and March, it just wasn’t fair. She’d lean over to play her tiles and I’d forget any words I was working on. She beat me by two hundred points.

  I knew I had to get serious, so I bought myself a Scrabble dictionary and checked into the library for the first time since they taught us to use the place at Orientation. Nothing like a little incentive to bring out the student in a guy. I put in a couple of hours a night and after a few weeks started closing the gap on her. Lost by a hundred, then fifty, then by just thirty. The last week of the term I thought I had her. She was stuck with fìve and six vowels most of the way, and I pulled ahead near the end. I could barely hold myself in. I was all set to make her pay up then and there, but on her final turn she played out her letters and beat me by three points. I didn’t sleep for a week.

  After such a close call I always figured it was a matter of time before Claire and I went the distance. Most times, if you stay friends with a girl long enough, something winds up throwing you together, if just for one night. You both get drunk, maybe, or one of you gets jilted, and what starts as a consolation hug ends up as the whole nine yards.

  Never happened with Claire, though. I’m not sure about her sometimes. The rest of my friends I know inside out, but there’s something in Claire I can’t quite get to. She seems to come on and sidestep in the same motion. As long as I’ve known her she’s never had a steady. She dates guys two, three times, but nothing comes of it. She’s very … careful. Lately I’m starting to think we may never hook up. Which is fine, too, I guess.

  She comes through the door and gives a wave when she spots me. She slides into the booth and leans across for a quick kiss.

  “Hi, there.”

  “Hi.”

  She’s in a tight blue suit with white hose, her legs together, her blond hair framing her smooth face. She looks straight at me with a cool smile.

  “So tell me again about this magic horse.”

  “Best investment you’ll ever make. He can’t miss.”

  “If you say so, Tom. So why do I feel so uneasy?”

  “Maybe because you don’t cultivate the gambling side of your nature, Claire. You really should. I think you’d be a natural.”

  “Thanks.” She pulls an envelope from her purse, holds it to her chest with both hands, and sighs. “Lean forward.”

  When I do she taps the envelope on my head.

  “Sir Tom, I knight thee for luck.” She sighs again and hands it over. “My bonus, Tom—please make it grow.”

  “Consider it done.”

  I tuck the envelope away and raise my mug.

  “To Spirit,” I say. We clink.

  “To Spirit.”

  FROM PETE’S I CAB down to First and Tenth and cross the street to the ruined awning of Downtown Beirut. In New York there are dives and there are dives. Downtown Beirut is the latter. One forty-watt bulb lights the whole place, which at least keeps you from seeing the art on the walls. Or the beer mugs. I’m a veteran of the East Village but I order from the bottle here, and I’ll walk the twenty blocks back to my place before I’ll use the can. I’ve seen homeless guys get a peek in there and head out.

  The place smells like a swamp and the regulars look as if they haven’t been outside in weeks. The jukebox is as good as you’ll find, but through the ten-dollar speakers all the songs sound the same, and you wind up picking punk just so you can hear it. It’s always eighty degrees inside, the crowd favors nose rings and green hair, and most nights you can count on at least one good fight. I try to make it here once a week.

  I’m on my second beer when Bobby walks in. He tosses me his jean jacket, feints with a right uppercut, and rubs the top of my head.

  “Sixteen dollars, Tom.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sixteen dollars. That’s what I got left. Till post time, anyway, when this horse of ours blows away the field. Buy me a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Bobby was the easiest sale on the team. I knew he would be. He likes any plan so long as he’s in on it, and he said yes to Spirit before I could even tell him the details. I’ve known Bobby six years, and I can’t remember him ever saying No to anything. Friendliest guy I’ve ever met. Hates conflict of any kind.

  At school, we used to express Bobby’s personality in terms of an equation: it was equal to x, where x was equal to the last guy to enter the room. You tell Bobby the Democrats are ruining this country and he’ll say, “Damn straight they are.” He’ll really believe it, too—until he runs into someone who says the Republicans are screwing everything up, at which point he’ll say, “You got that right,” and shout a toast to the Kennedys. Bobby’s not a whole lot of good in a debate, but you won’t find a better drinking buddy.

  If I could have a kid brother I’d make him just like Bobby. Nothing dark or brooding at the bottom of him. Grew up a good Catholic boy and even when he crossed over to the pipe in school he stayed straight and clean inside. He’s a little guy, like I said earlier. Five feet three. Keeps a chip on his shoulder about it, but it comes out in all the right ways. A scrappy athlete, second or third one picked when choosing teams. Then there’s the way he can hold that piss. Damnedest thing you ever saw.

  My only worry about Bobby is his girl Polly. She’s perfect for him, and you hate to see that. He’ll be the next of us to drop, I figure, though on the bright side Jimmy’s sideshow with Linda has probably bought Bobby another year with the gang. I worry if Polly hits him with an ultimatum, though. Shutting off a guy’s supply can make him do crazy things, and Bobby never had a girl at school.

  He pulls an envelope from his shirt, drops it onto the bar and slides it over to me. I reach for it but he keeps his hand on it.

  “Before I give it over, Tom …”

  “What?”

  “Cost of doing business with me—one movie opening.”

  “Christ, Bobby. You just gave us one the other night.”

  He starts to pull it back. “If you don’t want it …”

  “All right, you win. Hit me.”

  He smiles. “Close your eyes.”

  “Closed.”

  “Okay. The scene is a park bench in daytime. Two Hasidic Jews sit at either end, hunched over their books. It’s dead quiet. Suddenly, a big long-haired teen skates into the picture, Pearl Jam blasting from a boom box on his shoulder. He stops to tie his skates and sets the box on the bench between the two readers. Doesn’t even turn it down. He takes his time with his laces, lets a full song play through, then picks up the box and skates off. The Hasidic guys look after him, shaking their heads. Finally the one speaks up:

  “‘Doesn’t compare to their early stuff.’”

  I give Bobby the thumbs-up as Tank comes in, waking a few of
the regulars by slamming the door behind him.

  “Guys.”

  He nods at us, wipes the sweat off his face, takes a drink of my beer, and tosses an envelope onto the bar.

  “This is a week’s pay for me, Reasons. Your horse blows this one, I’ll beat him up myself.”

  Either you love Tank or you hate him. His charm is his lack of charm. At the end of a date he’ll ask a girl straight out if she wants to fuck. Doesn’t see a thing wrong with that.

  “How’s work?” I ask.

  “On my ass.”

  Tank sells policies for a big insurance company. A year ago he got ripped on poker night and made us all clients. Our net worth wasn’t a thousand bucks for the lot of us but we walked around with policies worth a hundred grand. Till the premiums came due, anyway. Then we all promptly defaulted and the head office called Tank onto the carpet for some explaining.

  Tank will never end up on the shrink’s couch. He makes it through life by keeping things simple. The great event of the twentieth century, for him, was Namath’s guarantee in Super Bowl III. The low point was the day the Mets traded Seaver. Tank puts on his suit to U2 in the morning and takes it off to the Who at night. In between, he’ll wash down the Mets, Knicks, or Jets with a six-pack. You don’t need a degree to figure out his moods, either. If he’s depressed the company is working him too hard, or he hasn’t gotten any lately, or the Jets lost on Sunday. Jet losses he takes hardest of all, which makes December a tough month for him.

  “Buy me a beer, Reasons. I’ll go put on some tunes.”

  I owe Tank big when it comes to music. If it weren’t for him I’d still be a Styx fan. The big rub to growing up on army bases is that you listen to the worst music in the world. Top 40 or bust. I hit college thinking Casey Kasem was the balls. Couldn’t name you one Hendrix tune, couldn’t tell you who the Clash were, but I could sing everything the Little River Band ever did. Jesus. Even now it’s a little hard to admit.

  Tank wandered into my room that first day, saw my box of tapes, and made me toss them all out before anyone else spotted them. That first semester he made it his personal mission to bring me up to speed.

  What a charge it was to hear real music after the stuff I grew up on. My head about flew off. Rock ’n’ roll had always been a couple stanzas of gentle rhymes and a chorus you could sing along to. I never dreamed there were bands out there like X, or Hüsker Dü, who play it all a lot faster, a lot harder, with words you can’t always understand, or print if you can.

  Tank taught me well. By the end of the term the gang trusted me to put on an album, and by spring I could throw together a pretty fair party tape, or be counted on to deliver at the jukebox. These days I can hold my own with anyone.

  Tank returns and takes a swallow of beer.

  “Now that you have my dough, Reasons, how about a shot and a head butt to seal this thing right.”

  I order tequilas all around. Tank really steps into the head butt, and I’m so woozy from the force of it I need the shot to set me straight. After we toss them back we raise our mugs.

  “To Spirit,” I say, still trying to focus.

  “To Spirit,” says Bobby.

  Tank puts up his hand.

  “To fuckin’ Spirit.”

  I HAVE A GOOD BUZZ going as I hop a cab uptown, and once inside I roll down the window to let the rushing air clear my head. My last stop tonight will be Gentleman’s, an old man’s bar across the street from Jimmy’s financial fìrm. I’m hoping Jimmy leaves his trading buddies at the office. Not just because they’re pricks, either. I have one tough sell job ahead of me, and I’ll need him one-on-one to pull it off.

  Jimmy said last night he’s good for a grand, but I hope to bring him in for a lot more. If I can get him to lay out seven thousand I’ll be in the clear, all the dough I need for the match in hand. That’s a big if, I know, and rattling up First Avenue, past hospital row and the UN, I try to figure an angle I can work.

  In the old days Jimmy was an easy touch. If I needed a favor I softened him up with a few jokes and he came across. A year of marriage has pretty much killed his sense of humor, though. Hard to believe, because back in school nobody liked a good joke as much as Jimmy. Hell, one of his best ones came at my expense.

  Freshman year I signed on to cover sports for the school paper. My first day on the job they handed me the football team. I was all gung ho until I saw the smiles around the room, and started thumbing the back issues the editor tossed me.

  Ham Tech football had been terrible forever. I mean terrible. Only a few fossils on the faculty could remember a winning season, and a recent class made it through all four years to graduation without seeing a victory. Not that anyone would have been there to see it. On a sunny day a game might draw a hundred fans. As for the stories in the paper, only the players themselves bothered to read them. Not exactly a plum beat.

  The season I covered them they lived up to their rep and then some. With our soft schedule, all we needed was a couple guys who knew which way to run with the ball. No dice. We lost our first nine games, and heading into our season finale at Williams, we were primed to finish winless again. The week of the game a few players I knew from the dorm promised me a night of beers if I could write a story that made them laugh. Williams was a rival, or what passed for a rival in our parts, because they were a little liberal arts school just like us and about as bad on the field. I figured what the hell, nobody gave a damn, so I sat down with a six-pack and wrote the piece. I played it straight until the end, then slipped in a few paragraphs about Williams’s freshman quarterback. I said he was having doubts about his intensity because one of the linemen across the ball was a fag lover from high school, and he wasn’t sure he could control himself if they wound up together on the bottom of the pile. I made up a few quotes to add weight to the story and filed it right at the deadline.

  My editor was a drunk whose idea of a good piece was one that hit the line count. He was pretty far along when I dropped it on his desk, and after counting out thirty-three lines he signed off on it.

  The paper came out Friday morning and all the players loved it, though as word got round to the administration they didn’t show quite the same sense of humor. A little chat with the editor would have been the end of it, but Jimmy got it into his head to road-trip to Williams Friday night with a hundred copies and drop them all over campus. He even managed to slip one under the door of their president.

  The morning of the game the shit hit the fan. Their president called it a “new low” in college journalism and demanded an apology. I wanted the paper to issue a statement saying we stood by our story, but they canned me instead. Might have been worse, but when the dean called me in I claimed I had a source my conscience didn’t allow me to reveal.

  That was all she wrote for my sportswriting career, though I did get that night of beers. As for Jimmy, he got off scot-free. Thought the whole thing was a pisser, and to this day I’ve never paid him back.

  I walk into Gentleman’s to find him alone at the bar and in high spirits. He slides a beer to me.

  “Why the great mood?” I ask.

  “Linda okayed the horse money. Not only that—after the tumble I gave her last night, I should be squared away till the weekend.”

  We raise our mugs. “To Demi Moore,” I say.

  “Bastard.” He pulls an envelope from his suit and hands it over.

  “Here you go. Now tell me more about Robo Horse.”

  “Jimmy, we’ll never get a chance this good. This baby is a lock.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  I look up at the ceiling, real casual.

  “You know, Jimmy, there’s no reason to stop yourself at a grand. I didn’t.”

  He looks at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I did a little borrowing, and I’ve got seven thou on her myself.”

  “Seven grand?”

  “You could come in for the same.”

  “Seven thousand dollars o
n a horse? You’re crazy. Linda would kill me.”

  “Not if she didn’t know.”

  “What?”

  I pull my chair closer.

  “Hear me out, Jimmy.” He eyes me warily but lets me talk. “She’d never have to hear about it until after you won. You slip me the money Thursday without marking it down in the book. Spirit comes in a winner Friday night, you get your fourteen grand, then you sit her down and explain it to her. You know the drill—you lost your head, you don’t know what got into you, blah, blah, blah, but the good news, dear, is we’re seven grand richer, go buy yourself something nice.” I spread out my hands.

  “And if he loses?”

  “Jimmy, if there were any chance this horse would lose I wouldn’t bring you in, not even for a grand. I’m telling you, it’s the tip of a lifetime.”

  He shakes his head but I can see he’s mulling it over. I order more pints and close in.

  “Jimmy, who pulls down the bucks in your house?”

  “Me.”

  “And who’s always telling me how bland his life is? How little excitement he’s getting?”

  “Me.”

  “Well, here’s a shot at some real excitement, Jimmy. Take it.” He takes a long pull off his new pint.

  “But seven grand, Tommy. They don’t make doghouses that big.”

  “Do I have to hit you over the head with it? This horse is not going to lose, Jimmy. Jesus.” I look away down the bar and mumble under my breath.

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “What did you just say? And why are you shaking your head?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  I sigh.

  “I was just wondering, Jimmy, if you ever get tired of five-and-diming it. A few years ago you would have been all over this. Hell, you’d be trying to talk me into doubling the whole works. Now a hot tip falls in your lap, I give you a chance to cash in, and you’re not even going to pull the trigger.” I shrug and shake my head. “Hey, it’s up to you. Just makes me sad, is all.”