“Lady Macbeth wouldn’t wear pants.”
“Listen to me, Dad—you can’t be trying to screw a gangster’s wife. It’s suicidal.”
“And you’re not listening to me.” He glanced toward the restrooms to make sure Graciella wasn’t on her way back. “It’s not about screwing and banging and—where did you get such a filthy mouth? It’s not about sex. I haven’t used my dick in so long I wouldn’t know where to find it. I sent it out for a pack of Camels in 1979 and it never came back.”
“I really don’t want to be talking to my father about his dick.”
“Irene, this is about finding someone. You find someone and you make them the most important person in your life—even if just for a little while. A day! An hour even! Tell me how that’s a bad thing.”
“The bad thing is when the important person’s husband shoots you in the back of the head.”
“Fair point,” he said. He still had one eye on the entrance to the restrooms.
“What am I doing here, Dad? I’m the last person you should bring along if you want to stay with this woman.”
“She’s coming back,” Dad said. “I just need to know one thing—do you like her?”
Irene sighed. “I kinda do, actually.”
“Perfect,” he said.
And suddenly Irene realized that she’d been tricked into something. What, she had no idea.
—
She’d discovered a fact of modern life by standing at a cash register for hours: mindless work could nevertheless fill up your mind, like radio static. If she stayed busy—pushing canned goods down the chute with her left hand while busily ten-keying the prices with her right, making small talk, sorting cash—then she didn’t have to think about what day it was, what time certain flights landed, or how she was going to die alone.
“You getting a cold, doll?” Phyllis asked from the next register.
“I’m fine,” Irene lied.
Phyllis harrumphed. She was a champion harrumpher.
Irene had stayed off the computer for four days, a new record since the day it arrived. Her father was delusional about choosing to fall in love, but maybe the opposite was true: you could choose not to fall in love. All she had to do was keep totaling the cans of Aldi cola (twenty-two cents apiece), keep boxing the groceries, and send each customer out of the store with a cheery goodbye.
“Kill the wabbit,” Irene said.
The customer, a woman who was too old to date her father by twenty years, said, “Pardon?”
“Nothing,” Irene said, and presented her the receipt as if it were a winning lottery ticket. “Have a nice day.” On to the next customer.
But there was nothing on the conveyor belt. Irene looked up, and the next customer was a man in a business suit.
“Joshua? What are you—?”
He put a finger to his lips.
She stepped around the deck of the aisle, embarrassed by her polyester uniform, her pulled-back hair. She hadn’t even put on mascara. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Without saying a word he stepped to her. Raised his eyebrows. Waited.
Shit. He was right. No more words.
She pulled his face to hers and kissed him.
9
Frankie
How the hell did coaches stop themselves from killing their star players? Frankie wondered. At first you’re in love with everything they can do for you. You start dreaming about glory. You can hear the roar of the crowds. But then you start depending on them. You need them. And eventually, as the training wears on, the star begins to doubt you. They have ideas of their own. And every time they don’t do what you ask them to do, you feel like they’re taking something away from you. Stealing glory.
“Listen, Matty. All you have to do is watch me open the safe, then come tell me the combination. If you don’t practice, it’s never going to work. Trust me. I’ve been through this.”
“I am practicing,” Matty said. He sat on the safe, arms around his stomach, staring at the garage floor. “Just…not in front of you.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s not you. I can’t do it in front of anybody.”
“How do you know unless you try? I’m beginning to think you don’t have what it takes, Matty.”
“I’ve gone really far, Uncle Frankie. The past couple weeks. All on my own. So I’m ready to try Mitzi’s Tavern.”
Frankie was stunned. “Right now?”
“Tonight. Or tomorrow night. It depends.”
“On what?”
The kid flushed red.
“Jesus, okay,” Frankie said. “You do what you do. I believe in you. You’re my Walter Payton, Matty. I know you can bring this home for us.” He rubbed a hand across his face. He was sweating again. Was he sounding too desperate? “Just let me know if I can help. Or something.”
“I just need one thing,” Matty said.
Yes!
“Name it,” Frankie said.
“I need money,” he said. “Fifty bucks.”
“What? Why?”
“Please. You can take it out of my cut.”
“All right. All right. If my star needs cash, cash he will receive.”
The summer of 1991, he made the garage into his own private Bellagio. He’d gotten ahold of a real roulette wheel that was used by St. Mary’s church for their Vegas Night fund-raiser, as well as a felt cloth layout with all the bet markings on it, and set it up on a table that was the right height. He even borrowed a box of chips from his dad’s stash, just for flavor. Then, for hour after hour, he’d spin the wheel, send the “pill” rolling along the track, and then try to push it, just like he pushed the pinball around on the Royal Flush game at the skating rink.
Grabbing the pill, though, was a lot trickier than moving the pinball. For one, it was lighter, just an ounce or so, and too much of a nudge sent it flying out of the wheel. But worse, it was plastic. Frankie had always had a better feel for metal.
He couldn’t affect the little white ball at all. It would bounce over the frets, fall into a random number…and sit there, ignoring him. “Fuck you,” he said to it. “Fuck you and your little white ass.”
He would have given up immediately if it weren’t for Buddy’s vision. Loretta was pissed about how much time he was spending in the garage. She had two toddlers in the house, getting wilder by the day. There was no way they could afford twins, not on his salary. Bellerophonics was failing, and he was borrowing from the Pusateris to keep it afloat. He’d told no one this.
He needed a win. He needed those stacks and stacks of chips.
If, according to Buddy, Future Frankie could control a roulette table, that meant Current Frankie just had to learn how, right? But nothing was happening. It wasn’t “hard work,” because it wasn’t working at all. The ball wouldn’t even slow down for him in the track. The damn thing wouldn’t so much as tremble in his presence.
“Fuck you!” he screamed at it. “Stupid fucking piece of plastic crap!”
He went to Buddy and told him the deal was off. “Your vision’s bullshit,” he said.
Buddy said nothing. He was on the back patio, doing his newspaper thing, flipping back and forth through the pages, frowning and shaking his head, like an old man who can’t believe what the world’s come to.
“Buddy, look at me. Hey.” Frankie put his hand in front of the page. Buddy swung his big face toward him. “I can’t do it,” Frankie said.
“You’re guaranteed to win,” Buddy said.
“If it’s guaranteed, why bother to learn to push at all? Maybe I just win by luck.”
Buddy shook his head. “No. You drive me to the casino. You play for two hours. You get stacks of chips. The only way that happens is if you control the ball, just like you used to at the rink.”
“It’s not working,” Frankie said. “I can’t do it with that stupid fucking plastic thing.”
“Be the ball,” Buddy said.
“That’s fucking Caddyshack,�
�� Frankie said. Buddy had watched that movie dozens of times.
“Love the ball.” Buddy stood, folded the paper.
“Yeah, but what if I choose not to do it?” Frankie said. “Your vision can’t make me.”
“Shut up,” Buddy said.
“But—”
Buddy wheeled on him, jabbed a finger in his chest. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Three angry jabs. He was near tears.
“Jesus Christ,” Frankie said. “Fine. I’ll try.”
He went back to his garage, listened to the clacking spin of the wheel, the tinkety-tinkety-tink of the pill as it found its home. Nothing he did slowed it down or sped it up or bounced it into the numbers he wanted. “Motherfucker!” he screamed.
His problem in the past had always been confidence. Just having somebody looking at him while he worked was enough to make him nervous and lose his touch. And if those people wanted him to fail, if their negative vibes were coming at him like fucking Astounding Archibald’s on The Mike Douglas Show? Game over.
But maybe this was a different problem.
Love the ball.
Frankie picked up the roulette ball, held it up to his face. Took a breath.
“I would like to apologize for calling you a motherfucker,” he said.
He began to carry the pill around with him. He’d roll it around in his palm until he could feel it warming to his blood. He’d clean it with chamois. He talked to it the way he used to talk to the twins when they were in Loretta’s belly, telling them the story of Castor and Pollux.
Loretta, speaking from somewhere on the other side of her belly, said, “What did you just call them?”
“Castor and Pollux? The greatest twins in Greek myth?”
“Hell no.”
He’d have to win her over. The same with the pill. “Just tell me where you want to go,” he told the ball. “Or just the neighborhood.” Predicting the exact number where it landed paid thirty-five to one, but that level of precision wasn’t required, and wasn’t even the smartest way to go about robbing the bank. He could bet one of the dozens (say, numbers one through twelve) and that would pay off two to one, and no one would suspect him. Once he got confident he could play a street of three adjacent numbers for an eleven-to-one payout, or a two-number split for seventeen to one.
The problem, of course, was that adjacent numbers were never adjacent on the wheel. The one and the two, for example, were across the wheel from each other. There was one bet, though, that could help him out.
“I have a suggestion,” he mentioned to the pill casually, as it contemplated its drop into the wheel. “Why not drop into the basket?” The basket was a special bet that paid off eleven to one on the single-zero, one, or two—and the single-zero and the two were side by side on the wheel.
He watched the pill lose momentum, and then plunk across the frets like a banjo player. Finally it came to rest like an egg on a pillow.
Zero.
After he finished whooping and jumping around, he picked up the pill and kissed it. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “Good job.”
He sat in his van a half block from Mitzi’s Tavern, watching guys walk into the bar sad and exit sadder, like penitents going to confessional and coming out sentenced to a thousand Hail Marys. Fridays were payday—or rather, pay up day. A lot of these guys owed their whole paychecks to the Pusateris and were hoping they’d be allowed to take a slice home.
Frankie was one of those guys. His problem was, he didn’t have the dough. Again.
Nick’s rule was, Don’t make me come looking for you. So even if you couldn’t cover your payment, you had to show up to Mitzi’s, explain yourself, and take your punishment. First time, you got her I’m-Not-Angry-I’m-Disappointed speech. Second time—he didn’t know what happened the second time. But he was about to find out.
He walked across the street like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest.
Inside, it was so dark he could barely make out Barney behind the bar. Frankie took a stool and waited for his eyes to adjust. “Is she free?” he asked. He knew she wasn’t. He could hear Mitzi in her office, yelling at the guy ahead of him.
Barney didn’t look up. He was squinting at a Reader’s Digest over the tops of his glasses, which somehow made him look even more like Droopy Dog.
“Bud Light,” Frankie said.
Barney turned a page. “You won’t be here that long,” he said.
Frankie started to object, then figured there was no percentage in pissing the man off. “Good point,” he said.
Here was the difference between Frankie and the poor bastard getting chewed out, and all those other bastards who’d gone in before him: Frankie was practically family. Teddy had worked for Mitzi’s brother back in the day, and Frankie had been coming in this bar since he was a kid. Mitzi liked him. That fondness, he figured, was credit that could earn him a grace period of at least a week. Even if Teddy had no idea this was happening.
The door to her office opened, and a young guy with tight jeans and an even tighter shirt came out. A big Italian goombah, six-foot-something, with too much gel in his hair. Tears were running down his cheeks. He hurried out to the door and vanished in a flash of daylight.
“You’re up,” Barney said.
He eased himself off the stool. The room telescoped, and the path to her door became a great distance. His legs walked it against his will.
The Alton Belle floated in the shallow Mississippi like a star-spangled wedding cake. It was a replica of a nineteenth-century paddle wheel steamer strung with lights and pulsing with disco music, promising some kind of Mark Twain–meets–Vegas grandeur. Frankie was so nervous he felt like throwing up.
Buddy, though, was vibrating with excitement.
“This is how you saw it, right?” Frankie asked. They hadn’t left the car yet. Frankie had driven the four and a half hours, of course, because Buddy had never learned to drive.
“Exactly,” Buddy said. “This is exactly right.”
“Stacks of chips,” Frankie said.
“Stacks,” Buddy confirmed.
They joined the stream of people walking the gangplank. They had a half hour before the boat left the dock for its first cruise of the night; by law the casino had to be on a functional, moving ship. Inside, it was incredibly loud, bells jangling as if every God damn player was a winner, just scooping coins from the slots. Even with all the mirrors, the place seemed much smaller than Frankie had pictured it. Every available space was crammed with slot machines, and every slot machine seemed to have an old person leaning on it as if it were life support.
“Where do we go?” Frankie asked. Buddy didn’t seem to hear him. “Where is the roulette table?” Frankie said, louder.
Buddy shrugged. “I don’t know this part.”
“Wait, there are parts you don’t know?”
“This way,” Buddy said, ignoring Frankie’s panic. The big man pushed through the crowd, Frankie following close in his wake. They were aiming for the middle of the boat, but walking in a straight line was impossible; they kept getting diverted by banks of machines, all clanging, beeping, and flashing for their attention. You could almost fool yourself into thinking you were in a tiny Vegas casino, if not for the customers, who were 80 percent midwestern shit-kickers: John Deere caps and St. Louis Cardinals T-shirts, flip-flops and basketball shorts; even guys in overalls. If the taxpayers of Alton, Illinois, were expecting high rollers, they were in for a disappointment. None of these yokels were James Bond.
Buddy checked his watch, then led them up the grand staircase to the A deck, where they found an array of blackjack tables, a long craps table, and two roulette tables. At the chips window Frankie handed over his life savings—two thousand and five hundred dollars—and the woman handed him back a crushingly small stack of chips in a plastic tray. The entirety of his hopes and dreams was smaller than a box of Girl Scout cookies.
“Where’s yours?” Frankie asked his brother.
“You don’t need any
more,” Buddy said.
“According to the vision,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Buddy said.
Chips in hand, they walked up to the tables. “Which one?” Frankie asked.
Buddy frowned at him.
“Which roulette table?” Frankie clarified.
Buddy studied them both, and then pointed to the one on the left.
“Are you sure?” Frankie asked. “Because you don’t look too sure.”
Buddy said nothing.
They approached the chosen table, Frankie’s fingers tight around the tray of chips. Only one other customer stood at the rail. The croupier, a tall black woman, called for bets. Frankie looked at the wheel and froze, his heart pounding. Frankie grabbed his brother’s arm and yanked him back into the crowd.
“What the fuck is that?” Frankie demanded. Buddy didn’t know what he was talking about. “That wheel! It’s too big!”
Buddy shrugged.
“And the ball’s bigger, too!” Frankie said. “I don’t even know how much it weighs! Why didn’t you tell me they came in different sizes?”
“It’s all going to work out,” Buddy said.
“What fucking use is a fortune-teller who can’t tell me how to win the fucking fortune!”
Buddy grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen to me.”
“What?”
“Stacks of chips. Piled high. That’s what I saw.”
The steam whistle blew, and the floor trembled. The boat was under way for its hour-long cruise.
“Now is the time,” Buddy said. “Right now.” Buddy was so intense. And talkative. He’d barely spoken since Mom died, and now he was issuing orders like General Fucking Patton.
“Okay,” Frankie said. He took a breath. “You saw the stacks, though, right?”
“Shut up,” Buddy said.
Frankie moved up to the table but did not signal to bet. A couple more players had joined in, a woman in a low-cut tank top and her lower-browed boyfriend. The Cro-Magnon placed a couple of twenty-dollar chips on red, and the croupier called for last bets.
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