by Mark Dunn
Jed thought about this for a moment, and then he said, “I understand. I’ll just have to ask somebody else. I’ll ask a bunch of somebody elses. Excuse me. I’m going over to Caesars Palace and stand by the big fountains and pose my question to folks who walk by.”
This he actually did. He reported back that afternoon that twenty-three people had said “red” and twenty-five people had said “black.” He discounted three of the people who had said black since they were, racially, black, and obviously exercising a prideful ethnic bias. He discounted another man who said “black” when he admitted that “red” to him carried Communist undertones. A different man, the professorial type, corrected the question: “You mean The Red and the Black. Stendhal’s 1830 psychological classic. An excellent read, my boy.” This man’s companion was equally unhelpful; his answer to the question “Red or black?” was “Red when I play checkers, but I do like my coffee black.” The final adjusted count was Red: 23, Black: 21. Red it was.
At first I was torn. I wanted to be there to support Jed, but I knew that it would probably end up being the most difficult couple of minutes of my life. Lorna couldn’t bear it. Neither could Babs. They escaped that evening to Sultan’s Table to hear Arturo Romero and his Magic Violins. I couldn’t leave Jed to face this life-altering event alone, so the decision was made for me.
We approached the table. There were a couple of busty blondes there who were all smiles and apparently doing well, and a glabrous-globed older gentleman who looked choleric and probably wasn’t doing well at all. I told the croupier what my stepson wanted to do. The man summoned the pit boss and the two spoke for a moment with backs turned. The pit boss ended up shrugging. Looking right at Jed, he said, “It’s his money.” But I could have sworn that he said, “It’s his funeral.”
I had every intention of trying one last time to talk Jed out of it, but I couldn’t muster the energy. Every muscle of my body ached from having tightened up so tensely in anticipation of this moment I had been dreading.
Jed paid for his chips. The audacity of the several towering piles in front of him drew in a small crowd. The two blond women looked intrigued, almost aroused.
The croupier called for bets. Jed pushed all of the chips over to red.
A wise guy behind us cracked, “I would have gone for black.”
I wanted to slug him. If only I’d been ten years younger…
The roulette wheel began to spin, the ball deposited. “No more bets,” said the croupier. Everyone leaned in. Everyone stopped breathing. The clockwise spinning of the roulette wheel, the counter-clockwise circling of the ball—it seemed to go on forever. And then the ball began its skip and skitter among the number slots as the wheel slowed, finally settling into its final numerical resting place. The number wasn’t red. The number wasn’t black. It was green. A zero. Zero was the house’s number—one of the two numbers (the other, the double zero) that helped the casino to make a profit in this game of otherwise pure chance. It was easy to calculate the payout that Jed would have received had he put all his chips on the house’s zero rather than red: seven hundred thousand dollars. Enough to buy several Montana ranches in 1967. But I would have blown up the building before allowing him to put all of that money on a thirty-five-to-one shot.
What did my stepson do in that next moment? He smiled, he shrugged, and then he said, “That’s what you call a bust, Pops.”
Several months later, Robert—otherwise known as Evel—Knievel, of Butte, Montana, played even longer odds when he convinced the CEO of Caesars Palace to let him (at the time only a semi-famous daredevil) jump over the casino’s fountains with his motorcycle. Knievel came up short, lost control of his bike, and ended up with a crushed pelvis and femur, several fractures, and a concussion that kept him comatose for almost a month.
Nor was the “Vocal Vesuvius” immune to the vagaries of boom and bust, although his bust was of the permanent variety. After an eight-year career as a popular vocalist and recording artist, Rouvaun, a.k.a. Jimmy Haun of Bingham, Utah, erstwhile boomtown, now vacated ghost town, died suddenly in 1975 of a rupture to the esophagus from all the strain he’d been placing on his Vesuvian vocal cords.
My stepson Jed and his wife Babs won the California SuperLotto in 1993 (boom!) after years of struggling to come back from the Dunes Casino loss. The lottery, which has much in common with the casino game Keno (which was born in Butte, Montana’s Chinatown), awarded the couple enough money to share a little with Jed’s aging parents (such a good boy) and to pay for a trip to Las Vegas, where Jed and Babs and their adopted daughter Tian planned to stay at the famed Dunes Casino hotel (for old times’ sake). Unfortunately, the casino, having been out-razzle-dazzled by the bigger, better-capitalized newer generation of casinos, was due for demolition on the weekend of their visit. They stayed at Treasure Island instead, and, along with two hundred thousand other spectators (who were there for the biggest show the Dunes had ever put on), watched with wide-eyed wonder the deliberate imploding of the casino that had taken twenty thousand hard-earned dollars from them back in 1967. There were fireworks and “cannon blasts” from Treasure Island’s pirate ship, and then the Dunes’ North Tower came down in fittingly dramatic fashion.
Jed held his wife tightly around the waist as the crowd gasped and squealed and hooted with delight and Tian covered her tender teeny-bopper ears. Then Jed smiled at a thought which he later shared with his grizzled old man—the stepdad label having long been replaced by dad-in-full: “The Dunes was the first casino on the strip to offer showgirl tits (literal bust). And when it went out, it went out with a big ol’ bang (literal boom)!”
I’m telling you—you just can’t make this stuff up.
1968
HIERATIC IN KANSAS
Nearly every Saturday night for the last five years, Father Mullavey had driven from his parish in Kansas City, Missouri, across the Intercity Viaduct Bridge, and into the Strawberry Hill neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, to visit his childhood chum and fellow altar boy, Herman Klar. The two men, both in their late forties, drank Schnapps and sometimes Scotch whiskey, and if the priest drank too much, Herman and his wife Jelena would play chauffeur and even tuck him into bed in the rectory—ever so quietly—so that Mrs. Davies wouldn’t wake and give him a dressing down the next morning for his shameful un-priestlike inebriety.
Father Mullavey was fond of the widow Davies and would have married her if the Roman Catholic Church ever came to its senses on this whole celibacy matter. This is what Herman’s wife Jelena believed. Jelena was of every sort of opinion under the sun, including how to make the world a better place on her own terms. She was in her mid-forties, the mother of twin daughters, each recently returned to college in Ohio on this early September weekend. The daughter of Croatian parents, Jelena Lisinki Klar had grown up in Strawberry Hill among Croatian meatpackers and their bustling, garrulous wives. Jelena inherited her big hands and large frame from her father and her assertive tongue from her mother. There was no debate to be brooked on the decision to buy the little gingerbread house on Thompson, which sat on a bluff overlooking the Kansas River. Because Jelena’s roots were there.
And she wanted her roots back.
The two men sat on the back porch, cocktail glasses in hand, itemizing aloud all of the things that over the years had rolled down the steeply sloping backyard and into the river. “The girls had a beach ball when they were four, five years old,” Herman recalled with a chuckle. “JELENA! COME OUT HERE FOR A MINUTE!”
Herman’s wife stepped out onto the ancient wooden porch that she and her husband and their two girls had shared for over fifteen years with intermittent colonies of termites and intermittent tank-sprayer-armed employees from the Smithereen Exterminating Company. “I was about to pop up some Jiffy Pop, Herman. Miss America starts in ten minutes.”
“They were b-burning bras this afternoon,” said the priest. He peered off into the distance as if focusing his gaze on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, the site of
that day’s acts of undergarment mischief.
“Who?” asked Herman. “The contestants?”
“Of course not. The—the—the protesters. The women’s libbers.”
Jelena put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “What did you want, Herman?”
“That beach ball we used to have—whose idea was it to leave it in the backyard so it would roll down the hill?”
“I don’t know, Ljubavi,” said Jelena, employing her favorite Croatian term of endearment for her husband. “How can I remember something from that far back? And they didn’t burn their bras, the protestors. The police wouldn’t let them. They said the fire would engulf the whole boardwalk. It’s made of wooden boards, you know.”
“Why would they want to burn their bras anyway?” asked Herman.
“Do you mean that, Herman? Do you mean that question? Tell him, Father. Tell my husband, who is still stuck in the year 1946, why women would protest the Miss America pageant.”
Herman stood. He teetered, grabbing the arm of the Adirondack chair he had bought at a yard sale for only four dollars because there were two slats missing in the back. Herman was drunk and a little dizzy. He drank only with his friend Pete the priest, which meant he drank only once a week. The alcohol always went straight to his head. “Sometimes, honey, I wish this was still 1946—when it wasn’t so hard for men and women to figure out what was expected of them, I mean, genderly speaking.”
“I said 1946, Ljubavi, because that was the year we married. Of course, now that I think about it, it was also the year that most of us female factory workers got our walking papers.”
“How else were we veterans supposed to find jobs if Rosie the Riveter didn’t give up her—her what, Peter?”
“Her air hammer,” supplied the priest. He took a sip of his Schnapps and made a small vocal exhalation that sounded halfway between a satisfied “ahhh” and the release of steam from a metal riser. “Tell me, Jelena,” said Pete, “if you endorse what these women are doing—what it is that they—they—they stand for, why are you so fired up to go sit and watch—”
“And watch with your Jiffy Pop,” interjected Herman, settling himself back into his wooden Adirondack chair with the two plastic lawn chair replacement slats.
“Watch the pageant,” finished the priest. Peter Mullavey stared out at the dramatically sloping backyard and whistled, and then said, “You could break your neck cutting that grass, Herman. How do you do it?”
“I use a cylinder mower with an extra-long handle,” answered Herman, matter-of-factly.
“If you must know—” said Jelena.
“How do you—excuse me, Jelena. How do you keep from losing it, Herman? Losing the mower?”
“If you must know—” said Jelena with growing impatience.
“Sometimes I don’t. I’ve lost three. That’s why I stopped using an expensive gas mower and got me one of those old hand-propelled jobs from the Iron Age.”
“I am watching the pageant,” pursued Jelena in service to an answer whose related question had long been forgotten by her husband and his equally toasted sacerdotal best friend, “because there is a girl who’s competing this year who grew up with the cousin of a friend of mine. You remember Alana, who lived down the street from us in Overland Park? Well, she knows the girl—she’s met her. She’s in the pageant this year. She’s Miss Illinois.”
“Sit down,” said Herman, pulling his wife down upon one of the wide, flat arms of the Adirondack chair.
“I can’t. I have to make popcorn.” Jelena squirmed but she didn’t get up.
“It’s a beautiful night,” said Herman. “I feel like we live on the edge of the world. You should see the sunrises from this back porch, Petey. You’re never here for the sunrises. I know why all those Croatians came here with their Dalmatian dogs and their plum wine. They came for the sunrises and the—do you smell that, Petey? Do you smell that smell?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“No, no, Petey. It’s the smell of American enterprise. The smell of American meat. Of ground round and sirloin and brisket and chuck.”
Jelena pushed her husband away and rose from the chair. “I have to see how Alana’s friend does. I owe it to Alana after she volunteered to give me a kidney after the car wreck. My point is this: that there’s something about the pageant that seems a little old-fashioned in this day and age—with all the changes going on in the world. I’ll admit it. All those women being asked to parade around like—”
“Mooooo!” said Pete the priest and both men chortled and some Schnapps escaped from Herman’s nose.
Jelena ignored this. “And women have a right to protest it. Just as women have a right to participate, if they want to.”
The priest sat up in his chair. The chair wasn’t from upstate New York. It was a traditional rocking chair that stopped rocking after it was nailed down following an incident in which a visitor to the house—a neighbor with a restless nature—rocked herself off the porch and tumbled down the hill like Jill of the familiar nursery rhyme. “Excellent p-p-point, Jelena. But here’s what—what—what I want to know, if you’ll be so kind as to—there’s the Folly Theatre across the river. It’s a burlesque house and there’ve been religious groups—none of them Catholic, I don’t think, although I think I saw a nun with a sign. And—and—and they—they have been protesting. Which is apparently what people are doing this year. It’s the—the—the thing this year—all this protesting and th-throwing smoke bombs and people burning their—their—draft cards and burning their underclothes and what have you. And my question to you, Jelena, is this: a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body, with her—her life, does she not?”
Jelena nodded. She had begun to tap her foot again. She had missed her chance to pop her corn before the parade of states. Now she’d have to do it during a Toni Home Permanent commercial or the big spangled musical production number in which pageant host Bert Parks made his annual attempt to sing and dance.
Pete went on: “Even as she is being assaulted from all directions. By the women’s libbers with their—their—their anger, and the uptight evangelical Bible-huggers with their—their what?”
“Their anger,” said Herman, to be helpful.
Jelena nodded. “And the point is that no woman should have to answer to another woman for anything.” Jelena took a breath. “Or answer to a man either, for that matter” she concluded, eyeing her husband.
“What is this? Have I ever once told you what I thought you ought to be doing? The world may be in flames right now, but please note: nothing’s on fire in this house. We have a very good marriage, do we not? I may be a stick-in-the-mud sometimes—I’m sorry. That’s the way I was brought up. But I love you, and I respect you, and you wanted a house in your old neighborhood, and I agreed that you should have it, even though the smell of the meat coming from those packing houses—it used to make me—”
“Just a moment earlier you called it the smell of American enterprise.”
“I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m saying. So listen now to what I’m saying—”
“My show’s almost on. I’m going to miss seeing Miss Illinois. They say she has a good chance of winning.”
“What does she do?” asked the priest. “For her talent, I mean. What’s her ta-talent?”
“She’s a trampolinist.”
“What is that?” asked Herman. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, Herman. She jumps up and down.”
“Is she chesty?” asked Herman, looking up, a little expectantly, at his wife.
“For the love of Mike, Ljubavi! I’m going inside.”
“I’m coming in too. I want to see Miss Illinois jump up and down. This is what she wants to do and we will honor her choice. Are you coming, Petey?”
Peter Mullavey shook his head. “I think I’d like to sit here for a little—a—a—little while longer.”
“You sure you don’t want to…” Herman had stepped aw
ay from the doorway to give the priest room to come inside.
“Just for a few minutes. It’s nice out here.”
“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I mean, who do—do you think I’m thinking about?”
“You and I both know. Your Mrs. Davies. You’re thinking about the two of you, huh? Cozied up together on the couch with your bowl of Jiffy Pop, watching Bishop Sheen together.”
Pete looked out at all the twinkling lights of Kansas City, Missouri. One of those lights represented the rectory where the priest slept and ate and prayed and kept a chaste distance from the woman he had loved since the day she had come to be his cook and housekeeper. “I’d like to liberated someday.”
“Don’t blaspheme, Petey. You always get irreverent when you’ve had a nip too many.”
“I’ve got nothing against God. Or the church, for that matter. It’s men who—who did this to me. You—you—you talk about women telling other women what it is they ought to be doing.” The priest lowered his voice. “But my problem is with men. It’s men who put me here. It’s the men of my faith who s-say I’m not allowed to worship God while seeking a different kind of Heaven in the arms of a beautiful woman. What r-right have they to tell me this, Herman? What right?” Pete Mullavey grew silent, thoughtful, yearning, then mournful. Herman held his vigil beside the door. He could hear the opening music of the 1968 Miss America Pageant starring Bert Parks and fifty-one of the finest examples of American womanhood. “There she is…” There they were.
“I’ll call you in when Miss Illinois climbs up on her trampoline, Petey. Go easy on the booze. I don’t want you to fall down and break your crown and wind up in the Kansas River.”