“Whuzzup, brother,” he says. “How you doin’?”
He doesn’t really know me, but he’s seen me around. You know how it is. You gamble in a place long enough, you get familiar with the faces of the regulars. But I’m blocking his path, and he wants to get to the cash office so he can cash Barbie them check.
I say to him, “I see you and the lovely wife here again tonight. How they treatin’ you?”
His shoulders slump. “You know how it is, brother. Them damn machines. I just need to hit them one time. Seems like they fixed against me winning. You know how it is. You pump in and you pump in, but it doesn’t pay a thing. If I could just hit one time.”
“Yeah, I know about those machines. They make all that damned noise, but they don’t pay.”
“You got that right. They don’t pay. They beat us tonight bad.” Grunting. Shaking his head. Hushed tones. “Over $1,700.”
“Whooo. That’s a lot of money. That’s too much money. That’s really too much money,” I say, looking him straight in the eye.
He reads something in this, and it pisses him off. “You know what?” he begins to say, and he’s glaring at me like, Man, get out of my damned way so I can go cash Barbie them check. He looks like he might take a swing at me. But I stand firm until he lowers his eyes and mumbles, “Well. That’s. But …” without finishing his thought. He knows what I’m saying is true.
“What if I gave you $900 right now to go home?”
“What?”
I open my wallet, which is thick with hundred-dollar bills. I count out nine hundreds. “What if I gave you $900 right now for you and your lovely wife to get out of here tonight? For you to go home and get some sleep. For you to pay your mortgage. You must pay your mortgage. You must pay your bills. My God, man, pay your damn bills. If I gave you this money, would you go home?”
“Brother, if you did that, I would go home,” the old man says.
“Go home. You don’t owe me anything. Just don’t come back here tonight, do you hear me?” I put the money in his hand and close his fingers around it tight. Now he is embracing me, and I am saying to him, this big, sniffling, weeping old man, “Go home. Go home. Take your wife home. Get out of here, and do not let me see you in any of the other casinos tonight either. If I see you in any of the other casinos tonight, don’t ever look my way again, you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you, brother,” he says, wiping a tear from his cheek. Suddenly he becomes animated as he recognizes the hat. “Hey. I heard about you, right? You’re the bus driver guy from TV. World Championship of Poker. Won all that money in Vegas—”
“And nearly gave it all back. Yeah. That’s me.”
“Came in second. You had kings full. That Chinese guy had aces full. What a tough break.”
“Hmmm.” It was a tough break. But I don’t like talking about the past. Or Chinese. It gives me an itch attached to a thousand-pound monkey. “Just go home, brother. Sleep tight.”
But he won’t leave. “How’d you do it, man? How’d you get out? I see you in here all the time, I never see you play.”
“I found another addiction, an addiction called love. An addiction called charity. It’s not as strong as gambling, but it will do in a pinch. I found my way out. You’d better find yours. Start tonight. Get some sleep tonight. Don’t blow my charity.”
“I’m out of here. Good meeting you, brother. Thanks.”
The old man shoves Barbie them check in his pocket and goes back over to the machines, where his young wife is waiting. He shows her the $900, then points back to me and waves. I wave back at him. And then at the wife, who cannot meet my gaze.
The wife slings her purse over her shoulder and they exit the casino, the wife putting a little extra in the swing of those hips for me.
Ping.
64.
The wife is no stranger to me.
There will be other nights for her and me upstairs in my room before she finds her way out.
I have heard her song and witnessed her dance. I have tasted my own breath on her lips.
You’ve got to get up and walk a lucky circle around the table, she tells me. Give your cards time to breath. Change your luck. Change your machine. Play the end machine. Kiss the rabbit’s foot. No guts, no glory. You’ve got to be in it to win it. Give me some more money, P. I feel some kind of luck coming.
No, no, I say. That’s not luck you’re feeling. That’s insanity. Collect two consecutive paychecks. Play with your children. Paint the house. Take piano lessons. Put premium unleaded in your car. Make love to your damn husband. Make love to me (and mean it). Go live life. This is not life. This is death. But she won’t listen.
I am no longer in love with her, but her body I will keep. She is pretty, you see, and down here in Florida, unlike in Vegas, my supply of hundred-dollar bills is endless.
The pretty girl is a worse degenerate than the old man.
Go home, pretty girl. Go home and never come back. There is nothing in here for you—nothing at all.
Not even charity.
I tell her what I told Missy. I tell her what I told C.L. I tell her what I tell them all. Never come back.
But of course she comes back.
An hour and a half later. I’ve been expecting her, though when she walks into the lobby area near the elevators to the hotel rooms, looking flustered and carrying a gripsack, I pretend to be preoccupied, playing a quiet game of solitaire. I don’t even look up.
“We had a fight,” I hear her say.
I didn’t ask, and I don’t respond. I flip my solitaire cards on the table. I’m worried about the gripsack she’s carrying.
“He thinks I got mad, took the car, and went to my sister’s house.”
I look up. “Barbie them house?”
“You know my sister them?”
No, but I just couldn’t resist. I flip another card.
She indicates the gripsack. “I figured I could stay with you tonight.”
“Hell no.”
“But—”
“I got company.”
“Bitch,” she calls me, though I am a man. She throws down the gripsack and spews again. “Who the fuck you think you fucking with, bitch?”
Her neck is be-bopping.
She came here thinking she would do me tonight and get a few hundred dollars for it and then do the machines and then go back to her husband after a night well spent. Now she’s got her hands on her hips and her torso is angled forward and her mouth is twisted into an ugly shape and her neck is be-bopping, rhythmically, rocking her pretty face back and forth.
“Ugly cowboy hat–wearing punk-ass bitch.”
She slaps the cowboy hat off my head onto the table, mucking my solitaire game as security arrives to secure her wrists and elbows.
In the end, rather than see her arrested, which would only result in potentially dangerous husbandly involvement, I resolve things with shrugs and more money. I explain it to security as a lover’s quarrel and rent her a room—not in this place, but at the motel down the street— and give her $200 for kiss, kiss make up. (Security gets one each.) The pretty girl is still huffing when I give her the money, but she does accept it and the motel room, too. She storms out of the casino without displaying any of the gratitude she used to when we first met. She’s storming out, loudly complaining, “What’s $200 to me? After all that I give you, you ugly cowboy hat–wearing mutha—”
Two hundred?
It is never enough with gamblers. Two hundred is two hundred. Plus the nine I gave her old man? That’s $1,100. Gamblers have no perspective. The average American works two weeks and doesn’t take home $1,100 after taxes.
It’s not like she can even spend it in the casino. Her ruckus has gotten her banned from the premises for a month. So she’ll get her night’s rest in the motel (if she goes there) and when she wakes up she’ll have to go to one of the other casinos to blow the money. If she doesn’t go home to her old man first and kiss and make up.
If I
were still a betting man, I’d lay it on her blowing it at the other casino before going home. If I were still a betting man, I’d lay it on her making a deal with the motel manager: If I decide not to sleep here tonight, can I get in cash what he paid for the room? Can I get back half of it at least? Batting those pretty eyes at him.
Or her.
65.
I ride the elevator up to my suite of rooms and find the fat girl waiting in that museum-piece couch outside my door.
The professor is there, too.
I deal with him first.
Ever since he backslid and started playing again, he has been on a nonstop losing streak. He has lost all of his money and now his home. He is teaching part-time at six colleges to make ends meet. But he holds a special place in my heart. I take him aside, away from the fat girl so that she cannot see, and I hand him the checks and the cash. He frowns when he sees what I have given him: checks made out to his bill collectors, as I had promised, and only $300 in cash.
He whispers, “Am I good for another couple hundred at least? I mean, I gotta have at least $500 to make it through.”
I must be firm, but I try to soften the blow with humor. I say to him, “Money for gambling I got, huh?”
He smiles weakly. He knows this joke. It’s his joke. He’s the one who told it to me in the first place. I must be firm with him, but I find another $200 for him in my wallet. He takes it and gets on the elevator. I watch as the elevator doors close and he descends to pay his little bills and gamble.
Then my fat girl, grinning lasciviously, gets up and pats her dress down smooth over the ample curves of her hips. Her greeting is a hug and a kiss on the mouth. She tastes good. She smells good. She always smells good, like freshly cut peach halves.
Now she is climbing my body, trying to wrap her legs behind my back. She wants me to lift her. She is not so fat that I cannot lift her, but I am tired tonight and somewhat bummed after seeing the professor. Seeing him always depresses me, reminds me that no matter how much money I have, it can all be gone in an instant. Seeing him brings back both the itch and the sense of doom, reminds me that underneath it all, I am still a gambler. I fall back against the door, with the fat girl’s wet mouth still on mine, and fit the plastic key card into the lock without seeing. When we stumble backwards into the room, she is still grinding against me, but I do not lift her and I hardly kiss back. She soon gets the message and pulls away. Pats down her dress again. Then she gets an idea and snatches the cowboy hat off my head and places it on her own, where it sits high on her throwback Afro.
I laugh and say, “You look good, cowgirl.”
I turn to the night table, where I dump my wallet, keys, and the small change from my pocket. When I turn back to the fat girl, she is wearing only the hat.
And lacy black garters.
I am too tired tonight, but now we are both laughing and soon we are rolling on the bed. She always gets to me.
I like the fat girl because she is young, bug-eyed cute, and fun. She can wear you out. Plus, she is not anyone’s wife or girlfriend that I know of. She works as a receptionist at the water department, takes nursing classes at the community college, and sings alto in the choir of the Greater Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church where I go sometimes. She still lives at home with her mother and has a baby (age 12), but no baby daddy. Her game is seven-card stud. They are having a tournament tonight, and I figure that’s why she text-messaged me earlier: where U at??? i’m coming up.
Translation: I need money for the entry fee.
She’s on top. She’s asking for the fee. Winding her belly on my belly. She still has the cowboy hat on. I put my mouth to her ear: “You’re going to have to earn your money tonight, cowgirl. Ping. Ping.”
We kiss and proceed to a quickie. A real slow quickie.
Then I give her the money for the entry fee and send her away so I can get some sleep. She takes my cowboy hat for extra luck. She already keeps in her right shoe for luck one of my very, very close Super Bowl losers. But the cowboy hat—everybody wants my cowboy hat.
She comes back to my room about 7:00 in the morning to return the hat and report that she came in second in the tournament. She does not offer me any of the prize money, which probably ended up in the machines anyway. The machines are her second addiction after seven-card stud. I am her third, she has told me, and I like her, so I believe her. She yawns, “Too late to drive home. Too sleepy.”
I say, “Hmmm?”
She rests the hat on the bed and looks at me expectantly, like she thinks I think she owes me something. Well, she does owe me money, a lot of money, but we both know she will never pay that back. What she thinks is that I want another roll in the sack. But I am tired and sore. The place where I was shot is hurting again. I am out of Viagra. I put my hand over my mouth. Yawn like I am really sleepy. I want her to go home and rest so she can make good on our deal from last night— She slips off her shoes and begins to undress.
—or she can just sleep here, I guess.
She goes into the bathroom, and a few minutes later I hear the shower. I hear her singing: “Lead Me to the Rock That Is Higher Than I.” Her voice is rich and mellifluous. She needs no accompaniment. Her voice is enough. It’s like listening to the radio. It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful I will take her again if she comes back to bed singing. I find myself singing along, though my voice sucks. I sound like a bus driver. I don’t want her to hear that. I shut my mouth as soon as the shower turns off, though she continues.
My alto comes back to bed, her skin redolent and glistening with cocoa butter. She wraps an arm around me, gives me a peck on the cheek, and in no time her lips are puttering like a motor against my neck as she begins to snore. For a while, I am humming “Lead Me to the Rock,” then I am out, too.
The alarm that wakes us up says it’s noon. We dress quickly and hurry downstairs. While valet is retrieving my car, she bums another $20 and runs inside to hit the machine “one last time real quick,” she promises.
Five minutes. Ten. Twenty.
When she gets back, I am in the car and frowning. Not because she has lost the $20, which I know without asking, but because she is making me seriously late.
When we get to the Orange Bowl, the first quarter is over. Our side’s band is playing the fight song. The score is already 21-0. The fans are going nuts. I ask the guy we sit down next to, “How’d we score?”
He says, “You know it. The wonder kid.”
“The two-way player.”
“It was beautiful,” the guy says, taking out his cigar to explain. “He ran one back. He threw for one. And this last one—busted play, they’re in on him, he has nowhere to go, he puts his head down, and he takes off—89 yards! The kid is beautiful, and I got good money riding on the game. Whoo-wee!”
I turn to my fat girl. “See? I told you.”
She squeezes my arm. “You ought to be proud.”
Yeah. I ought to be. I look across the field to the other side of the stadium, but I do not see his brothers or his mother there. Then a chance glance down and I recognize the back of her head, mostly because of some dangly-dangly earrings she’s wearing. Some dangly-dangly earrings I had bought her years ago. I remember the $3,200 jackpot that paid for them.
The crowd cheers and surges to its feet, and my ex-wife and her dangly-dangly earrings disappear into the crush of orange- and greenclad bodies again. I turn back to the game, and our son, our allergy boy—whose allergies are long gone—is running down the field, carrying the ball and two or three defenders, toward the goal line. They stop him this time. A gang tackle. Followed by a late hit. But he gets up strong, brushes it off, and swaggers back to his side of scrimmage. Every player in the huddle’s got their hands on him, their champion, the allstar freshman. The way he stands, the way he’s built—he reminds me of his grandfather, my father, who was built like a truck. He’s built like a smaller truck. A truck without a beer belly. He’s wearing the number 13, Marino’s number. My dad would
have been proud.
This happened not because of me, but despite me, my ex-wife likes to throw in my face. All of the good things. All of the things I should be thankful for. Like my daughter the doctor. Like the older boys—both of whom married nice girls. Both of whom have good jobs. Despite me. But I gambled and I won, can’t she see? I am high risk, but I won. I paid for their fancy weddings, their lavish honeymoons, set them up in their big houses. Why didn’t they turn all that down?
They’re no fools. The way this country is set up—this is no place for the poor. Come on. The credit cards, the bills, driving that bus, taxes.
I’m not trying to defend this thing—this thing is crazy. This thing will kill you if you’re not lucky. But I am lucky.
My ex-wife is full of shit.
I may not have been the best father in the world, but my boys know I love them.
I see them now, down there, cheering their brother on.
They are good boys.
Ah, who am I kidding? Maybe she’s right. What they’ve become, what they are as men, I have to admit they’ve got her and their … stepfather to thank for that. He’s one of those safe guys. A hard worker. Owns his own business. Born again. The boys work for him. He’s in air-conditioning repair, or some crap like that. I’m sure my old in-laws like him just fine. There he is, sitting next to my ex-wife’s earrings in his suit. He always wears a suit like he’s some big shot. I’ve got enough cash to buy and sell him a hundred and ten times. He’s cheering.
The crowd roars. I am snapped out of my thoughts by the image of my little allergy boy built like my father the truck spiking the ball in the end zone.
Another touchdown!
He raises his hands and begins to dance in celebration. The referee blows the whistle and throws the flag. No showboating, young man. A ten-yard penalty after the kickoff. The crowd boos the referee.
“Screw you, ref!” I shout. “Where were you on that late hit?”
My son’s a two-way player, but the coach is going to give him a rest on this kickoff. He shrugs and begins his trot off the field. They’re cheering him again. He’s got his arms raised. Pumping the air with his fists. I wave my cowboy hat at him. My son stops and scans the crowd. He sees me! He’s waving back. My fat girl puts her hand on my back. “That’s him,”
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