by Beth Raymer
“I won’t be able to sleep!” Dink said, panic-stricken. “I’m not gonna be able to sleep one night there. What am I gonna tell my mother? Oh, God, the food! I’m gonna get sick.”
“You’ll learn to sleep,” Cathy said. “You’ll adjust.”
Dink researched his options. One place caught his attention: the Pacific Furlough correctional facility in San Diego. The weather would be nice. Ira, his closest friend from childhood, lived there. Dave the Rave had a condo right on the beach. Roscoe, a longtime acquaintance, owned a deli nearby and if Dink worked there he could fulfill the sentencing requirement that he have a job. The Furlough was only fifteen miles from Tijuana. He could explore the Mexican sports-betting market. And, most important, he’d be close to Del Mar racetrack.
“Nonsense!” Freda said. “How can they do this to you?”
“I’m a bookmaker.”
“Do they know you graduated from Stuyvesant?”
Behind them, on the living room wall, hung a four-foot-tall acrylic painting of Dink reading from the Torah on the day of his Bar Mitzvah. A royal blue yarmulke covered his curls.
“Ma, I’m gonna be out every day. I’m gonna work at my friend’s deli.”
“You’re a bookmaker?”
“It’s not real jail. It’s night jail. I’ll be out ten hours a day. I’ll watch Tom and Jerry every day. You’re allowed to bring your own TV.”
“Tell me the prosecutor’s name. I’ll call our state congressman and have him send the judge a letter.”
“Not gonna happen. One year in night jail, Ma. That’s all.”
Before his sentence began, Dink flew to San Diego and rented a room in his friend’s condo. On his first visit to the track, he went to the grandstands. Beneath the tote board, taking bets, was a young lady with large breasts. Her name was Diane and she and Dink began dating. When the line at Diane’s window was too long, Dink went to the clerk stationed to the right of Diane. The petite blonde, Diane told him, was once married to a jockey. Dink cashed in his winning tickets and tipped Tulip twenty bucks. He was generous like that. And anyway, she was cute.
During the visits Dink made to Tulip’s window, the two became friendly enough that they shared their stories. He was about to serve a year at the Furlough. She was in the middle of a divorce, staying with friends.
“You’re welcome to stay at my place, ’cause I’m gonna be in night jail,” he told her.
She took him up on the offer.
Dink stood on a patch of burnt grass holding his Knicks duffel bag and an eighteen-inch color TV. The Pacific Furlough correctional facility was an old Army barracks painted institutional green and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The guard beside the gate pressed his finger to his nostril and blew. Snot smacked against the cracked sidewalk.
Inside, when Dink’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw rows of pillowless bunk beds pushed close together. A breeze from the Pacific squeezed its way through the Furlough’s barred windows and wisped across the black and brown faces of the men in the TV room as they watched Under Siege for the third time that day. The draft blew through the bathroom, which had no doors on the stalls, no lids on the toilets, and into the cafeteria, carrying with it a stench that made a plateful of corned beef hash taste as bad as it looked. Dink held his breath as he unpacked his bag. He would try anything in the square world to get away from this smelly, snorey, shitty place.
Refuge was found at Roscoe’s deli. A small-time gambler and petty thief, Roscoe, it was rumored, was in the Witness Protection Program. Paranoid that everyone was stealing from him, Roscoe emptied the till a dozen times a day. He got over on every possible angle, underreporting his earnings, and saving pennies by buying non-brand-name mayo and muffins where he could swing deals. But he let Dink work the cash register six hours, five days a week, and for that Dink was grateful.
To kill an extra hour before returning to the halfway house, Dink attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings. With no intention of quitting gambling—ever—Dink relaxed and listened to stories from men and women who didn’t lose much, just all they had. The head of the chapter was a teller at Del Mar who stole money from the racetrack, bet it into the machine, lost, and had to reimburse the track. One man claimed that he lost all of his money by betting his savings on a fixed race. The horse that was supposed to win was ahead by ten lengths when, three steps from the wire, he broke his leg. He swore he would never go to the track again (Dink later saw him at the track). Another man produced sports for television. He borrowed money and stole money, bet millions on football and baseball games, and finally lost his job. “I produce sports!” he said during one meeting. “If I can’t win, how can anybody else win?”
All these people thought that they were smart. Then they lost all of their money, and decided they were sick. Dink wondered why they didn’t decide that they were just stupid.
After GA, Dink would stop by the condo to shower. He enjoyed seeing Tulip. They talked about the track, her AA meetings, movies she had seen. Tulip looked forward to Dink’s shower visits. He always made her laugh. It didn’t surprise her one bit, the evening she found herself on her tiptoes, giving Dink a kiss.
First Diane, now Tulip. Dink had more women while he was in the halfway house than ever before. What was it about night jail that women found so sexy? The answer was easy: the eight o’clock curfew. Put a time limit on anything and life gets exciting. At a small table in the back of Yogi’s Sports Bar, the new couple ate dinner together nearly every night. Once the dishes were cleared, Tulip sat on Dink’s lap and rooted for the teams he needed to win.
It was at the Furlough, belly down on his top bunk, transistor radio against his shoulder, that Dink honed his gambling skills. With such an early curfew there was little else to do but listen to games and study sports. His bookmaker lifestyle may have seemed very far away, but Tijuana wasn’t. And the sports books there took bets ten minutes after kickoff as long as no one had scored. A team could have the ball on the 10-yard line and you could bet on that team, or the total. It was sports betting’s best-kept secret. Dink employed Ira, his oldest, most trustworthy friend, as his runner.
“Avoid customs. Park the car and walk over,” Dink instructed, handing Ira twenty grand.
His blue jeans stuffed with cash, Ira walked across the San Ysidro border. Immediately, he was besieged by contagious-looking three-year-olds begging for money. Past the kids and the cabstands and the Chavez fight posters tacked to plywood shacks, the Caliente hotel and casino rose in the distance.
Back at Roscoe’s deli, Dink was busy making the square world suit his needs. Directly across from the cash register, the newly installed sports ticker was just as glorious as Dink had imagined. The teenage employees Dink worked with every day stood by and watched as he stared up, slack-jawed, beholding the in-game updates that flashed in red, green, and gold, like sun-dappled stained glass.
“Why do you work here?” one of them asked.
“I’m interested in opening my own deli, one day,” Dink said.
He turned his attention back to the ticker: Welcome to Sub-Marina! Mets 3 Cubs 2, bottom of the eighth.
During his year of rehabilitation, Dink gambled—and won—more than he had ever won bookmaking in Queens. He beat the Tijuana sports books and because he was in good standing with the bookmakers back east, they gave him high limits and took his bets. It was all on the books and when his sentence was over he collected his winnings. Arty owes me $80,000, I owe you $60,000. Can you pick it up? You’ll owe me $20,000. Louie owes me $90,000, I owe you $100,000, pick it up and I’ll give you the other $10,000 next week. You know how it is.
With his debt to society paid in full, and a four-hundred-thousand-dollar bankroll, Dink and Tulip headed to Vegas and launched Dink Inc. Tulip, enticed by something new and exciting, became Dink’s first casino runner, stationed at Caesars Palace. Seven years had passed since their first date when Tulip finally asked, “Honey, are we ever gonna get married?”
“You ha
ve an open invitation,” Dink said.
They flew to New York and bought an engagement ring from Dink’s friend Cathy at her jewelry store in Chinatown.
It was during their first year of marriage, while the newlyweds were still negotiating their roles and discovering ways to work together, that I began working at Dink Inc. Tulip had recently cut back her hours, which was a source of tension between them. Dink had been a boss since he was twenty-two years old. Transactions were involved in every single relationship he had in his life and he had a difficult time understanding that Tulip was his wife and that she was not on the payroll. Tulip’s lifestyle—the clothes, the jewelry, the cars—made her an expensive proposition. He didn’t mind paying for her Pilates and daily rounds of golf, but it angered him when she spent money out of boredom. A job kept her out of the malls and also “helped with her mental sharpness.” Dink didn’t think she did enough thinking in her life; she didn’t challenge herself. Right, Tulip thought. As if having a husband who gambled for a living wasn’t challenging enough.
One afternoon Tulip came into the office, just wanting to say hi. Playing on the four televisions were two hockey games and two baseball games. Dink was down fifty grand for the day and it wasn’t even two p.m. The moment Tulip turned the brass knob of the office door, two teams he needed to lose simultaneously scored a goal and hit a home run.
“No!” Dink screamed. He squeezed his eyes shut and beat the palm of his hand against his forehead, making his curls jump. He shot his hands to heaven, invoking the Almighty, as if He should be helping. “Tulip!” he shouted. “You’re a jinx!”
“I am not,” she said, injured. “I was going to cut your toenails but never mind.”
Thick, crooked, and purple, Dink’s toenails looked as if they had escaped from a petri dish. Only someone who truly loved Dink would stoop to such a chore. Tulip dropped the pink nail clippers into her purse.
“Either you’re a jinx, or God hates me. Which one do you think it could possibly be?”
Robbie J stayed staring at the televisions. He was accustomed to the dynamic between Dink and Tulip. I wasn’t, and it made me nervous when Dink raised his voice during their fights.
Dink stopped yelling and threw one of his battery-operated singing hamsters at the television set. It landed near my keyboard. I picked it up and pressed its tummy, trying to diffuse the awkwardness, but I regretted it the moment the thing started singing.
Take. Me out to the ball game. Take. Me out with the crowd.
“Oh my God, shut that fuckin’ thing up. Thing gets on my fuckin’ nerves already,” Robbie J said.
I knew there was no off button; still, I looked for one.
Tulip remained standing with her purse over her shoulder. “God doesn’t hate you, honey,” she said, mildly. “Admit you’re powerless over baseball and that your life has become unmanageable. It’s the first step.”
“You think it’s funny. I’m gonna lose this winter and we’re going to have to sell the house.”
“You say that every winter.”
“But this winter I know. Trust me. We’re going to go broke. It’s going to sneak up on us, quietly. Quietly broke.”
It hadn’t always been like this. The year Dink was in the halfway house, he had such good luck that Tulip never saw any of his temper tantrums. It wasn’t until they moved to Vegas that she witnessed what happened when Dink lost. One afternoon she arrived home from a matinee. The moment she stepped out of the car, she heard yelling. Fearing that her husband had gone into cardiac arrest, she ran into the house. There was Dink, stripped to the waist, writhing around on the floor and pulling his hair with both hands.
“What is going on!” Tulip screamed.
“Cocksucker, motherfucker!” Dink cried. “WHY did he BUNT? Why, why, WHY?”
Tulip ran upstairs and into the bedroom. She turned on her stereo, but even Rubber Soul on high volume couldn’t drown out her husband’s yelling. So she packed an overnight bag and drove to the office. She fell asleep on the couch reading about fantasy vacations in Sunset magazine.
“Dinky, he takes you to all the funerals and none of the weddings,” his friends often said, shaking their heads. But it wasn’t just the funerals that bothered Tulip. Dink didn’t do anything husbandly. At the gas station, he stayed in the driver’s seat, glued to his sports ticker, while Tulip pumped the gas. He didn’t know how to rent a movie. His idea of grocery shopping was going to the 7-Eleven and buying baloney and American cheese. In all the times they visited his mother in Queens, Dink never once took Tulip into Manhattan for a day trip to Central Park or to visit a museum. It was strictly Shea Stadium, the track, and lunch at the Georgia Diner on Queens Boulevard. If Tulip asked Dink to do a simple task around the house, he’d panic. “I make the money,” he’d argue. “You change the lightbulbs.” Her first husband was so much more competent. David used to take her Jaguar in for tune-ups. He always pumped the gas and opened doors. When David lost races, he never would’ve imagined blaming it on his wife. He never would’ve called her a jinx.
Dinky, Dinky, Dinky. He was such a child. But Tulip never wanted kids.
Dink continued to scream and punch himself in the head. Without saying good-bye, Tulip closed the door so quietly that it took Dink a moment before he realized she was gone.
“I know something that’ll make you feel better,” I said.
He covered his face with his hands. His voice weakened.
“A bullet?” Dink said.
“Chinese poker!”
I grabbed the deck from my backpack and sat in the empty seat beside him.
“My wife is a jinx. I deal with it as best I can.” He stuck a pen in his mouth and chewed on its end. “Best out of three,” he said. “You shuffle.”
Beneath the banquet table, amid kinked computer cables and tangled telephone cords, our knees touched.
I came home to a message slid under my door by the motel manager. “Your father called,” the note read, “wondering if you’re still alive.”
I had yet to tell either of my parents about my new job. I felt that my mother, who was living in Ohio, recovering from her thirty-two-year marriage to my father and the long, bitter divorce that followed, was better off not knowing what I was doing. It would just cause her worry. But Dad never worried. Working at a dealership in Fort Myers and playing blackjack every weekend on The Big “M” (he referred to the casino boat’s high-limit table as his office), Dad is—and always has been—a very lenient man. Other than the casual remark that I’d make a good car salesman, he never pushed me down any career path. As long as I wasn’t “headed to the slammer,” Dad was proud. I put Otis on his leash and we walked to the corner pay phone.
“A collect call from BETH. Will you accept the charges?”
“Yello …”
“Dad!”
“Beth Raymer. You alive?”
Then the question that always followed:
“You workin’?”
“I’m working for a professional gambler!”
“Professional who-what?”
“Sports gambler,” I said. “I help him make his bets.”
I leaned my back into the phone booth and gazed across the street, inside the 7-Eleven. Its glass front doors were wide open and welcoming. Native Americans played the slot machines that lined the walls. Their free hands gripped necks of bottled beers. One of my neighbors, a Filipina hooker, came on to an elderly tourist in an electric wheelchair. Her long black hair sank into his lap as she leaned down and whispered in his ear.
“How much you make to do that?” Dad asked.
“Twenty dollars an hour, under the table!” I said. “Plus vacations and bonuses.”
“See if ya can get your old man a job. I got fired.”
This was not unusual. As a kid, if I walked home from school and saw my dad’s car in the driveway, I knew he had been fired. He sold cars seven days a week, from nine in the morning until nine at night. Under no circumstances, other than being f
ired (or quitting), would his car be in the driveway during daylight hours.
Through the sliding glass doors, I’d see him, drifting around the pool in the white styrofoam lounge float, Miller Lite tallboys jutting out from each of the built-in cup holders. In my bedroom, I’d quickly change into my bathing suit, run through the house, cannonball into the deep end, and ask him why he got fired. “That’s the car business, Beth Anne. Bunch of assholes.” Looking like her entire world had just collapsed, my mom stood in the shade and asked how we were going to afford groceries. Dad would finish one beer and crack open the other, while I spun him around in circles as though he were the guest of honor in a water parade commemorating unemployment. In the days that followed, I’d sit Indian style on the driveway and watch him work on the Corvette. A matinee at the dog track, a few games of catch in the street, a couple evenings watching Benny Hill reruns, then came the inevitable morning. The smell of Old Spice and drip coffee, and Dad in his dress pants, a button-down, and a tie. The classified ads tucked in his armpit. “Where are you gonna work this time?” I asked on his way out the door. His answer was always the same: “Who knows, Beth Anne. Some asshole fired me. Some asshole’ll hire me.”
I asked if he was serious about working for Dink.
“See what he says. I’ll get a room at the Mirage. I’ll get ’em to forward my unemployment checks there. Me and Brenda Baby’ll move to Vegas.”
Brenda Baby was my father’s most recent girlfriend, a skinny-legged blonde whose augmented breasts were out of kilter with her petite frame. The first time she invited me to her house for dinner, I brought Otis along and when she bent over to pet him, the weight of her chest propelled her forward and she fell. During my parents’ divorce, my father drained his 401(k) and took off with Brenda Baby to the Bahamas. They lived in a suite atop the Crystal Palace Casino for a month. I’m not sure what went on there, how much money Dad won or lost, but eventually they returned, unharmed, and moved in together. I liked the thought of Dad living down the street at the Mirage. Perhaps Dink could take Dad under his wing and teach him how to gamble responsibly. And if Brenda Baby belonged anywhere on this planet it was Vegas, baby.