by Beth Raymer
“Do we want de Dollars or de dog?”
“Youse guys gotta listen up! The Dollars are the dog!”
“I don’t understand shit what dis Chinese mother focker is askeeng me. I don’t know if he have no teeth or what.”
“Transfer him, line three.”
Once everyone fell into rhythm, voices were only raised to ask Bernard for counsel. Staring slack-jawed at the projection screen hanging in the middle of the room, he watched color-coded bets roll in from over the Internet: one thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand dollars in red, white, and blue.
“Pepe de Cuban looking for Milkmen onder seventeen, onder for one-nine dimes.”
“Howie Pork Chop crying my focking ear off. Wants Gringos minus run and a half minus forty. Say he don’t give a fock if it’s forty-tree.”
Even though I knew there were other sports books on the island and that most of our clerks came to ASAP with several years’ experience, hearing them throw around bookie jargon with such aplomb made me smile. For most of them, English was their fourth language, a technical language they used to earn a living, but along the way they’d invented their own patois. On this barren, thirty-eight-mile-long rock in the middle of the sea, the Dodgers were the Dollars, the Yankees the Gringos, and Milwaukee the Milkmen. It was exciting to see a whole new group of young people stretching my language and making it theirs. In my head, I picked out those I hoped would be my friends.
“Dookie say he knowed de peetching changes,” said a young man in the front row. “Asking for twenty dime on Tompa Bay over de yo.”
“Yo” is actually a craps term for the number eleven. Despite his “Jesus Is Lord” baseball cap, the clerk had clearly been around a lot of gambling.
Abruptly, as though a ghost had snuck up from behind and spooked him, Bernard jumped into motion: “Check on Motown! Check on the Cuban! Give HPC … fuck, we’re buried on that game. Give Pork Chop five dimes minus the forty. Now! No one talk for two point two seconds. Complete silence! I need to know right now who’s sweating the Cubbies? Who’s my sweater?”
Generally speaking, gamblers can be very superstitious. But it seemed to me that Bernard was steadily becoming insane. He believed that watching games brought bad luck so he turned off the TVs hanging from the ceiling and hid the remotes. A strong believer in the power of telepathy, he took the most incompetent employees and, instead of firing them, established a team of “sweaters.” While everyone else answered phones, took bets, and made bets, the sweaters were paid (eight dollars an hour, plus benefits) to sit in silence, stare at yahoosports.com, and telepathically root for the need. The only time the sweaters were permitted to speak was when the game ended and they reported the score. God help them if they didn’t say the winning team first.
An older, unhurried gentleman raised his hand. “I sweating de Cobbies, Mr. Bernard.”
“Ronald, yesssss!” Bernard said, pumping his fist. “Guys six and oh in sweating preseason. Keep up the good work, Ronald. ONE MINUTE TO POST!”
Over the course of the next minute, the telephones must’ve rung seventy times. Sweat trickled from Bernard’s hairline and his breath came in short gasps. “And quick, before I suffer a brain hemorrhage. Everybody meet Beth. She works here. Her laugh is on a ten-second game delay so don’t feel bad if she doesn’t get your jokes right away.”
The clerks looked at me, intrigued. They’d seen plenty of gringa wives and girlfriends come to visit. But only the men came to work. I think they assumed I was either Bernard’s daughter or mistress. When they greeted me, contorting their faces, it looked almost painful for them to pronounce the th in Beth, so we settled on Betty.
First pitches took the games off the board. Three-quarters of the room headed for the smoking porch, unlit cigarettes dangling from their lips. Fifteen-hour workdays were not uncommon, thus the crew’s only breath of fresh air came filtered through a Marlboro red. Jaundiced yet relieved, Bernard collapsed into his chair. He washed down Xanaxes with lukewarm Nescafé and dripped Visine into his eyes. In Bernard’s mind, ASAP was a five-year project. Five years of high, high intensity, then he would sell it, perhaps to Pinnacle, our competition down the street. But as I watched his eyelids sink, lower, lower, as slow and fluid as a bottle drifting to the bottom of an ocean floor, I wondered how he’d be able to last that long. Five years in the vacuum of high-stakes offshore gambling is like thirty years in any other line of work. After all, Internet gambling doesn’t close on weekends or holidays. It exists 24 hours, 365 days a year. A mere two weeks into preseason baseball and already Bernard looked sickly and spent. I never dreamt I’d say this, but he needed to put on some weight.
By the four o’clock games, he’d recovered. His eyes, as wide and clear as those of any expert in his element, darted from one game to the next. He formulated mathematical probabilities and barked orders no one dared question. At a moment of peak intensity, the forty, fifty bets that came in per minute were the size of mortgages and yearly salaries. In the midst of the commotion, drunk on the adrenaline-testosterone cocktail—the house specialty—everyone managed to keep their head. Inspired by the sheer absorption, I sidled beside the Italian crew, grabbed a phone, and joined them.
We lived in a house so fancy it had a name: Quinta Cindy. Quinta Cindy’s walls opened to a lush garden landscape, allowing in the breeze and yellow-bellied birds looking for places to nest. Sunshine covered every square inch of the mahogany floors, and from the hammocks on the wide veranda you could smell the sea, just one mile away. I shared this lovely, tranquil spot with the Italian crew, who in their paranoia briefly believed I was a private detective working on behalf of their wives, and Lionel, a McDonald’s drive-thru clerk Bernard hired one morning on the fly. Highly self-conscious and quick to criticize, Lionel had the squat build of a wrestling coach and shoulders like granite boulders. He wore sapphire pinky rings, chain bracelets, and a heavy gold necklace from which hung a fist-sized horse medallion. It thumped against his chest as he walked. You could hear Lionel coming before he turned the corner.
Bernard brought dozens of characters over from the mainland to work at ASAP, but one thing stayed the same: I was the only woman. Having spent the last four years working in sports gambling (not to mention my boxing and in-home stripping), I felt I had spent enough time in the company of men to become inured to their waywardness. But I hadn’t. In the States, desires pushed up against social mores and familial responsibility. Fear of the law tempered the scope of their gambling and drug use. They could cheat on their wives, sure. But they still had to be home by eight to tuck in the kids. In Curaçao, I witnessed complete unbridling of these desires. The heat’s sensuality; young, exotic women, topless beaches, the soft swells of buttocks; Heinekens served in seven-ounce pony bottles, the perfect size for ensuring cold beer to the last drop; inexpensive, high-quality cocaine and hookers: the lifestyle was all set up. All you had to do was get there.
The looks the men exchanged made it clear. They couldn’t quite believe their newfound freedom. The money Bernard offered them was so astronomical that even their wives couldn’t say no. But had their wives actually said yes? Had the words Go, honey. I’ll take care of the kids really crossed their lips?
They had. And once the men overcame their initial shyness and stopped brooding over their receding hairlines, their inhibitions broke free like long-awaited exhales. Most waitresses, and any Venezuelan hooker, totally unhinged them. Loud, grunting, wild sex. They’d almost forgotten what it was like to participate in it, and not just stare at it on a screen. Returning from their lunch breaks flushed and dazed, lost in a mélange of body scents, they splayed across the carpet and stared at the ceiling, as though they had just plunged down a sloping field of wildflowers and needed a moment to recover.
But no one—no one—fell harder for a woman than Bernard Rose fell for Maritza de los Santos.
ASAP happened to be having a meeting at Club Havana—the cheap open-air strip club where all executive decisions were
made—the night Maritza first took the floor. Her nervous, unvarying dance moves made it clear she was new. More comfortable facing the concrete back wall than the sparse crowd, she spent most of her stage time shaking her backside to an impossibly fast Shakira remix. When she did turn to us, through an uncoordinated twirl, her barrette unclipped, and her thick black hair spilled over her smooth brown shoulders and small, unsupported breasts. The slight disruption turned her forced smile sad. She lost her rhythm, her poise. Her song was not yet over when she bent at the waist, retrieved her clip from the floor, and walked offstage.
In an instant, Bernard jumped to a standing ovation and searched frantically for a translator. “Someone! You. Anyone. Please help me! Find her and ask if she’d like to join our table for an iced tea!”
Wearing little more than a sheer sarong and wooden banana earrings, Maritza approached our table. Up close, moonlight accentuated the shine of her hair and the whites of her big brown eyes. By midnight, Bernard had paid off Maritza’s boss and freed her of the club’s ninety-day contract. Passing the travel-sized English-to-Spanish dictionary from hand to hand, Bernard gazed into Maritza’s eyes as though he relied on them to breathe.
Three days later, Bernard resurfaced. Wearing inside-out pajama bottoms and his oversized, off-the-shoulder T-shirt, he looked another twenty pounds thinner, unshaven, and disoriented.
“Bernard. We’ve been worried about you,” I said.
Though Curaçao is a Dutch colony, tulips and tolerance it is not. If anyone at ASAP had picked up a copy of the Vigilante that weekend, they would’ve seen a front-page colored picture of a young black man, lying sideways in a weed-choked alley, the seat of his jeans blood-soaked from a gunshot wound to his sex organs. He’d been cheating with a girl and her boyfriend shot him in the balls.
“From now on,” I said, “you call.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” His speech was sluggish. “I’m in love. Buried in love! Why do we have so much on the Expos run line?”
“Because when you’re not here everything goes to shit,” I said, and handed him the activity reports. “We lost eighty-eight thousand dollars on the early games. We got middled on everything. Sorry.”
Uninterested, he set aside the report. “Beth, I’m in trouble. I look at Maritza, I smell her hair, and all I can think is I want her to have my baby. Baby Bernards. All over the island!”
Bernard’s obsessional love spread through the office like an epidemic. Hardly a day passed without some heavyhearted soul searching the Internet for advice on postnuptial agreements or reverse vasectomies. They took chances on new wardrobes, bought cologne, and attempted exercise. Computer passwords changed from Lombardi, Soriano, and Barkley to Vivianna, Magdalena, and Beatrice. I didn’t speak up until talk turned to a serious discussion on polygamy.
“You guys. Can’t you just enjoy these experiences? Can’t you just appreciate your dirty secrets and be happy? Do you really have to go straight for the full-fledged double life?”
“Yes,” they said unanimously.
Divorce was too expensive, not to mention risky. “Christ, Beth,” they said, annoyed by my naïveté. “Who do you think out there actually calls the friggin’ FBI hotline?”
Ex-wives, that’s who.
Days later, during a typically busy shift, a clerk called to me from across the room. “Betty?” she said. “The lady on my phone is very opset and cryeeng. I do not understand what she says. May I transfer her to you?”
Perplexed, Bernard looked at me. Save for the ringing telephones the room fell silent. Then, speaking on behalf of every man in the office came a quiet, defeated voice. Oh my God. It’s my wife.
My line flashed.
“Sports,” I answered.
A sad female with a high voice began to cry and I tried calming her. The guys couldn’t stand the suspense. Their whispers flew at me.
Beth! Say bad connection and hang up. Beth!
No matter what, I’m not here.
Beth! “He had to fly to Santo Domingo. Big banking emergency.” Say it!
I held up my hand to shush them.
“I’m just not sure what you’re asking me,” I said to the woman. “What is it you want me to do?”
I pressed mute and looked up to a sea of watery, pleading eyes.
“It’s a customer’s wife,” I said. “She says her husband has a gambling problem and wants us to shut down his account.”
Oxygen returned to the room. Worried mouths eased into sly little smiles. Sheep, also known as Bah-Bah, the most affable member of the Italian crew, crossed himself and snatched the phone from my hand.
“Hello? This is sports, how ya doin’?” he said. “Go ahead and gimme your husband’s name.”
Bah-Bah pulled up the customer’s account and I leaned in closer to see the balance. The husband had placed so many bets it took us minutes to scroll through his wagering history. Ending balance: minus thirty-six thousand dollars, for the month.
“Lady, lady. Calm down! I’m lookin’ at his account right now. Your husband doesn’t have a gambling problem, all right? He’s got a losing problem.”
Bah-Bah continued to scroll. “Oh my God, is he phenomenal at picking losers! Three months without hitting one. The odds of that are astronomical!”
The rest of the Italian crew rushed over to look at the husband’s account. Pointing in horror to specific wagers on the screen, they gasped and chuckled and covered their eyes. This kind of degenerate gambling was unbearable to witness.
“Lady, it’s an uncanny sense to be wrong. It’s the same sense as being right. You understand that? He doesn’t have a problem, all right? It’ll turn around for him. You watch. Odds are in his favor. Show him some support. Thank you for calling ASAP.”
The men stayed gathered around Bah-Bah and me, discussing the situation’s true moral dilemma: should they inform the husband—the good-natured Lakers fan who always said please and thank you when placing a bet—that his snoopy, suspicious wife was on to his gambling? They should do him a favor, they agreed, and warn him to cover his tracks.
Looking up, I found myself centered in a huddle of heavy, oily manliness. The air grew thick with body odor and hair tonic and stale breath. They belched and blew into the face of whoever was standing beside them. For the most part, I liked these guys. I enjoyed watching them work and listening to the dramatic scope of lies they invented to explain away odd credit-card purchases and abrupt changes of banking passwords. I felt for them as they suffered through the guilt triggered by family visits, arranged by their loving, adoring wives so the kids could see how hard Daddy worked.
But I missed the company of women.
So when the local brothel temporarily shut its doors, I welcomed a few of the girls into our home. My afternoon schedule spun from the plagued, paranoid interior of ASAP to sunbathing beside Vivianna, Magdalena, and Beatrice. Like the guys at the office, they spent an awful lot of time concocting lies. Parents, brothers, and husbands believed they were working at a Starbucks in Florida. It was the lie all the girls from their village used when they disappeared on a ninety-day visa to prostitute themselves through the Caribbean. At night, they lay in beds, sweaty and soft beneath the men I worked with. Beneath the beds, their stuffed duffel bags gathered dust until their visas expired. Beneath the passports, family pictures, and negative HIV documents, the gifts given to them by the Italian crew lay untouched. Clothes, jewelry, shoes, picture frames, items the girls looked forward to selling when they returned to Venezuela.
ASAP’s biggest win took place over the nine-day span of the 2004 NBA finals. In one of the biggest upsets in basketball history, the Pistons beat the Lakers in five games and we made one and a half million dollars. Dusk turned the air pink as we celebrated with lobster and Heinekens from a shoreline picnic table. Bah-Bah lifted his glass and made a heartfelt toast “to Bernard! And his brilliant arbitrage system!” But despite this astonishing feat, the warm wind in his hair, and scantily clad Maritza bal
ancing on his knee, Bernard wore the expression of a man who had just avoided a fatal car crash.
For Bernard, celebrating any win, especially one of this caliber, was rare. He disliked patting his own back. And the truth was, underneath that big, life-loving, buoyant personality of his, Bernard was a pessimist. If we lost two days in a row, he became anxious and depressed and would rearrange the sodas in the fridge while convincing himself we’d never win again. Not that winning made him feel much better. Keeping track of the money made him too nervous to sleep. As he tossed and turned, his hyperactive mind circled around one central question: how were we going to hide the money?
To receive our license from the Curaçao Gaming Commission, we had to meet many strict guidelines. For instance, an American couldn’t operate a gaming business on the island without the sponsorship of a Curaçaoan and bank accounts had to be in the sponsor’s name, a policy that never sat well with any of us. It took us months to adjust to the island’s slow-moving banking systems and the nerve-racking apprehension we felt before sending off thousands of dollars via Internet wire services. After repeated calls to the online payment service Neteller regarding issues of anonymity, limits, and fees, they flew their corporate training manager to the island for our very own PowerPoint presentation. Moving money was no longer as simple as hopping on the D train with a Jansport backpack and meeting Lenny in the Bronx.
Soon, though, I discovered the real source of Bernard’s high anxiety and it had nothing to do with pessimism and banking complications. The trauma of his 1983 Broke—the fear and disbelief of watching the stacks of millions vanish in three measly weeks—had left an indelible impression on him. So much so that any mention of money, good or bad, brought back scary memories. The simplest finance questions caused Bernard’s gaze to go unfocused. He’d become jumpy and evasive, abruptly changing subjects.