Lay the Favorite

by Beth Raymer

  “Bernard,” I said. “How much money do you want in the Catalina account?”

  “Is there a Quiznos on the island?” he answered. “Or did I dream that?”

  “Bernard,” I said. “Did we get the ten-thousand-dollar wire yet?”

  “You know what I need more than anything in the world? Lobster fra diavolo.”

  When Bernard didn’t have the energy to sidestep he’d simply say “Disaster,” pop a Xanax, and then return to what he loved most, making lines, setting mathematical traps, and watching the bets roll in.

  Surprisingly, Bernard suppressed his post-traumatic stress long enough to appoint two people to the finance department: Bah-Bah and me.

  At thirty-eight, Bah-Bah was a friendly, though highly agitated, father of five. Before his brother-in-law introduced him to the business, Bah-Bah tended bar in Philly. Astonishingly computer illiterate, Bah-Bah was ASAP’s “head figures guy,” handling all of our complex financial records and transactions. At times of acute stress, he’d snag Bernard’s Xanax, crack open a jug of Wild Turkey, and sputter long, senseless monologues about his desire to work for FedEx and live a clean, stress-free life. He fantasized about taking his kids to school in the FedEx truck, then working the swing shift, “droppin’ off boxes.”

  “Figures girl,” as I was called, was an unglamorous job that no one else wanted but I enjoyed. Players called me to check their balances and I like to think that the cheer in my girlish voice, even as I said, “You’re down seventy-two thousand for the week,” slightly softened the blow of losing money. If they claimed a balance discrepancy, I listened to the tapes. Scratchy phone lines, accents, and mispronunciations lent themselves to misunderstandings, plus a lot of people lied and tried to cheat. ASAP recorded every phone conversation for this very reason. Sitting at my desk, wearing puffy, oversized headphones that made my ears sweat, I listened to our serious action players slam receivers and cuss out our clerks. But the phones were also used for personal calls, so sometimes, following the angst and madness, there’d be a click. Steady breaths, and then:

  “Dad? I got an A in art.”

  “I had your mother over for dinner last night, pizza with the girls.”

  “Good talking to you. I miss you, man. And remember, if my parole officer calls, make sure you tell him we weren’t friends until 2001.”

  Coming upon such tender moments of human interaction within the aggressive inner atmosphere of ASAP was like stumbling upon a favorite bittersweet song while driving through a tornado. Though going offshore had given me a chance to make money and experience a new country, I hadn’t realized it would be so isolating. Much of my workday was spent on the phone, or at the fax machine, or in front of a computer, tracking wires and changing odds. My co-workers and roommates (brothel guests excluded) took little interest in the outside world. They had girls, Viagra, and sports. They were happy. I was just grateful for the sweet snippets of ordinary human life. They took me out of the vacuum and recharged me. This was especially so when I came across my conversations with Jeremy. At the flash of his sweet, unexpected voice, I’d press the headphones to my ear and listen in on our conversations from days before.

  “I told my dad about you,” he said.

  “Oh no. Did he ask what my job is?”

  “No, he asked if you were Jewish.”

  Sometimes I’d hear Otis bark from his spot beside Jeremy’s bed and I’d get sad and dreamy. My life was wide open and ready, but for what? It was sweet of Jeremy to keep Otis while I was away, but I wanted Otis in my day-to-day life. And I thought about Jeremy all the time. And I missed living in Vegas. If I really set my mind to it and pulled together all my resources, perhaps I could split my time between New York, Vegas, and Curaçao. Jeremy could quit his job and freelance and we’d shift residences depending on the seasons. To be the hustling breadwinner of a gypsy family wandering the world seemed like something I could be good at.

  “Do you think of me a lot?” I asked Jeremy.

  “Yes, but I have to go. I’m at work.”

  “No! Stay on the phone. How often do you think of me?”

  “Every seven seconds. I’m on deadline, Beth. Good-bye.”

  A staticky click. Furious buzzing. Shouting rolled over me and I was torn from the bliss and forced back into the chaos of “Tar Heels minus four. Tar Heels minus fourRRRRR!!”

  Everyone at ASAP, Americans and locals alike, worked extremely hard, putting in long hours and making themselves available for overtime on short notice. In terms of productivity, there was absolutely no difference between the clerks and the American employees. The difference lay in the salaries. American employees made five, six, seven times more than even the most experienced locals. Not to mention the beautiful homes we lived in and the big, air-conditioned company cars we drove. The clerks who worked for ASAP part-time to save for luxuries they couldn’t afford from their teaching or real-estate jobs didn’t concern themselves with the income inequality. But for the locals who viewed sports betting as their profession, the injustice drove them to near insanity. Some of the gamblers Bernard brought to the island were truly despicable people who referred to the clerks as “natives,” deeming them too stupid or lazy to grasp the oh-so-complicated gist of sports betting. It never occurred to these hangers-on that the clerks were educated, friendly people who spoke multiple languages and often held college degrees. The only justification I ever heard for the hangers-on being there was that their mothers kicked them out of the house—and when asked for a favor, Bernard was incapable of saying no. By the time of preseason football, poor management combined with cultural insensitivity and hazardous testosterone levels turned ASAP from a corporation made up of human beings into a hotbox snaking with dozens of short fuses waiting to explode.

  And then one exploded.

  “I about to show my aggressivity right now you fat beetch! I will tro you over dis fockeeng balcony. You don’t know how easy it is to die, right?”

  The argument boomed through from the other side of the wall. Like kids at the twitch of a lunchroom fight, we jumped from our chairs and ran to the windows and French doors, positioning ourselves for the best view.

  In the pounding heat, Wladimir, our line manager, hovered over one of Bernard’s hangers-on, who was standing motionless in the black of Wladi’s long shadow. The middle-aged, out-of-shape chauvinist was right to be scared. Wladi was young, athletic, and six foot four. An Afro with a vengeance added three inches to his height. I once saw Wladi catch a thirty-pound double-penised iguana with his bare hands. Casually, on his lunch break.

  Feeling his smallness, the hanger-on put his hands to his hips. His nostrils dilated. “Don’t threaten to kill me, Wladimir. I’ll have you fired.”

  Biting his bottom lip, Wladi reached into the bulging back pocket of his jean shorts. We didn’t wonder as much as hope he was going for his gun. That’s what a jerk the hanger-on was. When Wladi pulled out a copy of the New Testament, shoulders slumped in disappointment.

  With his long, thick arm, Wladi thrust the Bible high in the air. “I don’t kill no one, I am converted. I have personal contact wit God when I go to my knee. But I have people I will easy give dem hundred USD and dey will wait for you. And if you don’t have a broken fockeeng face, I won’t pay dem.”

  Through scattered claps and whistles, Bernard pulled away from the glow of his computer, bunched his shorts, and hurried to the porch. “Both of you, inside!” he scolded. “Wladi, you cannot talk like that to your manager. Houston’s going into overtime.”

  Suddenly, Wladi looked lost. He strained his face to keep from crying. “How can you say dat, Bernard? How can you say dis mother focker is my manager? He don’t have papers. He not even legal! Why? Because he gringo, he my manager?”

  Wladi covered his face with his large, calloused hands. He sniffled. “I am so depressed,” he said. “I want to kill people.”

  He took the stairs two at a time. A moment later came a high squealing pitch and the rumble of
an engine. In the parking lot below, Wladi sat in his purple Mitsbushi GTO. Keeping the clutch in and slamming the gas, he burned his tires against the steaming asphalt. People came out of their houses and businesses to watch the spectacle. Smoke, so much smoke, everywhere. And in the center of the scene, Wladi, spinning his car in tight circles, reversing over melted lizards, swerving off in outrageous directions, and screaming angry prayers.

  The next morning at eight, I arrived at work to find clerks passed out cold along the breezeway’s tile floor. Attempting to raise ASAP’s morale, Bernard had treated everyone to an evening at Mambo Beach, an outdoor dance club where hundreds of Curaçaoans, Rastafarians, Colombian cowboys, Latina prostitutes, and Scandinavian tourists mamboed around a massive sound system. The eighty-proof rum seeping from the clerks’ pores was so overpowering that I gagged as I nudged them awake. They looked up through crusted eyelashes, winced, and stumbled to their feet. When Bernard arrived at the office, I sat beside him. I hated to be the one to say it, but we needed rules.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Power of Prayer

  “Help me!”

  The hushed voice rushed through the crack of my bedroom door and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I thought I was dreaming until I heard it again. “Help me!” A faint knock followed.

  Half asleep, I turned the doorknob and Lionel’s girlfriend rushed in. She was visiting from New York and for the past week we’d all been subject to their endless, scornful arguments, which were made worse by their drinking. The girlfriend trembled, hand over mouth, as though she was trying not to vomit. My first thought was that Lionel hit her. I locked the door, immediately.

  “He’s out there,” she said. She was a Long Islander, so even her whisper was a shout.

  Her eyes and mouth twitched in either disgust or terror, I couldn’t tell. My imagination went wild. “Does he have a knife?” I said.

  Through hard swallows and half-sentences she managed to tell me that she and Lionel had had a fight over sex. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, he’d said, he’d find someone who would. He’d left and returned with a prostitute, to whom he was giving oral sex on the living room couch.

  I covered my mouth in shock and plugged my nose, something I usually did to keep myself from laughing, though I didn’t find this funny at all.

  “He screws hookers?” she asked herself and waited for a reply.

  Days before his girlfriend had arrived, Lionel had lost the company car. He’d picked up a hooker from the side of the road and when he stopped at a quick mart for beers, the girl drove away. The story was certainly believable, but it was shot through with holes. For instance, it didn’t explain why his face was beat up and his arms and legs were covered in tire marks. Or why he was wearing every piece of jewelry he owned, which was an awful lot. Showing little remorse, he shrugged the whole thing off as though he had lost not a four-door Mitsubishi Lancer, but a baseball mitt. I found Lionel’s oafishness and ungraciousness detestable. I only tolerated him because I felt sorry for him, his being an outsider and coming from McDonald’s and all.

  I tried to think of something comforting to tell his girlfriend. Nothing came to mind. High-pitch sex groans cut through the walls.

  Uh, uh, uh, uh.

  The girlfriend glanced at me for a reaction. Her eyes welled with tears and she covered her face.

  “Are you crying because you love him?” I whispered.

  “I hardly know him! We met on the Internet.” She sat on the bed. “What am I going to do?”

  “You mean right now?” I said.

  “Right now, tomorrow! I have three more days here.”

  She too worked in fast food. It must’ve taken her months to save enough money for a plane ticket. Most hotels on the island catered to the Dutch and were very expensive. No way could she afford a room.

  Uh, uh, uh, uh.

  I drew a breath. “Let’s hit him over the head with something and steal all of his shit,” I said. “I’m not kidding. Knock him out and take whatever money’s in his pockets, in that sad-ass money clip. Credit cards. His jewelry!”

  The jewelry part got me very excited.

  “And then what?” she said. Her mouth hung open, drawing out her confusion.

  “Anything you want! Stay at a nice hotel. Fly back first class. When you get home, pawn the jewelry.”

  Her face fell. “I am not a thief,” she said.

  “I didn’t say you were,” I said. “I’ll do it. I love hitting people.”

  She held her stare. “Who are you people?”

  I instantly hated her. Nothing enraged me more than having my bold, innovative ideas priggishly dismissed. Forget it, I thought. Let her sleep in the street.

  “I’m serious,” she persisted. “What are you people doing here?”

  “Stop saying you people. The psycho on the couch is your boyfriend. What did he say we were doing?”

  “That you made baseball uniforms, for Little Leaguers.”

  Now my face fell. I couldn’t decide which was stranger, the lie itself, or the fact that this woman believed us all to be seamstresses. For a moment, I considered telling her the truth, then thought better of it. She definitely fit the profile of a potential FBI hotline caller.

  The girlfriend hugged herself for comfort and began to cry, this time harder than before. She looked so small and alone. I went from hating her to feeling sorry for her again.

  “Let’s just go to bed,” I said. “You can sleep here.”

  At this slumber party gone awry, the girlfriend and I lay stiffly beside each other in my twin bed. She cried and sniffed and wiped her nose on the pillowcase and I pretended to sleep. Morning sunlight spilled through the open windows, streaking the walls and shifting shadows like a kaleidoscope. At once, the room blistered with heat so hot it buzzed. I kicked off the covers. Frogs croaked low and hollow. Lionel and the hooker started up again. Her high, fluttering moans fell in sync with the birdsong. His struggling grunts sounded like someone suffering a major heart attack. Repetitive thuds rocked the walls. We could feel them, coming hard and fast as an animal stampede. Thick humidity sucked the air from the room, leaving the girlfriend and me to lie motionless and silent in the sticky heat with nothing at all to breathe.

  At a round-table office discussion, aimlessly mediated by Bernard, I raised my hand to speak. “I want to vote Lionel off the island,” I said, speaking about him as though he weren’t sitting directly across the table, itching his balls through his New York Giants–themed pantaloons. “He lost the company car and he’s a sociopath.”

  Our new accountant, Pamela, a Curaçaoan, agreed. Pamela was only twenty-seven, but her serious demeanor and professionalism separated her from everyone else in the office. No matter how long her workday or unbearably hot the weather, Pamela kept her movements smooth, her head cool, and managed to look good while doing so. Her style was sumptuous: shimmery, tasteful makeup, crisp white pantsuits, and silky black and red braids falling over her shoulders. I don’t know how she did it. Most days I went to work in bikini top, jean shorts, no shoes, and by noon felt ill-tempered enough to steal sips of Bah-Bah’s bourbon.

  But even with Pamela on my side, my vote went dismissed. “Lionel is not violent,” said one of Bernard’s underlings. His dark, humongous post-cataract-surgery sunglasses perched upon a nose that had obviously been broken many, many times. “Wladi is violent,” he continued. “He’s capable of killing.”

  All heads turned to Wladi, slouched in his chair, scraping beach tar from his heel.

  Bernard had no doubts that his friends were treating Wladi unfairly, and he had no problem saying so. Still, he felt that Wladi was out of line in threatening to pay someone to break his gringo manager’s face. Final verdict: one-week suspension, with pay. “No. More. Death threats. None!” Bernard commanded, quite unconvincingly. Dying to get back to gambling, he tossed Wladi a thick roll of money and darted for his desk.

  Out of nowhere, high-pitched grinding sounds a
mped through the office before pulverizing into Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight.” Headbanging alone in the corner, Bah-Bah punched up the volume on the satellite radio.

  “Nineteen eighty-five!” Bah-Bah howled. “The women, the drugs. And I only went to jail twice!” The intensity with which he strummed the air guitar turned his round, pasty face into a war zone of bulging veins, as messy and twisted as barbed wire.

  Satisfied with the amount in the roll, Wladi bowed his head and pointed to heaven. “Dis is why we need to give tanks to God for all dat happen in life …”

  In tight shorts, halter tops, and platform heels, the twenty-year-old Latina mistresses sat along the back row. In what I can only describe as a fetishized version of Take Your Daughter to Work Day, the guys now brought their girlfriends along with them to the office. They meticulously applied makeup while chatting with relatives in Caracas and Santo Domingo. Afraid of chipping their acrylics, they punched the number pad with the tips of their blush brushes.

  Mamá!

  Mi hijo precioso!

  Estoy conociendo mucha gente en el Starbucks.

  Upon receiving September’s whopping $39,585 phone bill, Pamela—who had the impossible task of keeping ASAP within budget—forbade the girls from using the phones. The men acknowledged it was a shitload of money. But there was value in the girls’ presence: the good luck they brought, the intoxicating smell of their skin and shower-damp hair, the reassurance that the best sex these guys had ever had in their lives was just a footstep away.

  Bernard dropped a handful of chewy circus peanuts candies on top of my figure sheets and whispered, “Because you work so hard …”

  I was in the midst of prank-calling ASAP’s number one customer. Magic Epstein was known as a bridge-jumper, a gambler who bet inordinate amounts of money on heavy favorites. An upset (think no-name Buster Douglas knocking out undefeated champion Mike Tyson) can be financially devastating enough to send this type jumping off bridges. Magic held the distinction of losing the largest amount of money (one hundred seventy thousand dollars) to us in a twenty-four-hour period. It was crucial that we get his business early. Time is money, after all, so every morning at nine I gave the guy a “wake-up call.”