Lay the Favorite

by Beth Raymer

  “I have all the numbers I need, Dave. I have your number, your wife’s parents’ number, your address, your credit-card numbers.” The last one was a lie.

  Tulip set down her tweezers and gave me an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

  “Christ, Beth, you gotta believe me here. I am in no position to be talking to you about this and where the hell do you get off telling me you have my address and credit-card numbers?”

  “What do you think? I just run around the streets handing out thousands of dollars in credit limits? You don’t think I work for someone? You and your buddies win five weeks in a row and get paid the exact amount, on time, and the first time you lose you turn your phones off? It’s the most scumbag thing you can do in this business.”

  “I told you, my parole officer …”

  “Even if you do have a parole officer, Dave, he is not my problem.”

  The receiver went silent and I listened to the sound of blood in my ears. Then came a delicate, high-pitched squeak, the kind of sound a lobster makes when dropped into a pot of boiling water. Dave Greenberg was crying.

  “I can’t pay you,” he said, and for a second I felt for him. After all, this was the same guy who wanted to start up an exercise program for fat kids in his hometown.

  I pushed my forehead to my knees and listened to his story. Of how the Feds busted him for selling fake stocks on Wall Street and the judge made him choose between ninety days on Riker’s or a fifty-thousand-dollar fine and a felony. “I couldn’t have my mom see me go to prison,” he sobbed. “I wish I’d gone to Riker’s. I wouldn’t have to work at that real-estate place and get paid shit.”

  “You paid six hundred and twenty-five thousand for your condo,” I said. “I don’t consider that shit.”

  “How the fuck do you know that?” He blew his nose. “My in-laws put the money down for that house. I don’t have the money to pay you.”

  By the expression on my face, Tulip could tell something was wrong. “Tell him you’re gonna tell his wife that the two of you’ve been fucking,” she said.

  “Get Grant,” I said.

  Grant strutted into the room eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I held the phone to my chest. “Will you pretend you’re my boss?” I whispered. “And scare him a little?”

  He took the phone from my hand.

  “Listen here, you dirty-ass kike, you’re talkin’ to the boss man, you hear?”

  I cringed. Tulip covered her mouth and widened her eyes in disbelief.

  “I’ve dealt with lots of bitches in my life, but at least the bitches I’m used to dealin’ with have some common motherfuckin’ sense.” He paused to lick peanut butter from his fingers. “You don’t know who the fuck you’re dealin’ with. I ain’t some pussy-ass faggot on Wall Street. I want two grand a week for the next twelve weeks. The first time you miss a payment, I’ll knock every single one of your fuckin’ teeth out.”

  If there is a moral to this story it’s this: never trust anyone from Long Island. Greenberg submitted to Grant’s threat, but his promise to pay was nothing I could actually bank on. My instincts told me I’d never see that money and I couldn’t remember a time they’d ever been wrong. Though I took great pleasure in getting in touch with my inner thug—with the help of my partners in crime, of course—I couldn’t get the metallic taste of dread out of my mouth. It bothered me how carelessly I’d put Jeremy in danger and I wondered what he must think of me. If Jeremy got picked up, he could be convicted as a felon and fucked for life. I hadn’t considered any of this until I heard Greenberg say Jeremy’s name. Only then did I feel foolish and ashamed.

  Jeremy waved off my apologies. He wasn’t nearly as bothered as I was. From a reporter’s standpoint, he found the process interesting and thought it was a cool way to get to know the city. On the days he brought packages with him to work, he took the money out of his pocket when he went to the bathroom, just to look at it. He said he’d miss that. If anything, the whole episode seemed to strengthen his attraction to me. Without warning, he’d launch into declarations of love and praise so earnest they took me by surprise.

  “You were a master at managing that crisis,” he said, cutting my steak for me. “Very strategic. Extremely confident. Not once did it get beyond your control.”

  “Jeremy, you’re missing the point. I haven’t solved anything. It remains a crisis until the money’s in my hands.”

  He refilled my wineglass. “Forget journalism school. Apply to Wharton business school. I can help you get references.”

  It took Dave one month to come up with the money and he agreed to pay me on two conditions: I meet him in person and alone. “Just you and me, Beth. Don’t even think of bringing the ape,” he said, referring to Grant. But I doubted his motives. If Dave was, in fact, paying what he owed, why was he so concerned who I brought along? But I was already late in paying Bernard and so eager to get this over with that, despite my concerns, I agreed to meet him alone and flew to New York.

  From a booth in the sports bar, I watched Dave walk in from the street. He brushed the snow from his leather jacket as though he had just crawled out of a sewer. His eyes watered from the cold.

  “Have you been crying again?” I said.

  “No, I’m not crying,” he said, as oversensitive as a ten-year-old boy.

  He fished a thin pile of money from his front pocket and set it on the table. I made a point not to look at it.

  “That’s all I have,” he said. He wiped his mouth.

  “How much is it?”

  “Count it.”

  “I’m not gonna count it. Just tell me how much it is.”

  “It’s a thousand dollars. You can call my in-laws, wife, whatever you want. I told all of them what happened. There’s nothing you can do. If you call, they’re just going to hang up on you. I canceled my credit cards …”

  “I know,” I said. “You told your wife you lost your wallet.”

  A deep crease appeared between his thick black brows. “Tell me how you know that,” he said.

  “I don’t. It was a guess. But now I can tell her you left it in the hotel room we shared.”

  “Are you that”—he searched for the word—“cold?”

  It took all I had not to spit in his face. “Dave, you’re the one who chose to do business this way, not me. You’re the asshole. Look in the mirror and try to convince yourself you’re not. See how stupid you look.”

  “You can do whatever you want but here’s the deal. I’ll have Jeremy locked up in about five seconds. You want to get paid? Reopen my account. That’s the solution. If I win, you can deduct my winnings from what I owe. The only reason I’m giving you that”—he tapped the cash—“is because I have the heart of a lion.”

  And that’s when I realized that Dave Greenberg had psychiatric problems. Up to this point, I had considered Dave a degenerate, the gambling equivalent of a functioning alcoholic. Degenerates’ friends and family wonder when they’ll bottom out; ashen circles appear beneath their eyes and their skin takes on an enervated yellowish tint. But degenerates have one saving grace: they pay their bookies. Dave was what we referred to as a sicko. Sickos don’t care if they win or lose, how much they owe or who they owe it to. The only thing that matters is that they get down. Come the opening pitch, the tip-off, the coin flip, as long as they have action on the game, the sun will continue to rise.

  My mind raced through plans of action. One grand was a far cry from what he owed and I hardly considered reopening his account a solution. Successful gamblers say that if you really want to excel in their line of work, you must be able to “ride the wave,” the “wave” being losing streaks, the fear of getting busted, and the sickening feeling that strikes with smiting force when you realize you trusted someone you shouldn’t have—that you were taken for a sucker.

  I wasn’t sure if I had the stomach for the business, but one thing was certain: I no longer had the appetite. With Bernard waiting for his money, what choice did I have? To put Da
ve Greenberg back into action was a straight-up stupid gamble. Defeated, I took it. Knowing that I might lose credibility with everyone in the business or get myself into even deeper debt with Bernard, I kept my nausea to myself and, without stirring much notice, called and asked Wladi to reopen Dave’s account.

  The six o’clock alarm sounded. I sat up and faced the window. Beneath the streetlamp’s pool of light, snowflakes shot across the still-black sky. I whined about the weather and fell back into bed. Jeremy rose to admire it.

  “Babe, what could be more beautiful than a fresh snowfall?”

  “Six Flags Atlantis,” I said, solemnly.

  The room was dark and its every surface was cold to the touch. Each time I started to pack, I stopped, and crawled back beneath the covers and into the heat of Jeremy’s body. We interrupted our kisses to talk about the things we’d do to each other when we saw each other again, when we had more time. Unhurried in his movements, Jeremy rolled out of bed and tucked away his morning hard-on. He pulled a book from his workbag and set it in front of me.

  “Will you marry me?” he said.

  The book was thick with hundreds of pictures of engagement rings. I touched its cover, hesitantly, as though it might bite. I looked up at him.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. Thinking: I’m not pregnant.

  “I didn’t want to ask without a ring,” he said. “But I’ve never seen you wear jewelry and I don’t want to get you something you don’t like. We’ll pick one out together.”

  Astounded by his sweetness, I felt dizzied and charmed. But I was also confused. “Jeremy, are you being serious?”

  He nodded, but his expression stiffened and I noticed an illness of ease. As though the slipstream that propelled him this far had veered, forcing him to swim against the rapidly strengthening current of his better judgment. He acknowledged that things were moving fast, and he wasn’t entirely prepared, then kicked me out of the room so he could call my dad and ask for his blessing. I was happy Jeremy was being so respectful, but I worried what my dad might say. He never paid much attention to the guys I dated. As long as they were white and drove an American-made car, he was fine with them. Jeremy drove a sixteen-year-old Volvo and I wasn’t convinced Dad considered Jews white. Concerned, I eavesdropped from the living room couch. Yes, Mr. Raymer. It is early, I’m sorry.

  A moment later, Jeremy walked toward me. Smiling hugely, he got down on one knee and held my hand. Despite the fact that we were sitting in the living room and looking bed-rumpled in nothing but our underwear, the occasion took on a sense of formality so strong I straightened my posture and stopped giggling long enough to concentrate on Jeremy’s proposal. “I love you. I don’t want to go through life without you. Will you marry me?”

  Forgetting everything in the world, I said yes. And without meaning to, I cried.

  Our engagement intoxicated us like a heady wine. Between romantic dinners and heavy snowfalls, we wandered the city in a daze and dreamed of our future. We invented a game where we imagined winning one hundred million dollars. If we agreed on how to spend the money, we won, and winning meant we were destined to be together.

  “We buy my mom a house wherever she wants, we get my dad a Rolex and a new ’Vette, and we find a really nice rehab for my sister,” I said. “We have to take care of Tulip and Dink too. They don’t have kids.”

  “We buy my mom and dad a summer home and offer to pay the hotel and airfare for our wedding guests,” Jeremy said. “And we go somewhere exotic for our honeymoon.” He wrapped his arm around me. “It’s important to me we have a Jewish wedding.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And that the kids be raised Jewish.”

  “Okay! It’s important to me I travel alone up to three months a year.”

  “Will you be faithful forever?” Jeremy asked.

  “I don’t think infidelity is the worst thing,” I said. “From my experience, it’s the absolute norm. And easier to get over than people think.”

  “What’s the worst thing, then?”

  “I don’t know. Disappearing? Like, if you dropped me off somewhere and never picked me up.”

  “Well, Jesus. I’d never do that.”

  “Good. Me either.”

  “But Beth, I do not want an open marriage.”

  “I don’t know how open it has to be. We could do things and keep them to ourselves.”

  He stopped walking and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Jeremy,” I said, steps ahead of him. “Please don’t be so rigid.”

  In the days to come, when I was left alone with my thoughts, I tried to make sense of my shifting moods. Marriage struck me as romantic and courageous one moment, and unimaginably wretched the next. What bothered me most was the sense that I was betraying my own nature. Becoming someone’s wife didn’t seem like an honest expression of who I was. When I told people I was engaged, they’d exclaimed, “Beth, you’re blushing!” It wasn’t a blush; it was a pink, blotchy rash that ran down my neck and across my chest. I had always taken pride in my independence, but I had underestimated just how extreme it was if even the idea of forfeiting a bit of it could produce a physical reaction. I was afraid of becoming a hypocrite. I had condemned conventional marriage as an impractical way to live. Yet all these sentiments didn’t explain away my admiration for Jeremy or my need to be loved by him. Worried that in my absence he’d change his mind, I’d call him at the newsroom.

  “Beth, I’m on deadline.”

  “Okay, but I just want to make sure we’re still getting married.”

  “Babe, of course we’re still getting married.”

  Everything in my life was new. Every plan, thought, daydream—the fact that I now needed Greenberg to win. My mouth went dry and my breath shortened each afternoon as I checked his account. Late at night, he logged onto ASAP’s online casino and played blackjack. Knowing the site’s managerial password, I watched him play his hands from Jeremy’s laptop. Greenberg felt a little too safe with seventeens for my taste. I sent him telepathic messages and screamed for him to hit. He wouldn’t. He’d lose. And I’d go to bed in despair, too agitated to sleep, wondering if it was only a matter of time before my tongue turned green.

  Dave had always taken pleasure in betting long shots, and the day he called me with the big news was no different.

  “Bet you didn’t know I was a whiz at baseball!” Dave said. He chuckled. “Check my tab and call me back.”

  Dumbfounded, Jeremy and I stared at the computer. Dave had bet the most unlikely seven-team parlay, including a bet I’ll never forget: San Fran at Colorado total to go over 17. It was an extremely high total for a baseball game even in the thin, dry, home-run-happy air of Coors Field.

  Final score: Giants 13, Rockies 6. Dave Greenberg had won forty thousand dollars.

  “Do you know the odds of winning a seven-team parlay?” I said.

  Jeremy leaned back, pensively. “Don’t pay him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Jeremy was right: Dave had put me through the wringer. But I couldn’t contemplate keeping his winnings for myself without imagining him and his buddies lying in wait for Jeremy outside the newsroom. Or simply turning Jeremy in to the cops. The right thing to do was to pay Dave, turn off his account, and be grateful that Bernard got his money and nobody went to jail.

  But the thought of giving Dave one penny made me feel like I was betraying even stronger principles. I paced the room and twirled my hair. “But what if you get kidnapped?”

  “I doubt anything like that will happen.”

  “But what if it does?” I said. “What would you do?”

  “Call 911.”

  “From the trunk? What if you’re handcuffed?”

  “Beth, I’m not going to let anybody put me in a trunk.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. As absurd as this conversation was, I found something very comforting about our exchange. Jeremy was being brave and savvy, steadying me in a time of vacillation. I liked
the way he was taking control.

  Days later, when Dave called wanting to schedule our pay and collect, I couldn’t think straight. My mind had become preoccupied with silly, superstitious games. If I made it to the 2 train without seeing a cop car, I’d keep the money and Jeremy wouldn’t get kidnapped. If the first thing I saw when I walked into the bodega was a primary color, I’d keep the money but something bad would definitely happen to Jeremy.

  “Enough being shitty to each other,” Dave said. “We’ll meet near my office. I know a place that has killer chicken Caesars. My treat.”

  HIS TREAT? Now that was insulting. I seethed. Sleet underfoot, bare black branches overhead, I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering in the cold. Enough! I’d rather slit my wrists, I thought, than fight this weather to go into midtown and sit across from Greenberg and eat a chicken Caesar.

  “Lunch would be great,” I said, politely. “Let me see when I can get the money and I’ll call you back.”

  I called ASAP and spoke to the new figures girl. We deducted the money I owed Bernard. My commission, plus the amount I owed Greenberg, came to $21,500.

  “How would you like your player to receive his package?” she asked me.

  “Actually, why don’t you just send it to me,” I said. “Is there any way you could Western Union it, to Rio de Janeiro?”

  I made a mistake, I learned from it, and now I needed a vacation to forget about everything else. Jeremy was right about my habit of running away from things. But wasn’t this time different? I wasn’t shirking my duties; I was standing up for myself. And, anyway, I was taking him with me. We arranged for Otis to go to sleep-away camp in the Catskills, Jeremy finagled time off work, and two weeks after my arrival, he’d be meeting me at the condo I rented overlooking Ipanema Beach. In the meantime, Carolina and I would finally realize our South American adventure. She borrowed a diesel truck and we mapped out our entire trip. But really our goal was to stay lost, which, in the end, takes a lot more effort. Leaving the Brazilian consulate, expedited visas in hand, I swayed to the samba rhythm in my head. Squeezing into a Brazilian-cut bikini in the Bloomingdale’s dressing room, I could virtually taste the caipirinha.