He Played for His Wife and Other Stories

by Anthony Holden

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Quarter past seven in the morning.’

  ‘What . . . why?’

  Two clear plastic bags are placed beside Hana on the bed. Clearing her eyes and her head, she can make out wads of twenty- and fifty-pound notes.

  ‘Based on your latest estimate, this should cover three rounds of IVF,’ Leah says and sits on the bed. ‘Or two, plus a move.’

  *

  Extrapolating from the current political landscape of the world, Hana was explaining how people like her and Leah were running out of places to move to. Everywhere seemed to be closing in on itself. The people belonging to her extended family, now sat around her mother’s dining room table, were people who never moved or considered moving, regardless of the tectonic shifts of the world around them. The thought hit her mid-sentence. They now understood her less than ever before and were possibly even more convinced that this girl liked to choose the trickiest paths in life. But somehow she felt herself speaking from another place. Not the deliberately antagonistic one of her early years away. Not the defensive, self-questioning one of recent years. She felt she talked about herself effortlessly. Though it could just be that all the actual focus was on the baby, snoozing and drooling as it was passed around the table. Leah stood by the door, trapped by two cousins who were repeatedly failing to successfully translate a punchline to a joke. She signalled with some horror that the baby was about to be fed a spoonful of cake.

  ‘Please don’t feed her cake, Auntie. She’s only starting to eat solids, I’m not giving her any sugar,’ Hana said.

  ‘It’s home-made pie. The apples are as natural as they can get. Not sprayed or anything. I have a guy. It’s all health and love.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘There, there, you come to your auntie, little thing. No apple pie,’ the auntie tutted with indignation.

  ‘You really shouldn’t be dressing a little a girl in grey. She’s going to be depressed.’

  ‘What should I dress her in?’

  ‘Happy colours. Red and pink. Girl colours. Like the dress I got her.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Little Victoria. Little Victoria. Like the queen.’

  ‘Well, actually,’ – Hana smiled at her sleepy daughter in her grey baby suit – ‘it’s Victoria. Like the casino.’

  Jimmy Ahearn’s Last Hand

  by Peter Alson

  They came in right behind Stevie Freckles. Two big guys, one in a white sport coat, the other in a puce-coloured Dacron shirt. They must have been waiting for just the right moment; at any rate, they moved too fast for the door guy to react. Now they were in and it was too late to do anything about it.

  Jimmy Ahearn was at one of the six tables in the small well-lit loft, playing $5–$10 hold’em, and though the sudden appearance of the intruders caught him off guard, his immediate take was that they weren’t robbing the place. The rest of the room had gone from noisy to dead quiet in a matter of seconds.

  ‘The boss around?’ the guy in the white sport coat demanded gruffly of nobody in particular. Jimmy noticed that he was wearing white loafers to go along with the coat. Could these guys look more the part?

  The kid at the door, Joey, didn’t know what to do. He glanced at Jimmy, who wondered if either of the two thugs saw the look.

  What the fuck. It didn’t matter.

  ‘I’m the boss,’ Jimmy said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  The two men turned in his direction. ‘Like to have a word with you.’

  Jimmy did a little shrug of his palms and got up. He motioned for them to follow him and headed back through the kitchen to the smoking room. He held the door for them, then stepped in himself. Two exhaust fans were going. A smoke eater overhead. The room still stank like a wet blanket in a flophouse.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Jimmy said. ‘You didn’t come here looking for a game.’

  The one in the sport coat smiled, wagged a scolding finger. Of the two, he was apparently the point man. Up close, you could see pockmark scars of long-ago acne on his face. His eyes were dull but not stupid. ‘I’m Dominic. This is Anthony. We’re here to offer our services.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Jimmy said.

  Dominic nodded, lighting up a Parliament. ‘We hear you’re doing pretty good. We want to make sure that continues.’

  Anthony suddenly picked up a chair by the legs and swung it like a baseball bat into the window of the smoking-room door. There was a loud thud and the Plexiglas pane cracked although it didn’t come out.

  Anthony started winding up for another swing.

  ‘All right, all right, I get the picture,’ Jimmy said.

  Anthony swung the chair again despite Jimmy’s plea and this time the pane popped out, crashing to the floor on the other side of the door.

  ‘Jesus,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Dominic said.

  ‘Let me guess. You’ll make sure nothing like this happens in the future.’

  ‘It’s good you understand.’

  ‘Thing is, it’s not me alone,’ Jimmy said. ‘I got a partner.’

  ‘Sure. You need a couple of days to think things through. I understand,’ Dominic said. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette on the floor and rubbed it out with his heel. ‘We’ll be back.’

  After they left, Jimmy stayed in the smoking room a few moments to collect his thoughts. Then he called Ray Howie. Two years earlier, Ray had approached Jimmy about starting up a room. They’d known each other for years as players.

  Ray was a solid guy, a contractor who’d made a bundle flipping properties in the Hamptons, and now in his mid-forties was basically retired. He was a winning poker player himself, though not on Jimmy’s level.

  Jimmy was considered by many regs and pros to be one of the top two or three players in the city, legendary for his ability to sniff out bullshit and weakness and make crazy calls and impossible folds. He was pushing fifty himself when Ray came along with the idea of starting a place. Jimmy’s two kids were in middle school. The games in New York had gotten tougher, young sharp kids from the finance world and the Ivy League, combined with the higher rakes, cutting into his edge. On top of that, even great players could go through down times, and Jimmy was a realist – especially with college tuitions on the horizon.

  Ray said he’d put up the bulk of the start-up costs, the build-out of the space, tables, chairs, cards, chips, flat-screen televisions. All Jimmy had to do for his half was contribute ten per cent of the capital, bring in players and be the public face. Two years later, with half a million in profits stashed away in a half-dozen safe deposit boxes, Jimmy felt like it was the smartest thing he’d ever done.

  Now this.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Ray said. ‘See what I can find out about our friends.’

  ‘Miserable fucking lowlife parasites.’

  Ray looked at the business card Jimmy had gotten from the guy. The name Dominic Pagano was written in the middle. On each corner in embossed letters was the following: No Home, No Phone, No Job, No Number.

  ‘He’s got a sense of humour anyway,’ Ray said.

  ‘Yeah, a real wiseguy.’

  Next day, Jimmy met Ray at the club in the afternoon before the doors opened. A couple of the dealers were there already, cleaning up from the night before, taking out bags of garbage, stocking the refrigerator with bottles of water and soda, sorting decks.

  ‘Let’s go sit in the smoking room,’ Jimmy said.

  When Ray saw the temporary plywood over the window, he shook his head.

  They sat down on the built-in banquette. ‘So what’d you find out?’ Jimmy asked.

  Ray drummed his hands on his thighs. ‘They’re small-timers. But they like to drop names. Joey Salzano for one.’

  ‘Joey Onions? Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s like me saying I got the US Government behind me because I pay taxes.’

  ‘You don’t pay taxes.’

  ‘Point is they might give
Salzano a piece of whatever they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean he’s behind them.’

  ‘But he might be?’

  Ray turned up his palms. Jimmy had always found Ray to be careful and meticulous in his approach to both poker and business. He knew people on both sides of the street, and had enough juice that they’d been able to operate up till now without any interference. It was Ray who’d brought in Captain Mike, an ex-NYPD cop. In exchange for promising to tip them to any activity at the local precinct, Mike got back every dime of rake he paid. And since he was there most days, it amounted to a lot, maybe twenty grand over the course of the year. So far, Mike hadn’t sounded any alarms, and the cops had stayed out of their hair. This was something different.

  ‘So what’s our plan?’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Why don’t we see how much they want.’

  ‘Really? There’s a number you’d be good with?’

  ‘What are we gonna do, Jimmy?’

  ‘Tell ’em to go fuck themselves?’

  ‘Yeah, we could do that.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It might be easier to play ball, is all.’

  ‘Fuckin’ vultures.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  At home, Jimmy spent the afternoon in the kitchen. He liked to cook. His wife, Rosemary, said he brought the same intensity to cooking that he brought to poker. He found working in the kitchen relaxing, another way to occupy himself and not obsess about moves he had made or hadn’t made in his last session. When Rosemary had first started dating him, he’d bent her ear recounting hands he’d won and lost, amusing her with his descriptions of the crazy degens who inhabited the clubs. By the time they got married, the poker talk was old hat and she made fun of him and gave him the business whenever he started in. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she’d say, ‘and then you raised, and like an idiot he called, and of course hit his three-outer on the river cuz he’s just a dumb luckbox. And that’s why I can’t buy a new couch this week.’

  He no longer talked to her about poker or what happened at the club. For her part, though she had made her peace with what he did, she was happier not hearing about it. These days, at home at least, he was all about sous vide and powdered olive oil and blowtorching steaks. Benji and Chloe, eleven and twelve respectively, tolerated his more ambitious experiments but the two tweens made no secret of preferring the simple pastas and meatloafs their mother made and were grateful that their father was working at the club and unable to cook most nights during the week. Seriously, Dad, bourbon pecan chicken? Are we even allowed to have alcohol?

  Both kids went to public school. It had been good enough for Jimmy, growing up in Brooklyn, but Rosie thought they should at least think about private school when it came time for the next phase. ‘It’s not like we can’t afford it,’ she said.

  Jimmy didn’t argue it though it kind of ticked him off that his wife refused to acknowledge the uncertainty of their future. He wanted to say, ‘Don’t you understand? I’m in a business where you have to plan for a rainy day – maybe even a rainy rest of your life?’

  Once, he thought poker would last forever. Couldn’t imagine that changing. There’d always be juicy games he could beat. Lately, though, he found himself afraid of being left behind. For a guy who’d always made his living taking risks, it was a funny way to be thinking. Maybe the illusion of stability he’d found with the club was making him soft. He worried about that.

  Five days after their initial visit, Dominic and Anthony returned. This time they rang the bell like anyone else. After being called over to look at the security monitor, Jimmy told the door guy to buzz them in.

  Again, Jimmy walked the two men back to the smoking room. As he ushered them through the door, he decided that Anthony purposely bought shirts that were a couple of sizes too small to make himself appear bigger. Like the Hulk, he could probably split apart the seams just by flexing.

  ‘So you had a chance to talk things over with your partner?’ Dominic said.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’ll listen to your offer.’

  ‘Like I told you, we know you been doing pretty good. We did some calculations. Based on what we came up with, we think fifty per cent of the net is fair.’

  ‘What, fifty per cent! Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘Do we look like we’re kidding? Anthony, you want to show him if we’re kidding or not?’

  Anthony moved very close to Jimmy, backing him up against the wall. He put a massive hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and squeezed so hard Jimmy had to say, ‘Hey hey.’

  ‘That’s OK, Anthony,’ Dominic said.

  The big man stopped squeezing but stayed in Jimmy’s face, staring him down with his dead shark grey eyes.

  ‘Look,’ Jimmy said. ‘You guys come here—’ He tried to move to one side as he talked but Anthony moved with him.

  Dominic nodded and Anthony backed off. ‘You come to this place that my partner and I built up from nothing, and you demand half of it. Just like that. Like it’s your birthright. So that’s a little hard for me to digest. Half. I mean if that’s not negotiable, we may just decide to close our doors.’

  ‘I really doubt that,’ Dominic said. ‘You made at least three hundred gees last year, personally. You going to walk away from that?’

  ‘It would be a hundred and fifty,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If we give you half, I’d only be walking away from a hundred and fifty.’

  ‘So raise the rake. Squeeze a little more out of the players. You work it right, you won’t make a penny less.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m being serious?’

  ‘I think when you talk it over with your partner, you’ll see the light.’

  ‘The guy hit you?’ Ray asked.

  ‘He got up in my face. He didn’t actually hit me. Although I’ve got his fingerprints on my shoulder.’

  Ray frowned. They were sitting at the bar of the Hungry Giant, across the street from the club. ‘You mean it about walking away?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t read you.’

  ‘You never could.’

  ‘You bluffing them?’

  ‘They think I am.’

  ‘The guy has a point though. We could take more out of the game. Put in another table. Figure out ways to increase the gross. It doesn’t have to affect our bottom line.’

  ‘I want to be able to live with myself.’

  ‘Even if it means going back to grinding?’

  ‘I just want to be able to live with myself.’

  Jimmy never told Rosie what was going on. He knew she’d freak. The truth was, he was afraid. Of Dominic and Anthony, but also of the alternative, of going back to poker without a net. Sure, he had a bigger bankroll now and was better equipped to weather the variance. But he’d gotten used to a stable income. He worried that he didn’t have the nerve for the swings any more.

  It was true what they said about getting older. He was forty-eight and he felt like he was seventy. His world had shrunk. His balls had shrivelled. He didn’t like what he saw when he looked in the mirror. Some of the clarity and sharpness had drained from his blue eyes, which now projected a slightly rheumy milkiness. His earlobes appeared suddenly pendulous. His eyebrows seemed to be disappearing. He’d even noticed a patch of grey in his pubes. Fuck, could anything be more depressing than that?

  Ray kept making the case that dealing with mob shakedown artists was the price of doing business, that they had actually been lucky to have operated free and clear so long and they should be grateful for that. But Jimmy couldn’t stomach it. Not on such usurious terms, not when dealing with a pair of such unbending do-nothing bloodsuckers. Without even another sitdown, he closed up shop, turned off the lights, told his dealers and floor people and cocktail waitresses that he and Ray were suspending operations, maybe for good.

  Then, less than a week later, coming out of his apartment building on Prince S
treet, he saw the two bozos waiting for him, leaning against a parked car, looking like cartoon versions of themselves. His heart rate spiked though outwardly he remained calm.

  ‘We seem to have had a misunderstanding,’ Dominic said.

  ‘How’s that?’ Jimmy muttered, continuing to walk, glad that the street was crowded in the late morning.

  ‘You didn’t inform us what your plans for the club were.’ Dominic fell into step beside him, with Anthony trailing behind.

  ‘Is that right? I thought I was pretty clear. I told you that I’d rather shut down than give you half.’

  ‘And I suggested how you might maintain your rate of profit by making a few adjustments to the way you were running things.’

  ‘Yeah. Except that doesn’t work for me.’

  ‘You’d really rather go out of business than accommodate us?’

  ‘Apparently I would.’

  Jimmy turned into the Apple store and the two men followed. He thanked the helpful salesperson who approached them, saying that he knew where he was going, and he made a beeline for a polished waist-high wooden table that had speaker systems for iPhones. He pushed a button on one and the sound came on, playing some pop song he’d heard but didn’t know the name of.

  ‘Not bad quality,’ he said. ‘For something so small.’

  ‘Look, maybe we can work something out that’s more agreeable to you,’ Dominic offered.

  Jimmy laughed – not because he was surprised, the opposite actually. It was mostly just a question now of how far he could push this. ‘Like what?’ he said.

  ‘Like we’ll reduce our take to a third.’

  Jimmy stopped an Apple salesperson and told her that he wished to purchase the Bose sound dock he’d been looking at. As she punched in the order on her iPhone, Jimmy could sense Dominic’s agitation. Jimmy handed her his credit card and signed the screen with his finger.

  ‘All right, twenty-five per cent,’ Dominic said. ‘But that’s as low as we go, and you don’t say nothing to nobody.’

  *

  Ray was dying. ‘You didn’t stop there? You got ’em all the way down to twenty? Fuckin’ A, Jimmy, who’s better than you?’

  ‘I think I might have pushed it to fifteen, I don’t know. But if I had, Anthony woulda busted out of his shirt and Dominic might have popped a blood vessel in his forehead.’