“Capricorn, it figures. Not that I believe in that junk any more,” she said, and shrugged. “I don’t believe in anything any more, if you want to know. Not the stars, not God, not love, not marriage, nothing but the five hundred thousand dollars we’re going to get tonight, and this Cadillac wrapped around us. That’s all.”
“How do you know we’ll get the five hundred thousand dollars?”
“Because we need it.”
“For what?”
“To win.”
“To win what?”
“The game.”
“Ahhh, the game. And when we win it?”
She shrugged. “We win it, that’s all.”
“What do we win?”
“The right to keep playing it,” she answered. “The right to get two hundred dollars every time we pass Go. The right to stay in the game, that’s all. Until we’re bankrupt.”
“Then what?”
“Then out. We pack our hotels and our houses, and we trade Boardwalk and Park Place for the Queensboro Bridge. When you’re bankrupt, there’s no place else to go.”
“But you’re never bankrupt if you win,” Buddwing said.
“Aren’t you?” the blonde answered. “You’re married, go ask your wife. Go home and say... what’s her name?”
“Grace.”
“Go home and say, ‘Grace, can you win and be bankrupt at the same time?’ See what she tells you.”
“I can’t do that,” Buddwing said.
“Sure, because you know what the answer’ll be.” She glanced through the window and said, “There’s the penny arcade. Let’s get your name printed in the goddamn newspaper. Just pull right up there, driver.”
“Ma’am, there’s a No Parking sign there,” the driver said.
“We’ll take that back to the party, too,” the blonde said. “Rip it off the post, will you?”
“Me?” the driver asked.
“Yes, you. Do you want to be a lousy chauffeur all your life? Live a little.”
“Well...”
“Come on,” she said to Buddwing, and they got out of the car.
It was midnight in New York on Saturday night, and the Broadway sidewalk was packed with pleasure-seekers, all of them hiding their broken hearts from all the lights up there commemorating the fissures. The lights seemed determined to overwhelm by sheer size and candlepower, each blinking barrage showering onto the night a dazzle of swirling, skittering, racing, exploding illumination. A thousand times life size, a million times brighter than life, they blasted their wares to the street until the mind reeled dizzily. The people below, as though running to escape the falling debris of wattage, jostled against each other blindly, seeking the more human scale of the stores and restaurants lining the avenue. The shows had broken, the movies had let out, and now the Saturday night throng moved in a narrow canyon rimmed with shrieking illumination, like a herd of cattle ponderously and painfully avoiding an electrified fence.
There was very little equality in this crowd that moved along the sidewalk and overflowed into the street, constantly imprisoned by light. Whereas they were all here for pleasure, none of them had any intention of sharing it. This was not a unified crowd that had just come from the same football game, emptying an arena. This was, instead, a crowd pouring into an arena, and the only thing they shared was the uneasy knowledge that within this brightly lighted oval they themselves might have to provide the only entertainment. So they looked at each other suspiciously. Was that blind man leading his dog really blind? Were those teen-agers looking for fun or trouble? Was that real mink or imitation?
The Fourteenth Street shopgirl had spent all afternoon in a beauty parlor having her hair washed and tinted and teased and set and sprayed and lacquered into place so that a woman from Washington Mews could walk by and whisper to her escort, “My God, did you see that fright wig?” This was Saturday night, and a group of Puerto Rican teen-agers from Bruckner Boulevard could feel momentarily free to venture into the city as though they really did own a part of it. (“This place is getting overrun by spies,” a second-generation Italian from Fordham Road would mutter to his wife.) This was Saturday night, and going too fast, moving into the past too quickly — how many Saturday nights would there be before the whole thing ended? This was a time for enjoyment, a narrow respite between Friday evening and Sunday morning. If there were drinks to be consumed, this was the time to do it; jokes to be told, tell them now; women to be laid, lay them quick before they turned on the lights and called the law; jigs to be danced, chanteys to be sung, rumbles to be started, riots to be led, dance them, sing them, start them, lead them — this was Saturday night and such a short time in which to cram all that pleasure, such a short time in which to realize the week-long dream. If you didn’t make it now, you’d have to wait clear the hell to next Saturday, and who knew whether you’d be here or not by then?
They came out of the illegally parked limousine and pushed their way against the current of the crowd, walking past the front windows of the arcade, the monster masks, the practical jokes, the souvenir ashtrays and metal Empire State Buildings. The arcade was crowded with teen-agers and older people who still remembered Luna Park. Slot machines bonged and blinked, rifles popped, pellets pinged, a young girl in a bouffant hairdo shrieked joyously to her boyfriend when she shot down a hundred and forty Messerschmitts with an electronic machine gun. At one end of the arcade, alongside a man who was painting nude girls on silk ties, stood an elementary printing press and an ink-stained man. A small crowd of people was watching the artist as he dotted the nipples of a painted voluptuous redhead. A lone Negro was watching the printer pull a wet newspaper from the press, the headline stating A BOY FOR THE COHENS! Buddwing and the woman walked directly to the counter.
“My friend wants his name in the paper,” she said.
The printer looked up. “What do you want it to say?” he asked. “Write it down here. No more than twenty-five letters, and spaces count as letters.”
“How long will it take?” she asked.
“Half hour. You can wait or come back, either way suits you.”
“Think we can make five hundred grand in a half hour?” she asked, and winked at Buddwing.
“Only way you can do that,” the printer said, “is if I was to run it off on this press for you.”
“No, we need real money.”
“That’s a lot of loot, lady,” the Negro standing at the counter said.
“Not if you’re lucky,” she answered, smiling.
“You’re lucky, huh, lady?”
“I’m lucky. This tall man in the blue suit here is my lucky charm.”
The Negro looked at Buddwing appraisingly, nodded, and then said, “I believe you.”
“We’re thinking of robbing a bank,” the blonde said. “Do you know any banks that need robbing?”
“I know a couple in Birmingham that need robbing,” the Negro said, “but that’s a long ways off.”
“We were thinking of something closer.”
“Five hundred grand is a lot of loot, lady,” he said again. “Most banks don’t keep that kind of loot over the weekend.”
“You want a newspaper or not?” the printer asked. “I got work to do.”
“We want it,” the blonde said.
“Then write down what it should say, willya?”
“What shall we say?” she asked Buddwing.
The Negro grinned and said, “Couple Caught Robbing Bank.”
“That’s more than twenty-five letters.”
“Blonde Breaks Bank?” he suggested, and then shrugged. “How many letters is that?”
“Why don’t we just say I’ve been a big success at something?” Buddwing suggested.
“Yeah, just say he made it,” the Negro put in. “So-and-So Makes It.” He paused. “What’s your name?” he asked. “We’ll need it for the headline.”