“I don’t have a name.”
“Every man has a name,” the Negro said.
“I’m not Everyman,” Buddwing said.
“How do you know?” the blonde said. She took the pencil from the counter, and on the slip of paper she wrote:
“There. How’s that?”
“A bit pretentious, don’t you think?” Buddwing said.
“Well, that depends,” the Negro said. “How many letters is it?”
The blonde began figuring. “Eighteen,” she said. “Counting spaces.”
“That’s less than twenty-five, all right,” the Negro said. “It ain’t pretentious at all.”
“I’m not Everyman,” Buddwing said. “I’m me.”
“And who are you?”
He shrugged. “Nobody.”
“Maybe that’s more to the point,” the blonde said. She scratched out what she had written, and beneath it she wrote:
“That’s poetic, but untrue,” Buddwing said. “We are going to make it.”
“I believe you,” the Negro said.
The blonde shrugged and handed the slip of paper to the printer. “Print it,” she said. “We’ll be back in a half hour.”
“What kind of a headline is that?” the printer asked.
“What are you, a printer or an editor?”
“I’m only saying.”
“Print it,” she said. She turned to Buddwing. “Come on, let’s go make our five hundred grand.”
“Nobody makes it,” the printer muttered behind them.
The Negro followed them out to the sidewalk. As they approached the limousine, he asked, “You serious about that loot?”
“Why? Have you remembered a bank someplace?”
“Banks are for putting in, lady.”
“What’s for taking out?”
“Crap games.”
“Life’s the biggest crap game going,” the blonde said.
“Me,” the Negro answered, “I don’t dig symbolism. If you’re looking for a real crap game with some real money in it, I know where. You interested?”
“I’ve got a dollar and thirty-six cents,” Buddwing said, and shrugged.
“That won’t get you in this crap game, man.”
“Will a hundred?” the blonde asked.
“You hope to parlay a hundred bucks into five hundred grand?” the Negro asked, and shook his head.
“Why not? Will there be that much money in the game?”
“It’s there, if you can take it home.”
“We can take it home.”
“I don’t know,” Buddwing said dubiously. “What’s your stake in this?”
“Ten per cent,” the Negro said.
“Of what?”
“Your winnings.”
“We’d have to win a hell of a lot more than five hundred grand in order to afford your percentage.”
“Tell you what,” the Negro said. “Win five and a quarter, and I’ll settle for twenty-five grand.”
“Suppose we only win five? Or less than that?”
“Then my services are thrown in free. How about it?”
“You really do think we’re going to make it, don’t you?” Buddwing asked.
“Yep. I think you’re gonna bust that game wide open.”
“How come?”
“Man, when you’re born black, you never know the smell of luck until it comes sailing down Broadway sweet and cool in your nostrils. When you and your wife walked into that penny arcade, I got such a whiff of it, it nearly overpowered me. I’d like a piece of it, man. Twenty-five grand is all I ask.”
“You’re on,” the blonde said.
“Where is this game?” Buddwing asked.
“Up in Harlem. You ain’t a segregationist or anything, are you?”
“Yeah, sure I am,” Buddwing said, and grinned.
“So am I,” the Negro answered, returning the grin. “I want to segregate all that money in the crap game from its rightful owners.”
“Come on, let’s go do it,” the blonde said.
She was moving toward the limousine when the Negro said, “My name’s Hank. I know your husband’s name ’cause I seen it in the paper.” He grinned broadly. “But I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure, lady.”
The blonde hesitated. Then she opened the car door, winked at Buddwing and said, “Just call me Grace.”
Spanish Harlem was in full swing by the time they arrived, overrun by sailors from a squadron of destroyers moored in the Hudson River, all of whom had come uptown in search of exotica and erotica. The only natives concerned with the sailors were the prostitutes and the muggers; each would have a chance at rolling them before the sun came up. The rest of the citizens ignored the fleet and went about their pursuit of gaiety as relentlessly as did the Broadway crowd. The bars lining Madison and Park were full of drinkers, the apartments in the side-street tenements rang with the sound of guitars and Spanish songs, teen-agers sat on front stoops and discreetly nuzzled each other and their bottles of Thunderbird. This was not San Juan or Mayagüez, but it was Saturday night and for a while the ghetto could ring with the same humor and joy that sounded in the town plazas back home. There would be some fights, yes, and perhaps some youthful gang members would test their muscles against each other, it being spring and the summer rumble season not being too far off, but for the most part the cops roaming in pairs would have nothing more to worry about than a few drunken slashings and some sailors with bumps on their heads.
The Housing Authority cop had no such worries since he was not in the streets but was instead up on the third floor of the City Housing Development on 114th Street, in an apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue. The Housing Authority cop was not alone in the apartment. He was, in fact, part of a group that numbered about a dozen people, all of whom were crowded around a blanket that had been spread against the living room wall. As Buddwing, Hank, and Grace moved closer to the group, the Housing Authority cop reached for the dice on the blanket, shook them in his fist, yelled, “Eight, right back!” and then hurled them mightily against the wall. Hank, Buddwing, and Grace, standing on the edge of the crowd around the blanket, watched the white cubes strike the wall, bounce off onto the blanket, roll halfway down its middle, and then stop dead, a five-spot showing on one die, a two-spot showing on the other. In deference to the ladies present (there were three including Grace) the Housing Authority cop muttered his swear word under his breath, and then looked sourly at his neighbor as though the man had hexed him. His neighbor, clutching a fistful of ten-dollar bills, ignored the glance, adjusted his rimless spectacles on his nose, and reached for the dice. Buddwing and Grace elbowed their way into the circle and watched while the man with the spectacles rolled a seven and then a six, and then failed to make his point. The dice passed around the circle to a young mulatto woman named Iris, who picked them up and chided them gently as though they were a pair of skittish lovers, and then rolled them easily against the wall, her palm opening, the dice striking the wall and rolling back with a three-spot showing on one, and a one-spot showing on the other.
“Two to one, no four,” a tall beefy man in a dark gray tropical suit said, and Buddwing was surprised to see Grace hold out her hundred-dollar bill, and say, “It’s a bet.” The man in the gray tropical took her bill and tucked it together with his two bills between the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand while he continued to agitate for further bets, “Two to one, no four,” and the mulatto girl picked up the dice and blew her breath upon them as softly as a lover’s kiss, and again eased them out of her white palm and against the wall. They rolled back showing a pair of deuces, Little Joe, four the hard way. Grace collected her money — their stake had grown on a single roll of the dice to three hundred dollars — and Iris, the mulatto girl, put fifty dollars on the line and picked up the dice again, smiling a secret smile at them and again brushing her breath against them like a kiss.