“Stop jivin’ me and fire them dice.”
He looked up from where he was hunkered on the dirty floor, and I hope I never see a look like that again. It was killing cold.
And then I dug. Then I realized what I should have known right in front: that bastard didn’t have any money at all. He didn’t have a hundred and forty or ten or any other damn thing. He was busted. And he’d been bluffing me, playing me on my own money!
I wanted out then, very bad.
“Okay.” I said, “forget it you — ” I started to call him a bastard, but stopped, bad move, “ — you don’t have to pay me now. Just forget it. Just lemme out of here.” He didn’t budge. He wanted what I had on me. I don’t know why, and I don’t care, but he was insulted, somehow. He owed me money and he hadn’t been able to take me, and he was killing mad because the ofay bastard had him a hundred and forty mythical dollars in the hole. It was suddenly more than a crap game, it was a status thing, the downtown black man and all that. He was a sick guy, putting all that into it, and me just wanting to get the hell out of there and forget the ten, I’ll get it off a friend or some damn thing. Just lemme outta here!
“I’m gone pay you, man, you just remember that. But we gonna play a bit more. We gonna switch from crap, you been winning too much.” He reached into his side pocket and took out that knife, the one I knew he had.
He didn’t do a thing with it, just laid it back down in his sock, right tight to the shoe top He was giving me the word, I’d better not win.
Better not win? Jeezus, what’d I have to do, kill myself to prove I didn’t want to win?
“High dice, now,” he said succinctly.
He picked up one of the dice and bounced it, so very white, in the center of his palm, so very black. He was really busting on the symbolism. “You throw for roller,” he bid me, and my head swam for an instant, everything going furry and grey and I wanted to puke right there.
I threw the cube and it came up six.
Then he threw, and got a three, and I was roller, first.
High dice is played sometimes with two, sometimes with one, but the rule is simple: high man wins. I was his master for a hundred and forty, and this was a quick, frantic way to recoup fast. It’s a sucker’s game.
“Look, Kurt,” I almost pleaded with him, “please, I’m not feeling too well, let me get out of here, will you? You can forget the money, just let me out of here.” It was the wrong thing to do; he wanted me to crawl, it was some kind of a thing with him to see me completely hammered and half dead on my feet and the Man still waiting outside there, and me not being able to move, hanging suspended like a fly in a web.
“I think you been cheatin’ me, Teddy,” he said, rising, towering over me as I crouched down. “I think you been doin’ tricks with them dice. Gimme ’em here.” He reached down and I gave him my cube. He put them in his side pocket and took a smaller, red plastic pair out of his shirt pocket. They were clear plastic and I could see right through them and I knew as sure as hell they were loaded, the spots painted on with lead paint.
“Well, listen, Kurt,” I said righteously, “that other set was yours, too, so where the hell you get this stuff I’m cheating. Now c’mon, for Chrissakes, just get away from that door and let me out of here!”
I was getting a little hysterical now, and even as I raised my voice to him, someone shook the knob and banged half a dozen times quickly with a fist on the door and I heard a voice from the other side of the wood panel yell, “Hey, c’mon you jerks what the hell’s going on in there, you a pair of fruits, or what?” and banged again. I was really going out of my mind about then. I started to yell help to whoever was there but Kurt just reached out lightly and slapped me so hard across the mouth I thought my skull would split open. I didn’t get rocked back or anything, but it was the hardest I’ve ever been hit — and it dawned on me that I hadn’t had a fight since I was thirteen years old, and how easy it was to avoid violence if you were always afraid, and just never had occasion to fight because you didn’t want any part of it. But this was real, not the kind of constant wearying violence they have on TV that has no reality because there’s such a surfeit of it.
I got hit in the mouth, and I wanted to cry at him.
Then I did cry, I really cried, with tears, and my hands were wringing each other and I was begging him, “C’mon, Kurt, please c’mon, let me out of here!” I couldn’t give him my twenty-five dollars, I needed it, I needed that fix, my God, help me please help me God I’m going out of my mind, everything’s closing in on me, I’ll strangle if I don’t get a fix, JeezusJeezusJeezus!
“Man, you really think you gonna do that to me, doncha? You really think ah’m gonna let you outta here with mah money! Now c’mon, damn you, you gone play a little high dice with me, and then … when you get straight … I’ll let you go.”
It wasn’t real, what was happening. A nightmare, this weird surrealism bit with him saying one thing and meaning another. I didn’t have any of his money … in fact, he had ten bucks of mine! It wasn’t the money, it was the whole thing of him being him and me being me and he had to beat me down. I mean, Jeezus, here I was on my knees already crying like a baby, and begging him, what the hell else did he want from me.
I felt everything going strange and wild and brass bands were marching through and outside in the Shack everyone could see through the walls and see how I was getting so sick I wanted to die, and I was seeing things, crawly things that were coming up to bite the hell outta me. I knew the Man was sitting there maybe wiping his hands on his pant leg, or picking his nose, making those tentative first movements that meant he was gonna pick up and split at once, and there would go my fix and I’d just croak, and that would be it. It!
That little toilet was the world, right then.
It was the biggest and blackest most angry Negro in the world, all ready to kill me for every white cat that had ever used the word nigger. And I was innocent, so help me God.
The room bulged outward, rubber walls ballooning.
The floor puckered.
I hurt worse and worse. My belly was blasted.
My head throbbed and beat and beat and beat.
Welclass="underline" it passed, and I was sane again for a second. It had been very bad, all those twisting illusions and strange, dancing colors. I had been out of it completely, but now I was all right (except for the pains) and I had to take very close stock. Now just breathe easily, deeply, and look around. Just forget Kurt there for the moment. What else is there. Well …
The toilet has green walls, linoleum halfway up of a deeper green, and a sort of colorless dirty linoleum floor, and a toilet with the seat up and someone’s stuff still there, along with the floating seaweed of a cigarette, and a permanent ochre stain around the bowl. There’s a cloth towel rack up there over the sink, with the towel at the end of its tracks and hanging down into the sink. It’s very dirty, and some people will wipe their hands any where. There’s a mirror on the front of that towel rack, but it’s too high for me to see myself in it. I’m not too tall and Kurt is so goddam big — uh-uh, not Kurt. Analyze the room; what else …
Well, there’s the sink, without any handles on the faucets, because the jerks who come here would leave the water running if there were. The hot water one is letting down a soft dripping thin stream, just enough to moisten your hands or get some wet on the comb, but since there’s no soap, who cares? There’s a can of Bab-O on the sink.
They don’t have the Gold Dust twins on it any more. Or was it a Dutch girl with a bonnet that hid her face? I don’t know.