“I was,” I said. “I blew a front tire at seventy and shot off the road. I thought the car was going to flip, but it didn’t. I chopped a pair of teeth on the steering wheel and caught a few body bruises. That was all.”
“Lucky,” the insurance man said. That was Ken Jameson.
Murray asked me what I was drinking. I said scotch would do fine. I sat down and started a fresh cigarette. Evidently Sy Daniels had filled everyone in on my cover story. I had been a plastic firm’s salesman in Chicago, my job had disappeared when the company had merged with a larger outfit, and I had been heading for New York to look for work when the car had done the shimmy-shake and had wound up off the road. It was an adequate front, explaining simultaneously why I didn’t have a car, why I wasn’t working, and why my teeth needed a repair job.
I took the drink from Murray and sipped good scotch. Ed Hart and Harold Barnes broke open two fresh decks of Bee cards and shuffled them up. Barnes was the internist, a gangling fellow with a weak chin and thick glasses. He shuffled a final time, then ran the cards around the table until Sy caught the first jack for the deal. I bought thirty dollars worth of chips from Murray Rogers. Sy tossed his half-buck ante into the middle and we started to play. He dealt draw poker, jacks or better, and Lou Holman opened under the gun. Holman was the oculist. I caught a bust and folded before the draw. Barnes stuck around to buy one card to an open straight and picked up the pot.
I took things slow for the first half hour, laying back and getting a line on the game. It wasn’t quite as friendly as Sy had made it sound. Poker never is. The object of the game is winning money, and you can only win if somebody else loses. They played a sociable sort of game but nobody was giving anything away.
I picked off a pair of baby pots in the first few rounds. Then with about twenty minutes gone I folded early in a hand of seven-card stud and held back an ace before I pitched my hand into the discard. Two hands later I caught an ace for my hole card, covering the motion by reaching for a cigarette with my free hand. I was sitting with the empty chair on my left and that made the catch a little simpler.
I bet half a buck on the ace and got three callers. On the second round I picked up a jack and Lou Holman paired his queen. He bet a buck on the queens and Ed Hart bumped a buck with a king and a five showing. I called. Barnes folded.
Everyone got garbage on the third round. Holman checked, Hart bet a buck and I raised him. Holman made a bad call—either Hart or I had to be telling the truth, and he was chasing aces or kings or both with his pair of queens. He folded on the last round and my wired aces picked up the pot when Hart called my last bet. He had kings with no help for them. I pulled in the pot.
Ken Jameson started dealing a hand of draw, and I was on his left—I raked in the cards for the shuffle. It was easy to leave three sevens on the bottom of the deck, easy to let them stay there during the shuffle. I had a bust in the draw hand but I played it anyway, wound up with just as much of a bust and folded. Then I gave the cards to Jameson for the cut.
He cut the pack. I took a cigarette, lighted it. I picked up the top half of the deck and set it back on top of the bottom, nullifying the cut. By that time Jameson didn’t remember which way he cut them and nobody else was paying attention. I tossed in the ante and dealt seven-card stud, giving myself trip sevens off the bottom. On the sixth card I bought an outside pair and took the pot with sevens full over Lou Holman’s flush and Sy’s straight. It was a big one.
It looked like a nice evening.
I was busy losing a hand when I heard footsteps on the stairs and glanced up. I saw the legs first—long and slender, and a skirt ending at the knees. I folded my cards and had a look at the rest.
She wasn’t quite beautiful. The body was perfect, with hooker’s hips and queen-sized breasts and a belly that had just the right amount of bulge to it. The hair was the color of a chestnut when you pick the husk from it. She had the hair bound up in a French roll. It was stylish as hell, but you started imagining how this female was with her hair down and spread out over a white pillow.
The face was heart-shaped, with a pointed chin and wide-spaced eyes. Green eyes. There were little tension lines in the corners of those eyes, and there were matching lines around her mouth. Her mouth was a little too full and her nose was a little too long, and that’s why I said she wasn’t beautiful, exactly. But perfection always puts me off. There’s something dry and sterile about an utterly beautiful woman. This one didn’t put me off at all. She kept me staring hard at her.
“Hello, Joyce,” everybody said. She gave everybody a big smile and moved across the room toward us. I glanced at Rogers. He was watching his wife with that special expression a man has when he’s letting his friends survey a very desirable possession of his. She leaned over him, gave him a kiss on the side of his face. He put a hand on her hip and patted her.
“Sue just called,” she said. “She’ll be at the sorority house until late. She has a test of some sort she’s cramming for.”
“Jenny home yet?”
“She won’t be home for hours, Murray. Her date’s taking her to a dance and then to a party afterward.”
She squinted at his cards. “How are we doing?”
“So-so.”
“Who’s winning the money?”
“Ed’s ahead,” Rogers said. “And so is this son-of-a-gun Sy brought along. He plays a good game.”
She regarded me. Her eyes seemed to smoke, or maybe I had too good an imagination.
“Beginner’s luck,” I said.
“My husband’s not much for social graces,” she said to me. “He hasn’t introduced us yet.”
Murray laughed and introduced us. She gave me a funny smile, then asked if anyone would mind if she watched a few hands. No one minded. She took the empty chair at my left. Somebody shuffled the cards and started dealing. Murray gave Joyce a cigarette.
She let me light it for her, took a long drag, set the cigarette down in the ashtray. The filter tip was red from her lipstick.
She stayed for two rounds. I dealt five-card stud on my deal, took a peek at the top card after the first round was dealt. I had a five up and a king in the hole, and the top card was a king. I called the bet, then dealt seconds to the four other players and saved the king for myself. I brought an extra pair later in the hand and won a medium-sized pot.
She stubbed out her cigarette a few hands later. She stood up slowly, gracefully, walked around to Rogers and put her hand on his. Her fingers were long and slender.
“I’ll come down in a few hours,” she said. “I’ll bring you boys something to eat.”
He told her that was fine. She turned to go upstairs and the game continued while I tried to figure out how a girl who couldn’t be more than thirty could have a daughter in college.
The answer wasn’t that hard to dope out. It came out by itself a little later. Joyce was Rogers’ second wife. The first Mrs. R. had died five or six years back and two years after that Rogers had married Joyce. He said something to the effect that she was a terrific mother to his kids, and I sat there and tried to make myself believe it. I couldn’t. The hips, the eyes, the walk—she suggested a lot of things, and maternity was not among them.
But she was only another broad and Rogers was only another mark contributing to the fund for the enrichment of William Maynard. Maybe she made me hate him a little, because after she hiked up the basement stairs I thought how unfair it was that a hefty old lawyer like Rogers should have something that nice while I spent my nights alone. A deal later I punished him, did it without making a nickel for myself in the bargain. I dealt him a pat straight and gave Ken Jameson a four-card flush. Jameson didn’t play cards like an insurance man. He stood heavy betting to buy a card to the flush, and I made sure I dealt him the card he needed. Murray lost heavy on that one.