The game ended two innings later on a disputed play at the plate. Silvio ushered her away from the contracting circle of screams and threats, saying he knew a real nice spot where they could go have some beers. This was not an invitation, but an accomplished fact. He was going to take her without even asking what she wanted. It was the kind of arrogance that would normally have inflamed her, but she went along, her silent presence beside him all the consent he required. And when, as they walked, he slung an arm around her waist, she responded instantly (knowing him to be an operator, a man without underwear who carried shiny white knife scars with pride) by crossing her arm over his damp back and smiling into those black, still eyes. She amazed herself.
Orphan Annie’s was an airless, close-fitting bar that smelled of roach poison. It might have been the noise, the press of the crowd, the urgent, wheedling faces lunging at one another, but for whatever reason the new setting pierced the vacuum in which she had been afloat. That echoing, dreamlike serenity was gone and a sour unease took its place. Drinks with a bastard and in another fifteen minutes, back to his place.
Picking at the label of her beer bottle, Tildy wondered how she had ever gotten herself into such a box. Was it boredom? Feckless curiosity? Anger at Christo for leaving her alone? It didn’t amount to a damn. For if there was one truth to which she held fast it was that reasons were the province of the doomed; that only results mattered.
And so a few minutes later when Silvio danced off to the men’s room, she bolted for the door and ran. Full out. For blocks and blocks.
Down and dirty. Pierce dealt the final hole cards with care, sliding each one across the table with his finger, detouring around the green mountain in the center. Christo checked his pair of kings and Steve the Record Producer blew a few blasé smoke rings. He had four spades to the ace showing.
“I’ll go two thousand,” ironing the bills with the back of his hand, laying them delicately on the crest of the mountain.
It was two big ones to Randy Restaurants, a heavy loser all afternoon who’d been annoying everyone with such irrelevancies as the stale tale of screenwriter Ellie Sebring dropping dead at his sushi bar. He stalled, picking his eyebrows, massaging his overbite, and finally dropped.
“Yeah, what suspense,” said Dennis the Lawyer, throwing in yet another busted straight. “I can’t catch pneumonia here.”
Playing with the jogtrot conservatism of a loan officer from the Corn Belt, Pierce had been drifting back and forth across the breakeven mark all day long. Now, true to form, he dropped without even looking at his seventh card.
That brought it around to Eddie the Agent, a big, silk-suited noisemaker from the William Morris office who’d bought in only an hour or so ago and immediately lost four big pots in a row. He was showing paired eights and a couple of junk cards.
“So Steve is hot to trot with his spades, eh? And ace high, too. Fuck, is this déjà vu or what?”
“You really ought to put out some more face towels, Ernie.” Maury from Wall Street was just now returning from a pit stop in Freed’s black tiled bathroom. “The one I used was all wet…. Say, this looks like our biggest pot so far.”
“Shut up, Maury.”
“Yeah. If you’re out of the hand, stay out. What’re you up to, Eddie?”
“This is so exciting I just have to call.”
“Then I have to raise,” Christo said, counting three thousand into the pot.
Steve the Record Producer exhaled very slowly. “And two more. That’s three grand to you, Eddie.”
“Well, that’s damn exciting, but … But I don’t think I can stick around for the showdown.”
“You and me,” Christo said. “Let’s see it.”
Slamming the edge of the table, Steve the Record Producer threw open his hand in disgust. He had three red cards down and a second ace. Christo turned kings over nines and drew in the pot on the blade of his arm.
“Outstanding read,” breathed Maury from Wall Street. “Hell of an outstanding read.”
“Fucking ridiculous is what it is.” Steve the Record Producer was going a little pink about the ears. “There’s no possible way you can raise into me and then call me out with two cocksucking pair.”
“It was easy once he folded the winning hand. Trip eights, wasn’t it?”
Eddie the Agent shrugged helplessly.
“I must thank both of you.” Christo looked for a moment into the bursting silver bubbles of his club soda. “You did exactly what I wanted you to.”
“And your buddy was dealing, too. What did you do with the rest of the spades, Milbank, swallow ’em?”
“Back off, Steve.” Freed was behind him and kneading his shoulders. “It’s history, babe,” he said gravely, the wise old infantry sergeant who’s seen men die a hundred different ways.
As discreetly as he could with all eyes on him, Christo counted his money, he found that he was roughly thirty-one thousand dollars ahead. “Gee, I’d buy a round of drinks for everybody but they’re already free.”
He was not making friends.
“New cards,” said Eddie the Agent. “New cards coming out.”
So a few rounds later, in a gut-out five-card stud hand, a couple thou in revenge was extracted by Steve the Record Producer; and when things went no better over the next half hour, Christo began to suspect that he’d blown it, failed to recognize his peak and bail out before traveling the inevitable downside of the curve. Eddie the Agent was being dealt out while he “made some calls,” Dennis the Lawyer had tapped out and left, and Pierce was folding most opening bets, acting bored: Now was the perfect time to push the game into breakup and run with the profits. But on the other hand, there was still a great deal of money on the table that wasn’t his.
“So what’s the story?” Maury from Wall Street, peering over his Ben Franklins. “Are we all taking a nap?”
“Deal cards. Deal cards.”
“What time is it?”
“Dinner time,” Pierce said, “Hey, Freed, why don’t you open a restaurant in here? Some of that new light-on-the-mind cuisine, you know, raw fish wrapped in seaweed and eight-dollar salads. Maybe the publishing people would start coming here for lunch, you might do yourself some good.”
“What would you know about it?” Freed growled.
“I’m a writer myself, Freed. I know what it’s like to face that blank white sheet.”
“Do you wanna play cards or would you rather smartass?” Steve the Record Producer was by now getting after everyone.
“Sure, sure. Why don’t you deal something really challenging like Anaconda or Spit in the Ocean?”
But the game was draw, jacks or better. Christo’s five-hundred opening was called around, even by Pierce. Christo rapped on the table, passed one hand over his cards. Pat. Everyone but Pierce came right on into him, but his straight to the eight was mortally locked in.
Christo pushed his tightly fanned cards into the middle of the table. “Dealt,” pointing across to Steve the Record Producer and then, with the rude leer of someone tipping a Reno blackjack dealer for her cleavage, throwing a folded ten-dollar bill to him.
“Motherfucker.”
Impossible to say who came across the table first. Christo landed the first and last real punch, a chopping right to the side of the neck. A pawing uppercut was the best Steve could do before Freed’s rented muscle was all over him with a hammerlock.
Maury from Wall Street was yelling at the top of his lungs. “Bloody idiots. Bloody idiots.”
“You’d best take your damn seat, turkey,” Mr. Hercules said, shoving Christo with his free hand. “Or two seconds after I break his arm I’ll be breaking yours.” Then, curving the other’s body with a slight twist and tug, “Seems you and me already been to this movie, eh little Stevie? Little Stevie Wonder. I’m gonna have to kick your ass up around your collar if you don’t learn how to behave.” Something he often said after confiscating a blade in the halls of Printing Trades High.