Double down, p.26
Double Down, page 26
“It was summer, a beastly hot day, the way it can get in Houston. I stood in the doorway watching this determined, sturdy little man in short pants and T-shirt marching off to his solitary picnic. So happy and proud of himself. Several times he turned and waved, big wide smile on his face. In Texas, in the summer, we have these gigantic black flies, big as thumbs, the kind that assault you. It was his luck to walk right into a wall of them. About halfway down the block he stopped, and his arms started batting the air, and he started dancing this convulsive jig. He threw his lunch sack on the ground and came tearing back to the house, a swarm of flies trailing him, face all contorted, sobbing, falling into my arms, and crying for me to help him, salvage the day, make things right again…”
Her voice cracked. She sucked in her lower lip, and her eyes misted over, sought the ceiling. She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray Waverly held for her. He watched her.
“It was like I was seeing his future unfold in that little scene, Tim. Like it was a metaphor for his life. Or maybe more an augury of what was in store, what might become of him if I weren’t there.”
Because he had once been a literary man (a thousand years ago, in another life), and because being near her seemed to bring out those buried instincts, and because, finally, her story called to mind a blurred image of his own forfeited son, Waverly was thinking just then of Achilles, of “The sorrow woven into the patterns of a man’s life.” Prophetic lament. “It’s all very sad,” he said quietly, and another silence began.
After a while, not long, Caroline said, “This is turning into the wake that photographer warned us about. It’s not what I intended, and I’m not going to let it happen. This is our night.”
And having so declared, she sprang off the bed, gathered up her clothes and purse, and disappeared into the bathroom. The shower sounded. Soon the door opened and she came through it, dressed in her cream silk pants and matching top, sweeping a cascade of hair off her wide forehead. Renewed, it appeared, revived and filled with all the manic energy of a restless driven spirit. Waverly had an idea where that surge of energy came from, but he chose not to remark on it.
“Come on, Tim,” she said, tugging at him playfully, “your turn. No more malingering. I’ll finish up in here.”
When he came back into the room a few minutes later, she was standing before the mirror, applying the final touches: running a comb through her hair, painting on lipstick and eye color, fastening earrings, pulling on a necklace and the diamond-studded tennis bracelet. He watched the ritual, staring intently, as though to lock and seal her features and all her nimble fluttery motions permanently in memory.
She turned and presented herself. “How do I look? Be honest.”
“Gorgeous is how you look.”
She gave him a smile at once exhilarant and wistful.
He said, “What’s next?”
“The casino’s next. You’re going to teach me how to play cards. Make us rich. If we can’t be happy, we can at least be rich.”
D’Marco was into his third set of curls, bombing out the reps-four, five—racing the pump—six, seven—taking the burn right down to the belly of his biceps—eight—battling the last ones—nine—clenching his hard jaws, groaning—ten! Did it! He set the cambered bar on the floor and dropped onto a bench, arms engorged with blood, heart thudding, breath escaping his lungs in violent gasps. Blitzed, radically. Nevertheless, it felt good, hitting the big steel again. Better than good—sensational. Old Schwarzenegger had it right: getting pumped beat getting laid, hands down, no contest.
Sigurd, slouching against the squat racks, toothpick projecting from a corner of his mouth like a moist needle, looked on with an expression faintly bemused, faintly superior. He waited till D’Marco’s breathing returned to something approaching normal, and then he volunteered a word of advice: “Better slow down, chief. You like to blow a nut, end up wearin’ one a them trusses rest of your life.”
D’Marco tried ignoring him. Lardball. Strutting around the exercise floor in his street clothes, sucking a pick, advancing his value-minus opinions like they were nuggets of rare and precious wisdom. The idiot prince, prince of dumb. Any real hardcore gym they’d of shagged his fat ass right on out of there, long since. Here, Stayin’ Alive, Friday night, place almost empty but for a handful of pencilnecks pushing powder-puff weights, wouldn’t tax an invalid—here nobody seemed to give a shit.
Sigurd was persistent. “Know what I’m sayin’, truss? Like a rupture support? Looks sorta like a diaper?”
D’Marco, still not fully recovered, managed only to produce a surly grunt. The idea of himself ruptured, trussed, diapered, was the kind of idea you’d expect out of Mr. Wizard there, got a spit-bubble opinion on everything. Imagine him, D’Marco Fontaine, in a truss, him with his washboard abs, solid as armor plate, impregnable. (Though on surreptitious fingertip examination they did seem to be softening a little. Unless he was imagining it. Maybe he should be backing off from the heavy stuff, least till he got his life back in order again.)
Without a word he got to his feet and went over to the lat machine, set the pin in the plate stack at eighty—nice medium poundage—and commenced a set of pressdowns. He visualized his triceps rippling and swelling, inflating like sausage balloons up the length of his arms. Midway along in the set his muscles began to cramp, suffused by a delicious stinging ache. What are you going to do? Grind ’em out. No pain, no gain. Course this was no way to train either, workout once in eight days, full body at that. Normally what he did was split it up, chest and back first day, legs second, arms and shoulders third, and then repeat the whole process. Six big bombing sessions a week and one day off for good behavior. It was a science, building and maintaining your physique was, and it took mental discipline and dog-ass work. Results were worth it though: living sculpture, pure art.
But no sooner had he released his grip on the bar than Sigurd, hovering near, omnipresent, was at it again: “What’s that one for?”
“Tris,” D’Marco said curtly. He didn’t want to encourage any more chin-dribble conversation.
“What’s tris?”
“Triceps, pissbrain. Back of the arms.”
Sigurd’s mobile tongue shuttled the toothpick to the front of his mouth, balanced it between front teeth. He shook his head slowly, a show of bafflement. “Look like a helluva lot a butt bustin’ to me, just to put some bumps on your arms.”
D’Marco scowled at him. “Yeah, well, little butt busting wouldn’t hurt you any. Maybe get that hippo ass yours through a door without a crowbar.”
“Oh, I thought about it couple times,” Sigurd said good-humoredly, apparently stung not at all by the remark. “But then I figure what’s the percentage, puttin’ yourself through it? Sooner or later we all gonna croak, even you, all them muscles or not. Life’s too fuckin’ short, why sweat it? Enjoy it while you can, is my motto.”
“Sounds like something’d be your motto,” D’Marco said. He turned away, set the pin in the machine at one-ten (first set went good, might as well go for it—pain-gain principle again), hauled in a great breath, and focusing on the mighty effort ahead, blotting out everything else, grasped the bar and forced it down.
Sigurd, however, oblivious to this heroic contest—man versus the inexorable tug of gravity—kept right on talking at him.
“Take, for instance, this fella I knew up by Lisle. Soaker, real rummy, all his whole life. This was a guy really loved his sauce, even though it was pro’ly killin’ him. One day, though, he gets it in his head he’s gonna quit—just like that—zap!—chill bird. Takes a vow: turn things around, be a new man.”
Already by rep four D’Marco’s tris were tightening. Sweat beaded on his brow. His form deteriorated. His concentration flagged.
The cautionary tale wore on:
“Full year he’s clean. Proud of himself, but all jittery-actin,’ too, grouchy, hatin’ the world, way your dry drunks get to be. So one morning he’s carryin’ out the trash and here comes a rabbit barrelin’ down the alley, sees him, bites him on the leg.”
Rabbits. By rep six D’Marco’s focus was irretrievably lost. The one-ten could as easy been a ton.
“Well, guy’s pissed, ’course, but he don’t think nothin’ more about it. Only a fuckin’ rabbit, right? Big mistake. Turns out this bunny’s got the rabies. Couple days later he comes down with the fever, starts doin’ some foamin’ himself. Week or so later they find him dead—forgot to tellya, he lives alone. Anyway, he’s stone-ass dead. Pretty ripe, too, was the way I heard it. So what he done was make his last year shit-miserable, and for nothin’, seein’ he ends up just as dead. Account of a rabbit. Guy’s name was Leonard, I remember right, big fella, bald, always wore a hat—”
Squarely in the middle of a rep D’Marco let go of the bar and the plates went clanging. “Goddamit, I’m working out here. Can’t you find someplace to go?”
Sigurd shrugged. “Got nothin’ better to do. Anyway, I never been in one of these sweat palaces before. Always wondered what they was like.”
“Now you seen it, why’nt you wait outside?”
“Too hot out there.”
“Well quit rapping on me,” D’Marco snapped. “I’m trying to stay centered here.” He went next to the dumbbell rack, picked up a pair of thirties and began pounding out a furious set of laterals. Even the thirties felt heavy.
Sigurd tagged right along. For a while he was respectfully silent, but eventually, a few sets later, he was moved to observe, “Y’know, we got a lot a your iron-slingers, joint. Jailhouse ladies, most of ’em. I remember this one dude, come in couple months after I did, spick, name of Ramón. Built like King Fuckin’ Kong. I mean this was one freaky chili pepper, make even you look like Peewee ’longside him. Mean-lookin’ mother, too, so everybody figure he had the toughs to do his own time. Figured wrong, though. Spades jumped him, El Rukn gang it was, touched him up good and stretched his lollyhole wider’n your Cal-Sag Channel. Inside a week they had him turned out.”
Sigurd’s pick was all but disintegrated now. He removed it, examined it, flicked it away. Then he glanced at D’Marco innocently, and with a mischievous lilt in his voice concluded the vignette. “Yeah, wasn’t nothin’ but a natural-born punk inside that gorilla suit. All them muscles good for was vampin’ the spooks.”
Okay, that was it, that was enough. Ruptures, trusses, diapers, rabbits, spicks, spades, punks—that was plenty. D’Marco turned slowly, very deliberately, and fixed the grinny face with a steady gaze, fierce and, given the level of his fatigue, filled with his best studied menace. “You got something to tell me here, this little story?”
The grin slackened some. “No, nothin’ to tell, just—”
“You suggesting I’m like your greaser friend?”
“Nah, man, nothin’ like that. Anyway, he wasn’t no friend of—”
“What’d I just say? About you clacking at me while I’m trying to get in a workout—what’d I say?”
“Said don’t,” Sigurd said, and now, under the weight of that raw-eyed glare, the grin was collapsed utterly.
“And you did.”
Sigurd rolled over conciliatory palms, backed away. “Maybe I better wait for you out front there, hey.”
In a voice cold, sure, D’Marco said, “Maybe you better. While you still can.”
That sent him scurrying.
D’Marco stood with arms folded over his noble chest, watching till Sigurd was certainly, mercifully, gone, and then he returned to his labors. But nothing felt right anymore: rhythm off, thoughts wandering, weights heavier than ever, a bone-weariness, mental as much as physical, settling in fast. He pushed himself through a few more listless sets, but none of them were doing any good and he knew it. Finally he gave up in disgust. It was this tangled piece of business throwing him off; get that wrapped and he’d bring things back to normal again, routine. Next week, he promised himself on the way to the showers, next week.
The dealer was riding a serious streak. Six consecutive hands without a loss. When she took her seventh on another natural, third in a row, a thin penciled line of eyebrow arched slightly and a flicker of a smile, whimsical and unapologetic, crossed the lacquered mask of her face. The players’ faces, in contrast, were pinched into varying shades of irritation, worry, disgust, and woe. A hush, compounded in part of disbelief, part silent rancor at the pitiless gods of chance, descended over the table.
Caroline occupied the critical third base. Waverly stood behind her, studying the hands and trying to balance an elementary aces-fives count in his head. Without much success. In blackjack it was tough enough to keep a tally on a four-deck shoe, impossible—for him, at least—when the head was bubbled with drink. “Think of it as units, not money,” he whispered encouragingly in her ear, mindful of his own problem, not four days back, with that fundamental axiom of gaming. Physician, heal thyself.
Emboldened by this wise advice, Caroline dismantled her dwindling pillar of ten-dollar chips, stacked five of them in the wager square in front of her, and waited tensely for the next assaultive deal.
The cards came out. She caught an inspiriting ten on the first round, deflating deuce on the second. Dealer showed a three. “Hit it,” Waverly said when her turn rolled around.
Caroline snatched a glance at him. “But I thought you stand on these stiff hands,” she said doubtfully. She was a quick study but she’d had only the short course in the game.
“This one you hit.”
The dealer looked on impatiently.
Caroline signaled for a card, and it was a miraculous nine that fell. She clapped together delighted hands.
“Nice hit,” said the dealer dryly and without a trace of enthusiasm. Her eyes were shiny as polished brass, and just as hard. She flipped over her hole card, revealed a six, and dropped a ten on it. Her nineteen total wiped out everyone else and raised a quiet groan around the table.
The player at Caroline’s immediate right let out an exasperated wheeze, glared at her. He had a seamed, canny face narrowed by sunken cheeks, a booze-ruined nose, and a shag of unruly dun-colored hair. “Third base supposed to know the game,” he growled peevishly. He’d had an eighteen going, a might-have-been push. A peanut player, he’d lost a single chip, ten whole dollars.
“Play your own hand,” Waverly said to him coldly.
For an instant they stared at each other across a hostile gulf. The disgruntled player flinched first. He turned away, muttering something about “fuckin’ railbirds,” but under his breath. Through the next several hands he sat hunched forward in a kind of raging, concentrated sulk, and at the shuffle he got out of his chair and stalked off. Waverly eased into the vacated seat, which felt steamy beneath him. The loser’s residual heat.
“What a rude person,” Caroline said.
“Yeah, well, you’re not likely to find many of your gentle folk here.”
A smile spread over her face. “Apart from us,” she said.
“That’s right. There’s us.”
To retain the seat, cushion her from any more cretins, who were in plentiful supply, it seemed, he bought a hundred worth of chips and settled in. Recreational play. If there was such a thing for him anymore. Evidently not, for he found himself automatically resuming the count on the next deal, or trying to resume it, with no greater success than before. An accelerated film of cards and numbers, blurry and out of focus, whirled behind his eyes. The rhythmic clatter of slot machines rattled in from the room directly behind them, assailed the ears. Symphony of dissonance. Players came and went, featureless but for their glazed, neurasthenic eyes. In a vacuum of time the game rolled on.
After a while—thirty minutes? an hour? who could tell?—Caroline nudged him and said, “Let’s quit now, Tim. It’s making me dizzy, all these cards.”
The shoe was over half down. If he had the count anywhere near right, the remainder of the deck should be rich in aces and faces. If he had it right. “One more hand,” Waverly said, and he pushed out all his chips, eleven stalwart soldiers, a big hundred and ten. Mr. Fearless. Caroline stacked hers in two columns, squared them off, and slid one of the columns into the wager square. Ms. Prudence.
Bets down, here come the cards.
Waverly got one of the tens he knew had to be in there, and then he got a four to go with it. The dealer showed a five. When it came his turn, Waverly held up a flat palm.
Caroline had an ace-six. “What do I do with this?” she asked.
“Double it,” Waverly said.
“But I’ve only got seventeen.”
“Still you double.”
“Ma’am?” the dealer sighed.
Somewhat reluctantly, Caroline pushed her second chip stack out alongside the first and said “Double down” and another ace was laid on her hand. For Waverly, it was momentarily gratifying to see his tally hadn’t been all that far off the mark. For all it might prove.
The dealer rolled over her hole card. A ten. And then with a deft gliding motion she pulled, sure enough, the quashing six out of the shoe. “Twenty-one,” she intoned, and scooped in the chips and gathered up the cards.
Caroline looked stunned. Like someone bludgeoned from behind. “What happened, Tim?”
Waverly shrugged. “Sometimes you lose.”
She managed a smile, but it was tight, meager. “But all of it? On one hand?”
All of it was maybe three hundred dollars, outside. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you a consolation drink.”
Waverly led her through the dining room and into a small adjacent lounge. All the tables were occupied, but he found seats for them at the bar. He ordered two champagne cocktails, and when they arrived he raised his glass and said, “Welcome to the heady world of gaming.”
