Hearts In Atlantis

“Go on, let the kid learn a lesson,” Rionda said. “Besides, the guy may let him win. Suck the rest of us in.” She made no effort to lower her voice, but the man in the bowler—Mr. McQuown—only looked at her and smiled. Then he returned his attention to S-J.

“Let’s see your money, kid—come on, pony up.”

Sully-John handed over his quarter. McQuown raised it into the afternoon sunlight for a moment, one eye closed.

“Yeh, looks like a good ’un to me,” he said, and planked it down on the board to the left of the three-card lineup. He looked in both directions—for cops, maybe—then tipped the cynically smiling Rionda a wink before turning his attention back to Sully-John. “What’s your name, fella?”

“John Sullivan.”

McQuown widened his eyes and tipped his bowler to the other side of his head, making the plastic sunflower nod and bend comi-cally. “A name of note! You know what I refer to?”

“Sure. Someday maybe I’ll be a fighter, too,” S-J said. He hooked a left and then a right at the air over McQuown’s makeshift table. “Pow, pow!”

“Pow-pow indeed,” said McQuown. “And how’s your eyes, Master Sullivan?”

“Pretty good.”

“Then get them ready, because the race is on! Yes it is! Your eyes against my hands! Up and down, all around, where’d she go, I don’t know.” The cards, which had moved much faster this time, slowed to a stop.

Sully started to point, then drew his hand back, frowning. Now there were two cards with little folds in the corner. Sully looked up at McQuown, whose arms were folded across his dingy undershirt. McQuown was smiling. “Take your time, son,” he said. “T he morn-ing was whizbang, but it’s been a slow afternoon.”

Men who think hats with feathers in the brims are sophisticated, Bobby remembered Ted saying. The sort of men who’d shoot craps in an alley and pass around a bottle of liquor in a paper bag during the game. McQuown had a funny plastic flower in his hat instead of a feather, and there was no bottle in evidence . . . but there was one in his pocket. A little one. Bobby was sure of it. And toward the end of the day, as business wound down and totally sharp hand-eye coordi-nation became less of a priority to him, McQuown would take more and more frequent nips from it.

Sully pointed to the card on the far right. No, S-J, Bobby thought, and when McQuown turned that card up, it was the king of spades. McQuown turned up the card on the far left and showed the jack of clubs. The queen was back in the middle. “Sorry, son, a little slow that time, it ain’t no crime. Want to try again now that you’re warmed up?”

“Gee, I . . . that was the last of my dough.” Sully-John looked crestfallen.

“Just as well for you, kid,” Rionda said. “He’d take you for every-thing you own and leave you standing here in your shortie-shorts.” The girls giggled wildly at this; S-J blushed. Rionda took no notice of either. “I worked at Revere Beach for quite awhile when I lived in Mass,” she said. “Let me show you kids how this works. Want to go for a buck, pal? Or is that too sweet for you?”

“In your presence everything would be sweet,” McQuown said sentimentally, and snatched her dollar the moment it was out of her purse. He held it up to the light, examined it with a cold eye, then set it down to the left of the cards. “Looks like a good ’un,” he said. “Let’s play, darling. What’s your name?”

“Pudd’ntane,” Rionda said. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

“Ree, don’t you think—” Anita Gerber began.

“I told you, I’m wise to the gaff,” Rionda said. “Run em, my pal.”

“Without delay,” McQuown agreed, and his hands blurred the three red-backed cards into motion (up and down, all around, to and fro, watch them go), finally settling them in a line of three again. And this time, Bobby observed with amazement, all three cards had those slightly bent corners.

Rionda’s little smile had gone. She looked from the short row of cards to McQuown, then down at the cards again, and then at her dollar bill, lying off to one side and fluttering slightly in the little seabreeze that had come up. Finally she looked back at McQuown. “You suckered me, pally,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

“No,” McQuown said. “I raced you. Now . . . what do you say?”

“I think I say that was a real good dollar that didn’t make no trou-ble and I’m sorry to see it go,” Rionda replied, and pointed to the middle card.

McQuown turned it over, revealed the king, and made Rionda’s dollar disappear into his pocket. This time the queen was on the far left. McQuown, a dollar and a quarter richer, smiled at the folks from Harwich. The plastic flower tucked into the brim of his hat nodded to and fro in the salt-smelling air. “Who’s next?” he asked. “Who wants to race his eye against my hand?”

“I think we’re all raced out,” Mrs. Gerber said. She gave the man behind the table a thin smile, then put one hand on her daughter’s shoulder and the other on her sleepy-eyed son’s, turning them away.

“Mrs. Gerber?” Bobby asked. For just a moment he considered how his mother, once married to a man who had never met an inside straight he didn’t like, would feel if she could see her son standing here at Mr. McQuown’s slapdash table with that risky Randy Garfield red hair gleaming in the sun. The thought made him smile a little. Bobby knew what an inside straight was now; flushes and full houses, too. He had made inquiries. “May I try?”

“Oh, Bobby, I really think we’ve had enough, don’t you?”

Bobby reached under the Kleenex he had stuffed into his pocket and brought out his last three nickels. “All I have is this,” he said, showing first Mrs. Gerber and then Mr. McQuown. “Is it enough?”

“Son,” McQuown said, “I have played this game for pennies and enjoyed it.”

Mrs. Gerber looked at Rionda.

“Ah, hell,” Rionda said, and pinched Bobby’s cheek. “It’s the price of a haircut, for Christ’s sake. Let him lose it and then we’ll go home.”