I sat down. Everyone was there. Butch. Mike. Straight Jake. Drunk Jake. Andrea. Jonesie. Even the Dane had made an appearance. I smiled and shook his hand. He gave me a sheepish nod. I realized that he had been more mortified than me. He’d stayed away the last few games out of embarrassment.
It goes to show. There’s always someone more fucked up than you.
I played aggressive. I jammed the pot. I bluffed like hell. I hooded my eyes and glared the others down, my head slightly tilted in contempt. I said little. I drank a lot. I had no qualms. I had no inhibitions. I didn’t care. I was doing it for my father, my brother, my self-respect.
I won and kept on winning. I could see the dismay grow on their faces.
Butch ran out of high fives. He ran out of cash.
I can’t compete, man, he said.
He called a cab.
It made me strong. They’d never seen a thing like this. I was in the zone. The slightest sign of weakness I could smell as clear as rotting fish. I pounced on it. I smelled the strong hands too. I picked up cues. I folded in odd places. I showed my rags when I’d jammed them out of a pot. I showed my Aces when I folded them to a straight. I had them on the run. Confusing. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
Andrea was losing too, like all the rest. But her dismay turned gradually to admiration. She leaned over, joked about the new aggressive me. I could smell the sexuality as strongly as the cards. I’d become a dog. A wolf. A snake. A door was opened to a new and feral world. My nether regions stirred.
My God, I thought. I’ve become a man again.
I won the last pot too. It was inevitable. It was a rush for the ages. I gathered up the cash. I stuffed it in my pockets, inside, out. I’d taken everybody’s money. They looked at me with awe. They weren’t angry. They were amazed. My pockets bulged. I grabbed Drunk Jake around the neck, dragged him into the night.
72.
In the street the cold air hit me in the face like a slap from an angry woman. The temperature had taken a dive. A sharp wind was howling up the street. A rusted fire escape was twisting with it, making strangely beautiful metal music. I wanted to shout to the heavens. I wanted to challenge the Gods to a chess game.
Drunk Jake was drunk. He slipped on a patch of ice, lay in the street. He was giggling. I dragged him to the curb, just ahead of a barreling Denali. Jesus, I thought, that’s a big fucking vehicle. I began to sober up. Jake didn’t. I hauled him to his feet. I put my arm around him, held him up. We staggered comically toward the PATH train to Manhattan. I was hoping for a cab to pass, before we had to be subjected to the underground’s indignities.
At Bloomfield Street we stepped over a guy passed out on the sidewalk. We paid no mind. Just another obstacle on the road to becoming a man. But he took offense. We had awakened him. From a most important dream, it seemed. He crawled to his feet.
Hey, he yelled, the fuck you think you’re doing?
I’m trying to rescue my frigid friend here from the ravages of the evil drink, I said. The devil rum. A concept you might well want to attend to, I added, eyeing his vein-lined face and trembling hands.
I was confident that the inebriate wouldn’t follow a word of it.
Fuck you, the degenerate responded. Quote Shakespeare at your peril, shitbag.
Ho, ho, an intellectual walking dead pile of drunken pus, I said, strategically ignoring the fact that Shakespeare had nothing to do with it.
He must have mistaken my friendly tone, for he immediately launched himself at me, all hundred pounds of desiccated liver and grime-encrusted flesh aimed at my midsection like an RPG from the ninth circle of hell. I stepped aside, losing my grip on Drunk Jake’s armpit. Jake staggered to a lamppost and held himself up by sheer force of will. The homeless bag of bones fell face-first into the gutter, reaping a visage full of dirty snow.
I laughed. Our dead-end friend gathered himself and launched another pathetic attack. I could see that he was going to take some convincing. I batted him upside the head as he came within arm’s length, knocking him sideways into a wrought iron fence, sending him sprawling once again.
This time he lay there for a moment, catching what little breath his ravaged lungs made available to him, and cursed me from the prone position.
You piece of whale shit, he said, I’ll Melville your ass from here to Nantucket.
Gad, I said, you’re a literate piece of crap. Get up and I’ll buy you a drink.
Stick him, Rick, kick his fuckin’ head in, yelled Jake from his position at the lamppost.
C’mon, Jake, I responded, my words slurring for the first time, he’s a fellow traveler. An angel sent from Dante for our delectation. Let’s buy him a drink.
All the bars are closed, Jake said, more cogently than could have been expected. Kick the shit out of’m.
I’m not sure that our good friend here should be the victim of the mere contingency that it’s after closing time, I replied.
The angry hobo was not appeased. He gathered himself up and took another run at me. He was hunched over. I detected a glint of metal in his left hand. A lefty, too, I thought admiringly. A creative thinker. I landed a heavy uppercut to his sternum. He collapsed in a silent heap, and bothered us no longer.
Pity, I said. I was looking forward to some interesting conversation.
Fuck that, said Jake, let’s find a cab.
As luck would have it, one tooled by at just that moment. We flagged it down.
Manhattan, I said to the driver.
He smelled of stale cigarettes, and Jersey City.
73.
As I approached home I knew that I had to shed the macho skin. Kelly’d be awake. She’d be worried. In the midst of all of the bravado I’d neglected even to call her to tell her I’d be late.
I was deflated. I felt like a shit. I thought of my unconscious friend on the Hoboken sidewalk. Jesus. I probably should have called an ambulance.
But mostly I thought of Kelly. How I was going to explain this to her.
When I opened the door she was there. Standing in front of me. Arms crossed.
Where the hell have you been? she asked.
Out, I said. I had stuff to do.
I’m glad you believe that.
I looked at her. My angel child. My consolation. I didn’t want to lie to her. No, goddamn it. Whatever the price, with Kelly I’d be honest.
So I told her the story of my night.
She alternately smiled and frowned. She understood, I thought. Sort of.
Then the hard part started.
I talked to Detective Harwood, she said.
Who?
Detective Harwood. He’s investigating.
Jesus. He talked to you?
Yes.
Where? Here.
He came here?
Yes, she said, with a hint of defiance.
What right did he have to come here? What right did he have to talk to you without me here?
I don’t know, she said with a hard curl of the lip. You’re the lawyer, Daddy.
I sat and thought. Tried to place myself in the context of earlier that day. Before the manly thing had caught
