Card Sharks

especially under the fan.

'Do you like movies?' I asked, hoping to get the conversation going. 'I want to see Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, but I'll have to sneak out so my mother doesn't get mad. I think Marilyn Monroe is beautiful.' I waited for Flo to say something. When she didn't, I went on. 'Saturday, I saw I Was a Teenaged Joker, with Michael Landon. It was cool.'

She shrugged, uninterested. 'Is Jokertown … I mean, I know it's a neighborhood. But does it have all kinds of places?'

'Well … I guess so. What kind of places do you mean?'

She shook her head tightly and said nothing.

I watched her, puzzled. When a waitress thumped a heavy white porcelain teapot down on the table, I poured tea for Flo first. I was feeling protective.

'I'll help you, if you want,' I said quietly.

'Suppose, um …' She looked down at the table for a moment. 'Suppose someone wanted something that isn't normally available.'

'Something illegal?'

She shrugged. 'Can you really find everything in Jokertown?'

'Yeah. I think so.' I waited, my heart thumping excitedly.

She was silent.

The screen door creaked. Flo didn't turn around, but I saw two jokers entering. One was a tall, slender man who had been divided down the middle by the wild card; the right side of his body was normal, but the left looked as though it had been made of candle wax, melted, and then solidified again. He walked with a slow, painful limp on his sagging, twisted leg and let his distorted arm swing freely. The other joker at least moved comfortably; he appeared to be normal, except for having the face of a teddy bear with a fixed, very happy smile.

The newcomers were seated across the narrow room. Flo glanced in their direction. Her eyes widened suddenly and she looked away, back down at our table.

'It's Jokertown,' I said, puzzled by her reaction.

'It's so horrible,' Flo whispered. 'What that … alien … did. What he brought.' The horror in her face was unmistakable.

I felt a familiar horror of my own, deep in my stomach, ruining my appetite. Maybe she was no different from other nats after all. In the same moment, however, I finally understood something I had never realized before: she was scared.

Yet she was here — with me.

I decided to sit there and enjoy the sight of her beautiful face and figure as long as I could. When our dinner arrived, we ate in silence. Even some of my appetite came back.

***

When we had finished dinner, I carefully counted out the customary ten percent tip that Peter had told me always to leave. As I paid the check, Flo stared straight down at her shoes, avoiding the sight of all the jokers who had followed us inside for dinner. Then we stepped outside and I found that the heat had finally begun to ease a little.

'Well,' I said uncertainly, looking up at her.

Flo glanced up and down the street in the shadows.

'Would you like me to walk you to the Bowery or something?'

She shook her head again and suddenly peered straight down into my eyes. 'Can we talk privately somewhere?'

'Sure. We can just walk. Nobody here will bother us.'

'No, I mean, where we can't possibly be overheard. Inside.'

'Okay. Both my parents work second jobs to get by. They won't be home till after midnight. I'll take you home.'

'Good.' Her voice was breathy with anxiety.

***

The walk was okay. We passed Jube the Walrus on the way, pulling his cart full of newspapers on his regular rounds. He looked very surprised to see Flo, I figured because she was so pretty. Flo looked away, as though he wasn't there.

My family lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a fairly small building. I closed the door and led her into the living room, where I switched on the lamps on each end table by the couch. The air was hot and stale, so I turned on the big standing fan in the corner, to sweep back and forth across the room. Then I opened the windows.

Flo paced nervously for a moment, looking around. Some framed pictures on the wall caught her eye, over the back of a pink canvas butterfly chair. 'Is that your Dad?'

I came as close as I dared and raised up on tiptoe to see over her shoulder. Her perfume was light and sweet. She was looking at a posed studio picture of my father in his army uniform. A photograph of his whole platoon was next to it.

'Yeah, that's him.'

'Is that the American army?'

'Yeah. 442nd Battalion.'

'But they're all …' She trailed off.

'Nisei. Second generation Japanese Americans. He fought in Italy, among other places. I was born while he was in the army.'

'Really? Where were you born?'

'In California.'

'Where? San Francisco or Los Angeles?'

'Uh, no. A camp in Tule Lake.'

'A what?' Flo turned to look down at me.

I backed away. 'An internment camp for Japanese Americans.'

Her brown eyes were puzzled. 'What do you mean?'

'Well, it was a kind of prison camp. All the Japanese Americans on the west coast were put in them.'

'Even if your Dad was in the army?'

I shrugged uncomfortably. 'Yeah.'

She searched my face. I felt she was actually realizing for the first time that I was more than a joker. My face grew hot.

'Want to sit down?' I gestured toward the wing-back couch.

Flo hesitated, then sat down on one end of the couch. I sat down on the far end, well away from her. I just waited.

Finally, looking down at her hands in her lap, she spoke almost in a whisper. 'Do you know what an abortion is?'

'Yeah.' I froze, staring at her.

'You do?' She glanced up in surprise, her ponytail swaying.

'Yeah, I've heard about them from guys on the street,' I said softly. I could hardly believe this was what she wanted.

She spoke quickly. 'Can I get one in Jokertown? Safely? And in absolute, total secrecy? And how much would it cost?' Her brown eyes were large now, watching me anxiously.

'I don't know,' I said slowly. 'But I can find out.'

'Would you? Please?' Her voice was pleading.

'Sure.' I got up and walked over to the phone sitting on the kitchen counter. A guy named Waffle was good for stuff like that. I dialed Biff's Burgers, but he wasn't there yet. I hung up. 'A friend of mine will call back.'

'Okay.'

I sat down on the couch again. I wasn't going to tell her what a jerk Waffle was. 'He's twenty, and he knows about … stuff like this. We'll just have to wait.'