comeback and fire it off, so he said, 'Glad to hear it.'
The driver handed him a clipboard and said, 'If you'll just sign on the bottom line, I'll let you get back to bed.'
'Won't sign anything I can't see,' Valentine replied, fitting his bifocals on. 'And I wasn't in bed. I was in the living room, working. Am I really the biggest customer on your route?'
'Just about.'
Signing the form, Valentine asked, 'Got a name?'
'Ralph Gomez,' the driver replied.
Valentine stared at the driver's milky white arms and checkerboard face. 'You don't look like a Gomez. I would have pegged you as a Murphy or an O'Sullivan, not a Gomez.'
'What's a Gomez supposed to look like?'
'I don't know. Spanish, maybe Mexican. You've definitely kissed the blarney stone.'
Gomez realized he was being complimented, and a thin smile creased his face. 'My mom. Dad was Cuban- came over in the fifties. So what are you? Italian?'
Was he Italian? What kind of question was that? Even in his earliest baby pictures, Valentine looked Italian.
'No,' Valentine snapped, 'I'm Mongolian.'
'Beg your pardon?'
'Chinese, like the fortune cookie.'
Gomez's smile disappeared and his freckled face twisted in puzzlement, then outright confusion. The joke had flown right over his head and off the screened porch and was now spinning somewhere high above the stratosphere.
'Your mom or dad?' he inquired.
The envelope contained a surveillance tape from a casino in Reno, plus another frantic note from a pit boss. Every day across America, casinos were getting ripped off, the losses totaling millions of dollars. So much work, so little time.
Going to the kitchen, Valentine fixed his third cup of coffee of the day. Normally, two was his limit, but he'd slept so hard that he didn't think he'd fully wake up if he didn't get some caffeine into his system. Filling his cup from the tap, he poured the contents into the back of the Mr. Coffee maker, then placed his cup directly on the hot pad.
Thirty-five years married and you still act like a bachelor, Lois would say, watching the ritual each morning as she fried his egg and blackened the bottoms of his English muffins.
It's effective, he'd reply.
And frugal, she'd say.
That, too.
I bet it saves us, what, fifty cents a month on coffee beans, she'd say. Maybe more.
It's all I want, he'd say. Why fix more?
You make being wasteful sound like a crime, she'd say, spooning sugar into his cup, a smile on her face.
Maybe it is, he'd reply.
He sat at the kitchen table and sipped the scalding brew. Coffee just didn't taste right if it didn't take the skin off the roof of his mouth. The phone had rung earlier and he stared at the blinking answering machine. One of the great things about being retired was not having to call people back if you didn't want to. And right now, he didn't want to.
He glanced at his watch. Nearly dinnertime. Yet what he felt like eating was a big breakfast. The diner on Alternate 19 served a good one, twenty-four hours a day, but he didn't like sitting at the counter alone, looking old and pitiful.
Mabel materialized on his back stoop. He unlocked the door and she strolled in wearing canary yellow slacks and a flowered shirt right out of an old Sears catalogue. Because of the heat, she changed clothes several times a day, each outfit more garish than the last.
'I'm going grocery shopping and thought you might need a few things.' Opening the refrigerator, she peered at the vacant shelves. 'How about some Italian bread to go with your lasagna? Publix has a wonderful bakery.'
Trying to put mom-and-pop delis out of business, the local supermarket now sold fresh bread and rolls. They almost tasted like the real thing, so he said, 'Sounds great. Want a hot drink?'
'Tea, if you have it.'
He put the kettle on, then extracted a ten from his wallet and slipped it into Mabel's shirt pocket.
'What's that for?' she asked.
'Gas money. How was your afternoon?'
'I watched the ball game. The Devil Rays won. It was so exciting.'
Among the locals, it was a source of constant amazement that Tampa Bay's new baseball team was capable of winning a single game. Every time they did, it made the front page of both newspapers, with new heroes being christened every day. Valentine found the whole thing very perplexing. He'd grown up bowing to the Yankees, who were expected not to lose.
'I also worked on a new ad,' she said. 'Want to see it?'
'I'd be flattered,' he said.
She produced a square of paper with borders and fancy type, the proud product of a home PC. Old? Tired? Forgotten? Has retirement got you singing the blues? Want to get even with your kids? And all those pesky credit card companies? Enroll today in Grandma Mabel's school of financial insolvency. You too can live like a millionaire. Remember: Dying broke is the best revenge!
'It's different,' he said, sliding the ad back.
'You don't like it.'
'It doesn't tickle my funny bone. It's…'
'Come on-I can take it.'
'I don't know. A little extreme.'
'Jokes are supposed to be extreme.' Her mind was made up, and she tucked the ad away. 'It's going to cost more to run, but Social Security is sending me two hundred extra a month, so it won't be a stretch.'
'Then go for it,' Valentine told her.
'So what did you do this afternoon?'
'Believe it or not,' he said, 'I watched the tape I showed you earlier today.'
'Still got you stumped?'
The kettle was singing. Valentine fixed Mabel's tea, spooning in a half-teaspoon of honey, and served his neighbor.
'Right now, I've got two theories,' he replied, sitting down again. 'The first says the guy's reading the dealer's body language each time she peeks at her hole card. In those situations, his winning percentage is unbelievably high.'
'Really?' Mabel sounded amused. She sipped her tea. 'What does she do-stick her tongue out each time she has blackjack?'
'It's a little more subtle than that.'
'Try me.'
'Well, there are two types of dealers: those who want you to win and those who don't. If a player can peg which type of dealer he's got, he has an advantage.'
'You're losing me. Why do certain dealers want you to win and others not? Why should the dealer care?'
'Tips,' he explained. 'The ones who want you to win expect a tip when the night is over. The ones who don't are usually so jaded that no amount of money will make them happy. They want the players to lose because it makes them feel good.'
'And the dealers give their feelings away by their body language?'
Valentine sipped his coffee and nodded. 'They're called tells. Poker players use them all the time. I've never seen them used at blackjack, but there's always a first time.'
