crackled, which gave me an idea.
“We can’t talk now, over the car phone. It’s not secure. Anybody can pick it up.”
“Right. Damn. I talked to Mom, she’s pretty upset.”
I bet she is. What do they call it when a woman is cuckolded? Or doesn’t that matter enough to have its own word?
“There were reporters in front of the house,” Paul was saying over the static. “They tore up the garden, so she’s fit to be tied.”
She’s got worse trouble than the begonias. “Where are you anyway?”
“Running errands. I’ll see you at what time? Seven? At the restaurant?” His horn honked. “Pass me already, you jerk!”
“I’m not going to dinner. It’s Tuesday, remember? Poker night.”
“What? You’re playing
Here we go. “I’ll be at your parents’ by ten.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to play cards! Dad got calls from the newspapers, even somebody from AP. All hell’s breaking loose, Rita!”
There’s no better time to play cards than when all hell’s breaking loose. It clears the head. “I’ll see you at home.”
“Rita, it’s a game! Shit!” he said, but I didn’t know if it was at me or at the traffic. “Are you still upset about last night? Because if you are, we can talk about it. I want to talk about it.”
I don’t.
“This morning you were so quiet.”
“I’m fine. I have to go.”
“Sure. All right,” he said. Unconvinced. Hurt.
Let it be. I hustled him off the phone and didn’t respond to his parting line: “I love you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The five of us-me, my father, Uncle Sal, Herman Meyer, and Cam Lopo-sat around the Formica table in my father’s hot, cramped kitchen, waiting for a quorum. Seven is the optimum number for a poker game, but we never had a full house. The average age of our group was seventy-two, so one player or the other was always in the hospital. Still, the Tuesday night game went on. Prostate would be the only thing that would end us for good.
“So where is he? He’s late again,” Herman said. He was a kosher butcher, compact and healthy even at age sixty-nine, with bushy gray hair. Herman was insane about poker and even collected chips. As usual, he wanted to get started. “What is it with that kid, he can’t be on time?”
Herman meant David Moscow, a young copywriter who was trying to join us. David was gay, but the old men were past the age when such things mattered. They only cared that David was late. “He’ll be here,” I said, shuffling the cards. “Give him time.”
My father, at the head of the small table, was fingering some plastic chips. “What’s the difference if David’s a little late? Mickey’s late, too.”
Herman frowned. “Mickey had a doctor appointment, he told us he’d be late. This kid, he’s always late and he never tells us.”
“Then that’s the same as tellin’ us, ain’t it?” my father said. Water sweated down the sides of his brown beer bottle. “Same difference.”
Herman shook his head. “No. He wants in, he should be here. What does it take? He lives a block away.”
“Relax, Herm,” said Cam, sitting next to him. “It’s rainin’ out. Everybody’s late when it rains. Forget about it.” Cam had lost an arm in a machine-shop accident and always said nothing would ever bother him after that. At seventy, he was tall, gaunt, and his skin was pitted from teenage acne. Still, a ready smile redeemed his otherwise working-class face and he’d tell you proudly that his teeth were all his own.
“I can’t forget about it,” Herman said. “The kid has no responsibility. If he worked for me, I’d fire him.”
Cam sat back in his chair. “Did you go to that show this weekend, for the poker chips?”
Herman nodded. “Yeah, but they’re not all poker chips. Some are casino chips, some are dealers’ chips. Some are markers. It’s all different.”
Cam smiled. “Oh, I see. Very complicated.”
“Yes, it is, and to answer your question, I got some nice chips.” Herman twisted toward the front door, showing the casino chip painted on his yarmulke. It was a gray chip that said club bingo in cheery red letters around the outside. I once asked Herman if this was sacrilegious, he said it depended on what your religion was. “Now where the hell is that goddamn kid?”
“It’s not David’s fault he’s late,” Uncle Sal said. “They work him because he’s young. They take advantage.” Sal was shorter than my father and frailer, with identical bifocals. His forearms were skinny, his elbows protruded from his short-sleeved shirt like chalky knobs, and he had a neck as stringy as a baby bird’s. Sal had never married, he was like a permanent little brother.
“What chips you buy, Herm?” Cam asked.
“I got some nice ones. One mother-of-pearl, a real pretty purple one, and I bought a new ivory. With scrimshaw.”
“Like with a boat on it?”
“Nah, got a
“Floor-da-what?” Sal asked.
Herman rolled his eyes. “Like a design, Sal. A French design. It’s from 1870, like you.”
My father laughed. “How much you pay for this French chip, Herman?”
“Like it’s your business?”
My father smiled. “They’re robbin’ you blind, you know that.” The plastic chips he’d been playing with fell to the table with a clatter I recalled from my childhood, when I’d go to sleep in the tiny back bedroom. They didn’t let me join the game officially until I was thirteen and had paid my dues fetching beer and pepperoni.
“They’re an investment,” Herman said. “They’re antique.”
“Hah! They’re used.”
I pitched a card at my father and it sailed like a whirligig across the table. “Dad, play nice. He’s got a hobby. You got a hobby?”
“Yeah, I read the obits, that’s my hobby. I drink coffee, that’s my hobby, too. Did you hear about Lou, Miss Fresh?”
“Lou who?”
“Terazzi, from Daly Street. Had a heart attack in the middle of dinner. Dead before his face hit the spaghetti.”
“You’re a poet, Dad.”
Cam shook his head.
“No kiddin’,” Herman said, surprised. “Lou, huh?”
Uncle Sal patted his bony forehead with a paper napkin. “It’s hot in here. The cards are gonna be sticky. I hate that, when the cards are sticky.”
“Everybody’s complainin’ tonight,” my father said.
Cam rose and got a box of Reynolds Wrap from the drawer. Not that he wanted to wrap anything, he used the box to hold his cards, in the slit behind the metal strip. “Stop your complainin’, everybody. You’re upsettin’ Vito.”
Sal looked down, examining his arthritic fingers. “I’m not complainin’, I’m just
