He discovered a new way to clean Arty’s tank. Instead of watching a pair of brushes and a sterilizer hose go over the drained tank, Chick stood in front of the full tank and took out every cell, probably every molecule, that wasn’t supposed to be there. The green on the glass disappeared in broad, straight swaths like wheat in front of a mower. When Chick was finished the tank was so clean it was almost invisible. A round greenish cloud hung above it. Chick blinked at the cloud and it sailed dreamily across the stage toward the open door of the toilet. There was a faint splash and then the toilet flushed.
Arty and I were sitting on the exercise bench to watch because Chick had come chirping about his “new way!” My mouth hung open as I thought about setting the Chick on my own cleaning chores. Arty looked steadfastly at Chick, whose proud grin began to weaken and slide off into doubt. “Show-off,” said Arty quietly.
Chick’s face crumpled. “I didn’t mean it, Arty. I’m sorry.” Arty dropped to the floor and crawled into his room, thumping the door shut behind him.
For obvious reasons “show-off” was no insult in our family, but Arty had a way of turning “sweetheart” into a thumb in the eye.
I sat looking at Chick. I knew what he felt. The huge buoyant air sack of love that filled his body had just exploded and the collapse was devastating. Poor little stupe. He was just a baby. He hunkered down against the tank with the side of his soft face against the cool glass for comfort. He didn’t dare look at me for sympathy. He didn’t cry. He just crouched there and ached.
I squinted at Arty’s door. He had his radio turned up loud. I got up and walked over to the Chick. His eyes swiveled at me in fear. He thought I was going to pinch him or say something nasty. That proved he couldn’t really read minds. I put my arms around him. I rubbed my cheek against his curly ear. He slung an arm around my neck. I whispered, “It’s a great way to clean.”
“Truly?” he whispered. I could hear the tears in his throat.
The dumb little fuck was supposed to be so goddamn sensitive, how come he couldn’t figure it out? All he had to do to make me like him was need me. All he had to do to make Arty like him was drop dead.
Papa and Chick left with great fanfare. We all went along when Horst drove them to the airport. I can’t remember where we were except that it was not Atlantic City, because that’s where Papa and Chick were going. They were planning to stay for five days—a long trip but Papa wanted to break Chick in to the game slowly and delicately. Chick had heard that there was a swimming pool in their hotel. Chick was sure he was going to learn to swim like Arty. Arty was utterly charmed to hear this, of course.
That night the show closed down peacefully, but when Lil went to give out the tills the next morning she discovered that the entire take from the two days before—around $20,000—was gone. The alarms had been cut at their source and the safe—a silly, tinny affair anyway—had been popped open like a melon on pavement. Old-fashioned plastique, Horst said, and crudely handled.
Horst went out to the airport for Papa and Chick early on the morning of the sixth day. Papa had looked bad the last time he’d come home from picking pockets. This time he looked like deaths rectum. He hugged us all fervently, which was awkward because he wouldn’t let go of Chick and carried him the whole time. Chick himself was white and still and didn’t smile.
Papa collapsed into his big chair with Chick in his lap. We children arranged ourselves discreetly while Mama fussed in the refrigerator and Horst lit his pipe.
“You both look worn to shreds,” Mama was clucking.
Papa gave a walleyed look around at our waiting faces and I was afraid he was going to send us out so he could talk to Mama and Horst. The clink of ice cubes distracted him, and then Mama handed him a tall glass of her famous lemonade.
“Al, I want Horst to explain about the safe,” Mama began. Horst actually reached to take the pipe out of his mouth but Papa cut them both off.
“Lily, I gotta tell you. Horst, I got to get this out. I don’t know what in creeping Jesus to think.”
Horst waved his pipe, but Mama twisted her hands, anxious. “Are you ill? Whatever happened?”
“I came within a gnat’s ass of losing Chick,” Papa said. “That’s what happened.” Chick whimpered on Papa’s chest and got a pat. “No. I wouldn’t really lose you, honey. It’s O.K.”
I grimaced at Arty but he was hunched over in his sofa-bunk, watching Papa, and didn’t notice.
It took a while for Papa to get it all out. He hadn’t got it organized as a story yet. At first, he said, they’d taken it slow and easy.
“I didn’t lay any bets at all the first night. Just watched and had him practice. Gave wins to the good faces and grief to the apes and assholes. It was fun, sending some poor hack driver on the roll of his life with his skinny wife hanging on his arm in a faint, thinking ‘Shoes for Junior.’ Then watching their eyes as they stood under the chandelier and I say ‘Red 26’ into my button and pay off their mortgage, and whisper ‘Red 19’ and send their baby to college with twenty minutes at the wheel.
“The fat pricks with the diamond teeth are going off in fits. I was there awhile and then all of a sudden we went dead. Scared the crap out of me. Nothing. I turned in to a quiet corner and I’m practically screaming into the mike, but the wheel goes its own merry way. I go running for the elevator thinking the receiver’s broke or he’s sick or he’s been playing with matches. A million things. But the little turd is crapped out in his chair with the receiver buzzing in his lap. Asleep. I got him into his jammies and tucked him into bed and he didn’t peep. With the trip and everything he was just burnt out. He’d never done that before.…”
They had done well for a couple of nights.
“I’m percolating with forty thousand in the kick, and Chick’s eating big soft pretzels and floating in the pool every day and learning to paddle a little. Then, by the fourth night, I’m down the strip. This is no shit, Horst, three blocks. Three from the hotel room and the kid’s still got it. No problem. I took him there one time only and he had no problems. Not with the crowds or the distance or anything else.
“So I’m leaning on the table doing a quiet gosh-and-golly hick routine over my roll, when this punk in a red sweat suit, carrying a tennis racket, comes up beside me. He’s been there awhile, just watching, and I swear I was smooth as glass, Horst. Slicker than snot on a rock. Nobody would guess. Well, this punk in the sweats could have been a boxer to look at him. Broad on top, narrow ass. Skinny legs. He lays a hand on my arm and says, ‘You’re doing very well tonight, Mr. Binewski.’ He’s calling me Binewski when I’m traveling as Stephens. A young guy. Clean-looking. Short hair, face like a baby’s butt. Blond. You tell me, Horst, what the fuck should I have done? Am I supposed to say, ‘You must mean some other guy. I’m Stephens’? He’s easing me away from the table, his hand on my arm, out to the lobby saying, ‘Wonderful run you’ve been having, Mr. Binewski.’ And I’m thinking it’s another house-dick roust. The crew from Tahoe must have fingered me to every hotel on the planet. He says, ‘How’s your little boy?’ Cyanide-sweet, leading me along. Out by the door I finally ask him for bona fides. I say, ‘Are you with the casino?’ He says, ‘No. I’m with a larger organization.’ It’s not clear, you see, Lily? When the house dicks jumped me before there was nothing mysterious about it.
“But I don’t want to talk tough or panic because the Chick can maybe hear me and get scared. Then the guy asks where Chick is. Taking a nap, I say. This guy says, ‘Are you sure?’
“I just took off running—out the door, three blocks—left my chips on the table. Had nine heart attacks getting back to the room, but there’s Chick, calm in front of some old movie on the TV, eating a cucumber sandwich on wheat, and the receiver in his lap dead and cold.
“I just about died of relief. Give the kid a pat and sit down to look at my transmitter. Finally figure out the thing is dead. Something’s wrong or been done to it. I’m diddling with it when Chick looks at me and says,
‘Those other guys are coming,’ through his mouthful of sandwich. And I say, like a numbnuts, ‘What other guys?’ And the door opens and three guys come in. Chick ignores them and starts eating the carrot slices off his room-service plate.
“These guys were crazy young. The kind that show up in the spring to hire on and swear they’ll stay forever but they speak good English and their teeth are straight and you know they’ll go back to college in September but you hire them anyhow, even though they make stupid mistakes and wallop their own feet with the mallets, and every other year or so one of them decides to unionize the ride jocks and tries to go out on strike. But they work hard and they’re lively and they keep the redheads sparkling.”
Papa took a deep breath and stopped. Horst grunted encouragingly around his pipe stem, and Mama got up to refill the lemonade glasses. Papa sipped and sighed.
“I was six kinds of jerk-off not to take you with me, Horst. These guys amble through the door looking like college kids and one of them has a handgun that looks like the CO2 pistols we used to use on the neighborhood cats. He levels this thing at me and I’m sitting there like a geeked capon, my mouth flopped open, and Chick crunching carrots beside me. The one with the gun starts some ‘Hey, Mr. B.’ kind of street snot, and one of the others goes into the bathroom and turns the water on in the tub, hard. The third guy takes the transmitter out of my hand and rips the mike cord out of my shirt and walks me over to the wall to splay out so he can feel me down.
“The other guy comes in, the guy in the red sweats from the casino, and Chick turns up the TV volume. I guess he couldn’t hear with all the fuss. And I’m still spread out, hands on the wall, looking over my shoulder. The one little asshole has a hand in the small of my back to keep me there and the punk in red nods and goes to the bathroom door and the water quits and he and the guy from in there come out and he nods at Chick.
“This guy in red has a little popgun and he leans on the wall near me while the other fucker picks up Chick, just like that, and I turn around yelling and the other two grab me and slam me against the wall. That’s when Chick noticed there was something wrong. He yelped and they covered his mouth. This one bastard loops a belt over my elbows behind my back and cranks it tight, and the other cocksucker crams a pair of my own socks in my mouth while he holds the popgun to my head. They shove me over to the bathroom door and the guy in red gives an order, and the guy holding Chick puts him into the full bathtub, clothes and all. There’s a rag tied around Chick’s mouth and …”
Papa stopped to gulp lemonade and then sop the sweat from his nose and forehead and cheeks. Mama is frozen, staring at him.
“So Chick’s up to his neck with his eyes bulging at me over the gag and the guy in red leans close to me and says, ‘Now, Mr. B., this is just to let you know how very sincere this message is,’ and he tells me to keep out of the gambling joints. That I’m treading on staked turf and I should go home and be nice. Then the creeping little reptile says, ‘Now we’re going to show you how it could be if you didn’t understand us.’ And he nods and the guy who’s clamped onto Chick starts pushing him under. Chick is looking at me and kicking and splashing and I jump, and I don’t know what happened. I must have bumped the guy because he fell over the tub and bounced off the wall. Chick went to the bottom and the bastards were clubbing and clawing me.
“Next thing, I’m sitting in the tub yanking Chick out of the water while one fucker leans over me with a wet gun. His two buddies are worried over the guy on the floor, the one who pushed Chick under. He’s out cold and there’s blood running out of his ears and nose. They haul him out through the door and the one with the gun backs out after them. Last thing he says is, ‘Take it to heart, Mr. B. No betting games. Not here. Not anywhere.’
“The bastards got my kick, too. Found it in my socks. Didn’t even bother with my wallet. They knew I wouldn’t call the cops. Chick cried all night.”
Papa closed his eyes and smoothed both big arms around the now sleeping Chick. Mama’s voice was hoarse and puzzled. “Chick wasn’t afraid of them?”
Papa didn’t answer. I watched Arty, who was staring at the ceiling in ferocious concentration. I knew it as though I’d been there. Chick had cried, not because he was afraid, but because he’d moved the guy and hurt him, cracked him against the wall.
Mama sent us all out so Papa could nap.
• • •
It was an iron-grey morning with a low sky. By the time I pulled a sweater over my head, Elly and Iphy had Arty strapped into his chair and were pushing him down the row behind the midway, talking at him. I ran to catch up. Elly was demanding, in a hard voice, “How did you do that to them, Arty? I know you did it. I want to know how.” Arty wagged his head in denial. Iphy leaned forward, touching Arty’s neck gently. “Arty, the Chick looked terrible. And Papa. Why do you hate the Chick? You mustn’t …” Elly slapped Iphy’s hand back.
Catching up, I grabbed an arm of the chair and trotted along as it trundled down the dirt track. “It’s not Arty’s fault,” I protested.
Elly snorted at me, pushing the chair faster. Iphy shook her head mournfully, “You don’t know, Oly.”
“For shit’s sake!” Arty snapped. “Oly, call Papa. Go get Papa!”
“Don’t you dare bother Papa now,” Elly drilled at me. I hopped along beside them in dithering bewilderment. Arty stretched his chin toward the chair’s motor-control stick, but Elly’s hand whipped to his shoulder and yanked him sharply back, holding him. “Just sit still. We’re taking you for a ride.”
“Morning, kids!” hollered the point guard. “Morning,” chirped Elly. The show was sluggish in stirring this morning. It might rain and the redheads were yawning in their wagons.
“Take me to my stage,” Arty ordered, his eyes flicking at me.
“This way, Elly, Iphy,” I pointed, trotting back a few steps to lead the way. Elly pressed her lips and walked faster in her own direction with Iphy, sadly determined, pushing beside her. When I caught up again they were on the rear ramp of the deserted Mad Mouse roller coaster. Arty twisted in his straps to glare at the twins. “You stupid shits!” he snarled.
Elly grinned. “Are you scared, Arty?”
“Elly, don’t,” I wailed. “Iphy, don’t let her.”
The wheels of Arty’s chair were on the rails that the Mouse cars rode. Elly and Iphy, planting their white sneakers on the ties between the rails, bent their backs and pushed as the chair slid up the tracks, climbing the steep slope.
The Mouse cars hooked onto a chain-driven winch that ground its way up the center of this slope and brought them to the highest dropoff point, where gravity would carry them and their whooping, screaming cargo down through steep-banked turns with the customers’ hands glommed sweating onto the safety bars.
“Please, Elly!” I hollered as the damp earth dropped away beneath me. I couldn’t stand up on the tracks, but crept upward on all fours, shaking as I stared down past the black oiled chain with its heavy prongs to the flattened grass and mud below. I imagined the twins’ sneakers above me, slipping, tripping, tangling, and the twins crumpling to the rails and losing their grip on the chair, which—in my slow-motion mind—tipped backward over the big rear wheels, toppling over the sprawling twins and slamming down at the wrong angle so that its aluminum frame with its hogtied cargo went shuddering down the now thirty-five, now forty, now forty-five feet to the clanging smash of the mud.
“Arty?” I yelled, with my fists frozen to the rails.
Elly’s hiss sizzled down at me, “Shut up.”
I crouched and stared up the rails at the broad pumping hips and thin legs straining into their sneakers. They were very close to the top.
“What do you want?” Arty’s voice rose sharp and frail in the grey air. The twins stopped pushing, stood leaning against the steep slope. Iphy’s voice, pulling air awkwardly from the work, “You have to leave Chick alone, Arty.” And then Elly’s flat tone, “You have to realize that things can happen to you, too,
Arty.”
“Stuff you. Both of you,” he snapped.
“All right.” Elly was pushing again. Iphy leaned into the slope, digging with her toes. The chair creaked on the rails. “Get me the fuck down!” Arty bellowed. “You’re dead, Elly Binewski. Your ass is fucking meat!” His huge voice floated thin on the air and all I could see was the edges of the wheels beyond the twins’ moving legs. They were at the dropoff point.
“It’s real, Arty,” Elly was whispering hoarsely. “Iphy couldn’t stop me and you know it.” Then Iphy, contradicting, “Oh, Arty, we would never really hurt you. Elly loves you. But you have to understand.”
“O.K. I give.” Arty was too quick. Elly knew him. “Not so easy, brother.”
From my paralyzed station on the rails I saw the Elly half straighten suddenly, erect, beside the hunched figure of Iphy. Her arms flew up, as though saluting a crowd. “Hang on!” shrieked Iphy, her hunched shoulders disappearing as the wheelchair slipped forward and dangled over the edge of the drop. Only Iphy’s long hands held it now.
“No! Uncle! I give!” wailed Arty.
From below and behind us came a horrified bellow, “Get the hell DOWN from there, you stupid little bastards!” It was the point guard, Papa’s Marine, gaping at us from the ground in shock.
Elly’s arms flipped down and she hunched beside Iphy, grabbing the back of the wheelchair again. “It’s all right,” hollered Elly. “We’re coming!”
Then one sneakered foot slid, slowly, down a few inches, then the other, moving toward me. I backed down jerkily, so relieved I could have puked, while the guard’s huge shoulders below us bobbed back and forth, his arms stretched out to catch us if we should fall, his voice rumbling that our old man would have his ass as well as his job if we dropped off that goddamn girder while he was on duty and he fucking well KNEW that we knew better, until we were all on the ground trundling along in our own sweat, peaceful and relaxed, nodding at the guard. Arty silent and Elly and Iphy smiling sweetly.
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