by Stuart Dybek
Some nights I was on more than others, and overall we were ahead. But instead of getting used to prognosticating, I got dizzy sooner each time, and out of breath. It was giving me anxiety attacks. I’d have to tell myself, Easy, Rosie. I’d concentrate on breathing and feel that lazy sunset through my clothes like through a sail, like summer streaming through my body. Voices would sort themselves out of the crowd noise: someone praying to the Virgin in Spanish, fingering rosary beads in his pocket; newlyweds arguing about money—the woman crying in her heart cause Sportsman’s was her hubby’s idea of a honeymoon; an old man mumbling he’s going to kill hisself before his disease gets too humiliating, but not today, no, today he’ll stay alive to play the ponies. And some creepy voice beside my ear, whispering just to me, but before I could admit to myself what it’s saying, the PA blares, and the voices suck back into the crowd-hum of anticipation. I can smell the horses as their shadows clop by, and Frank opens the racing form, smooths it over my lap, and says in his bedroom voice, “Touch it, Rosebush, touch it like you’re touching…” Use your imagination, Rafael. My hand would be trembling and my finger would move on its own across the racing form like across a Ouija board. I’d be sweating.
I look flushed? Maybe it’s the tequila. But tak, one more won’t hurt. So it’s a little early in the afternoon to be buzzed, so shoot me. What’s na zdrowie in Spanish? Okay, then, Rafael, salute!
So, I’m blindfolded, sweating through my lucky underwear, and it’s like I got super-hearing—I can hear the hooves and creaking wheels, and blood’s pounding behind my eyes like that jockey on Frank’s lucky tie is whipping the sparkle horse across my eyelids as the buggies make the turn home, and Frank’s yelling in his clear tenor voice. It always surprised me when he’d let it loose. I got no idea even what horse we’re cheering. Some long shot maybe I picked at random. One thing Frank never could figure was a long shot.
By the middle of summer the special bank account we opened together for the Four Deuces is up eight grand.
I go, Frank, we got the down payment, let’s quit ahead of the game.
See, I don’t wanta be responsible if we lose it and he realizes there never was psychic powers. But he was a greedy sumnabitch. Then, who ain’t?
There ever something beyond what you could afford you hadda have, Rafael? Not just something you wanted, something you couldn’t live without. Maybe angels don’t have desires like that. You paint, right? Nah, I’m no mind reader—I noticed the colors spattered on the hair of your arms. You a painter like houses or like an artist? You do any of them murals of the Virgin along Eighteenth? The Virgin-of-the-El on Halsted or the Virgin-of-the-Lavanderia on Ashland? My favorite’s the wall by Nuevo Ramon, you know, the giant blue taco Virgin shooting light rays, and hovering beside her’s a two-story-tall bottle of Corona shooting the same rays. I told Frank, Maybe we need a Virgin-of-the-Four-Deuces. And Frank says, Way this neighborhood’s gone, people see Virgins everywhere—cracks in the plaster, rusty water stains under a viaduct, and, Mira! A miracle! And they’re kneeling, lighting candles. What’s next? The Virgin-of-the-Porta-Potty?
Frank could be one irreverent sumnabitch, but a hoot.
That me you’re sketching on that racing form? Let’s see. I won’t be offended. Okay, I’ll wait till it’s finished. You ever paint nudes? Tell you, I had a figure that made men ask would I pose. I might have, too, if they was artists, you know, classy, instead of some jerkoff with a Polaroid who thought he was Hugh Hefner. The real question in life ain’t What would you do? It’s What wouldn’t you? Where do you draw the line?
Tak. Salute!
So, that August there’s a heat wave killing senior citizens, and on Friday, Frank leaves work like a kid ditching school, changes into his lucky track clothes in the car, and we make Sportsman’s early. I’m wondering will the horses run? How can they breathe in a furnace? Right off, Frank that sumnabitch blindfolds me with the sparkle-horse tie and I hit the Daily Double, which we never play. The blindfold’s smothering me, I’m like faint, and I hear them voices in the crowd. That creepy voice is right against my ear—I don’t believe what it’s whispering—use your imagination—and I rip the blindfold off, but there’s no one there but Frank and Lester.
You all right? Frank asks.
Who was just here? I ask him, and he looks at me like I’m crazy.
I’m getting heatstroke, I say, and Frank goes, Cool it, Rosebush, I got the next race figured, anyway.
When he comes back from the window, he’s got cold brewskies for me and Lester. It was that sumnabitch’s way of showing he can win without my dramatics. He bets the whole four bills from the Daily Double on White Owl, a long shot, and loses our wad.
After all his crap about playing names, I can’t help blurting, Who’d play a pony named after a cigar?
Frank says, They named him after the bird of prey, not the cigar.
Bird of prey! That sumnabitch and his bullshit vocabulary. Maybe it was the heat, but every time I thought about “bird of prey” I’d laugh until I was like hysterical. Still breaks me up. Lester bets White Owl with him and there goes all his food stamp money, so neither of them are finding it too funny. I go, Shit, nothing like a healthy laugh to make you feel better, go ahead blindfold me. That cheers Frank up. Hot nips time, Rosebud, he says, hot silver-dollar nips. I can’t win without my Rosebud.
Only time I ever heard that sumnabitch actually admit it.
He kisses my neck and whispers, I still get hard just thinking about those pink silver-dollar nips. I want you to go to the Ladies’ and take your panties off. I’d like to blindfold you with your panties.
I say, You got some peculiar ideas. But I do it. There was like something about the heat that night making us drunk.
We win the fifth race. Heat wave or no, the stands are full, and the regulars know what’s going on. You can’t hide a winning streak, let alone a blindfolded woman with 36Ds in a white summer dress and no panty line. There’s a rumor the IRS has surveillance going, but instead a flying under the radar, Frank’s pounding beers, flaunting our luck, yelling, Yeah, Rosebud baby, we’re back in the peanuts and caramels! I’m so sweated my lucky dress looks like a wet T-shirt contest. You can see my—you really don’t get it?—hot nips.
Look, Rafael, we’re both a little buzzed. You wanta hear it like it happened, I gotta get personal. Frank that sumnabitch noticed—not like you could miss it—that when I’m on a roll my nipples have a mind of their own. When he’d blindfold me, it didn’t just feel like I had super-hearing. It felt like everyone at the track had X-ray vision and was looking at my boobs, and big-shot Frank the exhibitionist is getting off on it. I’m in the zone with the voices. One’s praying a rosary like the Virgin cares who wins in the sixth, and the newlywed has a crying heart cause she knows she’s married a loser, and the old man’s mumbling today’s the day to go for broke and if he bottoms out he’s going to step on the third rail, it’s like he’s betting his life, like all their fates are riding on a bunch of Lasix-doped nags trotting around a goddamn track in Cicero. I can feel the sparkle horse crossing my eyelids, and then I hear that creepy whisper, Move that shapely ass, bitch, and I think: Who are you?
I must of said it aloud cause Frank goes, I didn’t say nothing, Rosebush. And at the same time, the creepy voice answers: Zorro.
This time, instead a tearing off the blindfold I let myself listen to what it’s been trying to tell me all summer, ever since we been winning.
You need that shapely ass fanned, slut?
That’s what’s making for hot nips, not buena suerte like Frank thinks. I can hardly breathe in that heat, and my finger’s sliding across the racing form, pointing to I don’t know what, and everyone’s looking at the bitch on a roll with the white dress riding up her legs.
I pick three straight winners, something I ain’t done since that first night.
Lester’s pleading for Frank to loan him money to play, but Frank ain’t listening. We’re all in our separate trances.
Frank doesn’t take the blindfold off between races so’s not to mess with our luck, and for the first time I’m not dizzy anymore. I lose count how much we’re up. Three, four grand. Frank that sumnabitch is treasurer anyway. We’re in the zone, Rosebush, he says, you’re going to hit the Pick 3.
I go, You always said combo bets are for suckers.
Not today. We started with the Daily Double; we’re ending with the Pick 3. Going for broke, Rosebush.
Then he sees my picks for the last three races and chickens out, just bets a grand cause I pick three horses from the same stable where they name all their horses Bunny—Pearl Bunny, Precious Bunny, and Cool Bunny—and Frank thinks blindfolded or not I’m picking cute names again. Plus, what’s the odds on three Bunnies coming in first?
Well, I can tell you the odds that night: forty-four to one.
Pearl Bunny and Precious Bunny win their races. By then Frank’s hoarse from hollering. His shout’s a raspy whisper. He’s going berserkers cause Cool Bunny is boxed in eight lengths back. The blindfold slips down. Who knows how long it was off before I realized I could see. I’m so overheated I’m shaking like I got chills. I can smell myself. I smell like the bedroom and I think everyone at the track can smell it.
You mind an older woman talking frankly, Rafael? I get the feeling I can be honest with you, that you ain’t someone judges people. Maybe that ain’t an angel’s job—judging. You just bring the messages. It’s all just life on earth, right? I imagine a guy with your looks got some stories hisself. What do those nudes tell you? Probably the same stuff they’d blab about dressed. There’s a difference between nude and naked. Nude’s like art, but naked’s exposing the soul. Hell, who ain’t got things they’d strip their clothes off and stand bare-ass in the middle a downtown rather than tell?
Everyone’s up cheering. But me, I’m sitting like I already know Cool Bunny will bust to the outside, the driver using the whip like that buggy’s hitched to the sparkle horse, like the other horses are in slo-mo, like we’re all in slo-mo and it’s Cool Bunny in a photo, by a nose, and me sitting there shaky like I caught Parkinson’s from Lester, still feeling that whip, each lash with its own fever, and then Frank’s kissing me and pounding Lester’s back, and we’re waiting for the total to flash on the board, and when it does, we ain’t just won forty-four grand. No, what we won was the Four Deuces. When Cool Bunny crossed that line, our lives crossed a line, too. We won things we wanted and things we only thought we wanted, and things we couldn’t imagine, things we couldn’t give back. If we hadn’t of won, that slut, the Widow, never woulda stepped into my life. Oh, I’ll tell you about her. We won every moment that followed—like even this moment, Rafael. Think about it. If we hadn’t won all those years ago, you wouldn’t be in here now. So, the night we won is connected to you, too. We won you and me getting buzzed, sitting at the bar with the afternoon light coming in through the open door, and me setting up two more shooters of Chopin to celebrate our victory. Tak. Salute!
So, without waiting to catch his breath, Frank’s on to beating the system. He don’t wanta pay tax on all that money, and to call attention to all we ain’t reported. Still hoarse from cheering, he says, Lester, my man, you’re on disability, and black, you cash the ticket, and a couple hundred of it’s yours.
Should be more, Frank, should be ten percent, Lester goes, that’s the minimum a waiter gets for godsake.
Like I said, Rafael, who ain’t greedy? I mean, just twenty minutes earlier Lester’s begging for two bucks and a brat.
All right, Frank goes, meet you half fucking way, and before Lester can argue he gives Lester’s left hand a shake cause Lester got the palsy in his right. Then he gives Lester the ticket, and turns to me with a fistful of cash.
We can afford a cab, my sweet Bud, he says, my amazing, beautiful Rosebud, it should be a limo. Go home and put on “Wild Horses” and get your voluptuous ass ready to celebrate. And he kisses me so everyone at Sportsman’s can see. This is how life should feel every moment, he says, and he makes like he’s kissing my ear, and whispers that he gotta keep an eye on Lester, that he don’t trust no left-handed handshake, and that he’s going to give Lester a ride home to the housing project after Lester gets the money for the ticket.
I get home, peel off the lucky white dress, take a long slow shower, and dab on perfume, Red, which Frank stole off the trains and says makes me smell like a Roman whore—that’s a compliment, by the way. I’m like in a trance beyond horny, achy to be touched. Hot as it is I put on the black nylons with what Frank calls the mysterious thigh-high scripture, that he kneels before and makes me raise my skirt so he can read with his lips. I been saving a negligee for a special occasion and I slip it on and check myself out in the full-length mirror, and don’t believe what I see. Showing right through the filmy fabric, my behind’s marked up. It makes me so dizzy I sit down on the bed. I don’t want Frank to see, so I put on a black slip instead. I put out cheese spread, crackers, olives, there’s a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and I put martini glasses in to chill, light candles. It feels too hot for candles, though I got all the fans humming, but I want it dark. I put on “Wild Horses.” I want it playing when Frank walks in, and I turn out the lights, and wait. And wait. The flames are floating on wax puddles by the time he shows up.
Why’s it fucking dark in here? he asks in a raspy whisper.
He’s like I never seen him, pacing, cursing, moaning in that hoarse voice. I’m pleading, Frank, calm down, tell me what happened. Where’s the money?
Gone, he says, motherfucking gone, and pounds the table, and the busted platter and crackers fly like confetti. Weeks after, I was still finding olives under the furniture. He yowls and grabs his hand, and I go, Oh God! You cut yourself.
God, my ass, Frank rasps. That sadistic bastard sets you up, dangles the score of a lifetime so he can bust your balls. Ever think about that on your way to mass, Rosie? Adam and Eve, Jacob and Isaac, Job, all them set-up suckers. Same story: kiss the Big Guy’s ass or else.
I think: Blasphemy, which is not a word I walk around thinking. Once a Catholic always, huh? After that night, Frank never got his voice back, even after he quit smoking. It made him a great bartender, like everything he told you was confidential. Women would tell him he sounded sexy, but I knew shouting at Sportsman’s he’d lost the sweet tenor voice that made him think he coulda sung opera.
I ain’t about to take God’s side, but it’s all I can do not to mention to Frank that if he’d just paid the tax instead of giving Lester a cut, we’d a been eating Ritz crackers and drinking martinis.
He slides down the wall and sits holding his head, a dish towel around his cut hand, telling me how he followed Lester to the window, just far enough behind so as not to look like they’re together, watching that winning ticket like a hawk. When Lester gets handed the money he glances over at Frank and smiles, and right then the IRS grab Lester and cart him away. Lester’s yelling, Racial harassment! Jesse Jackson’s going to hear about this!
An IRS guy looks right at Frank, so Frank vamooses to the car. He changes into his railroad clothes like it’s a disguise, puts on a Sox hat and sunglasses, and rushes back through the crowd filing outta Sportsman’s. He waits for Lester to be released, but they got him in some office, and by now the lights are blinking out on the track and in the concession stands, and the betting windows are grated, and Frank has to leave. He sits in the car waiting for Lester, not sure what exit to watch. An hour goes by, no Lester. Frank figures they musta took him away, that Lester probably snitched it wasn’t his ticket. Oh, goddamn motherfucker, Frank goes, like he’s having a coronary.
I say, Frank, they’ll let Lester go and he’ll come through with the money. And Frank inquires if I was born fucking yesterday.
You believe it? The sumnabitch who hadda beat the system, the big shot dumb enough to give our ticket to a mooch, is asking when was I born.
It’s human fucking nature, Frank says, the longer that crip has my money, the more
it’ll seem to him like it’s his. He coulda figured out where I’d be waiting. He snuck out some other exit. I’ll have to kill him to get it and I would, but I don’t know what fucking slum he lives in, or what his phone number is if he even has a phone, I don’t know nothing about him. I don’t even know his last fucking name.
I’d know it if I saw it, I say, and get out the white pages.
What the fuck you doing? There’s millions of names in there and you’re going to find one fucking Lester?
I sit on a kitchen chair with the phone book on my lap, and Frank gets up off the floor to turn on the lights.
Leave them off, I tell him. Blindfold me.
Oh, Jesus motherfucker, Frank whispers.
He ain’t wearing the sparkle tie. His lucky clothes are still in the car. So he wraps the bloody dish towel over my eyes. You can do this, Rosebush, I know you can, he says like praying.
