King of Cards

by Ward, Robert

  “Buddy started it,” he said. “Really, Mr. Hawkins …”

  Mr. Hawkins nodded his head but still gazed at me sternly.

  “I have no doubt that he did,” he said, “Buddy’s a monster, but the truth is Mr. Fallon you were late, and you couldn’t deal with the situation. You and your friend, Raines, strike me as amateurs. I heard what happened over at Hopkins, and I warn you if any such mess occurs here, we won’t be so forgiving. Your contract will be canceled, and there’s a good chance we’ll hit you with a lawsuit. So I suggest you get your act together, at once!”

  “Yessir,” I said, flexing my leg so that I could get some semblance of feeling back in it. Worse than the physical pain, however, was the fact that I knew he was dead right. A professional would have defused the situation, and a man would have fought back. I had done neither, and I felt a kind of film spreading over my skin, the slimy ectoplasm of cowardice.

  Humiliated and barely able to stand, I went back to the camera and took Buddy’s picture. He smiled like a gargoyle, then blew me a kiss on his way out.

  Somehow I managed to fake my way through the rest of that long uneasy evening, though I didn’t get back to Chateau Avenue until 1 A.M. Depressed and with my leg aching (there was a black-and-blue bruise on my right calf that looked like Italy), I hoped that Val might show up and surprise me, but there was no sign of her. Only Sister Lulu sat on the wide front porch, swinging moodily to and fro on the glider. She was dressed in her tight black capri pants, pink flats, and red halter top, which showed a generous amount of her two fabulous Ripleys. In her hand was a Howdy Doody jelly tumbler filled with her inevitable Scotch and ice. She looked a little worse for wear. There were deep bags under her eyes, and it occurred to me that she wasn’t nearly as young as I had assumed. Indeed, tonight she seemed ancient—at least thirty-two.

  “Your first big night,” she said. “How did it go?”

  “My last big night,” I said. “Believe me, I am no photographer. Where is that madman Raines anyway?”

  “Upstairs. He passed out hours ago,” Sister Lulu said, taking a sip of her drink. “Care for a drink and a joint?”

  “Not right this minute,” I said, sitting down gingerly on the top step and leaning against the old shingled column. “You know, Sister, you’re a first for me. I mean a drinking, dope-smoking ex-nun?”

  “Well, Tom,” she said, batting her eyes in a comic way, “you have to remember … the spirit moves in mysterious ways.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I suppose so …”

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” she said.

  “Nothing, I just, ah, fell down trying to carry the camera in from the parking lot tonight. Just a little bruise.”

  “Let me see that,” she said, sliding down from the glider.

  “No, it’s all right, really,” I said.

  But it was too late. She had already slid up next to me and was pulling up my pant leg.

  “Oooh, that’s a bad one,” she said. “You need to get some ice on it.”

  She reached into her jelly tumbler, grabbed a piece of ice, then began rubbing it back and forth on the bruise. I felt weird, embarrassed, and, absurdly, guilty. Suddenly, I imagined Val catching us here and thinking all the wrong things … Sister Lulu looked at me and smiled. It was as though she could read my mind.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Val’s staying downtown at her place tonight. Besides, she wouldn’t mind, she’s no square.”

  “No?” I said. “She wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lulu said, rubbing the ice around in a circular motion and smiling at me in a way that was spectacularly un-nurselike.

  “Why,” she said, “does that bother you?”

  “No,” I lied. “Not really.”

  Lulu smiled and took the ice away from my leg. She put it to her mouth and licked it with her tongue, and I felt my cock harden in my pants.

  “You’re adorable, Tom,” she said, “you really are. I don’t blame Val for eating you right up. I wouldn’t mind a little myself. You want to go upstairs and play a few records?”

  She was running her fingers through my hair, and I felt dizzy, hot, and confused. I wanted her then but imagined Val walking in on us.

  “I’m a little tired,” I said, as Allen Ginsberg shook his head and said, “What a square.”

  “It’s okay,” Lulu said, taking her hands away and continuing her massage of my bruised leg, this time without the ice. “I know how you feel, really.”

  “You do?” I said.

  “Sure. This is all new to you. You still believe in purity and one girl and true love. I mean you still have some kind of Ricky Nelson thing in your head, right?”

  I laughed in spite of myself.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I managed a sheepish smile and again felt like a fool, but she moved closer and put her arm around me.

  “It’s okay, Tom, I believed in purity, too, I mean real one-hundred percent purity. I believed I was married to God.”

  “What happened?” I said as she rubbed my thigh.

  “Well, let’s just say that other urges began to present themselves, and I saw myself getting older, with only my thin little faith to sustain me, but worse, with all that time on my hands in the nunnery, I began to think … and you know what, I came up with, my own little theory. A theory of love.”

  “You did?” I said. She was running her hand through my hair now, and I found myself putting my own arm around her shoulders. It was like we were brother and sister, almost.

  “Yes, well, the Church is always talking about the mortification of the flesh, how this body is only transitory, how we will eventually be in our heavenly bodies. Know what I mean?”

  “I think so,” I said, as she began rubbing my leg again.

  “Well, they’re right, I mean, as the body gets older, it breaks down and you lose your natural sexual desire.”

  Now Sister Lulu did a very unnunlike thing. She stopped rubbing the ice on my bruise and started licking it.

  “But you see, Tom, it doesn’t have to happen that way.”

  “No?” I said as I started stroking her hair.

  “Definitely not. The flesh can be renewed through constant sexual contact. Sex sets up a life-enhancing energy field that restores dying cells. Don’t you kind of feel that your cells are getting renewed right now, for instance?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “They feel a lot younger.”

  “I’m so glad, Tom,” she said. “I just want to be the agent of your healing process.”

  “You’re succeeding beyond your wildest dreams,” I said as she put her face up to mine, kissed my lips, while simultaneously squeezing my cock. I rubbed my hands across her fabulous, pendulous Ripleys and felt as though my bruise was healed by some higher being.

  “I feel all healed, Sister,” I said.

  “I love doing God’s work,” she said, pulling down my fly.

  Then I heard a voice: “Lulu! You up there, Lulu?”

  Before I could say another word, she had pulled me down on the porch behind our shingled rail.

  “Who the hell’s that?” I said.

  “Dan the Trucker,” Lulu said, quickly zipping up my pants. “Good Lord, he’s out there in the street.”

  “Dan the Trucker?” I said, out of breath. “Who the hell is he?”

  “My ex,” she said. “When I got out of the nunnery, I spent a couple of weeks on the wild side up the Kent Lounge in Towson. I wanted to try out my theories, so to speak, to store up my new sexual faith in my cells so I wouldn’t let my batteries run down.”

  “Of course,” I said. “So you … fucked a lot of guys.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “About thirty … or so. They even tried to put me in jail for prostitution. But that wasn’t true. I never charged anybody. I mean, okay, I took a few drinks, then I met Dan.”

  “Sister Lulu Hardwell, you up ‘ere?” Dan screamed in his East Baltimore accent.” ‘Cause I’m coming u
p to take you home and if any of them hep cat friends o yours tries to stop me … I’m gonna break ‘ere little heads, unnerstan?”

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “Don’t let him take me back,” Lulu said. “He’s a jealous maniac. And he wants to marry me.”

  “God,” I said. I thought of my cowardice only hours before, how I’d sat there on the floor and let Biddleman kick me, and I knew I’d rather die than act that way again.

  Therefore, I heard myself say the noble and absurd words: “Don’t worry, Sister. I’ll save you.”

  She looked at me doubtfully but managed a small smile of gratitude. Then she said in a very tiny voice: “Ah, Tom, Dan has this thing about … crowbars. So you be careful, honey.”

  I felt my knees knock together, but I stood up anyway and looked down at the street. There was a huge truck with the words Oriole Movers on it, and standing outside the cabin was a uniformed man of considerable size. On his wide chest was a Baltimore Oriole and in his hand was a very large crowbar.

  “You bring her down here this minute pal, or I’m gonna cave in your skull, you hear?”

  “Drop dead,” I said and started moving toward him.

  He gripped the bar tightly and whacked it a couple of times in his palm, but I still kept moving forward. Then from behind me I heard a voice: “You call yourself a man?” the voice said in thunderous tones.

  I turned and looked and saw Jeremy Raines, dressed in a priest’s vestments. He wore a black coat, a white shirt, with a black turned collar. In his hand was a Bible. He walked past me, down the steps toward the irate, crowbar-wielding trucker.

  I glanced at Lulu, whose eyes were now nearly as big as her breasts. Then I walked behind him, imitating his purposeful gait.

  Finally, the two of us were only three feet away from Dan, who up close was not a pretty sight. He was about six feet seven inches tall, looked as though he were made of pure muscle, and had cheeks, lips, and eyes that would have been fashionable in Cro-Magnon circles. His giant square head was stuck into his barrel chest without the impediment of a neck. In his right hand was the black steel crowbar, which he swung up and down, hitting his left palm in much the same way Dr. Spaulding tapped his glasses.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said.

  “I am Father Jeremy S. Raines,” Raines said. “And this is the Holy Covenant Halfway House for Fallen Nuns. If you have business here, sir, then you have business with God.”

  A great swirl of confusion entered Dan’s eyes.

  “And who is ‘es guy?” Dan said. There was more than a little doubt in his voice.

  “This man, sir, is Father Henry James,” Jeremy said. “Like your friend, Sister Lulu, Father James has lost his faith, and both he and she have come here to our spiritual mission to work with me so that the fire of commitment might again burn in their breasts.”

  “Huh?” Dan said. “You serious or what?”

  “Never have I been more serious,” Raines said. “Now why are you standing here in the middle of this street in the middle of the night interrupting our spiritual work?”

  Dan looked around furtively. A blush came over his face.

  “‘Ere must be some mistake,” he said. “I was told by some of the guys uppa Kent Lounge that Lulu had joined up wif a house fulla hippie dope takers, and I come to save her from ‘at.”

  “Well, you were misinformed, sir,” Jeremy said. “I suggest you get in your truck and go home before you endanger your mortal soul!”

  “All right, Fodder, but what about Lulu?”

  He looked up on toward the porch, and there was a terrible pain in his voice.

  “What about it, honey? You gonna give up all our good times and go back to become a nun?”

  “I don’t know, Dan,” she said. “I’ll call you when I make up my mind.”

  “I miss you, baby,” he said. “I miss you so much I can’t even sleep no more.”

  A tear rolled down his eye, and I suddenly felt an unexpected tenderness for the big guy.

  Raines must have felt it, too, for he put his arm around Dan’s shoulders as he turned him back toward his truck.

  “We must trust in the Lord, son,” Raines said. “He knows what’s right.”

  Dan nodded sorrowfully and got inside.

  He looked down at us as he switched on the engine.

  “I’m real sorry, Fodder,” he said. “I sure don’t want to get in wrong wif Jesus. I got me enough troubles already.”

  “Godspeed, my boy,” Raines said.

  I almost burst into a howling laugh on that one but managed to contain myself as Dan pulled up the hill toward the lights of the York Road.

  When he was out of sight, I turned and shook my head.

  “Good God almighty,” I said. “You are the biggest bullshit artist the world has ever known.”

  “I knew this priest’s costume was gonna come in handy someday,” he said. “You know I was thinking about asking him for a tithe to help protect his mortal soul, but I thought that might be stretching our luck a little.”

  I broke into a laugh and Sister Lulu ran down from the porch and threw herself into Jeremy’s arms.

  “My hero,” she said. “Raines, you are one of a kind. Truly.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” he said.

  “I thought the ‘Godspeed’ was a little much though,” I said, roaring as we headed up the steps. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Robin Hood,” Raines said. “You know Friar Tuck is always saying it to Erroll Flynn when he goes off to fight Prince John, ‘Godspeed, Robin.’ I thought it was a nice touch.”

  We all laughed again, and then I recalled just where I had been with Sister Lulu before Dan The Trucker came by, but when I looked over at her, I saw that she was staring deeply and passionately into Raines’s eyes.

  “Time for bed, Jeremy,” she said.

  He smiled sleepily, ripped off his collar, and picked her up in his arms.

  “Yes,” he said, “I believe it is …”

  Then he turned, winked at me, and carried her over the threshold into the house.

  “Godspeed,” I said, then sat back down on the porch, alone and a little jealous.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. Dreams of Sister Lulu’s fantastic body were interwoven with strange images of a hooded skull-faced specter with a giant brass-plated machine gun. I awoke twice in the dark ready to scream out but caught myself in time and gripped the bed tightly. Then, when I thought about the meaning of the dream, it was so transparent, so patently square that I felt foolish. What a patently obvious dream. I wanted to screw a nun and a hooded figure, obviously Val, had shown up to kill me for my desires.

  The thought disgusted me at first. Lulu was right, of course, Val and I weren’t engaged. I was a free agent—like Lulu, like Raines, like Val herself—so why didn’t I feel free? Had I swallowed whole the idea of a wife and a Suburban Squire station wagon? God knows, I had railed against that pathetic image of middle-class mediocrity, but deep down wasn’t it stamped in my soul?

  Worse, didn’t I even kind of relish the idea? Yeah, Val and I living out in Timonium somewhere, with a great split-level house, three cute red-headed kids riding back and forth to Little League games, dinners and dances at the country clubs, like people in John O’ Hara novels (desperate people who eventually committed suicide, but somehow I’d forgotten all that).

  My God, what was I thinking? Last night I had been playing with the stiff nipple of a dope-smoking ex-nun and now I was ready to become Ozzie and Harriet.

  And what of my work? Yes, my work, my thesis. I remembered my humiliation at the hands of Dr. Spaulding, the pain I had felt walking out of his office, knowing he thought I had wasted my potential.

  Then I thought of Val sucking my cock and Lulu putting her hand between my legs and I felt dizzy and fell back on the bed. Things were happening too fast. There was only one hope for me. I had to read. I had to study. Reading had always been my salvation. When I read, my internal the
rmostat went down, and I was able to make intelligent decisions again.

  Yes, I told myself, leaping out of bed and throwing on my clothes, today would be a day devoted monklike to reading. I would go downstairs, eat a little breakfast, make a big pot of coffee, and come back to my room and read, read, read.

  I rushed out of the room and bounded down the steps. Already I felt sharper, clearer, filled with purpose. Yes, the asceticism of my day to come made me feel spiritually cleansed.

  But when I got to the kitchen, Raines had another surprise for me. He was dressed in a white hospital orderly’s suit—he looked like a bedraggled, hung-over version of young Dr. Kildaire—and as usual he was hugely energetic.

  “Young Tom. Listen, I forgot to thank you for what you did last night at B.U. I heard you had a little unpleasantness but that you came through in style.”

  “Only too glad to be of help,” I said.

  He walked over and put a friendly arm around me.

  “Anytime you want to get more involved in our business, let me know,” he said. “There’s even a couple of new opportunities today.”

  “Save your breath, Jeremy,” I said. “I’m heading right back up to my room to do some serious reading before I flunk out of school.”

  Raines smiled and nodded his head.

  “That sounds like a good and sensible plan. Of course, I might be able to make you a counteroffer.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said, smiling, “no card business today.”

  “Who said anything about the card business,” Raines said, smiling. “I’ve got to do some work with a patient out at Larson-Payne. Just thought you might want to observe.”

  I looked at him and shook my head.

  “Thanks, but no, I have work to do.”

  I picked up my copy of The Golden Bowl and waved it at him.

  “Ah, good old Henry James. Well, you get on with it. Just thought as a writer yourself, you might really benefit from seeing this patient. It’s a unique experience, believe me. But no bother. See you around.”

  He smiled in such a charming way that the room itself seemed to light up. Then he turned and headed for the door. I sighed, shook my head, looked down at my novel, opened it, and tried to read. Then I thought of Larson-Payne’s Gothic, redbrick buildings out by Towson. There was a road that cut through the grounds, and only a few years ago, my high school friends and I had driven madly down it while drinking beers, scaring each other with stories about crazed escaped inmates. It was juvenile stuff, jokes with fear and ignorance at their base. The truth was, we knew nothing about the place, and I had always wondered and dreaded what the reality would be inside. Now Raines was offering me the chance to see first hand.