“In here,” Sam said, and led the man through the corridor, into the living room, and then into the dining room.
“Nice place you have here,” Sol said. “How much you pay for it, if you don’t mind my asking—?”
“It’s not mine,” Sam said.
“Sure,” Sol said, sitting down at the dining room table. He leaned back, so that the chair squeaked. “Sure. I forgot.” Sam sat down opposite him. “Just the two of us?” Sol asked.
“There’s supposed to be a third—maybe a fourth.”
“Sure. I heard four—but if it’s just us two, why not? You have any objections?”
“No,” Sam said.
Sol looked around the dining room, then for the first time let his gaze fall on the decks of cards, the chips, Sam’s envelope. He sniffed in through one nostril and smiled. “So, let me ask you something—how are you feeling, son?”
“Fine,” Sam said, and sighed inwardly. He’d met guys like this before, when he and Dutch had traveled together. He’d been right about that, too, he told himself, picturing Sol outside, by the swimming pool in a cabana outfit: California and Florida, if you switched them around one night when nobody was looking…
“Maybe the others got held up—on the other side of the highway, going north—I come from up there—there was a big accident. Maybe they got stuck. You don’t mind waiting?”
“No.”
“You been out here long?”
“No.”
Sol’s head rocked forward a few times, his mouth turned downward. “What do they call you, you don’t mind my asking—Silent Sam?” He laughed.
The problem was—Sam thought of what Tidewater had written—that the better you became, the more you limited your competition. Sam stared at Sol, then let himself smile slowly. “Sam Junior,” he said.
“Well, Sam Junior, you don’t got to play it cool around old Sol Pinkus. I been around, you know what I mean? All this business before—sparring, feeling each other out, jabbing—Oh, I been through it all, son. Believe me, I was cutting decks of cards before you were born. I seen things and been places you ain’t dreamt of.” He slapped his fat hand on the table and laughed at Sam; something caught in his throat, however, and he coughed. Sam watched his face redden, but waited. The man gagged, tried to smile, gagged again. Sure, he thought. When he was the perfect poker player—which he might as well have been, with all the games he’d been getting—he’d wind up playing solitaire.
Sam got up then, walked into the kitchen, directly behind the dining room, and brought back a glass of water. Sol nodded, took the glass, dropped his huge head backwards and drank. “Thank you, son. Ah—that’s better. Thank you. You’re a good boy, I can see that.” Sam said nothing, and sat down again. “I got children,” Sol said. “I got grandchildren almost your age. What are you—thirty-one? thirty-two?”
“About that,” Sam said.
Sol pursed his lips, considered. His head rocked forward again and Sam could see freckles under the few remaining hairs, in the middle, where the man was bald. “But it’s okay—everybody has his own style, right? And two thousand dollars—that’s right, isn’t it?—that’s not nickel-dime.”
“You do this for a living?” Sam asked.
“Do I do this for a living.” Sol sniffed in again. He reached over to his right, took a deck of cards, and tapped the box on the table a few times. “That’s a good question, Sam Junior, do you know that?” He laughed. “I’ll tell you what—maybe we play a few quick hands, you and me—to warm up—and if you win, I’ll answer you. A bonus I’ll throw in tonight.”
“I can wait,” Sam said. He saw Ben handing him the envelope, and heard himself saying that he hoped he could repay it. Ben had said the usual, about what Sam had once done for him. It had been a short-term low-interest loan, on Ben’s passbook. The interest, if Ben paid the loan back within thirty days, would amount to nothing. If not, he explained, he could sell his stock, or take a loan out against his life insurance policy, though this would mean cheating Sam of his rightful inheritance. Ben had explained all the options available to him: social security, medicare, medicaid, a loan against the apartment, the stocks, the life insurance.
“Then we’ll wait,” Sol said. “We can continue our stimulating conversation.” He paused briefly, eyeing Sam. “Or I can keep talking, you can listen. I don’t mind. I been around, like I said. I don’t got to psyche anybody out—I left that behind years ago. When I play cards, I play cards. When I’m with somebody, I’m with somebody, you know what I mean?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was a gold ring with a large blue stone on his left ring finger. “I saw the name on the door—your father?”
“My uncle,” Sam said.
“He live alone?”
“My father lives with him.”
“They been here long—I mean, I’m only asking, if you want the truth, because my wife—Myra—she wants to get out of the city, and she has some friends here. Your old man, how does he like it here?”
“Fine,” Sam said.
“But you don’t know what he pays—”
“It’s his brother’s place.”
“Well, it’s not cheap, I can tell you that much,” Sol said. He stopped, sniffed in. “Look, I’ll tell you the truth—it’s not the first time I been here, so I shouldn’t let on like I know nothing at all. I played here before—not since last summer, but I played here, believe me.” He sneered. “Big shots!” He made a bubbling sound with his lips. “What do you think, son, could I earn my keep here—stealing pensions from—” He broke off, laughing to himself, wheezing. “Do a little shtupping on the side, why not?”
He looked to Sam for a reaction, but Sam showed nothing. He heard Andy asking him, as he did each morning, what Sam had against older women. He heard, to his surprise, his father giggling at Andy’s remarks, and he tried to recall what Andy had looked like when he had been younger—Sam’s age—and a lady’s man. “It’s a thought, though,” Sol said, leaning back so that his belly rose almost to table-level. “You got everything you need right here at your fingertips—when you get to my age, I’ll tell you the truth, you want things convenient. You want services. You don’t want to be running all the time.” He closed his eyes, breathed heavily through his nose. “I ran enough for one lifetime, believe me.”
The doorbell rang. “You heard of Mickey Cohen?” Sol asked. “This—” he pointed to the cards. “This is bingo after what I seen, believe me, son.” He leaned back. “You heard of Mickey Cohen?” he asked again.
Sam left the room without answering. He remembered Ben’s story, of course, about the time Ben and Andy had gone to see Lipsky; still, something about Pinkus didn’t smell right to him. He wondered if Ben would return before the game was over.
The new player was younger, shorter, very thin. “Sam Berman, right?”
“That’s right,” Sam said.
The guy blinked nervously with his left eye, looked to both sides down the hall corridor before stepping inside. Sam found that he wanted to laugh. He put his hand out. “Oh yeah,” the guy said, and shook Sam’s hand, quickly. His palm was very dry. “Yeah, sure. Is the game on?—I don’t want to come in if it ain’t—”
“It’s on,” Sam said. The guy reminded him, not of the jockeys Sam had met, but of their stable boys—the white ones—guys who’d save up six or seven months’ salary and then blow it all on one race, when they knew something. The guy wore a blue nylon jacket, zipped close, the collar turned up around the neck. Everything in his face seemed to be pointed downward—the tips of his ears, his widow’s peak, his thin nose, the cleft above his lip, his chin. “Looks like only three players, though.”
“Yeah, I know that,” the guy said, and walked in. “I come down anyway.”
Sam saw no reason to play it cool with a guy like this. “You from Brooklyn?” he asked.
“That’s my business, yeah? Where we playing—?”
“In the dining room. I can hang your jacket up
here.”
“I’ll keep it. What time you got?”
“Ten to nine.”
“You start yet?”
“We waited for you.”
“Yeah. Well, I ain’t got all night, you know what I mean?”
Sam walked into the living room. The guy looked around, as if he were casing the place. “Man, this is some creepy place,” he said in a whisper. “I mean, it gives me the willies, all these—I mean, it spooks you, walking around here, you don’t see nobody but old stiffs. Let’s deal and play so I can get my butt out of here quick, yeah?” He looked into the dining room, saw Sol, and grabbed Sam’s sleeve. His breath smelled like wet leather. “He live here?”
“No.”
“This is some creepy place,” the guy said again. “Wouldn’t want to get stuck here—you and me, we’d turn into dead men we stayed here too long.” He tried to catch Sam’s eye. “I mean—yeah, you guessed it, I’m from Brooklyn too, so we got something in common, we stick together a little, you know what I mean?” Sam said nothing. The guy’s left eye twitched.
Sam walked into the dining room and started to introduce the guy to Sol. “I didn’t get your name,” he said.
“That’s right.”
The guy took a seat at the end of the table and leaned over, blowing into his hands, as if to warm them. It amused Sam, seeing a bird like this all the way out in California. But he wasn’t, he told himself, fooled. Even though Tidewater’s story was filling his head, he found himself, to his surprise, able to concentrate. Sol smiled at Sam and winked knowingly. “You young people are always so anxious. What’s the rush? Me, I been around, I got time. Where’s the hurry?”
“The hurry is I come here to play, and I got things to do.”
“Well then, Mr. Noname,” Sol laughed, “we shouldn’t keep you waiting, although you’re the one who kept us waiting—”
“Don’t be a wise-ass,” the guy said. “And don’t call me noname. I got a name as good as yours.”
“Ah,” Sol said, sighing. “What do you wish us to call you?”
“Call me nothing. Just let’s play, yeah?”
“I’ll call you Norman, all right? For my eldest son,” Sol said, and he looked toward Sam.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Norman said. “Cut the gab, and let’s move it.”
“Five-card draw, you can draw four, nothing wild,” Sam said. They nodded their agreement. “Ten and twenty, ten for ante, three raises, you call chip to raise again.” He looked at Norman, whose tongue moved out, pointed, and licked his upper lip.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You don’t scare me. I played Brooklyn-style before. Let’s see the deck.”
Sol passed an unopened deck to him. He looked at the seal. “Okay?” he asked. Sam and Sol nodded; Norman split the seal with his fingernail, took the deck out, removed the jokers, fanned the deck in front of him, closed it, inspected the sides, then passed it to Sol. “Okay,” he said again, and unzipped his jacket. “Here’s my two. Put it in the bank.”
“White is ten, blue is twenty, red is a hundred,” Sam said.
Sol leaned to one side, pulled a wallet from his left sidepocket. Sam set the deck down to his right and distributed the chips—ten reds, twenty-five blues, fifty whites, then took his own two thousand from the envelope and showed it to them. He stacked his chips to the left, put the six thousand in the envelope, and laid the envelope at the far left of the oval table, where the extra chips were. Andy had supplied the chips. Remember, he’d told Sam before he and Ben had left for the evening, what’s difficult for man is easy for God.
“I’ll deal,” Sam said.
Sol looked worried. “That’s a big bank,” he said. “Six shiny dimes.”
Sam tossed a white chip into the middle, and the others followed, their chips clicking on the table’s wood surface. Sam knew that Sol had wanted him to say something, but he knew how much good words were. Sure, Sam thought. His account could be transferred also. Sam split the deck, shuffled, aware of their eyes on him, of the cards whirring downward, cascading. His fingertips tingled. Norman zipped his jacket closed, leaned forward, watching Sam. Sam passed the deck to him, and Norman cut. Sam took the deck; the cards felt good to him: cold, smooth, firm. He flicked them out, left to right, five times to each man, and heard his heart pounding under his shirt. He heard Stella telling him, the first night they’d met, that if he pulled three ladies, he should think of her. He put the deck down, reached for his cards, and held the thin stack in his palm, the edges cutting into his fingers.
He fanned the cards out, and found nothing: no pair, no possible straight, no possible flush. “Ten more to buy,” Sol said, moving a chip forward. Norman stayed in. Sam set his hand down on the table, put his ten dollars in also. Sol took three, Norman took two. “Dealer takes four,” Sam said, and dealt three to himself, turned one card down, then took his fourth.
“I’ll chip another penny to the big man,” Sol said, talking to Norman.
“Twenty more to see me,” Norman said, and pushed three white chips forward.
Sam looked at his hand—there was nothing there—and turned it face down. “I work hard for my money,” Sol said. He turned his cards over and Norman took in the pot. Sam collected the cards, passed to Sol, who moved a chip to the middle, shuffled, dealt. Sam drew a pair of sevens, stayed in. Sol kept three cards, Norman took two again, but dropped out when Sol raised ten, no chip. Sam saw Sol and lost, jacks to sevens, and knew something. He watched Norman shuffle—the guy’s fingers were long, and he shuffled beautifully: straight on, not corner to corner. He gave Sam a pair of sixes. Sol drew three cards; Norman took two again and raised twenty plus chip. Sam folded.
“We’ll see you this time,” Sol said, pushing a blue chip forward.
Norman did not hesitate. “Cost you plate, fat man.” Too soon, too soon, Sam thought. Norman slid a red chip into the middle. Sol smiled, moved a red chip forward. Norman turned two cards over—a pair of fives—his eyes on Sol. The guy would be tapped out in less than an hour, Sam told himself, playing like that. It didn’t figure.
Sol showed three eights, and pulled the chips in with both hands. He looked at Sam, raised his eyebrows. “No funny looks there, fat man,” Norman said, shoving the deck at Sam.
In the next deal, Sam drew nothing again, Norman took two cards to Sol’s three, but this time Sol smiled and let Norman take in the forty dollars. “You shouldn’t have called me fat man,” Sol said, slicing the deck.
“Keep the bottom card toward you—down.”
Sam was tired—the excitement he had felt when he’d held the deck for the first time had already vanished. It was a question now of staying in, of waiting. The cards moved around, left to right, left to right, Norman taking two each time, winning a few hands when both Sam and Sol would fold, but not chipping again. On the tenth deal, Sam took his first hand, holding a pair of kings, but the others did not see him. “I’ll trust you, Silent Sam,” Sol said. “You’re a good boy.” The pots remained small, Sam drew poorly. In a while he was down two sixty, about even with Norman—Sol had their money—but he wasn’t worried. He was playing the cards, as always. If they didn’t come now, they’d come later. He thought of his Bible Man, trying to lose, and remembered that there was nothing new there, either: he’d read an article once about a guy who had won at Monte Carlo with the same system.
Sol dealt, Norman passed, Sam passed, and Sol turned his cards down. He passed the deck to Norman—the first time, Sam realized, that that had happened. They raised the house, anted up again, and Sam drew a pair of fours. Norman made it thirty to draw, and Sam put his thirty in, but he drew nothing to the fours and had to let Norman take the pot.
Sam lost a few more, then drew his first good hand. He kept a six, seven, eight, and nine, and pulled the five, raised twenty and chip, then forty more. Sol stayed in, Norman folded. Sam turned the straight over, and as he waited for Sol to show his hand, he tried to show nothing. He knew that Sol was waiting, to see what he w
ould do—if he would make a move for the chips. “Good enough,” Sol said, aware of the silence, and Sam took in the chips, stacked them, his fingers steady. He did not smile.
Would he have taken Ben’s offer—and let Andy set the game up—if Flo’s letter had not arrived? He watched the cards in front of him: two tens. He drew two queens, stayed in when Norman raised twenty and chip. He raised him ten more and Norman saw the ten, raised twenty. Norman blinked. Sam put his money in and Norman turned over three fives. Sam showed nothing, nodded. Watch your ass, Sam Junior, he heard himself saying. Forget Ben, forget Andy, forget Flo’s letter, forget Tidewater.
The cards moved around again, and everybody passed. Another hand—nothing again. There were nine chips in the middle, and when Sam reached across for his cards he let his eyes fall on his watch: ten after ten. He was down five hundred—one good hand, though, a few small ones, and he’d be back even. Remember the rules: play it small and play it smart. He drew nothing. Sol bet twenty and chip, and Sam and Norman went out. The cards went around, Sol continued to win, to draw good cards. Sam knew that he was doing what he had to do, playing what was there. Still…
He heard a siren. He had, from his window, watched the tiny figures below freeze whenever that sound wailed through the village. About you and your father, Andy had said to him, when Ben was gone one morning, shopping. Remember this, what your grandfather always taught us: one mother can take care of ten children, but ten children sometimes, they can’t take care of one mother. Sam saw two queens in his hand, then drew the third. Sol took three cards also. Sam raised twenty and chip, Sol saw him, but Norman went out. Sam didn’t hesitate. “Plate,” he said. Sol looked at him, put a finger on a red chip and Sam did not move. Then: “Be my guest,” Sol said, and tossed his cards into the center of the table.
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