Hush Hush

by Steven Barthelme

  He had first come down here for a stupid sales education conference that he didn’t need, didn’t want, and a waste of two weeks of his time and two thousand dollars of the store’s money. The “rotunda concept” was what they were big on that year, get the stiffs walking in a circle, merch to the right, merch to the left … Most of the great merchandising concepts were equally sly. He shook his head. The first time he had come down here he had won eight hundred dollars, like it was easy, like it was meant to be. He even won two hundred on a slot machine. Patterson was unhappy when he found out about it, but it had been the old man’s idea to send Bailey to the dumb sales conference.

  They found out about everything. He remembered when he was hired, how he had been surprised that they knew Claire’s name, where she lived, what she did, how long they’d been together. They even knew that girl’s name—Dashy—that Bailey was fooling around with when he and Claire split up. “What’re y’all running, a department store or the C.I.A.?” he’d said, and none of them had laughed. They actually had a department called “Intelligence.” Patterson himself wasn’t so bad, just nosy. He paid well, and had done well by Bailey, shooting him up to the second spot in marketing in less than three years, him without even a business degree. Then when they sold the chain to a bigger chain, Patterson had become some kind of token figure, ceased to matter, near as Bailey could tell.

  Then he’d started gambling, which was more interesting. It was a department store, who could stay interested in that? It was dull, although he liked the people who worked on the floor, all the clerks and stock people and the tech crew, the people that built displays, moved stuff around. The people who ran the place were horrible, piously stabbing each other for dimes and for the old man’s favor. The smart alecks and old drunks at the casinos were far better company. And you never knew, you might make a killing some day, and bye-bye, nine to five. Pay off all the damn bloodsucker credit cards.

  He had his free dinner at the steakhouse on top of one of the casinos, and then drove down to Biloxi to another to play. Two and a half hours later, even betting cautiously and not drinking, he was into his line of credit for a thousand dollars, with about half that left, twenty green chips lined up in front of him.

  The dealer was some girl, not anyone he knew, lots of brown hair, very good-looking, looked like a magazine girl, with a magazine girl’s indifference. She looked about eighteen but she had two kids, said she was twenty-four. Bailey was thinking about trying another table, when she said, “Press,” quietly, and then, when he gave her a doubtful look, reassumed her indifferent expression. She hadn’t said more than a dozen sentences in an hour. Bailey stacked the chips, all he had, in one tall stack the way he had seen people do. It was always jerks who did it, but they always won. He pushed the stack onto his spot, and got two face cards and doubled his money. “Black out,” she called out for the pit boss, and gave Bailey black hundred dollar chips. He left it all on the spot and doubled it again. And again. And again. She was paying him in purple chips, five hundred dollars apiece. “Wait,” Bailey said, and reached out and settled his hand on the chips. The object, he thought, is to get out of this fucking place with some of their money.

  The pit boss was standing sort of sideways behind the dealer, watching. Bailey looked up at the girl, who was waiting for his bet, her hand poised over the shoe, her eyes gently blank as if her whole consciousness was pulled back somewhere well behind them. “I don’t have the nerves for this,” Bailey said. Still nothing.

  A Vietnamese man walked up to the table, set some bills down in front of him, looked at Bailey’s hand still resting on his chips, then at his face, and picked up the bills and walked away. The pit boss smirked, a chubby guy with stiff permed gray hair and a name tag that said “Lucky.” “You’re on a roll,” he said. “Let it ride.” It was a dare, a taunt.

  Bailey, sweating, looked at his utterly indifferent dealer again. “Bets,” the girl said. Okay, he thought. Once more. He shook his head and stacked all the chips on the round spot on the felt in front of him. “Be nice,” he said, and she dealt out the cards. He got a thirteen, an eight and a five, and she dealt herself a deuce. She looked at him.

  “Dealer’s ace,” Lucky said. “Glad that’s not my eight grand.” He laughed, and glanced away, over at each of the other tables in the pit, as if this game were already over. “She could still break,” Lucky said, doubtfully, and laughed again.

  Just a stupid thing everybody says about deuces, Bailey thought, but he didn’t like that the pit boss had counted his chips, or counted them so accurately. Or maybe they had it fixed. Players’ paranoia, he thought. Can’t mean anything. The dealer was waiting for him to play. Not this, he thought, shaking his head. It’s twelve against a three you’re supposed to hit. But he tapped the felt with his index finger twice, asking for a hit. She laid down a card, a three, now he had sixteen. The pit boss rocked, smirking. Bailey lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, took a breath, rocking, too, a little, forward and back, he couldn’t stop the movement. “I’m good,” he said, and waved his hand flat above his cards. “I’ll stay. Turn it up.”

  She turned up her down card, a queen, spades.

  “That’s a start,” the pit boss said. “That’s a good start.”

  The girl dealt herself another card, a deuce, and then a third deuce. It was taking forever. “Sixteen,” she said, and stopped, and a hint of a smile slipped over her face. Why wasn’t she dealing it? Bailey thought. Do it. “Twenty-six?” she said, and flipped out another card, another queen.

  “Twenty-six,” Bailey said, breathing out, and he shook his head sharply as he felt tears rising in his eyes. “It’s twenty-six. Dealer busts.”

  “Misdeal,” Lucky shouted. And then, when he saw the look on Bailey’s face, “Little jokie.” And then he wandered away to a telephone and a computer at a stand in the middle of the pit.

  “Color these up,” Bailey said, pushing his chips toward the dealer. “I can’t—” He shrugged. “—do this.”

  He watched, wondering if he had figured it right, trying to recount his stacks himself as she counted up his chips and made stacks from hers, all purples, sixteen thousand dollars. Lucky was back, watching. “Sixteen thousand,” the girl said.

  “Sixteen thousand,” Lucky said. “Okay.”

  When she had pushed the chips across to Bailey, he took one and slid it across the insurance line to her and slipped the rest of them into his shirt pocket. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. His hands were shaking.

  The girl took it blankly. “Thank you, sir,” she said, then called out, “Dropping five hundred for the dealers, for the boys and girls,” and slipped the chip into the toke box by her right hand. The dealers at the other tables turned to look.

  Get out, Bailey thought, checking his pocket. Cash it all in. Don’t look at the slots. Don’t think. Walk to the cashier, he thought, and headed that way. At the main cage he asked for twelve thousand in a check and the rest in cash. The I.R.S. would hear, anything over ten. It only took a few minutes, but getting the chips cashed in felt like landing an airliner. He looked this way and that. Suddenly all the casino patrons looked like sleazy bit actors on NYPD Blue.

  It wasn’t until he was in the car on the highway with the dark pine trees and bare fields passing by outside that he began to breathe easy again, and even then he kept patting his pocket for the fold of hundreds and the twelve thousand dollar check they’d given him. And then he started laughing, quietly, to himself, but that made him self-conscious so he just shook his head a little.

  He drove straight to Claire’s, but he didn’t get there until after midnight, and the windows of her apartment were all dark. Then he remembered the dinner he had been supposed to come to. Whoops, he thought. Well, I never said I’d be there. I’ll take her to dinner tomorrow, he thought. Take some roses, too. Really piss her off. So he pulled out of the parking lot and drove back to his own apartment.

  He had completely forgotten the cat, which sta
rted yowling the moment his key went in the door lock and didn’t let up until he opened the bathroom door. “Jesus,” Bailey said, “shut up. You aren’t winning any friends that way.”

  The cat sat on the edge of the bathtub, looking up.

  Bailey let it follow him into the kitchen where he shuffled through the cabinets looking for something to feed it. “Looks like you’re out of luck, Slick,” he said. “That was my only can of tuna fish.” He took down a plastic bag of chocolate chip cookies and ripped it open.

  “Here,” he said, and dropped a cookie on the linoleum in front of the cat, which looked at it. “Moist and chewy,” Bailey said. “And don’t give me any twaddle about this, as until yesterday you’ve been eating out of the garbage unless I miss my guess. I’ll get some Cheetos tomorrow.” He dropped another cookie beside the first one, and the cat set himself down to dinner. “That’s better,” Bailey said.

  He went into the living room and lay back in the big chair, watching the kitchen doorway, waiting for the cat to come in and start hassling him again. He turned on the TV, but left the sound muted, and thought about the money that was still in his shirt pocket, touching it every once in a while. It came to him that Claire wouldn’t care about it, not at all. She’d be happy to take her loan money back, but that’s all. He hadn’t done anything at all, the way she saw it. Just didn’t matter to her. He ran through some channels on the TV, settled on some talk show, set the control down. He touched his pocket, looked toward the kitchen. “Goddamn it,” he said, “get in here, you pest.”

  • • •

  It was a little after four in the morning when he went out and got in his car and started back over to Claire’s apartment. He wasn’t drunk. He’d had a couple beers to try to mellow out, but it hadn’t worked. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep with all that brand new money. There was something disappointing about it, anyway. It was like being a kid and doing something really spectacular about which no one cared, like getting all the way home through the woods without ever touching the ground, or hitting a home run in an empty ballpark, when it didn’t count.

  Maybe they could try again, him and Claire. He didn’t feel about new women the way he had felt about her, that it mattered, that it could end well, that it might not end. You met a woman and even if you had more than fifteen minutes worth of talk in common, even if she could say something interesting or funny, you were thinking, when do we find out what’s wrong with her, what’s wrong with me that she can’t tolerate, how long before we find out. But he didn’t feel about Claire the way he felt about them, either, that weird sort of hunger for them, for their faces, for their eyes. Claire’s eyes were beautiful but it wasn’t the same. You know me, you don’t know me, look, don’t look, don’t look away.

  The place was all dark when Bailey got there, and he sat in his car out front, trying to think of a way to put it, something to say to her, looking at the still, sleeping apartment building. But what did he want to say? The small lights in glass at the corners of the building, marking the ends of the three walkways into the interior courtyard, seemed friendly, almost like living things. He turned the key partway in the ignition to get the dashboard clock to light. 4:24. This is not normal behavior, he thought. This is the way I used to behave, before I got a job. Marketing.

  On the concrete walk, he stepped as lightly as he could, making his way into the courtyard and then past a half dozen doors to hers. His knock was stuttering, and waiting, he glanced quickly up and back the walk, afraid to see a light come on in some other apartment. Claire’s door swung open a few inches, and she stood blinking her brown eyes at him, holding her shoulders. Air conditioning floated out around her.

  “You’re late, Bailey,” she said, and frowned. “You’re way late.” She was dressed in an aluminum colored negligee edged with lace, and floppy white socks. She was wearing her glasses, and Bailey felt suddenly as if he had accidentally touched her, bumped into her. It seemed unfair that he was so close to her and she should look like this, like she had a life, preoccupied. It wasn’t what he had expected, although he hadn’t really expected anything. But it was as if they had agreed ever since their final separation to meet in a certain way, relaxed, not formal, but not en dishabille either, not personal.

  “For dinner, I mean,” she said. “I was asleep.”

  “I brought your money back,” Bailey said. “All of it.” It sounded pathetic, but everything else he could think of seemed wrong.

  She began to laugh, sleepily, and then nodded, more to herself than to him, and opened the door. There was a gray dog standing beside her. The apartment’s white walls looked faintly yellow in the moonlight. “By all means, then,” she said. “Come in.”

  Bailey stood staring at the dog, the same dog from yesterday afternoon, or its twin brother. He was shaking his head, trying to sort it out, trying to separate the scene in the parking lot and Claire, Claire and the dog, four o’clock in the morning and—

  “Come in,” she said again, emphatically. Behind her, standing in the tiny hall at the doors to the apartment’s bathroom and bedrooms, was the boy who owned the dog. He was holding a pair of slacks in one hand, barefoot on the wood floor, wearing boxer shorts and brushing his hundred dollar haircut back with his hand, looking at Bailey, who didn’t really know what to do.

  Bailey stepped inside and the air conditioning hit him full force. The dog loped back to the blond boy. The boy put his pants on.

  Claire, having added a pale blue oxford shirt, tried to shake off Bailey’s stare, looked away, looked back, then again, the same gesture, and failing, started talking.

  “Oh stop. It’s the middle of the night and you have come to my place ostensibly to return some money at—” She checked the clock on the microwave on the kitchen counter, squinting. “—at four forty-five a.m., which is not really banking hours, you know, after failing to appear at a dinner at which you agreed to appear and which was bought and cooked as per agreement, if you know what I mean. So stop fucking staring at me.”

  “I think you’d just better go,” the boy said.

  “Dave,” Claire said, and shot a glance at him.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “This is Bailey Long,” she said. “My old flame. Love of my former life. Bailey, Dave Boyette, my fiancé.” She slid up on a barstool beside the counter.

  “Hi,” Bailey said, and then to Claire, “We ran into each other yesterday.” Davey, he thought, still trying to assemble the pieces of the situation into something coherent. The old man called him “Davey.” “Somebody put a cat in my car,” he said, and then he thought, She won’t get that, that doesn’t make any sense at all. “It’s a long story,” he said. “This kid carries a gun, did you know that? It’s in his car? It’s one thing to hang around with teenagers, but armed teenagers?”

  “Look—” Dave began, but this time Claire only had to look at him. He sighed. “Okay,” he said.

  “Bailey, this is Dave Boyette. My fiancé,” she said, and wiggled her toes in her sock, pointing. “The one I told you about.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t take you seriously,” Bailey said.

  “You probably should have,” the boy said, advancing into the front room for the first time, passing between Bailey and Claire and walking around the counter into the kitchen, taking a new tack. “Do you want a beer or something? Pepsi?” His dog came with him, shy of Bailey, settling on a throw rug near Claire’s feet.

  She slid off the bar stool. “Well, if we’re going to have … conversation,” she said, “I’ll feel more comfortable with some clothes on. I’ll be a minute. You boys can start over, how about?” she said, and walked back into the bedroom.

  “She’s a great lady,” Dave said, breaking the silence. “You want something?”

  “Beer. A beer,” Bailey said. He sat at the table off the kitchen by the front window and took the money out of his shirt pocket, set the roll in front of him and counted off eight hundred dollar bills, his debt. “Listen,
I’m sorry about the other afternoon. It really wasn’t my cat.”

  “So you’re the big gambler,” Dave said. He handed a bottle over to Bailey and took a chair across from him. “I go down there sometimes.”

  “No, I’m a department store salesman who plays too much blackjack,” Bailey said, looking around for Claire.

  “What’s all that?”

  “Money,” Bailey said.

  “I could tell that much.” Dave sat back in his chair. “You’re making this harder than it has to be, you know? I’m trying to get along, and I really don’t have any reason to.”

  Bailey settled his head in his hand and shook it gently. This must be what it comes to, he thought. Sitting here sick at your stomach, getting advice about life from a teenager. This is how you pay for rank stupidity, for slovenliness, for falling a little short at everything your whole life long.

  He looked across at Dave. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be making it hard. That’s money I owe Claire, some of it is, which I am paying her back, which she lent me.” He looked over his shoulder toward the back of the apartment. “Sorry I woke you up. When it is you’re getting married?”

  “December,” Dave said. “I wanted to do it right away, but Claire wanted to wait. Her parents are in Fort Worth—but I guess you know them.”

  Bailey nodded. He heard a whistle from outside the window, and then again. That’s a bird, he thought. That’s morning. He looked toward the window, but the sky hadn’t begun to light. “What do you do for a living, Dave?”

  “Now you sound like her parents,” the boy said. “I’m second year at the law school. I was managing Bechtold’s—the restaurant—but you know, I needed to make—” Bailey looked up, then followed the boy’s glance to Claire, who had apparently been watching. “That’s better,” she said. Now she was wearing white jeans and a shirt of her own, white, a short sleeveless tunic.