Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Sheryl took her brother aside and explained what had happened with Dolores, and he joined Dusty, Sheryl and Steve to confront Morty. Old Mrs. Blatnick had gone shopping with Mimi and they had the suite to themselves. The air conditioning was blasting, but Dusty opened the door to the balcony and warm air and the distant roar of a power boat streamed in.

  “I swear to you,” Morty said. He stood next to the TV set, right in the path of the warm breeze, and spread his palms out. “She never told me she had a baby. She’s lying.”

  “I want to know how come she has orgasms with you?” Sheryl asked.

  Dusty put his drink down on the bar. “Look, Sheryl, hold it off for a little while, all right? I arranged with Dolores that she’s going to show us this baby tonight, after dinner. You and me are going to go down there and see it.”

  “What about me?” Morty asked. “If it’s my baby I want to see it.” Sweat trickled down the side of his face.

  “If it’s yours, you’ll have plenty of time,” Dusty said. “I want you three guys watching her building. My guess is that baby comes from somewhere else and it’s going back there as soon as me and Sheryl hit the road.”

  “If I catch her doing that I’m gonna let her have it,” Morty said.

  “Yeah, you let her have orgasms, too,” Sheryl said.

  Dusty shook his head. “This girl has got a one-track mind. You know, when your mother was your age she was just like you. Let’s crank open the bar and have some beverages.”

  Mimi and Mrs. Blatnick came back a little later and they all went out for dinner. Afterwards the five of them drove down to South Miami Beach in two cars. Even though this outing struck him as a typical Blatnick event, Steve was enjoying himself. There was a wild quality to what they were doing that gave him a chance to step away from the normal person he was and become someone a little more daring, a little more unexpected.

  While Dusty and Sheryl went into Dolores’ apartment to see the baby, Steve, Morty and Richie parked just up the street from Dolores’ building and sat and waited.

  “This is getting boring,” Richie said when they had been there almost an hour.

  “Shut up,” Steve said. “Here they come.”

  Dusty and Sheryl walked out of the building, got into Dusty’s convertible, and drove away. A few minutes later Dolores walked out, carrying a baby.

  “I knew it!” Morty said. “I knew she didn’t have any baby.”

  “Keep it quiet,” Steve said. “Let’s watch her.”

  Dolores walked down the street and turned the corner. Steve, Morty and Richie jumped out of the car and walked quickly down the pavement in pursuit, bumping into each other and muttering curses under their breath. When they turned the corner, Dolores was ringing a doorbell halfway down the block. They hid in the shadows and watched Dolores hand the baby through the door. Then she took money from her purse and handed that over too. The door closed and she walked back towards the three guys. Morty jumped out to intercept her.

  “Where’s my baby, Dolores?” he asked. “What did you do with my baby?”

  Dolores looked startled. “Morty, cara mia, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Yeah, but I was expecting you. I was expecting you to turn into a cheap tramp and hey, presto, you did.”

  “I’m no cheap tramp,” Dolores said. “Anybody’s a tramp it’s you, Morty Fleischmann. You just knocked this girl up so you could marry her and get rich.”

  “You can’t talk that way about Sheryl,” Morty said. “You can’t talk that way about me.”

  Richie took Morty’s arm and started pulling him towards the car. ”Anybody is a cheap tramp it’s you, Morty Fleischmann,” Dolores repeated. “You’re the tramp. You’re no good.”

  Standing on the sidewalk there, under the light of a street lamp, Dolores began to cry. Steve felt his heart melt. She wasn’t like any girl he’d fallen for before. He couldn’t imagine her working on Wall Street, wearing a man-tailored suit and running shoes with pink pompoms and carrying sensible pumps in her briefcase. He stood there by the curb and stared at her.

  “Hey, Stevie, come on,” Richie called. Steve couldn’t pull himself away. He took a step toward Dolores, and then stopped. He wanted to hold her until she stopped crying, to feel her head resting on his shoulder. Richie yelled, “Steve! We’re leaving!”

  In the distance a dog howled at the full moon and a siren rose and fell through the narrow streets. “Jesus Christ,” Richie said. He came up behind Steve and took his arm. “Come on, let’s go.” As he pulled Steve toward the car, he took the keys from Steve’s pocket. He shoved Steve in on the passenger side and got behind the wheel. Morty was already in the back seat, hunched over.

  Richie pulled a U-turn in the middle of Collins Avenue and headed north. Steve turned to look back at Dolores, who remained under the street lamp for as long as he could see.

  24 – Gambling on Dolores

  Sheryl, Dusty, Steve, Richie, and Morty met at the pool. It was cool and breezy and there was a low murmur of traffic from Collins Avenue. A few crickets chirped in the hibiscus hedge, and high at the top of a royal palm a mockingbird called to its mate.

  “So what do we do now?” Morty asked, sitting up on his lounge chair. “There’s no baby, but I know Dolores is hurt that I broke up with her. She’s just crazy enough to come to the wedding and mess things up.”

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Dusty said.

  Richie raised a can of Budweiser to his mouth. “Me, I think better on beer,” he said, and took a long drink.

  “Can’t we just pay her off?” Sheryl asked.

  Richie put his beer down and belched. “Yeah, Sheryl, go ask Mom and Dad for a couple of grand to pay off Morty’s ex-girlfriend. Or better yet, ask Grandma.”

  Dusty shook his head. “Nobody’s asking Ma,” he said. “We’ll figure this out ourselves.”

  “Do we really think we can buy her off?” Richie asked.

  Morty said, “Everybody’s got a price. Dolores may be a little wild, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders. I think she can be convinced.”

  “So why don’t you do the convincing?” Richie asked. “You must pull down some big bucks with that law degree. Dip into your retirement fund.”

  “If I had the money I’d give it to her,” Morty said. “But I’m no Rockefeller. Some months I can barely put gas in the car and food in the cabinets.” He paused. “I feel bad about Dolores. But I’m not going to let her stand in the way of what I feel about Sheryl.”

  “Or her trust fund,” Richie whispered to Steve.

  Steve waved his hand at his cousin. “I’m thinking.”

  “Ooh, smell the smoke,” Richie said.

  Steve agreed with Morty, that money could soothe Dolores’ broken heart and guarantee she wouldn’t disrupt the wedding. It was just a matter of putting together enough money quickly. “You can play blackjack, can’t you, Dusty?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I been meaning to go out to one of those Indian casinos, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

  “There’s no time like the present,” Steve said. “We can drive up to one of them tonight. That is, if you think you can win.”

  Dusty held his hands out to Steve. “You see these hands?” he asked. “Registered. Get me to a blackjack table, I can win.”

  They piled into Dusty’s Cadillac and drove up to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino. The parking lot and the attached garage were jammed, and they had to wait in a long line of elderly women and tough-looking men to get their frequent gambler cards.

  The casino was loud and sparkled with mirrors and neon. Dusty settled in at a blackjack machine with a video screen of a female dealer, and slid a fifty-dollar bill into the machine.

  Sheryl, Steve, Richie and Morty clustered around Dusty like rock-star groupies. By the time his on-screen balance had reduced to five bucks, he elbowed them away. “Hey, come on, give a guy a little room.”

  Dusty took a hit and went over 21, losing. “Somebody got som
e more cash?” he asked. “Come on, Sheryl, sweetheart, you got some?”

  Grudgingly, Sheryl handed a twenty-dollar bill to Dusty. Steve turned to Richie. “You know how to play this game?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Richie said.

  Steve took his arm. “Come on, show me.”

  Steve sat down at the next machine, with Richie hanging over him. He fed a twenty into the machine and was dealt a jack and a four.

  The dealer was showing a jack. “When it’s your turn, press the stand button,” Richie said.

  “The object is to get 21, beat the dealer, or make the dealer go over 21, right?” Steve asked.

  “Right.”

  “I’m taking a card,” Steve said. “The odds are that I’ll get less than a ten.”

  Richie shook his head. “Stevie, you jerk. You’re gonna bust. You should just hold on and hope the dealer busts.”

  Steve was the last player. He took a card, a seven, and smiled. The dealer turned over his hole card, a 4, and drew, pulling a queen. Steve won.

  “Stevie, you jerk. You’re gonna bust,” he mimicked to Richie.

  Richie frowned and grumbled, “Lucky break.”

  Steve continued to play, disregarding Richie’s advice, and he continued to win. He thought of Dolores frequently, and every time he did his heart raced a little faster. He was sure it was her image, combined with his good memory for cards, that was making him win.

  He built up a big balance on the screen in front of him. Dusty, Sheryl, Morty and Richie were watching him. He placed a large wager, most of the balance he had accumulated.

  “That’s a pretty big move, Steve,” Dusty said. “You could wipe yourself out.”

  Steve smiled. He’d been counting cards for a while, a strategy that indicated when it was a good time to make a big bet. His count was positive, meaning most of the low cards in the deck had been played. That increased his chance of drawing two high cards, making a win easier. But he had no intention of revealing that, either to Dusty or the other players. “No pain, no gain, Dusty. You’ve got to understand the elements of risk. We learned that kind of thing in business school.”

  Dusty shook his head. “I didn’t have to go to business school to figure out that’s a dumb bet.”

  Steve smiled when he saw the cards, a ten and an ace, come his way. Since a blackjack paid a one-and-a-half ratio, Steve raked in a large balance.

  The dealer went to a new deck, starting Steve’s count from zero again. He decided not to press his luck. “OK, that’s it.” He pressed the cash out button and waited for the machine to spit out his ticket.

  Dusty was appalled. “Are you crazy? You’re on a roll! Keep playing!”

  Steve wagged his finger. “Dusty. Just say no. That’s all part of risk. Knowing when to stop.”

  They walked back out to the garage. “So Morty, you want to take this money to Dolores?” Dusty asked.

  “I don’t want Morty to go,” Sheryl said. “I’ll go.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll probably take a knife to her if she doesn’t behave,” Steve said. “I’ll take the money. Give me her phone number and I’ll make the arrangements.”

  Everyone agreed it was a good idea to have Steve make the delivery. “Make her sign something,” Sheryl said. “Promise never to come after Morty again.”

  “I can draw up a little agreement if you think it’s a good idea,” Morty said, and Monday he faxed a couple of pages to Steve at the site. There was a lot of “party of the first part” and “party of the second part,” but that was about all Steve could understand. The language seemed to weave in and out of itself, circling back on concepts and principles that were so esoteric that he could not understand how they related to human beings. He called Dolores.

  “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Sheryl’s cousin,” he said. “Remember, the stuck-up one?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dolores said. “That was mean. I was just so mad, you know, I wanted to strike out at anybody.”

  “I know how you feel,” Steve said. “So listen, I’ve got some money to bring you. Can we get together?”

  “Anybody bringing me money gets my undivided attention,” Dolores said. “Are you free tonight?”

  “If you’ll agree to have dinner with me,” Steve said. He didn’t know where that request had come from. He hadn’t called Dolores with the intention of asking her out, but he had known he wanted to, ever since he saw her crying.

  “Sure,” Dolores said. “I’d like that.”

  They made plans to meet. “OK, I’ll see you tonight,” Steve said. When he hung up he saw his mother standing in the doorway of his office.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  “Not long,” Rita said. “You have a date tonight?”

  Steve shook his head. “Not a date. A business meeting.”

  “Stevie, I may be married thirty years but I still remember what it sounds like when a boy asks a girl for a date. But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s your business. I’m only your mother.”

  “Right now you’re only a tenant designer,” Steve said. “I presume those plans you have in your hand are for me?”

  Rita came in and sat down. “It’s going to be a lovely store,” she said. “Handbags Plus More. They sell all sizes of pocketbooks, from a little tiny evening bag to big suitcases you could get a hernia from dragging around. It’s a challenge to provide enough display space for them.”

  Rita unrolled the drawings to the first page, which was a floor plan. “I had to run the waterfall racks for displaying the pocketbooks right up to the window.”

  “You know we don’t allow that. Didn’t you read the guidelines? The first six feet into the store, you can’t have any display racks attached to the walls.”

  “It’s a silly rule.”

  “No, it’s not silly. The first six feet is the merchandise zone. Movable displays, no fixtures higher than four feet above the ground. You can’t just run the waterfalls all the way up to the window.”

  “But Steven, for your mother? You couldn’t make an exception?”

  “No, I can’t,” Steve said. “You’re creative. Go create something. Make a nice display for the front window and keep the waterfalls six feet back.”

  “I don’t see how you can do this to me. I changed your diapers. I made you chicken soup when you were sick.”

  “And Uncle Max pays my salary,” Steve said. “He pays me to make sure people like you don’t get away with things like this.” He flipped to the second page. “Let’s see what other trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  A half hour later, Rita had given up wheedling and cajoling. She made notes on the drawings with a red pen wherever Steve wanted her to change things. “I’ll have to review these with my client,” she said.

  “Fine. Tell your client to read his lease. All those design guidelines are legal attachments. He can live with them or take his business elsewhere.”

  “Fine,” Rita said, rolling up her drawings. “Next time when your father wants to give you a piece of coal for Hanukkah, I won’t argue.”

  “Coal is for Christmas, mother,” Steve said. “We’re Jews, remember? And Jewish parents are loving and doting. So go dote. I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Rita stood up and walked to the door. “Have a nice date.”

  “It’s not a date, mother,” Steve said, but Rita was already gone.

  Celeste buzzed him a few minutes later. “There’s a carpenter here to see you,” she said. “Richie. He says you know him.”

  “My cousin, Richie Fenstersheib. Also known as Excedrin headache number 24. Send him back.”

  “Hey, Stevie,” Richie said, holding up a palm for Steve to slap. Steve took the hand and shook it.

  “Nice office,” Richie said, looking around. He sat in a chair across from Steve.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” Steve asked.

  “Hey, man, you never heard of coffee breaks? Join the unio
n. Life can be one long coffee break.”

  “So what can I do for you?” Steve asked.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Richie said. “Grandma’s getting to be a real pain. I mean, I know, we were OK again this weekend, but then this morning, she starts in on me again. You know, did I clean my fingernails and am I being a nice boy at work, and all this shit. So I told her I was walking. Took all my stuff. I figure I can come over to your place after work, move in. OK?”

  “You have to go back to the hotel first?” Steve asked.

  Richie shook his head. “I borrowed Dusty’s car. I got everything in the trunk.”

  “Dusty let you use his car?” Steve asked. He knew Richie had been hitching a ride to work with one of the other carpenters who lived at the beach.

  “Hey, he doesn’t want people using his car, he shouldn’t leave the keys laying around,” Richie said. “I’ll get it back to him tomorrow.”

  “You better call him,” Steve said. He turned the phone around and pushed it toward Richie. “Now. I don’t want him coming after you at my apartment with an Uzi.”

  “Dusty don’t use shit like Uzis,” Richie said, but he picked up the phone and dialed. “Now a Colt .45, that’s Dusty’s style.”

  Richie spoke to Dusty. “Yeah, I’ll bring the car back tonight,” he said. “Stevie can drive over with me and bring me back.”

  Steve waved his hands. “No, I’m taking the money to Dolores tonight. I won’t have time to bring you back.”

  “So I’ll sit in the car while you hand it over. What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, we’re kind of going out to dinner.”

  “Whoa, Stevie’s got a date with Morty’s ex. You hear that, Dusty?”

  “It’s not a date. We’re just having dinner.”

  “No go, Dusty,” Richie said. “I’ll get the car back to you tomorrow. Stevie’s social life has to come first. He’s got so little of it.”

  “You’re a prince, you know that, Richie,” Steve said when his cousin had hung up the phone. “You better watch out or you’ll be sleeping on the streets.” He had a vision of Tunisia and her family. “Now get back to work. You need to keep that job if you’re going to be paying rent.”