The Wild Card

by Mark Joseph

  “We can play for the broad,” Dean suggested.

  Bobby screeched, “You want to what?”

  “Play a hand for the girl.”

  “You’re sick, Dean.”

  “Yeah. Ain’t it a goof?”

  “No, it’s a fucked-up, perverted idea.”

  “Why don’t you ask her? Maybe she’ll like the idea.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t like the idea.”

  “You’re a chump, Bobby.”

  “You’re drunk, Dean, but that’s no excuse to start calling people names.”

  “Hey, chickee. What do you think?”

  “Do I look like a poker chip?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you need glasses.”

  “You got a smart mouth for a broad.”

  “Oh, yeah? You’ve got a smart mouth for an asshole.”

  “Did you hear that? Did you hear what this hitchhiking runaway said to me? Shit.”

  “Shut up, Dean.”

  “Fuck you. Why do you think I wanted her on this boat?” Dean shouted.

  “I thought you felt sorry for her and wanted to be a nice guy.”

  “Like I said. You’re a chump, McCorkle.”

  Bobby lunged across the table and jabbed Dean hard in the nose, breaking his septum. Blood spurted onto the table and chips. More surprised than hurt, Dean tried to stand up, slipped on the wet deck, and collapsed on the table, bleeding on the cards.

  “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.”

  “You’re too drunk to kill bugs, let alone anybody else,” Alex laughed.

  “Stop this,” Sally insisted. “What is the matter with you people?”

  “Dean’s jealous and drunk.”

  “We’re all drunk,” Alex said.

  “That’s no excuse for disrespect,” Bobby said. “Hell, it’s no excuse for any damn thing.”

  “Listen,” Sally said. “You want to play a hand for me? Oh-kay. Bobby will win.”

  “And what if he doesn’t?”

  “He will.”

  “You don’t understand poker,” Alex said. “Anyone can win one hand.”

  Sally kicked at the beer cans on the deck, sending one through the hatch where it landed at Nelson’s feet, rousing his attention. He looked up, waved meekly and asked, “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Come in and find out,” she replied.

  She shook her head, violently flailing her hair as though she was exorcising a demon. Outside, the river gods responded to her gesture by conjuring a gust of wind that whistled through the trees and mottled the surface of the water. The boys were mesmerized, nonplussed by having their fantasies thrown back in their faces. Sally snapped back her shoulders, pushed out her chest and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, boys?”

  “This doesn’t sound right to me,” Bobby said.

  “No? Fine. I have a better idea.” Sally leaned over the table and blew smoke in all their faces. “I’ll tell you what, guys. You let me play, and whoever wins can do whatever he wants with me, and if I win, I can do whatever I want with any of you.”

  They were stunned. Nelson stood in the hatch looking confused. Alex’s jaw dropped. Dean, still bleeding, muttered, “What a broad,” and Bobby slowly shook his head in wonder, thinking, life is full of surprises.

  Then Sally leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “How can we lose?”

  30

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Bobby confessed. “She blew my mind.”

  Beyond the shuttered windows Saturday disappeared like a day lost to jet lag. A proper summer fog finally had broken the heat wave, sending grateful locals into the bars and tourists strolling through Chinatown. At five sharp the Hooper Fish Company crab boat Joaquin Murrietta left Pier 43 to check her traps for the last time that season.

  Alex tapped a cigarette on the felt, sniffed it, and touched one tip with his tongue to which adhered a single tobacco flake. The bitter taste caused him to revolve away from the table, and as he propelled the noxious sotweed into the air the professor realized the expression “blow one’s mind” was unknown in 1963. A short, fierce, argument inside Alex’s head ended with the brutal silencing of Professor Goldman and his pedantic quibbling by the wizard of Alvarado Street. Turning back, scarcely missing a beat, Alex recalled, “When Dean shot off his mouth and yapped, ‘Let’s play a hand for the broad.’ Holy shit! What the fuck! Oh no no no, uncharted territory, big taboo—but not for Sally. She went right with it and turned the whole crazy idea around and blew all our minds.”

  “We weren’t ready for someone like that,” Nelson said earnestly. “She was too far ahead of us.”

  Dean clenched his fists and held them to his eyes as though he were weeping. “Oh, Billie,” he moaned. “Oh, God.”

  Overlooking Dean’s histrionics, Alex went on, “That’s not quite true, Nelson. Bobby was ready.”

  All but Dean looked to Bobby who returned their glances with a neutral expression, determined not to put his feelings on display. “I appreciate the compliment, Alex, but Nelson’s right. I wasn’t in her class any more than the rest of you, not even close,” he said quietly, closely eyeing Dean whom the others continued to ignore. Sweating and trembling, the big man appeared ready to erupt from the pressure of reconstructing their voyage on the Toot Sweet. Bobby felt equally powerful forces at work inside himself—his mind reluctantly edged closer to the moment of his detonation, the turning point of his life about which these familiar strangers knew nothing. He’d told Nelson a few things in the cab, but how could he explain that Sally had opened a window and allowed him a glimpse of a universe of illumination? And as suddenly as the window had appeared it had been slammed shut—wham, a black hole in time. In the first nanosecond he’d been blinded by the darkness and had spent the rest of his life clawing back toward the light.

  “She was the first hippie,” Charlie observed. “It took me a long time to figure that out, but I think she wanted to have her Summer of Love a few years early. Whose deal?”

  “Ante up for seven stud,” Nelson replied, shuffling the blue deck. “We’ve heard your theories before, Charlie. First hippie, my ass.”

  “Not me, I haven’t heard Charlie’s theories, or any theories,” Bobby said, curiosity getting the better of him. “You guys have talked about her for years, but I …”

  Suddenly Dean jumped up, pointed wildly at Bobby, and shouted, “You broke my nose, you son of a bitch.” Teeth grinding, eyes squeezed tight, head jerking left and right in the throes of intense emotion, he sprawled his huge hands in the middle of the table, leaned over with all his bulk, popped open his eyes, and kissed Bobby on the lips.

  Beaming, eyes crazy as an acid dream, he growled, “Thank you, man.”

  Startled, Bobby recoiled and toppled over backwards onto the floor in a clatter of chair and yelps of surprise. The Enrico Caruso Suite resounded with uproarious laughter, Dean’s cackle, Charlie’s high shriek, Nelson’s giggle, and Alex’s belly laugh. Bobby too was laughing, but he wasn’t sure at what.

  “Christ almighty,” he mumbled lying on his back. “What else do I have to put up with to play a little cards?”

  Dean rushed around the table and pulled Bobby to his feet, saying, “Every time I see my crooked nose in the mirror I remember what an asshole I was.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dean, can’t we stick to poker without getting all sentimental?” Bobby complained, smoothing out his clothes and no longer laughing.

  “Hear hear, let’s play,” Alex chorused.

  “We tolerate Deano because we’re used to him,” Charlie said.

  “Only because the big turd made us rich,” Nelson added.

  “You’re still an asshole, Studley,” Charlie taunted. “You haven’t changed that much. If it wasn’t for Billie, you’d be dead.”

  “Billie?” Bobby didn’t remember who Billie was.

  “His wife,” Alex said, snapping open his Zippo and furiously lighting a Lucky. “De
an is terrified of Billie finding out about Sally. He’s afraid she’ll freak out and leave him, but, even though we’ve never met, from what I’ve heard I’ve always thought she’d be more forgiving than that.”

  “She isn’t going to find out unless the world finds out, and then it won’t matter,” Dean declared ominously.

  “Who knows what you say in your sleep?” Charlie teased. “Maybe she already knows.”

  “Horse exhaust. What a crock.”

  “You never know, pal. Maybe you’re the wild card, Dean. Maybe you always were the wild card.”

  “Jesus,” Bobby muttered, still fussing with his clothes and flexing his back as he sat down. “Damn, I think I pulled a muscle.”

  “Are you gonna play or throw another fit?” Alex inquired sharply of Dean.

  Casting a disdainful sidelong glance at Alex, Dean asked, “You okay, Bobby?”

  “Yeah, what the hell, with everything else that’s happened in this game, getting kissed isn’t the worst of it. Let’s play.”

  Charlie asked, “What’s the game? I forgot with all the fuss.”

  “Pay attention, Charlie, or you’ll lose your big stack of chips, which you probably will anyway. Ante up for seven stud,” Nelson repeated and after everyone tossed in a white chip, he dealt two cards face down to each player and then one card up. “A ten to Alex, a nine to Dean, a jack to Bobby, a six to Charlie, and a five to me. Jack bets. Bobby, you’re boss.”

  Bobby placed one red chip in the pot. “Ten grand on the jack.”

  “I fold,” Charlie said.

  “Too rich for me,” Nelson said. “I’m out.”

  “I’ll see your ten and raise twenty-five,” Alex said.

  “You pricks,” Dean swore, breaking etiquette and flipping over his hole cards, a pair of threes. “I’m not gonna get suckered into this with you sharks. I’m out.”

  “Tough geshitski,” Alex said. “Bobby?”

  “See your twenty-five. Deal ’em.”

  “Another ten to Alex for a pair and the three of diamonds to Bobby’s jack, no help.”

  “Oh, man, do you see that? That would’ve been my three.”

  “Shut up, Dean,” Nelson snapped.

  “Fifty on the tens,” Alex said.

  “Out,” Bobby promptly replied, turning his cards face down with a nod to Alex who collected the pot. “Too bad you didn’t stick around, Deano. Triple threes might have been good. I think you’re spooked.”

  “What!? I ain’t spooked.”

  Charlie’s short, barking laugh spilled into the air, “Hahaha, you’re fulla shit, Studley. Everybody’s spooked. I mean, we can’t play hide and seek with Sally forever. We have to get down to it sooner or later.”

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the table. Finally, Nelson said, “Nah, let’s play cards. C’mon, Wiz, it’s your deal.”

  “That’s right, rock and roll, my deal, let’s see, what’ll we play next?”

  “Let’s play low hole card wild,” a relentless Dean suggested with a gleam in his eye. “Whaddaya say?”

  Alex stopped shuffling, lay the red deck on the felt and buried his head in his hands, silently stifling an urge to grab Nelson’s piece and shoot Dean between the eyes.

  Charlie snarled, “No wild cards, you jerk. Not for this much money.”

  Shaking his head, Nelson pleaded, “Christ, Dean, give it a rest.”

  “We used to play low hole card wild,” Bobby said mildly. “That’s what we played that night.”

  “Haha,” Charlie twittered. “No shit. Maybe that’s why we don’t play it—”

  “We don’t play it because it’s a lousy game,” Alex interrupted vehemently. “It’s straight poker at this table, no wild cards, no bullshit.”

  Sputtering with laughter, Nelson said, “I thought poker was all about bullshit—in spades. Low hole used to be my favorite.”

  “It’s my deal, and we won’t play low hole card wild at this table,” Alex hissed.

  “Ooo,” Dean needled. “Watch out for this boy. He’s dangerous.”

  Charlie coughed, Nelson looked embarrassed, and Alex shuffled again, the tension visible in the taught, white tendons in his hands.

  He declared, “Seven stud one more time, straight poker. Nelson, cut the damned cards, please.”

  As Nelson reached for the deck to make the cut, Bobby smiled broadly and said, “Relax, Wiz, a wild card is just a card, y‘know. One card of fifty-two, and I know you’re on speaking terms with the math, Herr Doktor Professor von Goldman. Wild cards change the odds, but so what? You go with it. You know the numbers backwards and forwards—you didn’t have perfect scores on your college boards for nothin’—so what’s your problem? You gotta be ready for anything if you’re gonna play this game. You gotta be loose.”

  “Loose,” Alex echoed.

  “Yeah.”

  Nelson cut the deck and Alex picked up the cards, clucked his tongue several times, and tilted his hat back on the crown of his head. It was a day for letting things go. He remembered the little girl on the plane and then thought of his children who’d never met the wizard. He thought about the letters of resignation that waited in his suitcase, brief missives addressed to his department chairman at the university and supervisor at the Department of Defense. Equations flashed across his mind’s eye, significant issues of time, space, the motion of particles, the speed of light, the essence of being—useless junk, quickly replaced in his memory with odds for seven card stud low hole card wild. Bobby was correct. He knew the numbers.

  “I guess we should listen to the pro, right, boys? I mean, he knows what he’s talking about, that’s for sure,” he drawled and adjusted his hat low on his brow. “You’re right, Bobby, a card is just a card, a slip of stiff cardboard covered with ancient mystic symbols, hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, the king with his sword, and the knave who wields a stealthy knife. A wild card, though, that’s high concept, illusion and deception taken to another level.”

  With a flourish Alex fanned the cards, cut them, cut them again, and pushed the deck over to Nelson for another cut.

  “There’s no point in being a dogmatic fool,” he said. “You called it, Stud. Down and dirty, here they come.”

  31

  “Aw right, baby, it’s time to git naked, git crazy and boogie aw night long with the Wolfman, ‘cause we all just animals in the moonlight howlin’ at the big pizza pie in the sky. Now I’m gonna lay a little Maurice on ya. Stay just a little bit longer, baby, and maybe maybe maybe you’ll learn the Wolfman’s secret of life in the insane lane. Aw right.”

  The little radio buzzed, Wolfman Jack howled and Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs pumped out their immortal song of teenage desire, “Stay.” Sally stood close behind Bobby, gently pressing her belly against the back of his head and moving her hips to the slow beat of the erotic ballad.

  “You sure you wanna do this?” Bobby asked her.

  Eyes closed, nodding her head, Sally quietly sang along with the Zodiacs. “Well, your daddy don’t mind, bopbop a wahwahwaaah, and your mommy don’t mind, bopbop a wahwahwaaah, if we …”

  “If we’re gonna do it,” Bobby said, clutching the deck and twisting to wink at Sally, “it has to be low hole card wild.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Alex thinks low hole card wild is strictly for morons,” Nelson snickered. “You definitely qualify, Studley. You never win.”

  Smack. “Damn bugs.”

  “Please please please please please, tell me that you’re going to …”

  “Explain this game to me,” Sally asked, snapping to attention.

  Dean guffawed and blurted, “I wish someone would explain this damned game to me.”

  “You explain it, Alex. You’re so logical,” Bobby taunted. “We know how much you love it.”

  “What’s it called again?” Sally asked.

  “Low hole card wild,” Bobby said.

  “Low hol
d card wild,” she repeated like a mantra. “Low. Hole. Card. Wild.”

  A fish jumped and landed near the boat with a loud splash. “It sounds … exciting,” she said, drawing out the last word. Droplets of sweat surfaced on her upper lip.

  Nelson danced a little jig, wailing, “It’s a crazy game for crazy people and that’s why it’s Crazy Nelson’s favorite game. I’m gonna wake Charlie up; he can’t miss this action. Charlie! Get your butt outta the sling.”

  The song ended—“come on come on come on and stay, ooo, la de da”—the Wolfman spieled platter chatter, and Sally crouched down next to Alex and looked at him with fawn’s eyes. “Tell me the rules.”

  “You’ve been watching us, so I guess you understand regular poker, the sequence of the hands and all that, straights and flushes?”

  “I think I do, yes.”

  “Okay,” Alex began. “It’s actually called seven card stud low hole card wild because you deal it like seven stud. Everybody gets two cards face down and one up to start and you bet, then three more up, one at a time, and you bet on each one, and then the last card down and a final bet for a total of seven cards, three down and four up, and the best five make your poker hand. The three down cards are called hole cards, and the lowest hole card in your hand is wild, and all like it in your hand are wild. A wild card can represent anything you want. If you have a pair of tens and a wild card, say a five, the five becomes a ten and you have three tens. The wild card is a chameleon, a magic card that can make your dreams come true and then break your heart. It can be part of a flush or straight and even give you a royal flush which can lose in this game to five of a kind, or even six or seven of a kind. In seven stud low hole card wild everything is turned upside down and crazy. It’s poker for lunatics, at any stakes. Everyone has a different wild card and you don’t know what any of them are, except yours, and you can’t be sure of that because what happens in this game, and this is the dirty, evil, wicked part, what happens is, say you have two sevens on the first two hole cards, making sevens your wild card, and a queen up, and you think you have three queens, but on the last card you get a three which is lower than a seven and now the three is your low hole card and that’s your wild card and you only have three sevens. Get it?”