The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “You know what?” he said. “I’m gonna pass.”

  “Take some time to think about it,” Don said.

  “I already know. It’s not for me.”

  “Don’t tell me that, Rowan. Tell me yes.”

  “I can’t, Don. I’m sorry.”

  “Come on.”

  “No.”

  Don slumped in his chair. He looked tired, tired of everything, and Petty could tell he’d been the man’s last hope. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Don sighed deeply, struggled to his feet, and pulled on an ugly purple down jacket. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “Have another drink,” Petty said.

  “My daughter’s holding dinner. Holidays are a big deal to her.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Be careful driving in the snow,” Petty said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Don said and shuffled off.

  Petty returned to the bar and ordered a beer this time. The Packer game was kicking off. He stared at the screen, but his mind kept picking over the past and worrying about the future. Someone came up at one point and asked him the score, and he had no idea. Across the bar one of the homeless men clutched his head and rocked in his chair. “No, no, no,” he muttered. It was more than Petty could bear this evening. He went downstairs and took a seat at an empty 6:5 single-deck blackjack table and proceeded to lose two hundred bucks in twenty minutes.

  3

  IT WAS FULL DARK BY THE TIME PETTY LEFT THE CAL NEVA. THE snow had stopped, but his coat was still no match for the cold. Virginia Street was deserted, what with everyone watching the game or eating buffet turkey or throwing away their money in the casinos. The lights stained the wet sidewalk urgent red, electric blue, and acid yellow, and steam boiled out of various vents and grates.

  He had tacos for dinner at a Mexican restaurant wedged between a failed tattoo parlor and a pawnshop closed for the holiday. The restaurant was crowded with families spread out over two and three tables, and Petty sensed that the waitress felt sorry for him because he was alone, the way she kept asking how everything was and refilling his water before he’d even reached the bottom of the glass. Her sympathy annoyed him.

  After dinner he thought he’d go see the magician playing the showroom at Harrah’s. Hokey card tricks, vanishing doves—maybe the guy’d even saw a hot chick in half. But when he checked the starting time on his phone, he found that the show was dark for the night. Okay. Fine. He’d head back to the Sands, then—drink himself jolly and play some Hold’Em. Thanks to TV and the Internet, every monkey who could fan cards thought he was a rounder these days, and Petty always got a kick out of schooling their asses.

  Back on 4th he saw Tinafey from two blocks away, still working her spot. He started thinking about her long legs and naughty smile, the little gap between her front teeth through which you sometimes caught a flash of bright pink tongue. Another visit with her might be what he actually needed, this time let her do her thing. He hadn’t been laid in two months, had been so busy scrambling he hadn’t even thought about it, but now, suddenly, it was all he could think about. Tinafey looked up from her phone and grinned as he approached, and he found himself shivering more from anticipation than from the cold.

  “About time,” she said.

  “You knew I’d be back, huh?”

  “Of course. I hypnotized you.”

  “You said you had a room?”

  “Right here,” she said, indicating the motel behind her. “Ready for me to blow your mind?”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “I’d hold your hand, but mine’s like ice. Come here.”

  Tinafey crooked her arm and snuggled up to Petty when he snagged it with his. They walked across the parking lot to a room on the ground floor. Tinafey unlocked the door, and they stepped inside.

  The room smelled of skunky marijuana and some kind of “fresh” scented cleaning product. Bed, dresser, TV. A painting of an Indian slumped despondently over his horse hung on the wall, and the lamp on the nightstand created more problems than it solved, the shadows it threw turning the bedspread sinister and the mangy carpet into roadkill.

  “Pardon the mess,” Tinafey said. She plucked a red bra and thong off of the floor, tossed them into a wheeled suitcase on the dresser, and zipped the suitcase shut. She closed the pizza box next to the suitcase, too, and rearranged a couple of two-liter bottles of soda, a jug of wine, and a fifth of tequila. The Doritos and chocolate doughnuts she shoved into a drawer.

  “You want a drink?” she said.

  “Sure,” Petty said.

  She poured three fingers of Cuervo into a plastic cup and handed it to him. He sipped the stuff and wondered what he should do next. The worst part of being with a whore was figuring out how to get down to business. It was different every time. He was grateful when Tinafey took charge, guiding him to the bed and saying, “Go ahead and sit.” She backed away and did a sexy little routine where she slowly opened her coat and let it slide off so he got a good look at her tight body in that halter top and those short shorts.

  “It’s gonna cost you two hundred,” she said.

  Petty pulled out his wallet, removed the bills, and held them out to her. She took the money and tucked it into the pocket of her shorts.

  “You want to see these titties?” she said, running her hands up her sides to cup them.

  “For starters,” Petty said. He had to clear his throat first.

  She helped him along like that. “You want me to take my clothes off now?” “You want me to take off your clothes?” “You want to lie back?” “You want me to suck on that dick?”

  Petty answered yes to everything and ended up naked on the bed, trying not to pop too soon as Tinafey worked magic with her mouth. He was thinking that this was going to be worth every penny when the door to the room swung open and a big black dude in an Atlanta Falcons jacket stepped inside. He rushed the bed, shoved Tinafey aside, and threw himself on top of Petty, wrapping his hands around his throat.

  “Bo!” Tinafey yelled. “What the fuck you doin’?”

  “What the fuck you doin’?” Bo yelled back.

  Petty struggled against Bo’s hold, tried to grab a finger to break it, but the bastard punched him in the face with a fist like a twenty-pound sledge and knocked the fight out of him.

  “Who you think you are, fuckin’ my wife?” Bo said. He moved up so that he was sitting on Petty’s chest and squeezed Petty’s windpipe even tighter. “I could kill you right now, you know that? I could kill you and get away with it.”

  Tinafey leaped onto Bo’s back and pounded at him. He struck out with his elbow, catching her in the head and forcing her to retreat. He punched Petty again, in the ear this time. “What you gon’ do to make things right?” he said. “What you gon’ do?” He loosened his grip so that Petty could speak.

  “There’s two hundred dollars in my wallet,” Petty said.

  “Two hundred dollars?” Bo said. “If you caught me fuckin’ your wife, would two hundred dollars do it for you?”

  Tinafey reappeared, brandishing the jug of wine. She raised it with both hands, let out a roar, and brought the bottle down hard on the back of Bo’s head. Bo released Petty and sat back, stunned. Tinafey hit him again. His eyes rolled, and a string of drool hung from his lower lip. He toppled over sideways.

  “That’s what you get, layin’ hands on me!” Tinafey shouted.

  Petty scrambled off the bed. He gathered his clothes and began to dress.

  “You all right?” he asked Tinafey.

  “That motherfucker can’t hurt me,” she said, but Petty could see she was shaking. Her wig had been knocked askew, and her right eye was swollen. She crossed her arms over her tits and stared at Bo, who lay motionless on the bed.

  “Did I kill him?” she said.

  Petty wondered the same thing. He bent over the body and peered into Bo’s face. Bad breath still wheezed out of the bastard, and his eyeball twitched when Petty lifted the lid.
>
  “He’s alive,” Petty said to Tinafey. “But you fucked him up pretty good.” He went back to buttoning his shirt.

  “I wish I had killed him,” Tinafey said. “The motherfucker.”

  “Is he really your husband?”

  “Used to be, but we been divorced for a while. He showed up here outta nowhere a couple days ago, talkin’ ’bout he was gonna be my man again. I told him fuck that, I like bein’ on my own, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

  “So you let him come in and rob your tricks?”

  “Are you blind?” Tinafey snapped. “Didn’t I just bash his goddamn head in?”

  “He had a key to the room.”

  Tinafey picked up her coat from the floor and wrapped it around herself. “I been lettin’ him stay here,” she said. “He doesn’t have any money, no car, nothin’. I felt sorry for him. I shouldn’t have, but I did. He’s supposed to be leavin’ tomorrow, said one of his bitches was wirin’ him the money for a ticket back to Atlanta. That was probably a lie, though. He lies all the time.”

  Bo groaned and went back to snoring. Tinafey began to cry. “He’s gonna kill me when he wakes up,” she said.

  Petty didn’t want to be around when he came to, either. He put on his shoes and grabbed his coat.

  “Look here,” Tinafey continued. She pulled up the sleeve of her coat and leaned into the light. Petty saw four or five circular scars on the underside of her arm. “He did that with a cigarette the first time I left him, threatened to sew my pussy shut, too, and throw lye in my face.”

  “And you still let him stay here?” Petty said.

  “I told you—I felt sorry for him,” Tinafey said. “He swore he’d changed. ‘I understand you don’t want to start up with me again,’ he said, ‘but let me at least be your friend.’” She collapsed in the only chair in the room, sat there sniffling and shaking her head. “I’m not stupid,” she said, “but I guess softhearted’s almost the same thing.”

  Petty checked his pants for his wallet, his coat for his phone. Everything was where it was supposed to be. He walked to the door, then stopped short. Tinafey had probably saved his life by knocking Bo out. He couldn’t leave her here to take a beating—or worse.

  “Grab your stuff, and I’ll get you a cab to another hotel,” he said. “You can stay there until this asshole takes off or you figure out what you want to do next.”

  “I don’t know,” Tinafey moaned. “I don’t know.”

  Petty knelt in front of her and made her look into his face. “I know,” he said. “I know this fucker doesn’t give a shit about you. I know you need to get the hell out of here. So put your clothes on, grab your stuff, and let’s go.”

  She stared at him for few seconds, wiping at her nose with the backs of her hands, then made her decision.

  One of the wheels on the suitcase was broken, so Petty ended up carrying it the two blocks to the Sands. Tinafey trotted along beside him in her stiletto heels, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. A passing truck honked for no reason, and Petty ducked. The brawl in the room had put him on edge. He didn’t even feel the cold anymore.

  He and Tinafey hadn’t spoken since fleeing the motel. He was irritated at her for leaving a hundred dollars on the dresser for Bo. The inexhaustible, irrational compassion of some women had always confounded him. What they should have done was roll Bo up in the bedspread and take turns stomping him black and blue.

  He led Tinafey to the Sands main entrance. A taxi was parked at the curb. Petty told the driver to open the trunk. The guy popped it from the inside, couldn’t be bothered to get out. Petty put the suitcase in, but Tinafey hesitated when he turned to her for the duffel.

  “Where you sendin’ me?” she said.

  “A nice place out by the airport,” he said. “Bo’ll never find you there.”

  “You sure?”

  “Not unless you call and tell him where you are, and you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

  Tinafey frowned at his sarcasm.

  Two cowboys walked out of the hotel, both smoking big cigars. Tinafey waited until they passed before saying, “Can’t I stay with you tonight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I still owe you a party.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “I promise I’ll be on my way first thing in the morning.” She touched his hand. “I’m scared.”

  And she was, Petty could tell. Looking into her eyes, he could see this wasn’t a scam. Against his better judgment, he reached into the trunk and took out her suitcase. He felt a little noble; he felt a little doomed.

  “What the hell,” he said. “Couple of drinks, couple of laughs.”

  “That’s right, baby,” Tinafey cooed. “Coupla drinks, coupla laughs.” She cuddled up to him as they passed through the double doors of the hotel and headed toward the casino, with its eternal promise of warmth and light and a future that could turn on a dime.

  4

  PETTY COULDN’T READ THE ROAD SIGNS IN THE DREAM. HE WAS frantically lost on an interstate he was certain he’d driven before. Jumbled letters and numbers flashed past, and glowing arrows pointed every which way. What a relief it was when he woke suddenly in his room at the Sands, lying in his bed instead of sweating behind the wheel of his car. Bright daylight burned at the edges of the blackout curtains drawn across the windows, and Tinafey slept silently, out of his reach now, her back to him, the sheet pulled taut around her.

  It had taken them more than a couple of drinks to loosen up last night, to get to those laughs, but once there, they’d thrown themselves into having a good time with the zeal of people who knew how rare good times were. They danced some, gambled some, and ignored any worries that Bo might stumble upon them, hungry for payback.

  “That man is so high right now he can’t even crawl,” Tinafey assured Petty. “He’s on another planet in another universe.”

  They ended up in bed, Tinafey riding Petty like a bucking horse. He remembered every toss of her head, every bounce of her tits, and how her pussy gripped him like it’d never let go. When it was over she bent to kiss him, pressed her sweat-slick chest to his, and whispered, “Ooh, Daddy, you wore me out.” He drifted off with a smile on his face.

  He smiled again now as he watched her sleep. I like this girl, he thought. And she must like him, too, if she’d trusted him enough to stay the night. He considered waking her to see if she wanted coffee from the snack bar downstairs but decided to let her be.

  He pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie and ran a brush through his hair. Before he left the room he put on his watch and pocketed his wallet and phone. A hooker in Vegas once snuck out with every dollar he had in the world, and as much as he dug Tinafey, he wasn’t somebody who got burned twice.

  The line at the snack bar stretched into the casino. Petty took his place at the end, the ceaseless chatter of the slots adding an extra helping of pain to his hangover. “Wheel! Of! Fortune!” one of them blared over waves of canned applause, while another broadcast the sound of coins clinking into a metal tray even though it paid off with a paper ticket that had to be redeemed by the cashier.

  Two big women wearing Mardi Gras beads and cardboard tiaras preceded him in line. Their matching purple T-shirts commemorated Sarah’s bachelorette party. One of them cradled a shivering Chihuahua. She kissed its head and baby-talked while it licked her face.

  “What time did you all get to bed?” the dog lady asked her friend.

  “I don’t know,” the other woman replied. “All’s I remember is eating nachos around three.”

  “Did you win anything?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “I said don’t ask.”

  Petty fingered the spot on his cheek where one of Bo’s punches had landed. It hurt so much he was surprised there wasn’t a bruise. His phone went crazy. He pulled it out and saw that it was Avi calling. At 7:30 a.m. The morning after a holiday.

  “You didn’t send m
e any fish yesterday,” Avi said.

  “I knocked off early,” Petty said.

  “You decided that all by yourself?”

  “Nobody’s gonna talk to a salesman on Thanksgiving, with the family there and everything.”

  “What about people who don’t have families?”

  The women in front of Petty spotted another woman they knew and called to her across the casino. This upset the Chihuahua, which started barking.

  “Where the fuck are you, the zoo?” Avi said.

  “Yeah, the zoo,” Petty said. “Dodging monkey shit.”

  “You ought to be working. It’s what time already?”

  Petty imagined Avi looking at his watch, trying to remember where Petty was, then calculating the time difference between Reno and Miami, not sure if it was two or three hours.

  “Eight, nine,” Avi continued. “It’s almost eleven here. You ought to be on the phone.”

  Back in Jersey, when he was training Avi, Petty caught wind the kid was sleeping in a car and let him crash on his couch. He sprang for lunches so the dude didn’t have to live off Tastykakes and McDonald’s and had Carrie set an extra plate at dinner sometimes. None of this mattered to Avi now. He had his head so far up his own ass he couldn’t see where he’d come from or where he was going. He’d been treating Petty like dirt ever since he’d started working for him, and Petty was fed up with it.

  “Hey,” Petty said. “Watch your tone. I’m not on any clock, and you’re not paying for my time, so I’ll get on the fucking phone when I want to get on the fucking phone.”

  “Hey, you,” Avi said. “You’re the one who called begging for work, sad-sacking it like ‘Come on, man, I taught you this game, remember?’”

  “That’s not true?” Petty said. “I didn’t teach you?”

  “So what if it is?” Avi said. “I need people around me who want to work hard and make money. If you’re looking to take it easy, try Walmart. I need you to be fired up. I need you to be amped about what we’re doing.”