Bingo (34 page)

I called Mom to give her the wire story. She was back at home and I could hear the treadmill as I spoke. A light drizzle started before lunch so Mom was walking her five miles at home. I asked her if she was jogging in a black cashmere sweater with a simple strand of pearls and she said no, that outfit belonged to Liz Rife. She got off the phone fast because I knew she wanted to call
Aunt Louise and gloat. However, I found out before she hung up that she had paid Aunt Wheeze the fifty dollars.

I waited about a half hour, then called Aunt Wheeze to take her temperature on the subject. While my aunt was never one to avert her eyes from a juicy sex scandal, she was still excited about the fifty bucks won off her sister. She had promptly spent it too. She’d bought a Marie Antoinette TV cabinet and it was being delivered tomorrow.

I asked her what kind of cabinet she could get for fifty dollars and she said that she added her winnings to the seventy-five dollars I paid for renting the Chrysler. I made a crack about putting her Virgin Mary in the bathtub next to the Marie Antoinette cabinet. I knew better than to say it but something came over me. She called me “every other inch a lady” and hung up in my ear.

A
low pressure system glowered in the skies. Not a drop of rain yet but I knew it would dump buckets on Runnymede within the hour. Lolly, Pewter, and I sprinted toward the
Clarion
as though it were raining. Lolly loved it when I’d run and beg her to chase me. Chows, big teddy bears with hearts, aren’t fast but they aren’t dumb. Lolly ran first to the steps of the paper, thinking she’d nab me there, but I turned and dashed back into the Square and she joyously leapt off the steps. Pewter joined in for a moment or two and then, feeling that it was undignified to be seen cavorting with a mere dog and woman, bounded onto the cannon to watch us.

Mutzi unrolled the green awning over his store. The stalls were empty. The fruits and vegetables were stacked on the sidewalk. He stopped unpacking for a moment and loped over to play with us. Now Lolly had two people to chase and she didn’t know whether to shit, run, or go blind, as we say on the Dixon side of the line.

We wore out before the dog did. Mutzi leaned against the cannon. Pewter’s long whiskers swept forward in curiosity. Mutzi petted her and then stuck his head in the muzzle of the cannon.

“Can’t see a thing.” His voice echoed.

“What’d you expect?”

“Dunno.” He pulled his head out. “Stay here a sec, will you, Nick?”

Mutzi crossed the street, disappeared into his store, and then reappeared carrying a huge metal flashlight.

“What’s that for?” I asked. “It’s eight in the morning.”

“Will you shine that like this?” He shone the flashlight muzzle at an angle. “And hold her steady?”

“Sure.”

Mutzi fiddled a bit to get the right angle and to keep his head out of the light. “Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“There’s a mess of powder in there. Damn, I must have been so drunk I poured in a quart of the stuff.”

“How do we clean it out?”

“Might try a vacuum cleaner. Run the wire into the store—late, very late at night.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Not so long as there isn’t a ball in there and not so long as nobody touches a match to the wick.”

“Let me try something.” I examined the loading end of the cannon. The nub of a wick extruded. I lightly shoved it back so it was flush with the metal. It could easily be pulled out but until Mutzi and whoever, probably me, could come down in the middle of the night and clean this thing out, it ought to be safe. Anyway, the only person who played with the cannon was Mutzi.

We were so engrossed in what we were doing, Mr. Pierre scared us. Mutzi explained the situation to him but swore him to secrecy. Who knows what civic committee would descend upon us over this? Yet another committee investigation. The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version. Mr. Pierre agreed that a tight lip was the wise course of action and he promised to help.

When I finally got to my desk, a fresh copy of the
Clarion
was on it, as usual. The inky smell wafted to my nostrils even as the ink smeared over my fingers. We can send a man to the moon but we can’t print a newspaper that doesn’t smear. Mother picked on me
for not dressing up for work but I didn’t see the point, since I resembled a smudge pot before nine-thirty in the morning. I leafed through and beheld Michelle’s article on bingo. The paper included samples of cards for the different games: regular X, railroad tracks, block of 9, champagne glass, inside picture frame, and a miniature of what a blackout bingo would look like. I read the piece, fascinated. Michelle did a fine job. She’d even included a history of bingo, which was developed in 1880 in Italy from the game of
Tombola
, a kind of lottery. Then I read in bold print the date of the blackout bingo game. May 8. That was ten days away.

Michelle, carrying a pile of
Congressional Records
, entered through the back.

Before she dumped them on her desk I was at her. “What’s this about the blackout bingo game May eighth?”

“That’s what Saint Rose’s said.”

“How come I don’t know about it?” I was peeved.

“You passed out.”

“Someone could have told me.”

“Nickel, you’ve been occupied with the
Clarion
. We’ve all been in the dumps over the sale—who the hell has time to think about bingo?” she rebuked me.

That was the first time I’d ever heard Michelle swear.

“You’re absolutely right and I apologize.”

The phone rang and she picked it up. “For you.”

The call made me livid. It was an Eagle agent from God-knows-where; she sounded like she was speaking to me from the bottom of a well. The appraiser had recommended a check for $64.44. I had a $200 deductible. This amount was low because I had authorized repairs before the appraiser could see the damage. I told her about my claim being erroneously given to Maryland Accident Protection by my local insurance representative, just as I had previously explained to another Eagle agent, two weeks ago. The woman couldn’t have cared less. She talked to me as if I were a waterbug and she crisply said I could drop dead—in a less direct way. I jammed the phone receiver onto the cradle. Furious.

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t even want to know but trust me, never insure anything with Eagle! And you can bag Richards, Hilton, and Richards too!” I thought a second, picked up the phone, and dialed Jackson. His secretary put me right through.

“Jackson, more crap and I need legal advice.”

“Hey, I’m sorry about leaving the courts like that. I don’t know what got into me.” He wasn’t immediately interested in my problem, since he had his own agenda.

“Tough loss.”

“I couldn’t stand the way he gloated!”

Diz had looked happy but I didn’t think he’d gloated. I kept that to myself though.

“You can pound him in a rematch.”

“I will but I don’t have you for a doubles partner this summer. Don’t you think it will be difficult being his partner? Maybe you can back out.”

“I try to keep tennis separate from the rest of my life, and I can’t back out.”

“I suppose.”

“Listen, Jack, I’m having a real mess with Eagle over my Jeep.” I explained in detail what had transpired.

After carefully listening, he said, “Bring me your papers and if you’ve got a phone log, bring me that too. I’ll take care of this. Often what they do on a large claim is, they’ll try to get off cheap. You’d be surprised at how many people accept that. The insurance company figures they’ve got your money. They’ve been getting your money for years, so this Jeep accident is really paid for. During negotiations they usually relent and the claim is settled. It’s a shitty way to do business but there you have it.”

“Why do we take it? I mean, why do Americans just sit around like two hundred and forty million bumps on a log and get raped by these big companies?”

“Good question. The chain of accountability is removed from the customer. Theoretically, your local agent is accountable to
you, but the minute there’s trouble the job gets fobbed off on the major carrier. And there’s no such thing as a ‘clean’ accident, so if the major carrier wants to, they can find ‘variations’ in any claim. On the other hand, there are people who gouge the companies for more money than the actual damage.”

“I’m not that kind of person.”

“I know that but Eagle doesn’t. It’s a little like the IRS. You’re guilty until proven innocent.”

I felt sick again. This kind of stuff upsets me. “Sometimes I think I’d like to be a hermit and never have to deal with junk like this again.”

“I know the feeling. Why don’t you bring me over your materials after you put the paper to bed?” He paused. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about how things are working out—everything.”

“Me too. See you tonight.” I hung up the phone and then remembered that it was Tuesday. Our night. I didn’t want to go over to the office.

Charles had come in to work while I was on the phone with Jackson. He was a little draggy but he picked up when we had the meeting of all the
Clarion
personnel over the issue of public figures’ right to privacy. What a great meeting. People contributed a lot and their comments were not shallow. How was I going to live without Arnie and the boys, the gang?

It’s a funny thing. A lot of people, higher up on the social scale, stare down their noses at working people like Arnie. They figure they don’t think. I know a fair number of people perched on those corporate ladders who don’t think either. Some people’s minds question and roam and others’ don’t and it has nothing to do with one’s station in life. Just because someone is a laborer doesn’t mean he or she is stupid. Sometimes hardships have kept an individual from an education, and sometimes temperament. A lot of people I know observe the man in the three-piece suit and they think he’s choking on his white collar. For some people success is money and power or the illusion of it. For others it’s quality of life. It would be nice to have it all but the older I get the
more I respect the guys like Arnie Dow who love what they do, knowing full well they’re “just a working man.”

Well, we worked hard today. After the meeting, which lasted three hours, we had Verna bring in food for us. I returned to my desk and picked up the paper again.

In Michelle’s article she had woven some funny facts. She found a place, Sullivan, Illinois, where people play Bessie bingo. They’ve marked out 144 squares on grass and use cow chips. If a cow chip lands on your square, which you’ve bought for $20, you win the prize of $1,000. The proceeds go to the forty-nine-member Sullivan High School choir, which is so good it needs the money to travel to national competitions.

As I reread her article I found myself laughing anew. The screwiest fact she’d picked up was from the
Globe and Mail
, a Toronto paper. A Mrs. Grisdale had been lost and the authorities brought in a medicine man from Ontario who prepared a sacred hut and called on spirits to help locate Mrs. Grisdale. After this ceremony they held a bingo session and raised $200. No word yet on whether they ever found Mrs. Grisdale.

Michelle leaned over my shoulder. “Not bad for a cub, is it?”

“You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”

“Who’s my teacher?”

She had me there. “Thought about what you’re going to do next?”

“No. What about you?”

I shook my head.” You know Roger will hire you even though you turned Diz down. They’ll take you gladly.”

“The new
Clarion
is slashing editorial staff.”

“He’d hire you anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t want to work on the other side of the Square, do you? You ought to think about it. It’s the way newspapers are run today.”

“I know, but no amount of technology is going to help me bang out a good story. I learned that here.”

I waited a minute. “So how’s it going with you and Rog?”

“I go to bingo games with him and sometimes I go to dinner with him. Don’t start sounding like your mom or Wheeze.”

“I do not sound like my mother or my aunt.”

“You’re getting as nosy as they are.”

“I am?”

Her eyes darted. “A little bit.”

“I think I will assign you that story on early airport art.” I dumped out paper clips on my desk. I like the plastic kind because they’re in different colors and then I can sort them out according to color. I pushed together the orange ones. “Okay, so I’m curious. Hoping for the best, that’s all.”

“The best meaning I have some romance?”

“Well—yeah.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“We are having a discussion about romance, are we not, or did I miss something?”

“Don’t get fresh, Michelle. Romance and I seem to be strangers.”

“Every single day of your life?”

“Are you interviewing me or what?”

“No.”

“Not every day of my life. I lived with a woman for three years—God, that was ten years ago. Anyway, she left me as her career prospered.”