Hearts In Atlantis (13 page)

“Sure. Someday maybe I'll be a fighter, too,” S-J said. He hooked a left and then a right at the air over McQuown's makeshift table. “Pow, pow!”

“Pow-pow indeed,” said McQuown. “And how's your eyes, Master Sullivan?”

“Pretty good.”

“Then get them ready, because the race is on! Yes it is! Your eyes against my hands! Up and down, all around, where'd she go, I don't know.” The cards, which had moved much faster this time, slowed to a stop.

Sully started to point, then drew his hand back, frowning. Now there were
two
cards with little folds in
the corner. Sully looked up at McQuown, whose arms were folded across his dingy undershirt. McQuown was smiling. “Take your time, son,” he said. “The morning was whizbang, but it's been a slow afternoon.”

Men who think hats with feathers in the brims are sophisticated
, Bobby remembered Ted saying.
The sort of men who'd shoot craps in an alley and pass around a bottle of liquor in a paper bag during the game
. McQuown had a funny plastic flower in his hat instead of a feather, and there was no bottle in evidence . . . but there was one in his pocket. A little one. Bobby was sure of it. And toward the end of the day, as business wound down and totally sharp hand-eye coordination became less of a priority to him, McQuown would take more and more frequent nips from it.

Sully pointed to the card on the far right.
No, S-J
, Bobby thought, and when McQuown turned that card up, it was the king of spades. McQuown turned up the card on the far left and showed the jack of clubs. The queen was back in the middle. “Sorry, son, a little slow that time, it ain't no crime. Want to try again now that you're warmed up?”

“Gee, I . . . that was the last of my dough.” Sully-John looked crestfallen.

“Just as well for you, kid,” Rionda said. “He'd take you for everything you own and leave you standing here in your shortie-shorts.” The girls giggled wildly at this; S-J blushed. Rionda took no notice of either. “I worked at Revere Beach for quite awhile when I lived in Mass,” she said. “Let me show you kids how this works. Want to go for a buck, pal? Or is that too sweet for you?”

“In your presence everything would be sweet,”
McQuown said sentimentally, and snatched her dollar the moment it was out of her purse. He held it up to the light, examined it with a cold eye, then set it down to the left of the cards. “Looks like a good 'un,” he said. “Let's play, darling. What's your name?”

“Pudd'ntane,” Rionda said. “Ask me again and I'll tell you the same.”

“Ree, don't you think—” Anita Gerber began.

“I told you, I'm wise to the gaff,” Rionda said. “Run em, my pal.”

“Without delay,” McQuown agreed, and his hands blurred the three red-backed cards into motion (up and down, all around, to and fro, watch them go), finally settling them in a line of three again. And this time, Bobby observed with amazement, all three cards had those slightly bent corners.

Rionda's little smile had gone. She looked from the short row of cards to McQuown, then down at the cards again, and then at her dollar bill, lying off to one side and fluttering slightly in the little seabreeze that had come up. Finally she looked back at McQuown. “You suckered me, pally,” she said. “Didn't you?”

“No,” McQuown said. “I
raced
you. Now . . . what do you say?”

“I think I say that was a real good dollar that didn't make no trouble and I'm sorry to see it go,” Rionda replied, and pointed to the middle card.

McQuown turned it over, revealed the king, and made Rionda's dollar disappear into his pocket. This time the queen was on the far left. McQuown, a dollar and a quarter richer, smiled at the folks from Harwich. The plastic flower tucked into the brim of his hat nodded to and fro in the salt-smelling air.
“Who's next?” he asked. “Who wants to race his eye against my hand?”

“I think we're all raced out,” Mrs. Gerber said. She gave the man behind the table a thin smile, then put one hand on her daughter's shoulder and the other on her sleepy-eyed son's, turning them away.

“Mrs. Gerber?” Bobby asked. For just a moment he considered how his mother, once married to a man who had never met an inside straight he didn't like, would feel if she could see her son standing here at Mr. McQuown's slapdash table with that risky Randy Garfield red hair gleaming in the sun. The thought made him smile a little. Bobby knew what an inside straight was now; flushes and full houses, too. He had made inquiries. “May I try?”

“Oh, Bobby, I really think we've had enough, don't you?”

Bobby reached under the Kleenex he had stuffed into his pocket and brought out his last three nickels. “All I have is this,” he said, showing first Mrs. Gerber and then Mr. McQuown. “Is it enough?”

“Son,” McQuown said, “I have played this game for pennies and enjoyed it.”

Mrs. Gerber looked at Rionda.

“Ah, hell,” Rionda said, and pinched Bobby's cheek. “It's the price of a haircut, for Christ's sake. Let him lose it and then we'll go home.”

“All right, Bobby,” Mrs. Gerber said, and sighed. “If you have to.”

“Put those nickels down here, Bob, where we can all look at em,” said McQuown. “They look like good 'uns to me, yes indeed. Are you ready?”

“I think so.”

“Then here we go. Two boys and a girl go into hiding together. The boys are worthless. Find the girl and double your money.”

The pale dextrous fingers turned the three cards over. McQuown spieled and the cards blurred. Bobby watched them move about the table but made no real effort to track the queen. That wasn't necessary.

“Now they go, now they slow, now they rest, here's the test.” The three red-backed cards were in a line again. “Tell me, Bobby, where's she hide?”

“There,” Bobby said, and pointed to the far left.

Sully groaned. “It's the
middle
card, you jerk. This time I never took my eye off it.”

McQuown took no notice of Sully. He was looking at Bobby. Bobby looked back at him. After a moment McQuown reached out and turned over the card Bobby had pointed at. It was the queen of hearts.

“What the
heck?
” Sully cried.

Carol clapped excitedly and jumped up and down. Rionda Hewson squealed and smacked him on the back. “You took im to school that time, Bobby! Attaboy!”

McQuown gave Bobby a peculiar, thoughtful smile, then reached into his pocket and brought out a fistful of change. “Not bad, son. First time I've been beat all day. That I didn't
let
myself get beat, that is.” He picked out a quarter and a nickel and put them down beside Bobby's fifteen cents. “Like to let it ride?” He saw Bobby didn't understand. “Like to go again?”

“May I?” Bobby asked Anita Gerber.

“Wouldn't you rather quit while you're ahead?” she asked, but her eyes were sparkling and she seemed to have forgotten all about beating the traffic home.

“I
am
going to quit while I'm ahead,” he told her.

McQuown laughed. “A boasty boy! Won't be able to grow a single chin-whisker for another five years, but he's a boasty boy already. Well then, Boasty Bobby, what do you think? Are we on for the game?”

“Sure,” Bobby said. If Carol or Sully-John had accused him of boasting, he would have protested strongly—all his heroes, from John Wayne to Lucky Starr of the Space Patrol, were modest fellows, the kind to say “Shucks” after saving a world or a wagon train. But he felt no need to defend himself to Mr. McQuown, who was a low man in blue shorts and maybe a card-cheater as well. Boasting had been the furthest thing from Bobby's mind. He didn't think this was much like his dad's inside straights, either. Inside straights were all hope and guesswork—“fool's poker,” according to Charlie Yearman, the Harwich Elementary janitor, who had been happy to tell Bobby everything about the game that S-J and Denny Rivers hadn't known—but there was no guesswork about this.

Mr. McQuown looked at him a moment longer; Bobby's calm confidence seemed to trouble him. Then he reached up, adjusted the slant of his bowler, stretched out his arms, and wiggled his fingers like Bugs Bunny before he played the piano at Carnegie Hall in one of the Merrie Melodies. “Get on your mark, boasty boy. I'm giving you the whole business this time, from the soup to the nuts.”

The cards blurred into a kind of pink film. From behind him Bobby heard Sully-John mutter “Holy crow!” Carol's friend Tina said “That's too
fast
” in an amusing tone of prim disapproval. Bobby again watched
the cards move, but only because he felt it was expected of him. Mr. McQuown didn't bother with any patter this time, which was sort of a relief.

The cards settled. McQuown looked at Bobby with his eyebrows raised. There was a little smile on his mouth, but he was breathing fast and there were beads of sweat on his upper lip.

Bobby pointed immediately to the card on the right. “That's her.”

“How do you know that?” Mr. McQuown asked, his smile fading. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I just do,” Bobby said.

Instead of flipping the card, McQuown turned his head slightly and looked down the midway. The smile had been replaced by a petulant expression—downturned lips and a crease between his eyes. Even the plastic sunflower in his hat seemed displeased, its to-and-fro bob now sulky instead of jaunty. “No one beats that shuffle,” he said. “No one has
ever
beaten that shuffle.”

Rionda reached over Bobby's shoulder and flipped the card he had pointed at. It was the queen of hearts. This time all the kids clapped. The sound made the crease between Mr. McQuown's eyes deepen.

“The way I figure, you owe old Boasty Bobby here ninety cents,” Rionda said. “Are you gonna pay?”

“Suppose I don't?” Mr. McQuown asked, turning his frown on Rionda. “What are you going to do, tubbo? Call a cop?”

“Maybe we ought to just go,” Anita Gerber said, sounding nervous.

“Call a cop? Not me,” Rionda said, ignoring Anita. She never took her eyes off McQuown. “A lousy ninety
cents out of your pocket and you look like Baby Huey with a load in his pants. Jesus wept!”

Except, Bobby knew, it wasn't the money. Mr. McQuown had lost a lot more than this on occasion. Sometimes when he lost it was a “hustle”; sometimes it was an “out.” What he was steamed about now was the
shuffle
. McQuown hadn't liked a kid beating his shuffle.

“What I'll do,” Rionda continued, “is tell anybody on the midway who wants to know that you're a cheapskate. Ninety-Cent McQuown, I'll call you. Think that'll help your business?”

“I'd like to give
you
the business,” Mr. McQuown growled, but he reached into his pocket, brought out another dip of change—a bigger one this time—and quickly counted out Bobby's winnings. “There,” he said. “Ninety cents. Go buy yourself a martini.”

“I really just guessed, you know,” Bobby said as he swept the coins into his hand and then shoved them into his pocket, where they hung like a weight. The argument that morning with his mother now seemed exquisitely stupid. He was going home with more money than he had come with, and it meant nothing. Nothing. “I'm a good guesser.”

Mr. McQuown relaxed. He wouldn't have hurt them in any case—he might be a low man but he wasn't the kind who hurt people; he'd never subject those clever long-fingered hands to the indignity of forming a fist—but Bobby didn't want to leave him unhappy. He wanted what Mr. McQuown himself would have called an “out.”

“Yeah,” McQuown said. “A good guesser is what you are. Like to try a third guess, Bobby? Riches await.”

“We really have to be going,” Mrs. Gerber said hastily.

“And if I tried again I'd lose,” Bobby said. “Thank you, Mr. McQuown. It was a good game.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get lost, kid.” Mr. McQuown was like all the other midway barkers now, looking farther down the line. Looking for fresh blood.

•   •   •

Going home, Carol and her girlfriends kept looking at him with awe; Sully-John, with a kind of puzzled respect. It made Bobby feel uncomfortable. At one point Rionda turned around and regarded him closely. “You didn't just guess,” she said.

Bobby looked at her cautiously, withholding comment.

“You had a winkle.”

“What's a winkle?”

“My dad wasn't much of a betting man, but every now and then he'd get a hunch about a number. He called it a winkle.
Then
he'd bet. Once he won fifty dollars. Bought us groceries for a whole month. That's what happened to you, isn't it?”

“I guess so,” Bobby said. “Maybe I had a winkle.”

•   •   •

When he got home, his mom was sitting on the porch glider with her legs folded under her. She had changed into her Saturday pants and was looking moodily out at the street. She waved briefly to Carol's mom as she drove away; watched as Anita turned into her own driveway and Bobby trudged up the walk. He knew what his mom was thinking: Mrs. Gerber's husband was in the Navy, but at least she
had
a husband. Also, Anita Gerber had an Estate Wagon. Liz had shank's mare, the bus if she had to go a little farther, or a taxi if she needed to go into Bridgeport.

But Bobby didn't think she was angry at him anymore, and that was good.

“Did you have a nice time at Savin, Bobby?”

“Super time,” he said, and thought:
What is it, Mom? You don't care what kind of time I had at the beach. What's really on your mind?
But he couldn't tell.

“Good. Listen, kiddo . . . I'm sorry we got into an argument this morning. I
hate
working on Saturdays.” This last came out almost in a spit.