Paper Lantern: Love Stories (10 page)

He goes, Notice its address? 2200 West 22nd. Four deuces. Could call it Deuces Wild, but that seems to invite bad behavior. But Four Deuces, that’s a deceptively lucky hand. A man with a hand like that lays in wait for the kill. Know the odds on a hand like that, Rosebud?

No idea, Frank.

Four hundred and twenty-six to one.

So, we get an asking price from Verman, and now that Frank’s fantasy has a name, the Four Deuces, it becomes his obsession. He was the kinda sumnabitch always needed an obsession. It’s what got him stealing from the railroad—he was a relatively honest sumnabitch up to then. Perfume, leather coats, rugs, booze, guns … He’d fence the goods on Jewtown and we’d play the funny money at Sportsman’s. Mr. Visionary would be up to all hours calculating the odds on that racing form. Einstein never figured harder. Frank had a theory there was a hidden pattern to luck, and if you could find it the odds would be on your side.

Don’t matter if it’s astrology or astrophysics, he’d say, they’re both about a pattern in the stars that allows you to predict. That Oriental rug you’re standing on is just a design to you and me, Rosebud, but if a swami saw it, he’d know there was a prayer woven in it.

Would the swami know you stole it off a boxcar?

Wouldn’t matter. That’s why in
Aladdin
the carpet could fly, cause he knew its secret power, Frank would say, and go back to his prognostications.

Mostly he’d get hosed.

One night on Memorial Day weekend, I tell him I wish we were at a movie or the beach or anywhere other than Sportsman’s, and he says, Hey, nobody’s twisting your arm to be here, and I joke I could do better with my eyes closed, then I close them and point to Devil May Care, a long shot. It pays thirty to one on my two-dollar bet.

Rosebud, try it again, Frank says.

I pick three winners that night, and stop only cause I get dizzy. We take home eight hundred and change for three hours’ play. Woulda taken Frank two weeks of dicking around to clear that. You can bet that sumnabitch wanted his lucky Rosebud along after that. You and me, Rosebud, he’d say, Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde, Lucy and Ricky, and I was too goddamn dumb to tell the difference between love and superstition.

And Frank was one superstitious sumnabitch. He’d wear the same lucky track clothes and make sure I was dressed the same down to my lucky underwear. You can use your imagination as to what that might be. I knew what turned him on. We’d sit in the same lucky seats along the stretch …

Sure, you can buy us a round, Rafael. Vodka’s on you, brewski’s on the house. Fair? Chopin and
ywiec—a Four Deuces boilermaker.
Tak
. No cheap-ass Beam and Millers for us.
Na zdrowie!

Smooth, but I wonder am I tasting the vodka or the pretty bottle. You like tequila, Rafael? We stocked tequila when the neighborhood went south of the border. Tequila gets me rowdy. Here, we’ll have a little taste challenge, Chopin versus No Way Jose Cuervo.
Tak. Na zdrowie!

That’s firewater, Rafael. Remember I warned you: tequila gets me rowdy.

So, yeah, superstition—we always sat along the stretch. Lester, this half-blind smoke with Parkinson’s, on Social Security, would get there early and save our seats. Frank would buy him dinner—beer and a brat—and stake him to a couple two-dollar bets. What Lester wanted though was hot tips, or what Frank that sumnabitch took to calling hot
nips
.

No, I ain’t going to explain why, and not cause I’m embarrassed, but cause it’s retarded. Use your imagination. Frank could be a hoot, but he was also one of those guys who like never got past high school humor. Anything he could turn into a sexual innuendo he would—not something I admire in a man. Like there was a horse I picked named Whinny Pooh—cute, right?—that Frank insisted on calling Whinny Poohtang. That’s funny? Like I’m supposed to go tee-hee at a naughty macho word.

Frank that sumnabitch noticed when I read the racing form we’d lose cause I’d pick the horses by their names. I mean, you see a horse named You Bet Your Dupa, well, you got to bet your
dupa
. Or Lady’s a Tramp—I love Sinatra doing that, so you got to play that little filly. Same when they’d parade the horses around the track. I’d play them by color or how their manes were styled. He’d say, Rosebud, don’t look at their names, don’t look at their manes, female intuition’s blind, just close your eyes and pick. But I couldn’t not peek. Not just cause I hated to miss seeing, but closing my eyes in a crowd gets me light-headed, like my balance is off. Like seasick. Frank that sumnabitch would cover my eyes with his hands, and then he started blindfolding me. In public, I mean. He wore this lucky tie, a souvenir from the Thoroughbred track at Arlington. It was wide and had a sparkly picture of a horse winning by a nose, the jockey whipping him across the finish line. He’d wind that tie around my eyes so there were no distractions to what he took to calling my deal-with-the-devil psychic powers. I played along. But I knew I was faking. I didn’t have no psychic powers, just dumb luck.

Some nights I was on more than others, and overall we were ahead. But instead of getting used to prognosticating, I got dizzy sooner each time, and out of breath. It was giving me anxiety attacks. I’d have to tell myself,
Easy, Rosie
. I’d concentrate on breathing and feel that lazy sunset through my clothes like through a sail, like summer streaming through my body. Voices would sort themselves out of the crowd noise: someone praying to the Virgin in Spanish, fingering rosary beads in his pocket; newlyweds arguing about money—the woman crying in her heart cause Sportsman’s was her hubby’s idea of a honeymoon; an old man mumbling he’s going to kill hisself before his disease gets too humiliating, but not today, no, today he’ll stay alive to play the ponies. And some creepy voice beside my ear, whispering just to me, but before I could admit to myself what it’s saying, the PA blares, and the voices suck back into the crowd-hum of anticipation. I can smell the horses as their shadows clop by, and Frank opens the racing form, smooths it over my lap, and says in his bedroom voice, “Touch it, Rosebush, touch it like you’re touching…” Use your imagination, Rafael. My hand would be trembling and my finger would move on its own across the racing form like across a Ouija board. I’d be sweating.

I look flushed? Maybe it’s the tequila. But
tak
, one more won’t hurt. So it’s a little early in the afternoon to be buzzed, so shoot me. What’s
na zdrowie
in Spanish? Okay, then, Rafael,
salute
!

So, I’m blindfolded, sweating through my lucky underwear, and it’s like I got super-hearing—I can hear the hooves and creaking wheels, and blood’s pounding behind my eyes like that jockey on Frank’s lucky tie is whipping the sparkle horse across my eyelids as the buggies make the turn home, and Frank’s yelling in his clear tenor voice. It always surprised me when he’d let it loose. I got no idea even what horse we’re cheering. Some long shot maybe I picked at random. One thing Frank never could figure was a long shot.

By the middle of summer the special bank account we opened together for the Four Deuces is up eight grand.

I go, Frank, we got the down payment, let’s quit ahead of the game.

See, I don’t wanta be responsible if we lose it and he realizes there never was psychic powers. But he was a greedy sumnabitch. Then, who ain’t?

There ever something beyond what you could afford you hadda have, Rafael? Not just something you wanted, something you couldn’t live without. Maybe angels don’t have desires like that. You paint, right? Nah, I’m no mind reader—I noticed the colors spattered on the hair of your arms. You a painter like houses or like an artist? You do any of them murals of the Virgin along Eighteenth? The Virgin-of-the-El on Halsted or the Virgin-of-the-Lavanderia on Ashland? My favorite’s the wall by Nuevo Ramon, you know, the giant blue taco Virgin shooting light rays, and hovering beside her’s a two-story-tall bottle of Corona shooting the same rays. I told Frank, Maybe we need a Virgin-of-the-Four-Deuces. And Frank says, Way this neighborhood’s gone, people see Virgins everywhere—cracks in the plaster, rusty water stains under a viaduct, and,
Mira!
A miracle! And they’re kneeling, lighting candles. What’s next? The Virgin-of-the-Porta-Potty?

Frank could be one irreverent sumnabitch, but a hoot.

That me you’re sketching on that racing form? Let’s see. I won’t be offended. Okay, I’ll wait till it’s finished. You ever paint nudes? Tell you, I had a figure that made men ask would I pose. I might have, too, if they was artists, you know, classy, instead of some jerkoff with a Polaroid who thought he was Hugh Hefner. The real question in life ain’t
What would you do?
It’s
What wouldn’t you?
Where do you draw the line?

Tak. Salute!

So, that August there’s a heat wave killing senior citizens, and on Friday, Frank leaves work like a kid ditching school, changes into his lucky track clothes in the car, and we make Sportsman’s early. I’m wondering will the horses run? How can they breathe in a furnace? Right off, Frank that sumnabitch blindfolds me with the sparkle-horse tie and I hit the Daily Double, which we never play. The blindfold’s smothering me, I’m like faint, and I hear them voices in the crowd. That creepy voice is right against my ear—I don’t believe what it’s whispering—use your imagination—and I rip the blindfold off, but there’s no one there but Frank and Lester.

You all right? Frank asks.

Who was just here? I ask him, and he looks at me like I’m crazy.

I’m getting heatstroke, I say, and Frank goes, Cool it, Rosebush, I got the next race figured, anyway.

When he comes back from the window, he’s got cold brewskies for me and Lester. It was that sumnabitch’s way of showing he can win without my dramatics. He bets the whole four bills from the Daily Double on White Owl, a long shot, and loses our wad.

After all his crap about playing names, I can’t help blurting, Who’d play a pony named after a cigar?

Frank says, They named him after the bird of prey, not the cigar.

Bird of prey! That sumnabitch and his bullshit vocabulary. Maybe it was the heat, but every time I thought about “bird of prey” I’d laugh until I was like hysterical. Still breaks me up. Lester bets White Owl with him and there goes all his food stamp money, so neither of them are finding it too funny. I go, Shit, nothing like a healthy laugh to make you feel better, go ahead blindfold me. That cheers Frank up. Hot nips time, Rosebud, he says, hot silver-dollar nips. I can’t win without my Rosebud.

Only time I ever heard that sumnabitch actually admit it.

He kisses my neck and whispers, I still get hard just thinking about those pink silver-dollar nips. I want you to go to the Ladies’ and take your panties off. I’d like to blindfold you with your panties.

I say, You got some peculiar ideas. But I do it. There was like something about the heat that night making us drunk.

We win the fifth race. Heat wave or no, the stands are full, and the regulars know what’s going on. You can’t hide a winning streak, let alone a blindfolded woman with 36Ds in a white summer dress and no panty line. There’s a rumor the IRS has surveillance going, but instead a flying under the radar, Frank’s pounding beers, flaunting our luck, yelling, Yeah, Rosebud baby, we’re back in the peanuts and caramels! I’m so sweated my lucky dress looks like a wet T-shirt contest. You can see my—you really don’t get it?—hot nips.

Look, Rafael, we’re both a little buzzed. You wanta hear it like it happened, I gotta get personal. Frank that sumnabitch noticed—not like you could miss it—that when I’m on a roll my nipples have a mind of their own. When he’d blindfold me, it didn’t just feel like I had super-hearing. It felt like everyone at the track had X-ray vision and was looking at my boobs, and big-shot Frank the exhibitionist is getting off on it. I’m in the zone with the voices. One’s praying a rosary like the Virgin cares who wins in the sixth, and the newlywed has a crying heart cause she knows she’s married a loser, and the old man’s mumbling today’s the day to go for broke and if he bottoms out he’s going to step on the third rail, it’s like he’s betting his life, like all their fates are riding on a bunch of Lasix-doped nags trotting around a goddamn track in Cicero. I can feel the sparkle horse crossing my eyelids, and then I hear that creepy whisper,
Move that shapely ass
,
bitch
, and I think:
Who are you?

I must of said it aloud cause Frank goes, I didn’t say nothing, Rosebush. And at the same time, the creepy voice answers:
Zorro
.

This time, instead a tearing off the blindfold I let myself listen to what it’s been trying to tell me all summer, ever since we been winning.

You need that shapely ass fanned, slut?

That’s what’s making for hot nips, not
buena suerte
like Frank thinks. I can hardly breathe in that heat, and my finger’s sliding across the racing form, pointing to I don’t know what, and everyone’s looking at the bitch on a roll with the white dress riding up her legs.