Ring Game (17 page)

By the time Crow showed up, a dense strata of gray smoke hovered a foot above the surface of the table, blurring the features of the five players. Arling Biggie, a huge cigar gripped in his stumpy teeth, clutched his cards and glared across the table at Ken Kirk. Crow knew instantly, without seeing any of the cards in play, that Bigg was about to lose. Kirk was the tightest player at the table, betting only when he had the best hand. Al Levin, Ozzie LaRose, and Zink Fitterman watched as Bigg called Kirk’s fifty-dollar raise, then lost to the inevitable nut straight. Bigg flexed his jaw, causing a walnut-sized ash to fall into his remaining chips. He stared balefully as Kirk gathered the pot.

Crow picked up a chair and wedged it in between Bigg and Zink.

“Mind if I squeeze in?” he said.

Bigg rolled his eyes and moved about half an inch to his right. Zink skidded his chair over to make room for Crow.

Crow sat down and said, “Evening, Bigg. How’s it going?”

“Screw you, Crow. I got no more free memberships.”

Crow smiled. The best way to beat a guy like Bigg at the card table was to make him want to beat you.
Don’t play against your opponents. Let them play against you.
The harder Bigg tried to get a piece of Crow’s stack, the more money would flow Crow’s way.

Al Levin dealt. The bet was checked to Bigg, who bet twenty. Crow looked at his cards. Queen, four. He threw them away.
Wait for the cards.
He sat back and watched the hand play out.

Two hours later, Crow was up a thousand, and Bigg was down two. Zink, who played his cards almost as tight as Kirk, was also a winner. The other players were all within a hundred bucks of even. At Bigg’s request, they had switched from hold ’em to seven stud high-low, which had the effect of increasing the number of bad hands Bigg could play.

At one point, Bigg shifted strategies and began to make enormous bets at the beginning of the hand. He picked up several antes by betting two hundred dollars on the strength of his first three cards. Finally, with a pair of aces in the hole and a five up top, Crow called and raised a hundred. Bigg, who was showing an ace, looked startled, then called the raise. Everyone else folded.

Crow picked up the case ace on the fourth card. Bigg was showing ace, ten. To Crow’s surprise, Bigg bet five hundred. Crow raised an equal amount. Once again, Bigg called.

The fifth card gave Crow a deuce and Bigg a nine. Bigg bet another five. Crow gazed at Bigg’s cards, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip. Little danger of a flush. The best thing Bigg could have would be three tens, or four cards to a straight, or three cards to a good low hand. Crow called the bet. Ozzie tossed out two more cards, a ten for Bigg and a seven for Crow. Bigg pushed the last of his cash into the pot—three hundred forty dollars.

Because the game was table stakes, players could only bet the amount of money they had on the table. However, according to Zink’s house rules, if only two players were involved in the pot, they were free to negotiate additional bets—I.O.U.s, cars, houses, whatever—so long as it was understood that such arrangements were agreeable to both players.

At this point, against anybody else, Crow would simply have called the bet and let the cards fall. But remembering the dent in his GTO, he said, “You want to dig deeper, Bigg?”

“That’s all I got,” Bigg growled.

“Maybe you got something else you want to bet.”

“I already told you, no more free memberships.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a limo rental.” It would make a great wedding gift. Crow pushed a small stack of chips toward the pot. “Another two hundred against a limo rental. What do you say?”

Bigg’s tongue darted across his lips. “I get six hundred a day,” he said. “That’s the limo and driver.”

Crow added another stack. “I’ll go four against a free ride.”

Bigg nodded. “Done.”

Carmen had a large lump on her head where it had struck the bathroom door. She was treating it with a bag full of crushed ice and a triple vodka tonic. The combination was remarkably effective. Not only did her head not hurt anymore, but she could hardly smell the butyric acid, which, according to Hyatt, was the worst smelling substance on the planet. Carmen believed it. Hy’s Evian business was ruined. It would take months for the odor in the garage to go away. Maybe longer. Carmen didn’t mind that so much—the water business was small potatoes—but she did not appreciate the fact that her fiancé smelled like aged vomit. Taking another sip of her drink, Carmen watched Hyatt sitting in his red silk boxers on his black Naugahyde sofa watching an infomercial.

She said, “You know what was the first thing I thought?”

The corner of Hyatt’s mouth twitched, but he kept his eyes on the television. Carmen fished a piece of ice from her drink and flicked it onto his bare belly.

Hyatt’s body snapped to attention; he brushed away the ice and said, “Hey!”

“You know what was the first thing I thought?” Carmen said again.

“You thought I’d killed myself. You already told me that.” When Carmen had opened the bathroom door, she had discovered Hyatt sitting in the bathtub four inches deep in V-8 juice.

“That was actually the second thing I thought. The first thing I thought was that you were having one hell of a period.” Carmen pulled the ice bag away from her head.

Hyatt processed that for about a nanosecond, then returned his attention to the infomercial. “This is interesting,” he said. “You can get rich on 900 numbers. You get a 900 number, put a few ads in the paper, and let some other jerk field the calls. Every time somebody calls in for their horoscope you get a piece of it. That would be perfect. Just sit back and wait for the checks to come in.”

“I thought, well, at least we know he’s not preggers.”

Hyatt gave her a sardonic look. “Which thought was that? Number two or three?”

Carmen rattled the ice in her glass. “That was number one and a half, asshole.”

“Hey, I tried to warn you. I told you it was just tomato juice.”

“‘It’s only V-8,’ you said. What the hell was I supposed to do with that?”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you. I thought it might kill the smell. It works if you got a skunked-up dog.”

“Yeah, well it didn’t work on you. It still reeks in here. I probably reek, too, just from being here. It’s a good thing we aren’t getting married tomorrow.”

“It’ll wear off. What do you think about us getting a 900 number? Wouldn’t that be cool? You got a pen?”

Carmen shook her head. Hyatt jumped up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen.

“We’re gonna have to move, that’s all there is to it,” Carmen said.

Hyatt returned holding a stubby pencil. “We’re going to move anyway, Carm. We can live wherever you want, once the money starts rolling in.”

“What are we going to do for money until then? I don’t care what kind of label you slap on it, nobody’s going to buy water that smells like puke.”

“I’ve got a little money.” Hyatt copied the number on the screen onto the back of a magazine. “You believe this? To find out how to get rich by owning 900 numbers, they have you call this 900 number. That’s what I call
perfect
.”

“You think everything is
perfect
.”

Hyatt jabbed the air between them with the pencil. “Not true,” he said. “A wedding reception with Swedish meatballs is not perfect. Sometimes you have to compromise.”

When your mind is elsewhere, go there.

—Crow’s rules

C
ROW FELL ASLEEP FULLY
dressed on the sofa. He dreamed himself back to Paris where, amazingly, he found that he could speak French after all. He was looking for Debrowski. Everyone he asked remembered her, but wherever he looked, she had just left.

Shortly after sunrise he woke up with a headache and a tongue that tasted like a bad oyster. Two cups of instant coffee did not help, nor did three. Milo made an attempt at being sociable, butting his head repeatedly against Crow’s shins, but received no encouraging response. Crow stared out the window, morning light pouring into his eyes but leaving no impression on his mind. He felt as if his head was full of sludge, the tailings of too much second-hand tobacco smoke and adrenaline. It didn’t seem to matter whether he won or lost at cards—either way, his body exacted a price. He stared out the window, replaying last night’s big hands in his memory.

After an unmeasured period of time—it may have been only a few seconds, or as long as half an hour—he got up and packed his gym bag. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Bigg.

On the other hand, he could hardly wait.

Crow found a parking space beside one of Bigg’s limos. He parked in close and pulled the door latch back, paused for a self-conscious moment, and threw his weight against the door, slamming it into the side of the limo. Crow climbed out and examined the resulting dent. Satisfied, he locked his car. When he looked up, he saw Flowrean Peeche sitting in her red Miata, looking at him, wearing a bemused smile. She quickly turned her head away and pulled her car into a parking space at the other side of the lot.

Bigg Bodies was crowded with reasonably normal-looking men and women getting in a workout before going to their jobs—a slightly more ambitious version of the after-work crowd. It was still too early for the gym rats and serious bodybuilders. Arling Biggie sat behind the front counter, filing his nails with an emery stick. Neither man spoke.

Crow went through his routine with robotic precision. At one point, after a set of deadlifts, he looked at the mirrored wall and found Flowrean Peeche’s reflection watching him, still with that smile. Embarrassed, Crow finished his workout with six brutal sets of leg extensions. On the way out, he knocked on Bigg’s office door and stepped in. Bigg was sitting behind his desk reading
Muscle and Fitness
.

“What the hell do you want?” He looked pale. His eyes were bloodshot and yellow.

“I just wanted to see if you were hiding in your closet.”

“Screw you.”

“And to make sure you got that date. It’s August ninth.”

Bigg glared. “I got it.”

“Good.” Crow felt an unexpected knot of sympathy for the man. Bigg had lost a nice chunk of cash, he was suffering from a hangover, and he owed a debt to someone he despised. Crow had been there. “I’ll see you,” he said.

Bigg made a grating noise in his throat and returned his attention to his magazine.

The Latin Quarter bistro, half a kilometer from the Louvre, was packed with tourists. Most of them had chosen to sit outside in the hot sun, drinking Heinekens and waving flies away from their
croque-monsieurs
. Even in July, in Paris, the tourists found charm in al fresco dining.

Laura Debrowski sat inside behind a small round table near the air conditioner and lit a Gitane. She no longer minded the tourists, no longer felt self-conscious to be recognized as one of them. After two months, she had made a kind of peace with this city. It was doomed to be neither more nor less than what it was, and so was she.

During her first weeks in Paris, Debrowski had worked hard to merge with the city, observing its residents with fierce concentration, forcing her tongue to mimic their words and accents, training her body to move the way the Parisians moved, memorizing their hand and facial gestures, and buying herself a pair of the odd-looking canvas shoes that were popular with the Latin Quarter students. Three years of French classes percolated through her brain. She challenged herself to speak only the native tongue and proudly proved her ability to blunder her way through the basic communications necessary to get from one end of the day to the other. She was embarrassed by her Americanism, unable to forgive herself for being herself, and angry with herself for giving a damn. During those early weeks she had attempted to embed herself upon the city like a virus attaching itself to a cell, mimicking its proteins, hoping to become a part of it.

A narrow-featured, bearded garçon approached, flipped open a tiny pad, mumbled, “
Pour vous, mademoiselle
?”

“
Un grand noir
,
s’il vous plait
,” Debrowski rattled off. Her accent was nearly perfect—she had listened to the words dozens of times, practiced them endlessly, even going so far as to tape herself at SuperSon, the recording studio where
Les Hommes Magnifiques
had been laying down tracks for their CD. She knew the waiter understood exactly what she had said, and what she wanted: a large, black espresso. She had ordered it as would a Parisian: one large black, please. An efficient, elegant use of the language.

The waiter frowned at his pad. “Espresso double?” he asked, feigning confusion.

Debrowski sighed and tapped the ash off her cigarette. “
Oui
,” she said. “
Un double
.” This waiter—and every other waiter in this city—knew she was no Parisian. At best, they would think her some other variety of European. She would never be permitted to order her morning coffee in the Parisian manner, but would now and forever be required to order her coffee as would a tourist—in clumsy guidebook French or, should she prefer, in English, German, Spanish, or Italian.

The garçon gave a sharp nod, whirled, and headed for the bar, where the only locals in the bistro, a group of working men, stood sipping pastises and
grand noirs
, their short, broad backs turned on the seated tourists.

Any one of the men could have been Crow, with his French laborer-type body. But Crow was gone, back in the States.

Debrowski fastened her lips on the Gitane and inhaled the powerful blue-brown smoke, bringing it down deep. That goddamn Crow. She’d known he was going home as soon as he’d started talking about his cat.

During Crow’s three weeks in Paris he had not uttered a word in French, which had irritated the hell out of Debrowski. She’d worked so hard to fit in, yet had found herself in the company of this—this unrepentant American. What really got to her was that Crow, who refused to take on even the faintest tint of local color, was repeatedly mistaken for a native. People on the street would approach him speaking rapid French, to which he would reply in English. Worse yet, despite his blatant refusal to even attempt to speak their language, the French seemed to like him. She remembered one conversation that had begun when a short man with a wide nose had stopped them on the street and asked Crow—in French—for directions to the nearest RER depot.