Stone Junction (27 page)

‘In another mood, I’m sure it would be delightful. Right now I need walking, water, and whiskey.’

‘You want water with your whiskey?’

‘No. I meant the ocean.’

‘Sounds romantic.’

‘It’s not,’ he assured her.

Even though Daniel left by his private exit and went around the back, he still couldn’t get away. He had to cross a long, terraced patio thronged with people. Just below them, on the beach itself, a nude coed volleyball game was in progress. That stopped him. In the intense, late-October light, every naked body seemed young, tanned, perfect, and doomed to perish.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Bad Bobby suddenly groaned beside him, ‘stark-naked volleyball. Seems California just gets stranger and weirder every time I pass through.’

‘I’m going for a walk,’ Daniel said. ‘If it’s all right with you, of course.’

Bad Bobby looked out toward the horizon. ‘I made me a deal with the ocean when I was a scrawny little twelve-year-old cracker-ass kid – no folks, no kin, nowhere. I’d scraped my way down to the Gulf because I’d heard about the ocean, but I’d never seen it; and I wanted to see it real bad. And I stood there gawking at it, water as far as I could see, and I said real fast, “Ocean, let’s work out a deal. If you don’t fuck with me, I won’t fuck with you.”’

‘Sounds fair,’ Daniel said. He took a step to leave.

‘Goddamn, Daniel!’ Bobby boomed, stopping him. ‘Don’t matter how big a snit you’re in, it’s piss-poor manners to be holding a bottle of whiskey in your hand and not offer a thirsty man a drink.’

Momentarily disconcerted, Daniel remembered he had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, offering the bottle.

Bad Bobby unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle: ‘May you get ’em when you need ’em, and sometimes when you don’t.’ He took a long swig.

Daniel nodded to acknowledge the toast. He realized he was tired of looking at Bad Bobby, tired of his voice, his strong and constant presence.

Bad Bobby handed the bottle back. ‘There’s a hell of a card game shaping up inside. If you need to find me, start looking there.’ He turned and walked away.

Daniel fumed as he walked down the beach. ‘He’s
always
the one who walks away.
Always
gets the last word.
Always
has the hammer and the high ground.’

Heading up the beach, he was forced to admit that Bad Bobby was simply sharper – more experienced, more aware, more determined – and Daniel arrived at the understanding that if he played cards heads-up with him, Bad Bobby would hand him his ass. The understanding didn’t cheer him up.

When he was out of sight and sound of the party, Daniel sat against a wave-smoothed drift log and drank slowly and steadily. He watched the ocean, each wave driving him deeper into depression. Even the fiery sunset seemed bleak. He felt like he was trapped inside himself, a ragged rat in a maze.

He stood up shakily and took off his clothes, the night air balmy against his skin. He waded out in the creaming surf and dove into an oncoming wave. As he felt himself tumbled in its force, his depression vanished. He swam out till nearly exhausted and then floated on his back, watching the stars, giving himself to their vast indifference. It was exactly what he’d been missing – stars, rock, water, wind. For over a year he’d been living sealed in smoky rooms, perfumed suites, and moving cars; rootless, wired to the action, tightened down to the turn of a card. Too small, too narrow. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to expand, to roar. He wanted to be a furnace of light.

Every clear night at Nameless Lake Wild Bill had spent at least half an hour staring at the night sky. When Daniel had asked him if it was some sort of meditation he was doing, Wild Bill had claimed that the stars were actually alchemists’ forges and he just found it reassuring to see so many souls at work.

Floating, Daniel tried to see the stars through Wild Bill’s eyes, but couldn’t. He tried to imagine he was the first primitive man who’d ever looked up and beheld them. With an oblique leap, he thought of a warm autumn afternoon when Johnny Seven Moons had showed him how to play Indian stick gambling. Stick gambling was clean and simple. Which hand held the stick. Left or right; right or wrong. Pure intuition, the grace of guessing. Daniel smiled at the starry heavens. He had his game. It eliminated Bad Bobby’s major edge in cards, his years of experience. Daniel doubted if Bad Bobby, despite that experience, had even
heard
of stick gambling.

Daniel swam back in slowly, riding the waves, then sat on his log drying off. He felt fresh, happy, confident – an actual sea change. He could see the lights from the party far down the beach. He decided not to go back. Scooping a hollow against the log and rolling his clothes into a pillow, he curled up and in moments fell asleep.

He dreamed for the first time since the explosion.

A card was dealt to him face down across the green felt table. He flipped it over. The jack of hearts, the knave, the hook, the sweet bastard himself. He focused on the image. It was Guido’s face. He turned the card upside down. Now it was Bobby’s face. He ripped the card in half.

Another was dealt immediately, skimming face down across the felt. Slowly, he turned it over. The jack of hearts. He ripped it in half.

Another was dealt. Jack of hearts. He tore it in two.

And another, and another, and another, the invisible dealer sending them as fast as Daniel ripped them up.

The next card he turned over was blank. Stunned, he stared at the glossy white surface. A bird cried. He touched the card. It turned into a window. He strained to see through it but he was looking into an empty sky.

He touched the glass, and when he lifted his finger he saw a black stone hurtling toward him. But as he watched, entranced, he saw it wasn’t a stone at all, it was a bird, a raven, and it had a small, brilliant object clasped in its beak, a spherical bauble of some kind, a glass bead, but no, it was too brilliant, too clear. A diamond, a slender spiral flame burning in its center, and then the bird hit the window and it froze into a mirror and he heard his mother scream, ‘Run, Daniel, run,’ but there was nothing he could do, he was falling toward the mirror. He curled into a ball to protect himself, then changed his mind, opened himself, arms spread wide; the instant before he hit the mirror he saw it was empty.

The mirror shattered into a million diamond splinters and Daniel floated on his back in the moonlit water, watching the darkness and the stars.

He woke in the late morning. Except for a raging thirst, he felt wonderful. He was dreaming again. His luck had changed. He picked up the whiskey bottle to celebrate. Under it, side by side in the depression, were two stones, virtually identical, each a flat, smooth, elongated oval, one black, one white. He hefted them, one in each palm, then closed his hands into fists. He stood with his eyes closed, the stones warm against his palms. Bad Bobby was in trouble.

Transcription:

Denis Joyner, AMO Mobile Radio

Hang on, honey, we’re going up high! Yasss, sweetness, wrap your ears around me and I’ll get you there. Yup, and you didn’t even have to guess it, you got the DJ, the Devil Jubilee, coming at you hot and heavy on mow-beel, multiple-frequency, pirate, jack-your-ass-up, ray-dee-oooo – and oh my goodness, talk about diversity, you got me if you want me on KPER, KINK, KUZZ, KLUE, and KYJL (the only gay station in Malibu). And now that you got me, just try turning me loose.

You figure on that while I cue up tonight’s musical treat. Hold still now, cuz for the next three hours you’re gonna hear something so old, so moldy gold, you’re gonna remember back through seven lifetimes at least. Three solid hours – count ’em, Jack – of uninterrupted Voodoo Trance Jam that I recorded live, scared to death, on my recent trip to Haiti. And while you’re digging the movies on your skull walls, the DJ here is gonna be getting comfortable with a little sweet thing who just dropped by the van to discuss the price of opium in Shanghai. So I’ll catch you ’round ’bout midnight with DJ’s bedtime story and quasiphilosophy lesson, yet another installment in this metaphysical potboiler he’s beginning to suspect is his life. So spoon June’s moon and stay attuned. Be here now or there later. This has been the DJ babblin’ in your ear. Till then, all over and far out.

After he’d showered off the sand and changed clothes, Daniel found Bad Bobby where he’d said he’d be, playing Hold-’Em in Clay’s game room. Bobby had towers of neatly stacked chips in front of him, so he was either doing well or had bought a bunch. Before Daniel could say a word, Bad Bobby stood up, said to the table of players, ‘Deal me out a few hands,’ and motioned Daniel outside on the patio.

‘Daniel, we’ve blundered into Poker Heaven. There’s lawyers, producers, actors, directors, drug dealers – and they are all
loaded
with cash money and hot to prove they have the
huevos
to play no-limit Hold-’Em.’ Bad Bobby glanced around and leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘And about half of them, it’s maybe the
third
time they’ve played Hold-’Em in their entire life, and they didn’t learn shit from the first two. They think a pair of treys in the pocket is a mortal lock and that a kicker is some Hungarian who boots field goals for the Rams. The only reason
not
to be in that game is if you absolutely
hate
money. How much you have left in your roll?’

‘I’m down to about twenty grand.’

‘Get it in there.’

‘I’m saving it to play you.’

Bad Bobby blinked slowly, about the only sign of agitation he ever displayed. ‘Jesus, Daniel, not now.’

Daniel reminded him, trying to keep any hint of mockery from his tone, ‘“Any man, from any land; any game he can name; any amount he can count; any place, face to face; any time he can find.”’

‘You got it close to right,’ Bad Bobby acknowledged, his drawl considerably tightened. ‘Now you go find the time and come back and tell me when it is, and I’ll see if I’m available. In the
meantime
, I’m gonna keep on repairing the dent Guido put in my bankroll. And since I can flat fucking
guarantee
I won’t be available till this game breaks up, you might as well sit down and get rich. You lose your twenty grand, your credit’s good with me.’

‘Give me fifty thousand.’ Daniel was half bluffing. His credit line had always stopped at twenty-five, which Bad Bobby claimed was a safeguard against Daniel going so tilt he couldn’t recover.

But without a word Bad Bobby dug out his roll and started counting. When he ran out of bills he shook his head. He handed the wad to Daniel. ‘Only forty-seven. Little short myself.’

‘Thanks,’ Daniel said, moved that Bobby had given him his last penny. ‘I’d use mine first, but if I lost it, I’d have to borrow from you to play you heads-up, and I’d feel bad about making you gamble against your own money.’

Bad Bobby cocked his head. ‘That don’t make a drop of sense to me. It’s all money, and when it isn’t, it’s all chips. Like I told you, it’s just a way of keeping track.’

Daniel looked at him and said, ‘How do you always manage to get in the last word?’

‘Same way I usually manage to get in the last raise. Why? You want to say something?’

‘No, not really.’

‘All right, then – let’s go shear sheep.’

Good Shepherd Bobby destroyed the personal finances of a famous young actor, nearly drove a prominent Hollywood law firm into Chapter Eleven proceedings, and cost Clay Hormel a point off his next teenage horror flick. Definitely one of Bad Bobby’s better days at the office.

Daniel won eight hundred fifty dollars, or, according to a chuckling Bobby, a little less than he’d tipped his personal hostess. Daniel had been ahead almost ninety thousand. With a pair of tens in the hole, the flop had brought another ten and a pair of sevens. He slow-played it, not raising till the end, but when Bad Bobby had reraised a whopping hundred thousand, Daniel had put him on four sevens and threw his hand away. He’d been right – Bad Bobby showed the hand down when Clay Hormel, with ten-jack, called what he thought was a bluff, thus losing one percent of his profit in
Torn
Teenage Flesh VIII
. When Bad Bobby saw that Daniel had laid down tens full, he’d nodded with respect. ‘Besides being smart, that took some real balls. The more I see of you, Daniel, the more I see a player.’

Daniel said, ‘Wait till we play the game I’m going to name. And I promise you it won’t be cards, because you’re the best.’

‘I’m looking forward to it, Daniel. I really am.’

So when the game broke up Daniel was right behind Bad Bobby as they cashed out. Daniel handed him the fifty grand he’d borrowed and said, ‘You ready?’

Bad Bobby shrugged. ‘Sure. But you don’t want me now – sweet Jesus, son, can’t you see I’m on a
supreme
heater? There should be flames shooting out my ass, I’m that hot.’

‘Every heater burns out,’ Daniel said, repeating one of Bobby’s axioms.

‘All right. What’s the game?’

Daniel thought fast. ‘Nomlaki Stone Gambling.’

‘And I suppose you wrote the official rule book.’ Bad Bobby was clearly dubious.

‘As a matter of fact, it’s the oldest gambling game on the North American continent.’

‘I thought Indian Stick Gambling was.’

‘Well, yes,’ Daniel gulped, ‘that’s right, too. See, stone gambling is just like stick gambling, except you use stones instead of sticks.’

‘Makes sense,’ Bobby noted.

Daniel continued, ‘You use a white stone and a black stone. You mix them hand to hand behind your back and then hold your fists out to the other person, who can choose the hand that has either the black or white stone.’

‘Little more complex than stick gambling, but the same idea. I gotta think you chose it because you think it’ll neutralize my vast card-playing experience. Which was smart of you.’ He draped his arm fraternally around Daniel’s shoulders. ‘But you’re gonna be in a world of hurt, Daniel. I beat Tony Big Elk
so bad
stick gambling that he retired, and he was supposed to be the best.’

Daniel hadn’t heard that story before, so wasn’t sure if it was fact or intimidation. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t waste our time playing. I’ll just
give
you the ten grand and listen to you call the shots for another year.’