The Altonevers (7 page)

Antique looking glass and detailed
woodwork cover most walls to be seen of this oversized sleepy
little town. They have revolving doors as every entryway, that seem
to be bowing outward and reshaping themselves as the two pass them
by. Strolling the sidewalks of this out of the way Alto, having
only one two lane avenue connecting spliced dead ends and one way
streets.

“
Enjoying yourself?” he
asks. She ignores him, preferring the levitating people and their
pets. Liking the weave of this peoples clothing and cloths hung on
laundry lines crisscrossing the second story of almost every
building in town. Admiring the passing peoples clothing, some silky
looking scarves hanging in a boutique window.

“
They really like scarves
here,” she says.

“
They're alright. Just keep
an open eye, okay.”

“
I can look after myself.
That one’s nice,” she says pointing to a plaid penguin feather
scarf in a window.

“
They have nice neck
accessories, but were just passing by.”

“
Where are we going,
anyway?” she asks.

“
Down the block and around
the corner. To a gambling house,” he says, liking to see her
pause.

“
I've never played
before.”

“
It’ll be fun,” he
says

“
Do you have money to
gamble?”

“
Yeah, lots, I've been hot
lately.”

“
Then, why can't I get a
scarf?” she asks.

“
We can get one on the way
back, now there’s too few people outside to hide,” he says. A humid
but cool breeze and the pulsing muted yellow light of spring is
disarming the two of any sense of urgency. They come to a well lit
hazel house looking like a neglected country courthouse.

“
So this is where you've
been all this time, a cat house!?”

“
A brothel, have some
respect for the craft. They have tables and a band.”

“
And nude neon women in the
window, real neon ones, dancing.”

“
It's mostly a gambling
den, never mind what's on display,” he says.

She rolls her eyes from him to a
brightly lit sign which she reads “The red hen’s house.”

“
Can we get some food
first? I don’t want to eat there.”

“
Sure,” he says looking
around. They settle on a push cart manned by a hairy man with
stains on his shirt and a tight vendors cap scooping the middle out
of balls of bread and filling them with a fleshy blue
soup.

“
What'll it be lady?” the
vendor grunts.

“
Whatever they’re eating?”
Cider answers.

“
You mean a
bobber?”

“
I guess,” she says. The
two watch other people eating and eat it as they do. Dipping the
scooped out bread, sipping the soup, then eating the bowl. They
walk up a filthy red carpet covering a shallow set of stairs
leading into the stochastic saloon's open door. In passing through
heavy purple curtains the enter into the air of countless nights of
the heights of hot streaks, the lows of last pennies lost and lives
put on ice. Mounds and piles of gambling chip shift and spill over
tens of green felt tables, cascading in random sounding crashes
that chirp like birds in a rain forest. A room of more angles than
a house of mirrors, filled with fat drunks and pimps, dogs of men
and women, all of them crooks of some sort. Seated together,
thieving, lying and tricking the money from the pockets of the
person next to them.

The patrons are crammed through the
large parlor room past capacity, squeezed between islands of green
felt tables and roulette pits haphazardly thrown about a haze of
smoke. Nearly every one of them, from child to adult, is smoking
with their faces obscured but for their cherries flickering in and
out like floating fireflies flashing and fading in a fog.
Deafeningly loud, with boisterous shouting and the laughter of the
winning mixing in with swearing and fighting of the losing. A
waitress clad in dirty apron and skirt with a big kitchen knife
tied around her waist, brushes past Anna while balancing a tray
full of overflowing mugs. Anna stumbles over a beached whale of a
man, face down in someone else’s foam filled vomit.

“
What's wrong with that
guy?” she asks.

“
Him? nothing. Ever play
blackjack?”

“
Twenty one?”

“
Good we'll sit at that
table, I like that table.”

“
Okay,” she says, following
him nervously. Feeling as green as the felt tables stepping over
the dead or unconscious. Leaning away from the frisky patron’s
creeping about and the few faces she can glimpse in passing. Most
of the patrons peek at her, then to Cider and away, sinking their
heads as though praying not to know him.

“
Do you know them?” she
asks. He doesn’t answer. Leading her to a table and pulling out a
wooden chair for her to sit. She sits and he waves his hand, a
nearly nude knife wielding bar girl brings a stack of colored
casino chips.

“
They work for a guy I
know,” he says and shrugs.

“
Which ones?”

“
Almost everyone here.
They're Ravens Anna. It's why they all have some sort of red about
them.”

“
What are Ravens?” she
asks.

“
Debt collectors, hustlers,
hookers, messengers, criminals, politicians, crime bosses, anyone.
Actually the only requirements for the job are to have been a
killer and to have been killed. He has a foothold in almost all the
Alto’s I’ve been to yet, he’s virtually inescapable, it’s
charmingly a nuisance.”

“
Everyone that wears red?”
she asks.

“
No, some, they'll usually
have a some red around the rim of their eye lids too. And it’s
usually a bit of red somewhere, depends on how much of yourself you
get to hold on to,” he says. She seems stiff to him, not sinking
into her seat, not relaxing, looking around and moving
mechanically. Like she's scared.

“
You want a drink?” he
asks, “It'll loosen ya up.”

“
Yes please.”

“
Two please,” he
says.

“
What type of exotic drink
you think it will be?” she asks.

“
Whiskey.”

“
How much, sir?” a flat
bellowing voice asks Cider. She sees the dealers enormous hands
first, following his long white sleeve up to his black vested
double wide shoulders. Having a black bow tie that’s tiny in
comparison to the stretching somber square face above
it.

“
Chang’a ten thousand, and
give a few hundred to her,” he says throwing some yellow chips to
the middle of the table. Anna reaches and puts them in a neat pile
for the lurching man. After sliding Cider’s stack to him, she
slowly counts her own little batch of black and yellow chips. Each
take their drinks and play two hands, and two more shots, and a few
more hands. The dealer, a quick shuffle and monkey dealer, deals
two cards to the three people at the felt table. The two are next
to a thin but triple chinned man not sober enough to look up from
his glass. Who jumps up suddenly, leaving his chips and scurries
away into the smoke.

“
What’s with that guy?” She
asks.

“
I dunno, probably scared
of a skirt taking his money,” he says and she smiles. It's humid in
the heat of racing hearts as cards fall and chips shift to the
fortunate of this minute. All but the two here have the intensity
of diamonds in their desperate sleepless eyes, wired to the rush of
the turn. The smoky room comes to be overflowing with the smell of
“Is that perfume?” Anna asks sniffing the air and
sneezing.

“
No” he says, “It's
rosewater.”

“
Why do you like places
like this?” she asks.

“
Eh, you kinda sink to
where you swim, I guess. Maybe it's that you can see it all here, a
bit of the whole show. The less fortunate and the fortunate seeking
glory and despair in the same vice. Lives lived by the flop of a
hand, the roll of the die, and the springs of a call girl’s bed.
It's a den of vice, of life, where every kind meet and mingle,
bound by games of chance,” he says.

“
Are you a good swimmer?”
she asks.

“
Hahaha. No, well kinda I
guess,” he says “I think of gambling as the chances of chaos,
what's possible becomes actual. The rules set for the game, and the
luck of the draw. Kind of like the circumstances you are born into,
unfolding, and how skillfully you handle the ups and downs of your
own...streak”

“
Hmm, better than I thought
of you,” she says.

“
And it feels really good
to play the odds. That thrill when the money is up and you think
you got it, but you may not. Bliss, the closer the
better.”

“
Isn't the fun part
winning?”

“
Eh, either way,” he
shrugs. The two play on, she prays to probability under small,
smoke smothered ceiling lamp. He taps away carelessly, compulsively
chirping his chips away, as she barely pecks at the table with her
pointer finger, as long slender fingers crawl slowly, like spider
legs, across piano keys playing in the background. Leading a band
that’s not on a stage, but the brass and bass are instead spread
around the room. Their uneven notes strum as an undercurrent under
the incessant chirping of shifting stacks of chips.

A few more hands and shots later the
piano drifts off and stops. A slender, porcelain skinned temptress
with straight black hair falling around her sharply featured face,
is grinning with black painted lips. Her bare shoulders show in a
cardinal sundress that adores her shape as she stalks with long
legs straight to their table. She sits next to Cider and opposite
Anna without a word for several hands. The girl's large black shark
seeming pupils remain unblinking until taking out a silver case and
lighting a long cigarette. She smells like a freshwater pond and
her girlish voice is crisp but cold as her air as she breaks the
ice.

“
So, where have you been?”
the red dressed woman asks. He swills down another shot, “Another
round,” he shouts to a dreary blonde waitress.

“
You know her?” Anna
asks.

“
What will it be?” asks the
waitress after sprinting and jumping from table to table while
dropping off drinks and taking orders.

“
Whiskey.”

“
Whiskey.”

“
Vodka, just bring the
bottles,” the pale woman says, and is instantly obeyed. They each
take their shots and the cards are dealt.

“
You can't ignore me,” says
the porcelain skinned girl.

“
Rebecca,” he says, peeking
at his card and tapping the table.

“
Why are you betting so low
tonight? and who's your friend?” Rebecca asks.

“
Who are you?” Anna asks
her.

“
Rebecca,” she answers with
her big black unblinking eyes blaring right through Anna as she
speaks. The fireflies of the room, and it’s noises start forming
immature partial patterns in Anna's perceptions as she panics
inside.

“
You alright dear? have you
drank too much?” she asks, every word spoken in
condescension.

“
No,” Anna sharply replies.
Immediately disliking the girl for what she perceives as the pale
woman’s disdain of her.

“
You seem like the type to
over think, panic a bit. Are you nervous right now? poor thing. You
have nothing to worry about?” Rebecca says.

“
You seem like the type to
feign pleasure for the appeals of men,” Anna shoots back, then
shooting back a shot. Rebecca smirks, and the corners of her black
painted lips become sharper than thorns.

“
I like her” Rebecca says
rosily.

“
You've been coming out to
see her all this time?” Anna asks.

“
No, she's a...co-worker,”
he answers.

“
Of the cathouse?” Anna
sneers.

“
Actually, I made captain,”
says Rebecca.

“
Oh good for you,” he
says.

“
Captain of what? Anna asks
impatiently.

“
Of what?” Rebecca laughs,
“what hen house did you snatch this chic from? Captain of the
Ravens, the Raveness Rebecca” she says, and Cider squirms in his
seat.

“
Ravens?” She
asks.

“
You really don't know.
What rock are you from under?” the Raveness asks with a
sneer.

“
Her name is Anna, and
she's been along with me for a while, now” he says
defensively.

“
Anna, huh. Anyway,”
Rebecca says “We have business, don't we,” she turns her sharp
smirk back to him.

“
What happened to the other
guy” he asks.

“
Don't try to divert me,
like every other time.”

“
Okay, fine,” he
shrugs.

“
He seems to have been
seduced and lead to think he was able to walk the path of Alister.
He tried, and well didn’t quite make it,” Rebecca says.

“
Wonder who tricked the
poor guy, and you got the job? that's curious,” he says.