Max Collins - Quarry's deal

Somebody came around and lit our candle. It threw shadows on her face, making her features seem even more exotic than usual. She wasn’t wearing any make-up on her eyes. She didn’t have to.

I was taking a perverse enjoyment in the verbal games we were playing, neither of us aware of what the stakes were, exactly, but both aware we were playing something, maybe nothing more than the sex game, or anyway that was the conclusion I hoped she’d come to, and maybe she had, if I was succeeding at convincing her I really was just a guy who used to sell brassieres.

I knew one thing. I knew I had to be something of a pain in the ass to her, since she was obviously playing the back-up role here, surveilling Tree till her partner (who I assumed was the guy who’d worked me over with the lamp) got ready to make the hit. I was in her way, making it impossible for her to properly keep an eye on Tree, to get his movements, his pattern down; but my presence here was suspicious enough to make it necessary for her to keep track of me, at least until she was sure of who the hell I was or wasn’t. Otherwise she’d have to forget the Tree contract entirely; she was a pro, and couldn’t operate any other way. She’d beg off the job, tell her middle man to tell their client to get somebody else because this one just didn’t smell right to her.

The thing that bothered me was, was she getting to me? And something else bothered me even more: I was starting to entertain the probably stupid notion that I might be getting to her.

Not to mention this nagging feeling I had that one of us was behaving like an idiot, and I was afraid I knew which one of us it was.

Unless it was both of us…

We had another drink, and I decided to move another chess piece.

“There’s something I’m having trouble with,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Your name. Lucille. It’s a nice name. I like it. But I’m having a little trouble using it. It’s, I don’t know, too formal or something. And you don’t look like a Lucy to me. Do people call you Lucy?”

“My folks did. I always hated it.”

“So what do people call you?”

“Do I have a nickname, you mean? Well. I knew a man who called me Ivy. He seemed to like that name for me.”

Ivy. The Broker’s name for her. I make a tentative little move, just nudge a pawn out for a look around, and she comes down on me with her fucking queen.

“Ivy,” I said. “I don’t think it fits you.”

“My friends in high school called me Lu. Nobody’s called me that in years though.”

“Lu.” I lifted my gimlet. “Here’s to you. Lu.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to have so many drinks so early in the day? I’m a bartender. I know.”

“Are you going to accept the damn toast, or not?”

“All right.” She clinked her glass against mine. “Here’s to Lu.”

The house lights dimmed. We looked down and the stage had been cleared, the set put back in place, and the play was beginning.

And that was when I found out who her friend Ruthy was.

She was the lead. Playing the Judy Holliday role in Born Yesterday, which they were doing in ’40s dress and trappings, since that’s when the play first came out, and because people like nostalgia, I guess. She was no Judy Holliday, but she was blond, and well-built, and not a bad little actress, for Des Moines.

She was also Frank Tree’s girl friend.

But then was that so surprising?

After all, Tree himself was sitting at a ringside table. I saw him there when the house lights went up for intermission.

The bitch had brought me along on her goddamn stakeout.

Sunday evening was interesting.

I won a hundred some bucks playing draw poker, but that in itself wasn’t particularly interesting. What was was the dealer, the kid with the worried expression and closed mouth and glasses, the one who played stupid every time I sat down at his table, which was every night I’d been there.

So winning a few bucks from him was nothing special. In fact I usually won a little bigger.

But it was unusual to see him wearing make-up.

I don’t mean to imply he was queer or anything (though you never know). I don’t mean he was wearing lipstick or mascara or rouge. It was makeup, flesh-colored stuff, the theatrical-type liquid some women use in place of powder these days. He’d applied it along one cheek, across the cheekbone and down a ways. That side of his face was a little fucked up, a little puffy. The make-up did a fair job of disguising it, and the somewhat dim lighting in the room helped, too. But his face was fucked up, no question, like maybe he’d been in a fight.

Like maybe somebody had given him an elbow in the face.

He didn’t say much that night. He didn’t say much any night. He let his cards speak for him, and they didn’t say much either, except that he was lousy.

I listened to what little he did say, though. You can’t play poker and not let out a few words, now and then, especially sitting in the dealer’s chair. So I listened and tried to match the voice with the voice behind the light that had shined in my eyes last night.

At one point one of the other players commented casually on the bandages on my face. I still had five of them, covering little cuts I’d got from where the lamp caught me. I gave a small speech about how people who use electric razors shouldn’t switch all of a sudden to a straight razor unless they don’t mind looking like chopped meat for a couple days: The various players laughed politely at that. Everybody but the dealer. He just shuffled his cards and said to the man at his left, “Cut them.”

It was the same voice, all right.

I made a mental appointment with him, and returned to my cards.

The other interesting thing that happened Sunday night was Lu (as I was beginning to feel comfortable calling her) had invited me to move in with her.

“Why keep paying for that bed at the Holiday Inn?” she said. “You haven’t been using it.”

“Your apartment’s pretty small. We’re going to be tripping over each other.”

“That sounds kind of nice.”

It did at that.

So I moved in with her, wondering how she was going to manage to watch Tree with me around, knowing that if anyone could find a way it was Lu.

Glenna.

Ivy.

When I got there Tree was almost finished with his lunch. He was sitting alone, in a booth, eating a bratwurst sandwich. It was eleven and the lull between breakfast and lunch was just about over; soon the coffee shop would be crowded again, and I wanted to talk to him in private.

I went over and smiled and said, “The swimming pool, when you’re done.”

Tree looked up and his mouth was full but his china blue eyes were empty. He just nodded, looked down again, picked a pickle off his plate and went right ahead eating.

He was a poker player, all right.

The place was a Holiday Inn, but not a typical one. It was situated on the turn-off for the Amana Colonies, which was where some Amish-type settlers had experimented with a crude communistic life style a hundred years ago or so, and the place had affected a rustic look, not unlike Tree’s own Red Barn, though somewhat more authentic. The barnwood walls were decorated with framed photographs of somber, bearded pioneers in heavy dark clothing, their wives in bonnets and drab formless dresses, faces full of hard work and well-earned unhappiness.

Some of the pictures showed children, who hadn’t been around long enough to get glum, though the teenagers in the pictures were well on their way. There were also some examples of authentic pioneer clothing, under glass, and some old farm equipment and, in little roped-off alcoves, antique furniture was visible, with modern versions of similar furniture displayed here and there, with tags telling where in the Amanas the stuff could be bought.