Hob Broun - Odditorium

“Back off, Steve.” Freed was behind him and kneading his shoulders. “It’s history, babe,” he said gravely, the wise old infantry sergeant who’s seen men die a hundred different ways.

As discreetly as he could with all eyes on him, Christo counted his money, he found that he was roughly thirty-one thousand dollars ahead. “Gee, I’d buy a round of drinks for everybody but they’re already free.”

He was not making friends.

“New cards,” said Eddie the Agent. “New cards coming out.”

So a few rounds later, in a gut-out five-card stud hand, a couple thou in revenge was extracted by Steve the Record Producer; and when things went no better over the next half hour, Christo began to suspect that he’d blown it, failed to recognize his peak and bail out before traveling the inevitable downside of the curve. Eddie the Agent was being dealt out while he “made some calls,” Dennis the Lawyer had tapped out and left, and Pierce was folding most opening bets, acting bored: Now was the perfect time to push the game into breakup and run with the profits. But on the other hand, there was still a great deal of money on the table that wasn’t his.

“So what’s the story?” Maury from Wall Street, peering over his Ben Franklins. “Are we all taking a nap?”

“Deal cards. Deal cards.”

“What time is it?”

“Dinner time,” Pierce said, “Hey, Freed, why don’t you open a restaurant in here? Some of that new light-on-the-mind cuisine, you know, raw fish wrapped in seaweed and eight-dollar salads. Maybe the publishing people would start coming here for lunch, you might do yourself some good.”

“What would you know about it?” Freed growled.

“I’m a writer myself, Freed. I know what it’s like to face that blank white sheet.”

“Do you wanna play cards or would you rather smartass?” Steve the Record Producer was by now getting after everyone.

“Sure, sure. Why don’t you deal something really challenging like Anaconda or Spit in the Ocean?”

But the game was draw, jacks or better. Christo’s five-hundred opening was called around, even by Pierce. Christo rapped on the table, passed one hand over his cards. Pat. Everyone but Pierce came right on into him, but his straight to the eight was mortally locked in.

Christo pushed his tightly fanned cards into the middle of the table. “Dealt,” pointing across to Steve the Record Producer and then, with the rude leer of someone tipping a Reno blackjack dealer for her cleavage, throwing a folded ten-dollar bill to him.

“Motherfucker.”

Impossible to say who came across the table first. Christo landed the first and last real punch, a chopping right to the side of the neck. A pawing uppercut was the best Steve could do before Freed’s rented muscle was all over him with a hammerlock.

Maury from Wall Street was yelling at the top of his lungs. “Bloody idiots. Bloody idiots.”

“You’d best take your damn seat, turkey,” Mr. Hercules said, shoving Christo with his free hand. “Or two seconds after I break his arm I’ll be breaking yours.” Then, curving the other’s body with a slight twist and tug, “Seems you and me already been to this movie, eh little Stevie? Little Stevie Wonder. I’m gonna have to kick your ass up around your collar if you don’t learn how to behave.” Something he often said after confiscating a blade in the halls of Printing Trades High.

And then Freed stepped in to mediate the money situation, boundaries between individual stakes having been obscured in the commotion.

“Now who had the brand-new fifties?”

“I did,” Christo said. “But where’s his ten? Let’s find Little Stevie’s ten first.”

Freed stuck a hand inside his shirt, somewhere near his heart. He looked at Pierce and clicked his tongue. “You get the man’s money together and then you get him the fuck out of here.”

In came Eddie the Agent massaging his receiver ear. “Hey, what’s happening, beautiful people?”

Warm rain had come with darkness into the streets. Night walkers kept close to the buildings, rushing along with heads down, jostling as they passed. Cabs poured down the wide avenues with wipers slapping and the bleeding edges of distant traffic lights, taillights were sucked up into particles of mist — sweat mixed with steam, steam with soot.

Christo shadowboxed his way past a restaurant window, college girls inside blowing on their soup. His pockets bulged. “Man, but I put out their lights.”

“Sometimes,” Pierce said, “sometimes I wonder why I have anything to do with you.”

“What’s your problem now? It was like printing my own money. I cleaned up on those ginks and now I’m ready to invest.”

“But, jazz, you burned the game down. You fucked me up with those people and some of them are customers.”

“The hell with them. We got a whole new operation, partner. New worlds to conquer. With my radar I can put us on to most of the psychiatric shoppers in this city, doctors and patients both. Who needs drugs more than they do?”

Pierce caught him by the belt loops, pulled him out of the path of an oncoming bicyclist. “Why don’t we go stash that in my safe at home before it works its way out of your pockets?”

“No, I want to feel it and look at it and spend it. Let’s go get some cocktails and a few pounds of meat. I’m paying.”

Christo had never tasted a Rio Rumba before. It contained absinthe and three different kinds of rum. He had four of them before dinner and had to have someone cut up his sirloin for him. Just outside they’d run into some people Pierce knew, an AP radio reporter and her husband. She was small and aggressive and undernourished. He had a couple of children back in Venezuela and had married her to keep from being deported.

“Come on. You have to line your stomach with something if we’re all going to make a night of it.”

She was carving his meat and feeding it to him. Nice action. He ought to find out her name.

They bar-hopped their way down Second Avenue in the general direction of a birthday party. Some fanatic in a plastic derby started buying drinks in a place by the Queensboro Bridge, so they lingered there awhile. Largely drowned out by Irish reels from the juke box, Pierce tried to talk politics with the husband. Christo and Monique (the name he’d given her for the evening) slipped out of their shoes, chalked the floor and played hopscotch. By the time they made the party it was well past midnight and running steady. The lights were off and the music was loud and it smelled like the inside of a rain boot. Monique danced until the sweat ran in her eyes. She had Christo up against the side of the refrigerator, groping with one hand, tugging at her pantyhose. She whispered something unintelligible in his ear and then a light blinked on, blinding white. The refrigerator door was open, someone saying, “Where’s the damn beer?”

Later Christo got into an ugly, window-rattling argument with a woman, both of whose parents were psychiatrists, who became so angry she spat in the host’s fish tank. They left the party by popular demand and visited a few more bars. Things went entirely out of focus. Somewhere in there as the morning wore on they landed in an after-hours Italian social club, Pierce and Monique shooting an endless eight-ball game while her husband slept on his arms at the bar and Christo belched gingerly, sipped expresso. Monique dropped ashes on the pool table and laughed like an idiot. But finally, inevitably, everyone got crashed out and depressed and went home.

Christo had to really lean on the bell before anyone came to unlock the lobby door. The night porter didn’t see any reason for anyone to be awake at this hour. Christo gave him a carton of Italian cigarettes he found under one arm. The porter accepted and kept grumbling. Christo stood in the motionless elevator with the door closed for some time before he remembered to push the button.