Stuart Dybek - Paper Lantern - Love Stories

Only time I ever heard that sumnabitch actually admit it.

He kisses my neck and whispers, I still get hard just thinking about those pink silver-dollar nips. I want you to go to the Ladies’ and take your panties off. I’d like to blindfold you with your panties.

I say, You got some peculiar ideas. But I do it. There was like something about the heat that night making us drunk.

We win the fifth race. Heat wave or no, the stands are full, and the regulars know what’s going on. You can’t hide a winning streak, let alone a blindfolded woman with 36Ds in a white summer dress and no panty line. There’s a rumor the IRS has surveillance going, but instead a flying under the radar, Frank’s pounding beers, flaunting our luck, yelling, Yeah, Rosebud baby, we’re back in the peanuts and caramels! I’m so sweated my lucky dress looks like a wet T-shirt contest. You can see my—you really don’t get it?—hot nips.

Look, Rafael, we’re both a little buzzed. You wanta hear it like it happened, I gotta get personal. Frank that sumnabitch noticed—not like you could miss it—that when I’m on a roll my nipples have a mind of their own. When he’d blindfold me, it didn’t just feel like I had super-hearing. It felt like everyone at the track had X-ray vision and was looking at my boobs, and big-shot Frank the exhibitionist is getting off on it. I’m in the zone with the voices. One’s praying a rosary like the Virgin cares who wins in the sixth, and the newlywed has a crying heart cause she knows she’s married a loser, and the old man’s mumbling today’s the day to go for broke and if he bottoms out he’s going to step on the third rail, it’s like he’s betting his life, like all their fates are riding on a bunch of Lasix-doped nags trotting around a goddamn track in Cicero. I can feel the sparkle horse crossing my eyelids, and then I hear that creepy whisper, Move that shapely ass , bitch , and I think: Who are you?

I must of said it aloud cause Frank goes, I didn’t say nothing, Rosebush. And at the same time, the creepy voice answers: Zorro .

This time, instead a tearing off the blindfold I let myself listen to what it’s been trying to tell me all summer, ever since we been winning.

You need that shapely ass fanned, slut?

That’s what’s making for hot nips, not buena suerte like Frank thinks. I can hardly breathe in that heat, and my finger’s sliding across the racing form, pointing to I don’t know what, and everyone’s looking at the bitch on a roll with the white dress riding up her legs.

I pick three straight winners, something I ain’t done since that first night.

Lester’s pleading for Frank to loan him money to play, but Frank ain’t listening. We’re all in our separate trances. Frank doesn’t take the blindfold off between races so’s not to mess with our luck, and for the first time I’m not dizzy anymore. I lose count how much we’re up. Three, four grand. Frank that sumnabitch is treasurer anyway. We’re in the zone, Rosebush, he says, you’re going to hit the Pick 3.

I go, You always said combo bets are for suckers.

Not today. We started with the Daily Double; we’re ending with the Pick 3. Going for broke, Rosebush.

Then he sees my picks for the last three races and chickens out, just bets a grand cause I pick three horses from the same stable where they name all their horses Bunny—Pearl Bunny, Precious Bunny, and Cool Bunny—and Frank thinks blindfolded or not I’m picking cute names again. Plus, what’s the odds on three Bunnies coming in first?

Well, I can tell you the odds that night: forty-four to one.

Pearl Bunny and Precious Bunny win their races. By then Frank’s hoarse from hollering. His shout’s a raspy whisper. He’s going berserkers cause Cool Bunny is boxed in eight lengths back. The blindfold slips down. Who knows how long it was off before I realized I could see. I’m so overheated I’m shaking like I got chills. I can smell myself. I smell like the bedroom and I think everyone at the track can smell it.

You mind an older woman talking frankly, Rafael? I get the feeling I can be honest with you, that you ain’t someone judges people. Maybe that ain’t an angel’s job—judging. You just bring the messages. It’s all just life on earth, right? I imagine a guy with your looks got some stories hisself. What do those nudes tell you? Probably the same stuff they’d blab about dressed. There’s a difference between nude and naked. Nude’s like art, but naked’s exposing the soul. Hell, who ain’t got things they’d strip their clothes off and stand bare-ass in the middle a downtown rather than tell?

Everyone’s up cheering. But me, I’m sitting like I already know Cool Bunny will bust to the outside, the driver using the whip like that buggy’s hitched to the sparkle horse, like the other horses are in slo-mo, like we’re all in slo-mo and it’s Cool Bunny in a photo, by a nose, and me sitting there shaky like I caught Parkinson’s from Lester, still feeling that whip, each lash with its own fever, and then Frank’s kissing me and pounding Lester’s back, and we’re waiting for the total to flash on the board, and when it does, we ain’t just won forty-four grand. No, what we won was the Four Deuces. When Cool Bunny crossed that line, our lives crossed a line, too. We won things we wanted and things we only thought we wanted, and things we couldn’t imagine, things we couldn’t give back. If we hadn’t of won, that slut, the Widow, never woulda stepped into my life. Oh, I’ll tell you about her. We won every moment that followed—like even this moment, Rafael. Think about it. If we hadn’t won all those years ago, you wouldn’t be in here now. So, the night we won is connected to you, too. We won you and me getting buzzed, sitting at the bar with the afternoon light coming in through the open door, and me setting up two more shooters of Chopin to celebrate our victory. Tak. Salute!

So, without waiting to catch his breath, Frank’s on to beating the system. He don’t wanta pay tax on all that money, and to call attention to all we ain’t reported. Still hoarse from cheering, he says, Lester, my man, you’re on disability, and black, you cash the ticket, and a couple hundred of it’s yours.

Should be more, Frank, should be ten percent, Lester goes, that’s the minimum a waiter gets for godsake.

Like I said, Rafael, who ain’t greedy? I mean, just twenty minutes earlier Lester’s begging for two bucks and a brat.

All right, Frank goes, meet you half fucking way, and before Lester can argue he gives Lester’s left hand a shake cause Lester got the palsy in his right. Then he gives Lester the ticket, and turns to me with a fistful of cash.

We can afford a cab, my sweet Bud, he says, my amazing, beautiful Rosebud, it should be a limo. Go home and put on “Wild Horses” and get your voluptuous ass ready to celebrate. And he kisses me so everyone at Sportsman’s can see. This is how life should feel every moment, he says, and he makes like he’s kissing my ear, and whispers that he gotta keep an eye on Lester, that he don’t trust no left-handed handshake, and that he’s going to give Lester a ride home to the housing project after Lester gets the money for the ticket.

I get home, peel off the lucky white dress, take a long slow shower, and dab on perfume, Red, which Frank stole off the trains and says makes me smell like a Roman whore—that’s a compliment, by the way. I’m like in a trance beyond horny, achy to be touched. Hot as it is I put on the black nylons with what Frank calls the mysterious thigh-high scripture, that he kneels before and makes me raise my skirt so he can read with his lips. I been saving a negligee for a special occasion and I slip it on and check myself out in the full-length mirror, and don’t believe what I see. Showing right through the filmy fabric, my behind’s marked up. It makes me so dizzy I sit down on the bed. I don’t want Frank to see, so I put on a black slip instead. I put out cheese spread, crackers, olives, there’s a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and I put martini glasses in to chill, light candles. It feels too hot for candles, though I got all the fans humming, but I want it dark. I put on “Wild Horses.” I want it playing when Frank walks in, and I turn out the lights, and wait. And wait. The flames are floating on wax puddles by the time he shows up.