“ACCORDING TO HOYT, they lost their hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean last night.” Over breakfast, Brogan is giving Glenna an update on his folks.
I’m there between them, the interested third party they like, finishing my buttered toast.
“Oh, shit.” Glenna has her hair rolled up and is in an old pair of Brogan’s pajamas that she likes to wear to sit around and have juice when they’re not doing business. “Oh, damn. How can they do it again? You tell me. Don’t they know there’s nobody to bail them out any more?”
“Hoyt was cased on coverall.”
“Don’t speak to me in that foreign language.”
“Cissy was cased on B 17.”
“Bingo. They were playing bingo.”
“You got it.”
“How in this wide world is it possible to lose the mortgage on your house in a bingo game?”
“Easy. That’s when they always do it. It’s never craps. It’s never blackjack. Those are too rich for their blood.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Blackjack you got to have money to stay in the game. Craps you got sharks watching every move. Bingo, down there in the bingo parlors, you got a running total and you got all these old folks playing with their social security, looking like they’re at a church social, and first thing you know you’re down five hundred, and there goes the house payment. And then if you’re already two months behind, the bank can decide that it especially wants, right now in the squeeze, to own that little frame doodad with the sweet gum in the backyard. Bankers start sitting around getting nostalgic to own Lot 4, Block 48 one more time. Like in the good old days.”
“Why wouldn’t the bank just look the other way? They got houses out the kazoo they can’t sell right this minute.”
“Repossessed house goes in Column B. Moves from Column A. Moves from accounts receivable to assets. Looks good on paper. They got nothing but accounts receivable, they got nothing but uncollected debts, an examiner could say. See here, they can tell him, we got this two bedroom, eat-in kitchen, all the extras, Lot 4, Block 48. We’re fixing to have a couple more. This is your solvent bank, with assets.”
“They couldn’t sell it for twenty-five thousand, that place.”
“Multiply by three. Times three. You could sell a leaking dog house for seventy-five G in that part of town.”
“Did you forget the bottom fell out?”
“So lien-fettered upward mobes have got to drop their one ninety-nines and move down in a hurry. But they got to keep their kids in the Alamo Heights even if they’re eating Alpo. So here comes this little bungalow on the right side of all the tracks. No way it won’t be a hot item.”
“If we bought it, could we make a profit selling it?” She takes a finger and smooths the wrinkle between her eyes.
“I’m not putting Hoyt and Cissy on the street. Besides, in three years we can get double. There’s going to be a turn-around, you’ll see.”
“Brogan, paying for this customers’ party is already breaking the piggy bank.”
“I’m coming up with something.”
“I saw the flyers of your cocoa king.” She sniffs.
“Something new. I got an idea. Give me a little time to polish the fine points. The bank’s giving Hoyt and Cissy thirty days’ notice. To come up with the back payments, P-I-T-I, principal, interest, taxes, insurance.”
“This is eight times since I’ve known you, Brogan Temple, they’ve done this. Seven times we bought the house back, starting on our honeymoon. We got a box big enough for a Kelvinator holding deeds to that place.”
“You got to understand the urge.” Brogan is full of sympathy for his parents. “It’s excitement. What’re you going to do at seventy years with no dough and nothing to do but watch the tube and you can’t see too well for that? And you’ve given up smoking because your doctor doesn’t understand it’s your only occupation; so you’re retired from the only thing you ever knew how to do well.
“And you fight a little, but they never got a lot of pleasure from that, and you shop some, but that takes money. Besides, you don’t know what to buy that you don’t already have too many of. Their house looks like a three-car garage sale already. But you can get in the Pontiac and drive across town and then you get in the atmosphere of winning. You get that close.” He holds up his fingers half an inch apart. “You get that close to the big one. Maybe even win fifty or a hundred. That feels great. It makes you forget you lost three.”
“Your mom never gambled, did she?” Glenna turns to me for some third-party sympathy.
I consider how to answer this. Gambling, you could say, is all Mom ever did. But not that way, no, not bingo. “No,” I tell her.
“Brogan doesn’t gamble.”
I don’t see how she can sit here and say that, but she’s thinking about being cased for coverall. About waiting there with your favorite bingo card lacking only that one number and you’re going to win one thousand dollars when they call it. Brogan doesn’t do that.
“You worry sometimes it’s inherited,” she says. “Like heavy drinking, or being color-blind.” She looks at me. “I bet if I had kids, I’d be a nervous wreck, worrying were they placing bets on Little League or something.”
“The first time,” Brogan says in a solemn voice, helping himself to a sweet roll, “the first time it happened, Hoyt called me up and said, ‘Son, we lost our hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.’ This time he said, ‘On Baltic and Mediterranean.’ It’s real sad, isn’t it, hon, how when the bottom falls out your image of yourself deteriorates.”