Hawk gave Armand six grand against the ten he owed him and paid Phil down to four grand again, so tonight he only has a couple of hundred dollars to lose. Phil the Pot is a numbers man. You don’t have to pay him more than a small, flat-rate interest, but that way it takes a lifetime to sweep clean your debt. The American way, like Armand says. Pay the vig, ignore the principal. Fives asks no interest beyond an initial charge and a one-time 60 percent penalty for nonimmediate repayment in full. If Hawk had paid Armand after Earth Day weekend he’d have owed eleven-five. Otherwise he owed Fives fifteen thousand and after a first payment of a grand he had to meet his obligations. No late fees or mounting interest. They cut him off. Like American Express.
“You in or what?” says Fat Frankie.
“Not tonight,” Hawk says. “I’m playing poker.”
“They allow slightly Jewish people in that game?” Marcus asks.
“He’s come to have lessons and to pay for them too,” the Rubber Rabbi says, so named for the quality of his checks.
“Can you make that rabbi stop talking?” Hawk says.
“No,” Marcus says, shaking his head sadly. “He has no super ego.”
“What part of you’s Jewish?” No-Way asks Hawk. “I thought you was one of us.”
“One of what, No-Way?” Marcus says. “They haven’t found a culture for you to be in yet. Be patient, they’re still looking.”
“Get my batting helmet,” Frieda says when Hawk and Mikey enter, and everyone smiles. It’s never good when people in a poker game all look happy to see you.
“The Hunchdame of Notreback,” Hawk says. “How you been?”
“Kicking ass and taking names and tattooing them on my butt.”
“Whatchew peddling?” Boardwalk asks Hawk. “Where’d you get that sunburn?”
“In here,” Larry Lawyer says.
Hawk takes two Earth Day buttons off his lapels with color photos of the planet on them that read, LOVE YOUR MOTHER EARTH.
“My old lady would love this shit, man. How much?”
“Two bucks for you, Boardwalk. Sells for four on the street.”
“Two bucks? It’s got an old date on it. Probably cost you five cents to begin with.”
“Don’t buy ’em. That button’s a three-color job. Cost a buck each to print.”
“Three-color hand job,” Boardwalk says. “You take chips?”
“Play cards,” says Lawyer Larry, sitting there with the tongue of his loosened tie resting on the felt of the table and his chips stacked neatly on the tie.
“Hey Larry,” Hawk says. “Is it true they’re using lawyers in lab experiments because there’s things rats wouldn’t do?”
Tuna, the dealer, looks like a rat with sunken cheeks and a pin nose. He’s light and indifferent with the cards, like a casino dealer waiting for suckers to bust. His skin is gray and his beady eyes close and flicker just a fraction under his visor as he pinches a few chips out of every pot for the house, or raps a toke tip against the drop box before putting it in his dealer apron. Mikey holds his cards close, peeks under the corner, pitches. Gonna play tight. Hawk’s gotta play loose. The few outright known suckers in the mix usually get knocked out fast, and most of the regulars can read Hawk’s face like a Daily News headline if he tries waiting for hands. Better to mix speeds and pump and try and get lucky.
Around nine, pork in the hole, Hawk pitches, phones Carla at work. He can hear Carlos’s letter-cutting machinery humming behind her.
“Can you talk now?” Hawk asks.
“Yeah, I’m taking a break.”
“You think anymore about Monday? Seymour says my car’s supposed to be fixed. It could be fun to get out of the city, drive up the Hudson. Or Jersey, take Zoey to Six Flags Adventure, or is it Seven? They got rides. You know, just drive.”
“Just drive?” Carla says.
Silence.
“Yeah. Hey, Carla. You okay?”
“Nelson called an hour ago. Drunk idiot bitch. Apologizing. Wanting me to have a drink with him. I could kill that bitch.”
“Let me know if I can help,” Hawk says.
“I should be so lucky.”
“Look, don’t worry about that moron, okay? We’ll be out front of Zabar’s after the Broadway Festival tomorrow. You could stop by and we could talk about Monday.”
Hawk walks back to the table, thinking he played the hand cool.
“What’s the news?” Mikey says.
“The Ginsu knifer’s on the loose again.”
“What?” Frieda says, lighting a cigarette from her previous.
“This bozo stabs one of my girlfriend’s other boyfriends with four Ginsu knives. Like he wanted to try out the whole set.”
“If you play poker with him you’d be fined by Gamblers Anonymous,” Frieda says.
“Hawk, man. You don’t mind my saying so, looks like you could use a little metal, maybe,” Tuna says, with a wink.
“Funny you should ask.”
“And if you need,” Tuna says, “I got.”
“You could pass me a couple of aces,” Mikey says.
“’Cause I’m holding this extra .22—brand spanking new,” Tuna continues. “I mean, out of the box.”
The rat salesman, whiskers moving.
“It’d run you a hundred and I could throw in a box of bullets.”
“Does it include instructions?” Boardwalk says. “So Lamb Chops here doesn’t shoot his other foot.”
Hawk can’t help staring at the gun on the table. He picks it up. It’s light and cold in his hand and a blue-green gray. Not much heavier than the plastic machine-gun squirter Zoey spritzes him with in the park. A cop shot an eleven-year-old who had one of these squirters a few blocks from his building and claimed it was self-defense. Hawk examines the empty clip, snaps it in, holds it to his head, squeezes off a few rounds.
“This thing stop somebody?”
“You hit ’em in the head or the chest it’ll bring ’em down.”
“Otherwise it’ll just make ’em mad,” Boardwalk says.
The table’s watching him.
Hawk knows the simple truth: if you don’t want to buy a product from a salesman, you shouldn’t even peek in its direction.
“Your basic bargain-basement personal security system,” Tuna says.
“Hawk,” Mikey says. “What you want with that gun?”
“Okay if I pay in chips?”
“You better leave that thing in your house,” Mikey says. “Cops find that, it’s called carrying a concealed weapon. You ain’t got a permit, they put you out of circulation.”
“Unlawful possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon,” Lawyer Larry says. “Punishable by up to a year.”
“Since when do we worry about permits?” Hawk says to Mikey.
“Don’t worry,” Boardwalk says. “Larry will defend you. He got a guy off once in 1983. With his hands behind his back.”
Hawk puts together a minor streak, splits a few pots containing mostly his money, and has that sure and slow feeling of being processed. Tuna shuffles faster and looks dead. Flat voice calling “stud” in the rotation. Nun to the nun, heart to the possible. The long hand of the wall clock sweeps the grime of the night into the dust pan of the short hand. Omaha-lows counterfeited. Hawk’s chips come and they go and they go. He tries to action things up, feel the magic.
“One more time, all in,” Hawk says, shoving in his last chips and showing trips when he’s called.
“You starting to sound like Count Basie,” Mikey says.
“No fool, no fun,” Frieda says, flopping her hole cards to show that the river made her boat. “No vacancy!”
“Goddamn river!” Hawk yells.
“If there weren’t a river,” Frieda says for the millionth time.
“There’d be no fish,” Hawk says, easing back.
“Wanna hold a few C’s?” Mikey asks.
“Just as soon try to catch a few z’s before the show.”
No-Way pokes his head in, crinkles his nose. “What stinks?”
“Frieda just barbecued a Hawk,” Larry says.
Hawk leans against the wall, rifles the Post to unkink.
He knows he won’t sleep. He might have slept less than any man alive. Tomorrow he’ll rise and rub his face with cold sink water and rinse off assorted layers of jinxes and then be zonked in the sun, handing out napkins and straws and sodas while his eyeballs slide down his face. Sweaty tourists will ask him where Bloomingdale’s is like he’s Rand McNally. He reads a column about a guy under a collapsed building for ten days who ate cardboard and drank rainwater and survived. The centerfold of the paper shows an old guy being handed a cardboard replica of a check for five million by Miss Housewife New Jersey. More advice, predictions, horoscopes. You could dial in for the winners.
“You just miss the lottery again?” Frieda asks.
“Just checking the weather forecast for tomorrow.”
“The forecast for tonight,” says Simon from the shoe store, “is for darkness, with a chance of stars.”