MANFRED A. OZIKEAN RAISED UP A HAND—the knuckles bruised from that afternoon’s game against the Black Hawks—and poised it over his cards. The huge hand fluttered back and forth over the fan, sometimes darting in close for a possible pickup, always turning back. “My gracious,” Manny sighed, “what a predicky-doo.” Dainty talk from a man who that afternoon had situated Charlie Gardiner’s nose somewhere near his hairline.
“Play,” says I. I was one draw away from a lay-down, and I could fill it at either end of two straights or fill up my set of deuces. My little fingers had started to itch.
“A predicky-dicky-doo,” says Manfred. Manny raised that hand again. It took a run at a card, even grabbed the top corner like it really meant business. Then, after a second’s stillness, the hand retreated and began to beat on the tabletop.
“Manny,” I said.
Manny looked up. “Yo?”
“Play.”
I had a loathsome little seven of clubs that was eager to sacrifice itself on the refuse heap. I knew that the next card would fill up my gin. A feeling in my bones. Manfred likely had a couple of pairs or else was saving only one suit, something he did now and again, confused about the rules of the game.
Outside our window was Chicago on a Saturday night. It howled. But Manfred hadn’t been drinking much since the beginning of the 1918–19 season (since he met Janey Millson, really), one of the main reasons that the Ottawa Paddies were currently tearing up the league. It was due to Manny and, I must say, Little Leary, a puff of Irish wind. I’d had a hat trick that afternoon against the Hawks, popping three straight goals all in the third frame. I was wearing the top hat in our hotel room, playing cards. If you could call what we were doing playing cards.
“Hey!” That blasted me and my seat almost two feet backwards. Manfred was grinning.
“Figured out a play, have we?”
“Gin.” Manfred’s hammy paw rearranged his cards quickly and laid them down on the table. I looked at them close—sometimes Manny left holes in the straights or confounded the suits—but this time he had it clean. I tossed down my cards and flipped him the quarter.
“Much obliged, Percival.” Manny polished the coin on his shirtfront and pocketed it with glee. The Patriots were paying him plenty, but the only money that seemed to mean anything to him was the quarter we exchanged over card games.
Manfred scooped up the duckets and began to waterfall them. Cards dribbled over the top, and before long some were boxed. “You want another crack at me, Percival?”
“Naw.” I flipped onto my bed, cradled the back of my head in my hands. The ceiling was cracked in more places than it wasn’t. I shoved the top hat forward so that I wouldn’t have the one light bulb burning into my eyeballs.
Manny flipped onto his bed, which could have been a serious mistake. The thing groaned and the room shook, but everything settled down. I counted two automobile accidents during the silence. Chicago sounded like a wounded animal.
“I miss Constance. Er, Janey.” I was receiving a blow-by-blow account of Manfred’s romance with Miss Millson, not that I’d requested it. We’d now arrived at a stage where Manny missed her every time he wasn’t with her. Being a hockey player, that was plenty. “Do you miss Chloe?” Manny asked me.
Chloe was Janey’s younger sister. She looked quite a bit like Jane, only she looked like she’d been salted and left out in the sun. Chloe’s face was pinched and set like stone. When she walked, her cheeks jiggled. The best thing about her was her eyes, which were a very light blue. But, you know, eyes is eyes. If the big star is eyes, the show ain’t going to Broadway. I’d been seeing Chloe since the summer previous. According to her, we had an understanding, although I had no idea what it was. Anyway, to answer Manny’s query I produced a vague grunt that he could interpret however he wished.
Someone was screaming outside, drunken incoherencies, a foreign tongue.
At our Home Opener in Bytown that year, Janey Millson had single-handedly roused the crowd to near-riot pitch. She claimed a seat near the players’ bench, one of the prime viewing positions, but she spent the whole game with her back to the ice, hollering upwards into the stands. She made us Paddies feel like a whole different team; even North Innes said, “We got to get serious out there!” The Patriots were in first place by a handful of points.
The door to our hotel room flew open, and there stood Clay Bors Clinton.
“Asleep?!” he demanded. Clay was dressed in his army uniform, even though the Great War was some time finished. He was going to milk that baby for all it was worth. Clay was sporting a handlebar mustache. He was all the time experimenting with facial growth, but the beards and mustaches just seemed to interfere with his beauty. “It’s but nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and these two ponces are asleep!”
Manfred was off his bed in a second, scooping up Clay in a bear hug. I continued to lie there, although I did cock an eye at Clay and give him the old howdy-do.
Clinton sat on my bed. He regarded me archly.
“Is he exhausted, Freddy?”
“Could be maybe,” Manfred noted. “It was a tough game.”
“Did the Percival poppet play well, Freddy?”
“Three goals,” Manfred announced proudly.
“Well done, Percy, my pretty!” Clay Clinton slapped my belly. Then he stood, straightened the crease in his trousers, adjusted his collar and cap, and said, “Leave us leave.”
“I got shot in the head!” I piped up. “I got two decorations, Clay. I was at the Vimy Ridge.”
“Percival, Percival, Percival,” muttered Clinton quietly. “Do you really think I don’t know these things?”
“I haven’t seen you in some time.”
“You’re seeing me now.”
I jumped off my bed. “I guess maybe I could go for some grub.”
“I was thinking, Percival mine,” said Clinton, “of refreshments that were more liquid.” Clay grinned at Manny.
“Oh, listen,” I said, “Manny doesn’t—”
Manny cut me off, quick and clean. “Sure!” he shouted. “I could go for a glass of beer, maybe.”
This was the early times with Manfred. I allowed as he probably could go for a glass of beer. We didn’t know so much about the whole deal back then, didn’t even have the word “alcoholic.” That came up in the forties while my boy Clarence was busy becoming one. In the teens and ‘twenties, someone who favored the whoozle-water was an “alcoholist,” and what Manfred was wont to do, I hate to admit, was called “Indian drinking.”
I flipped on my cap, picked up the dragon-head swagger stick. “I’ll get a ginger ale and one of those pickled eggs.”
“Still on the ginger ale, are we?” asked Clay, opening the door to the Windy City.
I nodded. “Can’t quit the stuff.”
The three of us went out into the night.