Hearts In Atlantis (41 page)

“But there's a big problem, Pete. Three-handed Hearts is risky. Who dares shoot the moon when you got that one fucking leftover card to worry about?”

“How are you playing? Game over at a hundred, all losers pay the winner?”

“Yeah. And if you come in, I'll kick back half what I win. Plus
I give back what you lose
.” He sunned me with a saintlike smile.

“Suppose
I
beat
you?
”

Ronnie looked momentarily startled, then smiled wider than ever. “Not in this life, shweetheart. I'm a scientist at cards.”

I glanced at my watch, then in at Ashley and Hugh. They really didn't look much like real competition, God love them. “Tell you what,” I said. “One game straight up to a hundred. Nickel a point. Nobody kicks back anything. We play, then I study, and everyone has a nice weekend.”

“You're on.” As we went back into the lounge he added: “I like you, Pete, but business is business—your homo boyfriends back in high school never gave you a fucking like I'm going to give you this morning.”

“I didn't have any homo boyfriends in high school,” I said. “I spent most of my weekends hitching up to Lewiston to ass-bang your sister.”

Ronnie smiled widely, sat down, picked up the deck of cards, began to shuffle. “I broke her in pretty good, didn't I?”

You couldn't get lower than Mrs. Malenfant's little boy, that was the thing. Many tried, but to the best of my knowledge no one ever actually succeeded.

Ronnie was a bigot with a foul mouth, a cringing personality, and that constant monkey-fungus stink, but he could play cards, I give him that. He wasn't the genius he claimed to be, at least not in Hearts, where luck is a big part of the game, but he was good. When he was concentrating full on he could remember almost every card that had been played . . . which was why, I suppose, he didn't like three-handed Hearts, with that extra card. With the kicker card gone, Ronnie was tough.

Still, I did all right that first morning. When Hugh Brennan went over a hundred in the first game we played, I had thirty-three points to Ronnie's twenty-eight. It had been two or three years since I'd played Hearts, it was the first time in my life I'd played it for
money, and I thought two bits a small price to pay for such unexpected entertainment. That round cost Ashley two dollars and fifty cents; the unfortunate Hugh had to cough up three-sixty. It seemed Ronnie had won the price of a date after all, although I thought the girl would have to be a real Bogart fan to give him a blowjob. Or even a kiss goodnight, for that matter.

Ronnie puffed up like a crow guarding a fresh piece of roadkill. “I got it,” he said. “I'm sorry for guys like you who don't, but I got it, Riley. It's like it says in the song, the men don't know but the little girls understand.”

“You're ill, Ronnie,” I said.

“I wanna go again,” Hugh said. I think P. T. Barnum was right, there really
is
one like Hugh born every minute. “I wanna get my money back.”

“Well,” Ronnie said, revealing his dingy teeth in a big smile, “I'm willing to at least give you a chance.” He looked my way. “What do you say, sporty?”

My geology text lay forgotten on the sofa behind me. I wanted my quarter back, and a few more to jingle beside it. What I wanted even more was to school Ronnie Malenfant. “Run em,” I said, and then, for the first of at least a thousand times I'd speak the same words in the troubled weeks ahead: “Is this a pass left or pass right?”

“New game, pass right. What a dorkus.” Ronnie cackled, stretched, and watched happily as the cards spun out of the deck. “God, I love this game!”

That second game was the one that really hooked me. This time it was Ashley instead of Hugh who went skyrocketing toward one hundred points, enthusiastically helped along by Ronnie, who dumped The Bitch on Ash's hapless head at every opportunity. I was dealt the queen only twice that game. The first time I held it for four consecutive tricks when I could have bombed Ashley with it. Finally, just as I was starting to think I'd end up eating it myself, Ashley lost the lead to Hugh Brennan, who promptly led a diamond. He should have known I was void in that suit, had been since the start of the hand, but the Hughs of the world know little. That is, I suppose, why the Ronnies of the world so love to play cards with them. I topped the trick with The Bitch, held my nose, and honked at Hugh. That was how we said “Booya!” in the quaint old days of the sixties.

Ronnie scowled. “Why'd you do that? You could have put that dicksnacker out!” He nodded at Ashley, who was looking at us rather vacantly.

“Yeah, but I'm not quite that stupid.” I tapped the score sheet. Ronnie had taken thirty points as of then; I had taken thirty-four. The other two were far beyond that. The question wasn't which of Ronnie's marks would lose, but which of the two who knew how to play the game would win. “I wouldn't mind seeing those Bogie movies myself, you know.
Shweetheart
.”

Ronnie showed his questionable teeth in a grin. He was playing to a gallery by then; we had attracted
about half a dozen spectators. Skip and Nate were among them. “Want to play it that way, do you? Okay. Spread your cheeks, moron; you're about to be cornholed.”

Two hands later, I cornholed him. Ashley, who started that last hand with ninety-eight points, went over the top in a hurry. The spectators were dead quiet, waiting to see whether I could actually hit Ronnie with six—the number of hearts he'd need to take for me to beat him by one.

Ronnie looked good at first, playing under everything that was led, staying away from the lead himself. When you have good low cards in Hearts, you're practically bulletproof. “Riley's cooked!” he informed the audience. “I mean fucking
toasty!
”

I thought so, too, but at least I had the queen of spades in my hand. If I could drop it on him, I'd still win. I wouldn't make much from Ronnie, but the other two would be coughing up blood: over five bucks between them. And I'd get to see Ronnie's face change. That's what I wanted most, to see the gloat go out and the goat come in. I wanted to shut him up.

It came down to the last three tricks. Ashley played the six of hearts. Hugh played the five. I played the three. I saw Ronnie's smile fade as he played the nine and took the trick. It dropped his edge to a mere three points. Better still, he finally had the lead. I had the jack of clubs and the queen of spades left in my hand. If Ronnie had a low club and played it, I was going to eat The Bitch and have to endure his crowing, which would be caustic. If, on the other hand  . . .

He played the five of diamonds. Hugh played the
two of diamonds, getting under, and Ashley, smiling in a puzzled way that suggested he didn't know just what the fuck he was doing, played void.

Dead silence in the room.

Then, smiling, I completed the trick—
Ronnie's
trick—by dropping the queen of spades on top of the other three cards. There was a soft sigh from around the card-table, and when I looked up I saw that the half-dozen spectators had become nearly a full dozen. David Dearborn leaned in the doorway, arms folded, frowning at us. Behind him, in the hall, was someone else. Someone leaning on a pair of crutches.

I suppose Dearie had already checked his well-thumbed book of rules—
Dormitory Regulations at the University of Maine, 1966–1967 Edition
—and had been disappointed to find there was none against playing cards, even when there was a stake involved. But you must believe me when I say his disappointment was nothing compared to Ronnie's.

There are good losers in this world, there are sore losers, sulky losers, defiant losers, weepy losers . . . and then there are your down-and-out fuckhead losers. Ronnie was of the down-and-out fuckhead type. His cheeks flushed pink on the skin and almost purple around his blemishes. His mouth thinned to a shadow, and I could see his jaws working as he chewed his lips.

“Oh gosh,” Skip said. “Look who got hit with the shit.”

“Why'd you do that?” Ronnie burst out, ignoring Skip—ignoring everyone in the room but me. “Why'd you do that, you numb fuck?”

I was bemused by the question and—let me admit
this—absolutely delighted by his rage. “Well,” I said, “according to Vince Lombardi, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. Pay up, Ronnie.”

“You're queer,” he said. “You're a fucking homo majordomo. Who dealt that?”

“Ashley,” I said. “And if you want to call me a cheater, say it right out loud. Then I'm going to come around this table, grab you before you can run, and beat the snot out of you.”

“No one's beating the snot out of anyone on my floor!” Dearie said sharply from the doorway, but everyone ignored him. They were watching Ronnie and me.

“I didn't call you a cheater, I just asked who dealt,” Ronnie said. I could almost see him making the effort to pull himself together, to swallow the lump I'd fed him and smile as he did it, but there were tears of rage standing in his eyes (big and bright green, those eyes were Ronnie's one redeeming feature), and beneath his earlobes the points of his jaw went on bulging and relaxing. It was like watching twin hearts beat in the sides of his face. “Who gives a shit, you beat me by ten points. That's fifty cents, big fucking deal.”

I wasn't a big jock in high school like Skip Kirk—debate and track had been my only extracurricular activities—and I'd never told anyone in my life that I'd beat the snot out of them. Ronnie seemed like a good place to start, though, and God knows I meant it. I think everyone else knew it, too. There was a huge wallop of adolescent adrenaline in the room; you could smell it, almost taste it. Part of me—a big part—wanted him to give me some more grief. Part of me wanted to stick it to him, wanted to stick it right up his ass.

Money appeared on the table. Dearie took a step closer, frowning more ponderously than ever, but he said nothing . . . at least not about that. Instead he asked if anyone in the room had shaving-creamed his door, or knew who had. We all turned to look at him, and saw that Stoke Jones had moved into the doorway when Dearie stepped into the room. Stoke hung on his crutches, watching us all with his bright eyes.

There was a moment of silence and then Skip said, “You sure you didn't maybe go walking in your sleep and do it yourself, David?” A burst of laughter greeted this, and it was Dearie's turn to flush. The color started at his neck and worked its way up his cheeks and forehead to the roots of his flattop—no faggy Beatle haircut for Dearie, thank you very much.

“Pass the word that it better not happen again,” Dearie said. Doing his own little Bogie imitation without realizing it. “I'm not going to have my authority mocked.”

“Oh blow it out,” Ronnie muttered. He had picked up the cards and was disconsolately shuffling them.

Dearie took three large steps into the room, grabbed Ronnie by the shoulders of his Ivy League shirt, and pulled him. Ronnie got up on his own so the shirt would not be torn. He didn't have a lot of good shirts; none of us did.

“What did you say to me, Malenfant?”

Ronnie looked around and saw what I imagine he'd been seeing for most of his life: no help, no sympathy. As usual, he was on his own. And he had no idea why.

“I didn't say anything. Don't be so fuckin paranoid, Dearborn.”

“Apologize.”

Ronnie wriggled in his grasp. “I didn't
say
nothing, why should I apologize for nothing?”

“Apologize anyway. And I want to hear true regret.”

“Oh quit it,” Stoke Jones said. “All of you. You should see yourselves. Stupidity to the
n
^th
power.”

Dearie looked at him, surprised. We were all surprised, I think. Maybe Stoke was surprised himself.

“David, you're just pissed off that someone creamed your door,” Skip said.

“You're right. I'm pissed off. And I want an apology from you, Malenfant.”

“Let it go,” Skip said. “Ronnie just got a little hot under the collar because he lost a close one. He didn't shaving-cream your fucking door.”

I looked at Ronnie to see how he was taking the rare experience of having someone stand up for him and saw a telltale shift in his green eyes—almost a flinch. In that moment I was almost positive Ronnie
had
shaving-creamed Dearie's door. Who among my acquaintances was more likely?

If Dearie had noticed that guilty little blink, I believe he would have reached the same conclusion. But he was looking at Skip. Skip looked back at him calmly, and after a few more seconds to make it seem (to himself if not to the rest of us) like his own idea, Dearie let go of Ronnie's shirt. Ronnie shook himself, brushed at the wrinkles on his shoulders, then began digging in his pockets for small change to pay me with.

“I'm sorry,” Ronnie said. “Whatever has got your panties in a bunch, I'm sorry. I'm sorry as hell, sorry as shit, I'm so sorry my ass hurts. Okay?”

Dearie took a step back. I had been able to feel the adrenaline; I suspected Dearie could feel the waves of
dislike rolling in his direction just as clearly. Even Ashley Rice, who looked like a roly-poly bear in a kids' cartoon, was looking at Dearie in a flat-eyed, unfriendly way. It was a case of what the poet Gary Snyder might have called bad-karma baseball. Dearie was the proctor—strike one. He tried to run our floor as though it were an adjunct to his beloved ROTC program—strike two. And he was a jerkwad sophomore at a time when sophomores still believed that harassing freshmen was part of their bounden duty. Strike three, Dearie, you're out.

“Spread the word that I'm not going to put up with a lot of high-school crap on my floor,” Dearie said (
his
floor, if you could dig it). He stood ramrod-straight in his U of M sweatshirt and khaki pants—
pressed
khaki pants, although it was Saturday. “This is
not
high school, gentlemen; this is Chamberlain Hall at the University of Maine. Your bra-snapping days are over. The time has come for you to behave like college men.”