Henry of Atlantic City

Mrs. O’Brien was a fat woman with red hair and a red face and two sides to her that Henry saw the minute his father drove off in the Maserati Quattroporte he’d won in a bet. She was all smiles when other people were around but when they were alone she turned into a witch. Mr. O’Brien worked at night somewhere. Henry never knew exactly where, but it must have been a salt mine or a steel factory because Mr. O’Brien was the tiredest, dirtiest man Henry had ever seen. Henry was always glad when he turned up. When Mrs. O’Brien yelled, Mr. O’Brien would tell her to shut up.

Before he was left at the O’Briens’, Henry lived in Philadelphia with Sy’s sister. Before
that
he lived with his father in Caesar’s Palace. The Palace was always busy. People said you could hear the noise from the slot machines as far away as Smyrna, which was all the way in Delaware. But even if that wasn’t true and you could only hear them as far as Cologne—which was halfway to Philadelphia—
that was
loud
. Caesar’s Palace was big and people came from all over to play. Henry’s father was chief of security. It was sort of like being quaestor of the Sacred Palace and captain of the Blues rolled into one. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote a lot about the Blues—not the music but one of the teams that ran in the chariot races in the Hippodrome. In the olden days most of the people in Byzantium were Blues, but there were many Greens too. Procopius said Byzantium was the city where the east toucheth the west. That made it special. When Henry read the old historian’s books he decided he wanted to live there—not just in Byzantium but in a place where things touchethed like that—east and west, waves and shore, light and dark, past and present. To be in between two touching things meant you were on the spot where they came together. It meant they came together in you, and after all Henry had seen and read and been through, he couldn’t think of anything better than that.

Being chief of security was like living where things come together too—like where a rock toucheth a hard place. That’s what Henry’s father said all the time after Theodora became general manager of the Palace. Theodora was also the name of the Emperor Justinian’s wife, and being general manager of Caesar’s Palace was sort of like being an empress. Henry’s father was six feet tall and weighed one hundred ninety-one pounds, so for him being between a rock and a hard place was not very comfortable. There were nights when he came off work so tired that he
fell asleep right on the sofa holding a bottle of beer in his hand. Even if Henry took off his shoes and socks and tickled his feet he wouldn’t wake up. The only thing that could wake him up was his beeper. When that went off he always said, “Jesus Christ,” because it meant there was trouble. There was always some kind of trouble going on. Henry liked to go and watch whenever he could. You had to be a grown-up to go most places in the Palace, but that didn’t stop Henry. He knew how to sneak into the Bacchus Room and the Gladiator Lounge and had even been backstage at the Forum. His father said he didn’t know what was harder, keeping his job or keeping up with Henry.

Then one day his father took him out on the beach. It was the beginning of the summer, and the city was getting crowded. It was the first time Henry had ever been on the beach with his father—or even seen him wearing swimming trunks. He always dressed in suits because that’s how chiefs of security have to dress. It was hot. They walked and walked, past Balley’s Wild West and Trump Plaza and the Tropicana and the Taj, past the pier with the Ferris wheel at the end, past everything and everybody until they were alone and there was no one else. Finally his father said, “It’s time to get you out of here, kid. Time to go to school.” He picked Henry up and put him on his shoulders and they walked for a little while longer. “First you’re going to spend the summer with Sy’s sister. She lives in Philly.” Then he put Henry down. “You’re gonna love her, kid.” He took his gold chain off and put it around Henry’s neck, then
picked Henry up again and put him back on his shoulders. “That’s so you have something to remember me by,” he said, and they headed back to the Palace. “I don’t want you to worry, kid. No tears. Everything’s gonna be fine.” Then he had to put Henry down because his beeper went off.

The summer went by fast and slow at the same time, and even though they didn’t fall in love, Henry liked Sy’s sister a whole lot. She was older than Sy and lived in a row house that had stained-glass windows that were left over from her hippie days. In the morning when you came downstairs the living room was filled with colored light. It looked sort of like the pictures in the book about the Hagia Sophia, and in the fall, when his father brought him to the O’Briens’, Henry brought that book with him to remind him of Sy’s sister and her house. Of all the things he did that summer, getting books out of the Philadelphia Public Library had been the funnest. It wasn’t stealing, either. It was called borrowing.

He was sent to Catholic school. His father said it would be good for him. He never said why. Henry figured that it was all very complicated and probably had to do with appearances. He had learned all about appearances that summer. Henry was a gnostic. He said so on the playground and in religion class and Sister Theresa told the principal, Sister Agnes Mary, who took him over to the rectory. “We’ll just see what Father has to say about these
silly stories of yours, young man,” she said. “Idle minds are the devil’s workshop.” Henry could tell she was angry because she was pretending not to be.

Father Crowley had lots of silver hair and dark eyes that made him look tired. Sometimes he wore a black suit and sometimes he wore a black cassock but he never wore a hat. The priest said he wanted to hear all of Henry’s story, so on Saturday he came to the O’Briens’ house in his black Chevrolet Malibu that said
CLERGY
on the license plate and talked with Mrs. O’Brien. She became a jolly fat lady as soon as the priest walked into the house. She put her arm on Henry’s shoulder and squeezed him against her thigh and talked a lot and forgot to breathe. Henry could tell when Mrs. O’Brien forgot to breathe because her face got red and she made a wiggling motion and said, “Lord, oh Lord!” all the time. Father Crowley and she agreed that the best thing would be for Henry to spend the day at the rectory, where they could have a quiet talk. Mrs. O’Brien said, “Don’t you worry about the time, Father. I’ll keep his dinner warm.”

On the way to the rectory Father Crowley pulled into a shopping center that had a Baskin Robbins. “I love ice cream,” he said. “Care to join me for a dip?” He laughed.

Henry went inside with the priest and asked for Rocky Road because that was what he felt like. When they returned to the car Father Crowley didn’t drive but sat behind the wheel licking his ice cream cone and frowning. Henry licked his too and watched out his window as cars turned in and out of the parking lot.

Then the priest turned to him. “So, Henry,” he said. “Where did you hear about gnosticism?”

Henry said Philadelphia.

The priest’s cone dripped and he wiped the ice cream from his lap. Henry began to tell him about
veneranda vetustatis auctoritas
, which means the venerable authority of antiquity, and the gnostic secrets he’d learned in
The Coptic Gnostic Library
and about Procopius and
The Secret History
and about the Hagia Sophia and the Blues and the Greens and his friends Helena—whose mother was the Whore of Jersey City—and Sy.

Henry missed Helena. He missed Sy and the Palace too. He wanted to go back but his father told him it was impossible because he didn’t know who his friends and who his enemies were anymore. He said real friends were the people you did things with that you didn’t want anyone else to know about. Real friends were very rare and only came along once or maybe twice in a whole lifetime and you always knew where you stood with them. The only problem was that the same was true for enemies. You always knew where you stood with them too, and things could get real dangerous when you didn’t know and weren’t sure. Theodora was one of those people who was hard to figure out. She was a powerful bitch.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Father Crowley said. “You watch your language, young man.” He dripped more ice cream into his lap and said, “Oh gosh,” and got a napkin out of the glove box.

Anyway, Henry’s father was never sure where he stood with her. He said that one day when everything settled down they would move to an island somewhere far away and buy a houseboat where Henry and he would live together. Henry made him promise and he said, “Kid, if things go according to plan we’ll be able to do anything. You name it.”

“When did he tell you all these things, Henry?” Father Crowley asked.

Henry said he didn’t remember.

“Was it in Atlantic City?”

Henry nodded.

When they got to the rectory, Father Crowley took Henry to a big, sunny room with a couch and some tables and chairs. It looked like a card room without the card table and there was a whole wall with books. It reminded him of the library near Sy’s sister’s store in Philadelphia except there was a fireplace with a crucifix over it. Father Crowley wanted Henry to tell him more.

The Whore of Jersey City lived next door to Henry and his father at the Palace. They called her the Whore of Jersey City because once she was in a movie called
The Whore of Jersey City
. Helena was her daughter. Jersey City worried about her hair too much. She made Ruben come up to her apartment at least once a week and sometimes even more than that. Ruben was a hairdresser from Bethlehem and he did everyone’s hair if they were famous because somehow he was famous too. Jersey City had been in more
than ten movies and that’s why
she
was famous. Helena went to a college up in the mountains. Not the Carpathians or the Caucasus or the Alps, but mountains like them somewhere in New Hampshire. Jersey City was very proud of her. When she came home after the first semester, she hardly ever left the apartment and her mother told Henry’s father that she had become a real snoot and was always arguing and they were driving each other crazy.