– -
In the weeks that followed we told each other our stories and got to know each other. An afternoon drink became a ritual, and most of the time we had dinner together at one in the morning, when Diane finished her shift on the baccarat table. But it all depended on our gambling patterns. If one of us got hot, he’d skip eating until his luck turned. This happened most often with Jordan.
But then there were long afternoons when we’d sit around out by the pool and talk under the burning desert sun. Or take midnight walks along the neon-drowned Strip, the glittering hotels planted like mirages in the middle of the desert, or lean against the gray railing of the baccarat table. And so we told each other our lives.
– -
Jordan ’s story seemed the most simple and the most banal, and he seemed the most ordinary person in the group. He’d had a perfectly happy life and a common ordinary destiny. He was some sort of executive genius and by the age of thirty-five had his own company dealing in the buying and selling of steel. Some sort of middleman, it made him a handsome living. He married a beautiful woman, and they had three children and a big house and everything they wanted. Friends, money, career and true love. And that lasted for twenty years. And then, as Jordan put it, his wife grew out of him. He had concentrated all his energies on making his family safe from the terrors of a jungle economy. It had taken all his will and his energies. His wife had done her duty as a wife and mother. But there came a time when she wanted more out of life. She was a witty woman, curious, intelligent, well read. She devoured novels and plays, went to museums, joined all the town cultural groups, and she eagerly shared everything with Jordan. He loved her even more. Until the day she told him she wanted a divorce. Then he ceased loving her and he ceased loving his kids or his family and his work. He had done everything in the world for his nuclear family. He had guarded them from all the dangers of the outside world, built fortresses of money and power, never dreaming the gates could be opened from within.
Which was not how he told it, but how I listened to it. He just said quite simply that he didn’t “grow with his wife.” That he had been too immersed in his business and hadn’t paid proper attention to his family. That he didn’t blame her at all when she divorced him to marry one of his friends. Because that friend was just like her; they had the same tastes, the same kind of wit, the same flair for enjoying life.
So he, Jordan, had agreed to everything his wife wanted. He had sold his business and given her all the money. His lawyer told him he was being too generous, that he would regret it later. But Jordan said it really wasn’t generous because he could make a lot more money and his wife and her husband couldn’t. “You wouldn’t think it to watch me gamble,” Jordan said, “but I’m supposed to be a great businessman. I got job offers from all over the country. If my plane hadn’t landed in Vegas, I’d be working toward my first million bucks in Los Angeles right now.”
It was a good story, but to me it had a phony ring to it. He was just too nice a guy. It was all too civilized.
One of the things wrong with it was that I knew that he never slept nights. Every morning I went to the casino to work up an appetite for breakfast by throwing dice. And I’d find Jordan at the crap table. It was obvious he’d been gambling all night. Sometimes when he was tired, he’d be in the roulette or blackjack pits. And as the days went by, he looked worse and worse. He lost weight and his eyes seemed to be filled with red pus. But he was always gentle, very low-key. And he never said a word against his wife.
Sometimes, when Cully and I were alone in the lounge or at dinner, Cully would say, “Do you believe that fucking Jordan? Can you believe that a guy would let a dame put him out of whack like that? And can you believe how he talks about her like she’s the greatest cunt built?”
“She wasn’t a dame,” I said. “She was his wife for a lot of years. She was the mother of his children. She was the rock of his faith. He’s an old-time Puritan who got a knuckle ball thrown at him.”
– -
It was Jordan who got me started talking. One day he said, “You ask a lot of questions, but you don’t say much.” He paused for a moment as if he were debating whether he was really interested enough to ask the question. Then he said, “Why are you here in Vegas for so long?”
“I’m a writer,” I told him. And went on from there. The fact that I had published a novel impressed both of them and that reaction always amused me. But what really amazed them was that I was thirty-one years old and had run away from a wife and three kids.
“I figured you most to be twenty-five,” Cully said. “And you don’t wear a ring.”
“I never wore a ring,” I said.
Jordan said kiddingly, “You don’t need a ring. You look guilty without it.” For some reason I couldn’t imagine him making that kind of joke when he was married and living in Ohio. Then he would have felt it rude. Or maybe his mind hadn’t been that free. Or maybe it was something his wife would have said and he would let her say and just sit back and enjoy it because she could get away with it and maybe he couldn’t. It was fine with me. Anyway, I told them the story about my marriage, and in the process it came out that the scar on my belly I had shown them was the scar of a gall bladder operation, not a war wound. At that point of the story Cully laughed and said, “You bullshit artist.”
I shrugged, smiled and went on with my story.
Chapter 5
I have no history. No remembered parents. I have no uncles, no cousins, no city or town. I have only one brother, two years older than me. At the age of three, when my brother, Artie, was five, we were both left in an orphanage outside New York. We were left by my mother. I have no memory of her.
I didn’t tell this to Cully and Jordan and Diane. I never talked about those things. Not even to my brother, Artie, who is closer to me than anyone in the world.
I never talk about it because it sounds so pathetic, and it wasn’t really. The orphanage was fine, a pleasant, orderly place with a good school system and an intelligent administrator. It did well by me until Artie and I left it together. He was eighteen and found a job and an apartment. I ran away to join him. After a few months I left him too, lied about my age and joined the Army to fight in WW II. And now here in Vegas sixteen years later I told Jordan and Cully and Diane about the war and my life that followed.
– -
The first thing I did after the war was to enroll in writing courses in the New School for Social Research. Everybody then wanted to be a writer, as twenty years later everyone hoped to be a film-maker.
I had found it hard to make friends in the Army. It was easier at the school. I also met my future wife there. Because I had no family, except for my older brother, I spent a lot of time at the school, hanging out in the cafeteria rather than going back to my lonely rooms in Grove Street. It was fun. Every once in a while I got lucky and talked a girl into living with me for a few weeks. The guys I made friends with, all out of the Army and going to school under the GI Bill, talked my language. The trouble was that they were all interested in the literary life and I was not. I just wanted to be a writer because I was always dreaming stories. Fantastic adventures that isolated me from the world.
I discovered that I read more than anyone else, even the guys going for PhD’s in English. I didn’t really have much else to do, though I always gambled. I found a bookie on the East Side near Tenth Street and bet every day on ball games, football, basketball and baseball. I wrote some short stories and started a novel about the war. I met my wife in one of the short-story classes.