Dancer advised, “You might let her know the stakes are penny ante. Nickel a chip.”
“Joanie, the guys want me to get together with them for their weekly poker night,” I said as I hung my suit on the overnight valet in our bedroom.
To my surprise, Joanie wasn’t taken aback. “Oh, yes. Linda Spitz was telling me about it. Molly Dancer, too.” She was in the bathroom, shedding her strapless cocktail dress in an efficient manner, clearly transmitting that tonight was not the night. “It’s on Mondays?”
“I’m lousy at poker,” I said.
“They might be insulted if you turn them down,” Joanie cautioned. “I know you don’t like playing office politics, Dale, but it’s NBC, after all.”
The Abbey Victoria was that dowdy one-star Michelin hotel you’d find in Chartres or Rouen, where you were expected to leave your passport with the front desk and the restaurant would close by nine. Except that somehow this prim, bourgeois hotel had drifted off to sea and foundered upon the corner of Fifty-first and Seventh in midtown Manhattan. You’d hardly notice it alongside the gleaming Americana (which to me had always looked like the UN with a coat of whitewash). The Shabby Abbey, as some called it, was crammed full of chambers with little twin beds that had been purchased in a time when everyone was shorter and two businessmen found nothing odd about sharing a room to halve their expenses.
A number of the Abbey’s bedrooms had adjoining parlors so that they could be rented as suites. But if the Abbey wasn’t full (and these days it never was), you could book the drawing room alone. Apparently, parlor room 622, situated between bedrooms 620 and 624, was regularly reserved on Monday nights by the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria.
The door swung open and Dancer greeted me. He’d changed since work into a blue turtleneck and tan chinos. He looked at his watch.
“Seven-oh-six,” he noted. Dancer had never struck me as the punctilious type, but my time of arrival seemed to please him. “You’re the first — other than me, of course.”
A table from room service had been wheeled into 622, its two hinged leaves locked in the up position. A green felt cloth served as cover to the now-circular table. Presumably, ours was not the first poker game ever to have been played at the Abbey. Alongside a few red-backed Bicycle decks, still sealed, were colored plastic chips neatly nested in a circular caddy, the kind you’d see in a Sears Roebuck catalog.
“What beer do you like?” Dancer indicated a pewter bucket filled with crushed ice and a modest supply of bottled beer. Pilsner glasses were inverted alongside the bucket. He inventoried the supply. “We have Piels, Schlitz, Knickerbocker, and Miller.”
I wasn’t much for beer, but when in Rome. “Miller,” I opted.
“The Champagne of Bottled Beers,” he affirmed. So far the conversation was scintillating. There was a knock at the door and he again looked at his watch. “Seven-ten, and my money says that will be Shep.”
If there was anyone who did not resemble a “Shep,” it was the fellow in the doorway, attorney Shepard Spitz, still in his three-piece suit. He entered, giving no indication he might remove his jacket or loosen his tie.
“I want you to know I turned down ringside seats at the Garden to do this,” he complained without preamble. “Where’s Harv?”
“I’m here,” said Braverman, entering right behind him. “Don’t make it sound like such a chore, Shepard. This is a big night for Dale. For all of us.”
Spitz sat himself at the circular table. “Sorry, Winslow. Welcome to the fold.”
“And fold-wise” — Braverman used his best ad-agency parlance — “let’s hope you have the decency to fold once or twice when there’s a big pot, right? Who’s dealing?”
“Host is always dealer,” said Dancer, sliding into a vacant chair. “You know that full well, Harv, and I note that whenever you’ve been host, you win more hands. Just a comment.” He broke the seal of the blue tax stamp on a Bicycle deck. “The game is straight poker, brethren. No improvements, wrinkles, exceptions, or exclusions, and nothing is wild. I will now accept a five-dollar offertory from all members of the congregation in return for chips.”
We each tossed a bill his way. As he slid our chips toward us, he cautioned, “For the benefit of Brother Dale, let me remind you that the Monks of the Abbey Victoria observe a vow of silence about current work and current events, including sports, motion pictures, TV shows, and hit records. Our purpose is to shrug away the world that is too much with us, to speak only of our experiences in the past and the lessons we may have learned from these experiences. Ante up, fellow Monks.”
It seemed an odd set of restrictions on conversation. And considering that the purported reason for our get-together was to have a pleasant time, the evening passed fitfully, as if we were all fulfilling some sort of obligation. Surely life was too short to spend every Monday night this way.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” asked Spitz as I tried to improve my spirits by reaching for a second beer.
I looked at him in bewilderment. “I’ve only had the one.”
Spitz nodded at the others’ glasses, from which only a few token sips had been taken. “Best to keep your wits about you. Poker requires a clear head, especially when the stakes are high.”
I took a glance at the current pot, which totaled about eighty cents and was unlikely to achieve a dollar, but the others nodded silent assent. I forsook the beer.
“Hey, did you see the outfit Donna was wearing today?” ventured Harv.
“Not permitted,” Dancer said quietly. He seemed to take his role as chairman seriously.
“Sorry,” Harv muttered. “Can I talk about her in general?”
Dancer raised the pot another nickel as he pondered the question. “For the moment, I’ll allow some general discussion,” he ruled.
“Sometimes I could swear she’s not wearing a bra.”
“Of course she wears a bra,” said Spitz. “Call.”
“But today, when she was leaning over, in that peasant blouse—”
“Not permitted,” Dancer said. “Specific to time. Let’s move off this general topic, anyway. It’s fraught with difficulty. Anyone hungry?”
I hadn’t had dinner and said as much. The others agreed that food was in order. I walked to the phone. “I assume room service is still open? It’s not even ten.”
Dancer shook his head. “We don’t like the room service here, except for beer and peanuts. Food’s lousy. And the kitchen’s had citations from the Department of Health. Who wants Chinese?”
There was some grousing about which Chinese restaurant in the immediate neighborhood was best. Harv was big on Bill Hong’s, whereas Spitz said he’d been going to the New Bamboo Palace, a place I didn’t know myself, since the night of his high-school prom in Amityville. Matty Dancer insisted Ho-Ho was the finest and Canton Village the cheapest, at least in midtown. I suggested the one I considered classiest: China Song at 54th and Broadway.
The discussion stopped dead. “We can’t go to China Song, Dale,” Braverman said quietly. “That’s CBS territory. It’s wedged in between Studio 50 and Studio 52. They’ve got paintings of Garry Moore and Durward Kirby hanging over the bar, for chrissake. If Ken Compton sees any of us at China Song, he’ll think we’ve gone over to the other side. We can’t go to China Song, Dale. Even for takeout.”
Apparently, the Abbey Victoria had a policy against food deliveries from the outside, but they allowed guests to bring food in. So Spitz took down our order and volunteered to pick it up for us at the New Bamboo Palace. Braverman said he’d accompany him, which left Dancer and me alone.