It was strange to find myself sitting late at night in a frilly little hotel room with Matty Dancer, a man I barely knew. “It’s nice to have you for company, Dale,” he commented and started to tidy up, cleaning out the four little blue glass Abbey Victoria ashtrays that rested by our packs of cigarettes and Braverman’s pipe. “We alternate as hosts each week, but it seems as if every time it’s my turn, the others go out for food, leaving me to mind the roost. Of course, I’m the neat one.”
I nodded slowly, hoping this was as far as Dancer was going to bare his breast to me. He was married, of course, and his wife, Molly, was lovely. Still, it’s a funny world.
“How long have you been married, Dale?” he asked, and I gave him the same stock answer I’d given Braverman, adding a few days to the total. He nodded solemnly. “These Monday nights are very important to my marriage, I have to tell you. They provide me with a much-needed... interruption. The same way our viewers sometimes look forward to a commercial, so they can get some ice cream from the freezer, or see if the kids have turned out their lights, or take a leak. Even Shakespeare had intermissions, for God’s sake. So should marriage. Any good, healthy, sound marriage. You know?”
The phone rang, a long “hotel ring” via the switchboard, and he picked it up. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll ask him.” He turned to me. “It’s Harv, he’s calling from the New Bamboo Palace. He can’t remember if you wanted almond gai ding or moo goo gai pan.”
I had opted for the former and said so.
In theory, I agreed with the case Dancer was making for a once-weekly break from connubial “togetherness,” as was the newly coined term for marital constancy. But if the offered respite was four sullen men playing dreary nickel-and-dime poker and taking little sips on ever-flattening beer while eating one from Column A, I did not see this as the ideal alternative.
Spitz and Braverman returned with two brown-paper bags. We made no shared feast, but ate our individual orders, each from his own white cardboard box, maintaining the relative silence of those who find the food more interesting than the conversation.
Blessedly, midnight arrived at last. Harv commuted from Rye by car and both Spitz and Dancer lived in Manhattan, but I relied on the New York Central to get me home. So I had no problem rising to my feet and saying, “Well, guys, it’s been a great night, but I have to catch the 12:35 to Pelham.”
“Sit down, Dale,” Spitz said gravely. “You’ve not been installed or initiated.”
I could feel the temperature in the room drop by a good ten degrees.
Spitz looked at the others. “Are we ready?”
Dancer and Braverman nodded assent and turned their chairs to face me. Spitz, who had courtroom experience, opened: “Dale. Tell us what we did tonight.”
I looked around the room. “Uh... we played poker.”
Spitz shook his head slowly. “No, Dale, don’t disappoint me. I want you to give us a detailed account of what we did tonight. For example, what time did you get here?”
I remembered Dancer’s greeting when I’d first walked in. Perhaps he’d been so specific about my arrival time for the very purpose of this oral exam. “Seven-oh-six.”
“Who came next?”
“You. Followed by Harv.”
“What brand of beer did each of us drink?”
I pride myself on having above-average recall and rarely came up empty-handed during the interrogation. I accurately synopsized the run at the table, with Dancer playing aggressively and (I said in all candor) foolishly. Spitz had been conservative, folding his hand often; thus, when he did stay in, we assumed he had the goods. This ultimately cost him, as we didn’t allow big pots to build when he stood by his cards. I’d played inconsistently, pushing a few weak hands farther than I should have and not riding a trio of sixes as far as I might. The most impressive winning hand had been Braverman’s. He had broken up a pair of eights in successful search of an inside straight and had gone on to be the big winner for the night, apologizing after each victory. He would be departing nearly ten dollars richer than he’d started.
As for conversation, I had little problem reconstructing the general thrust of our discourse. Past histories had come into play, Spitz recounting his years as a civil-defense attorney, Braverman the winning of the Colgate Toothpaste account by some fairly devious means, Dancer his prior career as a producer of off-Broadway revues. We’d recalled college days. Braverman was Princeton orange and black, Spitz had been Fordham Law, Dancer boasted of being kicked out of several Ivy League schools, and I tried to make the most of my class standing when I graduated from Michigan State.
As I recapped the convoluted path of our unmemorable exchanges in such detail that it alarmed me (surely there was something more noteworthy to occupy the vacancy between my ears), I noticed knowing glances cast among my associates. I wrapped up with “Harv, you accompanied Shepard to his favorite, the New Bamboo Palace, at something like nine forty-five—”
“Forty-two, but who’s counting?” said Braverman.
Increasingly peeved, I rattled off, “You brought back egg rolls for three, shrimp toast for Harv, who also ordered sweet and sour pork, Matty had lung har gai pan, Shepard had steak kew, and I had the almond gai ding. Matty and Harv had pork fried rice, I had white, Shepard didn’t eat his, now may I please ask what this inquisition is in aid of?”
Dancer stood and ceremoniously raised his pilsner. “Gentlemen, I believe we have ourselves a brother. Welcome, Frère Dale.”
“Frère Dale,” echoed Braverman and Spitz.
Dancer clapped an arm around my shoulders. “I suppose we must have you pretty confused. Sorry about that. We’ll be delighted to enlighten, but first we need your word as a fellow Monk of the Abbey Victoria not to disclose on pain of death what we are about to tell you. Not to NBC, to your neighbors... not even to your wife.”
“I know how to keep a secret,” I said.
“You showed us that the other day,” acknowledged Braverman.
Dancer nodded. “So we’ve had ourselves a pleasant evening” — he looked at the others and grimaced — “all right, let’s say we’ve had ourselves a harmless evening, consisting of poker, beer, Chinese food, and some of the most tedious conversation any of us have ever endured, most of which you’ve just now recounted in impressive detail. A typical weekly edition of our informal men’s club. And now, Brother Dale, I am pleased to inform you it is very likely we will never assemble like this again.”
Spitz added, “Until such time as necessity dictates. Hopefully, not for months to come.”
“Amen, Brother,” murmured Braverman.
I looked at their serene expressions. “I don’t understand—”
“We won’t reconvene until we have a need to,” Dancer explained. “You see, Dale, the reason we got together tonight was so that all of us, including you, could identically describe exactly what transpired this evening, with — what’s the word, Spitz?”
“Versimilitude.”
“For what purpose?” I asked.
“Freedom,” said Dancer. “We’re all of us married, tethered, seven days a week every week of the year. However, as members of the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria, we get one gorgeous night each week to do whatever we wish.”
Spitz elaborated. “Meaning, Winslow, that we are the poker club that does not play poker. Or even convene. We go our own way, free from wives, neighbors, and each other, to pursue whatever secret pursuits spring to mind.”
“Not to say,” rushed in Harv, “that we do something bad on that one day a week.”