She picked up her cards, eager but fumbling. Tried to recall what the point of the game was. You counted cards in a sequence, of the same suit; or in a group, of identical value. There were two piles of cards on the table, the discard and the stock and you were expected to do something with these. The object was to accumulate points and go gin.
Colleen was disappointed with her cards. She laughed but bit her lower lip, pouting.
Rebecca stared at the shining cards in her hand. The queen of spades? Ten of spades? Jack, ace…?
Her fingers trembled slightly. The smoldering smoke of the birch logs distracted her. She had a vision of birch trees, beautifully white birches marked with striations in black, bent to the ground, broken-backed to the ground…She had no need to draw, or to discard. She played out the hand. She was too naive a cardplayer to question the odds of such a hand.
Tignor laughed, and congratulated her. He was keeping score with a stub of a pencil, on a cocktail napkin.
The game continued. Tignor dealt. The girls insisted, he must be the dealer for they loved to watch him shuffle the cards. Though Colleen complained, “Rebecca has all the luck. Shit!” A pretty frowning girl with a fleshy deep-pink mouth, large breasts firmly erect in a black knit jersey top, glittery hoop earrings. Rebecca sensed how desperate Colleen was to snag Tignor’s eye, to engage his interest that kept drifting onto Rebecca. “D’you need extra cards, girls? It’s Gypsy-rummy. Ask me, I’ll hit you.”
They laughed. They had no idea what Tignor was talking about.
Rebecca had been noticing how amid the busyness and frantic hilarity of the Tap Room, Tignor seemed to hold himself apart. If he was aware of others glancing in their direction from time to time, men who might have imagined themselves friends of his, or friendly acquaintances, hoping to be invited to join Tignor in his booth, he gave no sign. For he was not like the other men: he was so supremely self-possessed. He was not quite laughing at Colleen and Rebecca, these credulous girls who picked up the cards he dealt them, like children.
“Oh, look at my hand…”
“Oh, look…!”
Rebecca laughed, she had such beautiful shining cards king queen jack of clubs…She’d given up counting their value, she would trust to Tignor to keep score.
Tignor hunched over his own cards, and sucked at his mouth in dissatisfaction, or a pretense of dissatisfaction, saying, suddenly, “Your race, Rebecca. You are wanderers.”
“Race? What race?”
“The race to which you were born.”
This was so abrupt, Rebecca had no idea what they were talking about. Her eyelids, that were heavy, and stinging from the smoke, now lifted in antagonism. “I’m the same race as you. The same damn race as anybody.”
She was furious with Niles Tignor, suddenly. She felt a savage dislike of him in her soul, in that instant. He had tricked her into trusting him. All that evening he’d been leaning forward on his elbows watching her, bemused. She would have liked to claw his big-boned face that was so smug.
Yet Tignor frowned, his question seemed sincere: “What race is that, Rebecca?”
“The human race.”
These words were so fiercely uttered, both Tignor and Colleen burst into laughter. And Rebecca laughed, seeing this was meant to be playful-was it? She liked it that she could make Niles Tignor laugh. She had a gift for beguiling men, if she wished to. Catching their eyes, making them want her. The outside of her, that they could see. Since Tignor had greeted her she’d been intensely aware of him, the sexual heat that exuded from him. For of course Tignor wanted sex with her: he wanted sex from her. God damn if she would go upstairs with him to his hotel room, or out into his car for a nightime drive along the river…She felt the thrill of her will in opposition to his. She felt almost faint, exulting in her opposition.
Tignor was dealing. More flashing cards. Tignor’s fingers, the sphinxring on his right hand, snaky rivulet of sweat running down his forehead, and those big horsey teeth grinning at her. “Don’t need to be hit, eh? So show us your cards, girl.”
Rebecca spread her cards on the sticky tabletop: king, queen, jack, ten, seven, ace…all diamonds.
Unexpectedly then Rebecca began to cry. Tears spilled down her warm cheeks, stinging as acid.
32
They would become lovers, in time. For Tignor must have her. He would marry her if there was no other way.
He went away from Milburn, and he returned. In the winter of 1953 to 1954 he was sometimes gone for a month, sometimes two. Yet in January, he unexpectedly returned after only two weeks. There was no pattern in his schedule that Rebecca could discern. He never told her when he might be back or even whether he would be back and out of pride she refused to ask him. For Rebecca, too, was stubborn telling the man only goodbye calmly and maddeningly as if each time she accepted it, this might be the last time she saw him.
She kissed his cheek. He seized her head, and kissed her mouth hurting her.
Teasing, “Don’t you love me, girl?”
And, “Ain’t you curious what it might be, to love me?”
And, “You ain’t gonna make me marry you, girl? That’s it?”
She kept Tignor at a little distance from her, she would not sleep with him. It was painful to her, yet she would not.
For Rebecca knew: Tignor would use her and discard her like Kleenex. He would not love her in return-would he?
It was a risk. Like slapping down a playing card, irrevocably.
“You don’t want to fall in love with that man, Rebecca. That would be a damn sorry mistake for a girl like you.”
This was Leora Greb. But others were jealous of her, too. It riled them that Niles Tignor should seek out Rebecca Schwart who was so young, scarcely half his age. Rebecca Schwart who was graceless in their eyes, not-pretty and headstrong.
Rebecca asked Leora, “What’s that, Leora-”a girl like you‘?“
Leora said, “A young girl. A girl who doesn’t know shit about men. A girl who…” Leora paused, frowning. About to say A girl with no mother, no father but thinking better of it.
Rebecca said hotly, “Why would I fall in love with Tignor, or with any man! I don’t trust any damn man.”
She knew: when Tignor was away from Milburn, he forgot her, she simply ceased to exist for him. And yet she could not forget him.
When he was in Milburn, at the General Washington, always he wanted to see her. Somehow, at some time. He had “business appointments” through much of the day and often for dinner and so he must fit Rebecca in, late in the evening. Was she available? Did she want to see him? She’d given him her telephone number, at the Ferry Street apartment. Out of nowhere he would call her. His voice was always a shock to her, so intimate in her ear.
Rebecca tried to manage a light, bantering tone when he called. Often Katy and LaVerne were close by, listening. She would ask Tignor where he was, and Tignor would say, “A block up, on Ferry Street at a pay phone. Fact is, I can see your windows. Where’d you think I was, girl?”
Girl he called her, teasing. Sometimes Gypsy-girl.
Rebecca told him she was not a Gypsy! Told him she had been born in the United States just like him.
I won’t sleep with him. But I will marry him.
It was ridiculous, truly she didn’t believe. Any more than years before she had believed truly that Jesus Christ was her savior: that Jesus Christ had any awareness of Rebecca Schwart at all.