Each morning now the tide of his loneliness rose, to ebb only when he took his evening place in the slot. To rise a bit higher, by the following morning, than it had the morning before. If it hadn’t been for the punk, it somehow seemed, he’d be on the legit now somewhere with Molly instead of still hustling suckers all night long. His eyes, under the night-light, no longer reflected the light.
It’s all in the wrist, with a deck or a cue; yet the fingers had lost the touch. The feel of the deck wasn’t there any more. And it had all been better before.
He practiced squeezing a sponge ball one evening. ‘Tunney stren’thened his hands like this,’ he explained to Sophie. And fancied the fingers felt stronger.
He gave the sports a shaky deal three nights running. On the fourth he settled down. Till, toward morning, one sport sat with a low straight and three others drew to two pairs. The second player’s final card slipped face upward, matching the pair of sixes already showing on the board. Frankie reddened and gave the others theirs face upward too, with a mumbled ‘sorry’ to the one whose hand he had so clumsily betrayed, a youth known to him only as Bird Dog.
Four players turned up their cards with real relief; the dealer had saved them money from home. But Bird Dog shoved the pot toward Frankie.
‘You won this one, Dealer,’ Bird Dog assured him, slapping his corduroy hat against the flat of his hand to indicate he was casing out, and tossed two bits of his own into the pot. ‘You win that too.’
‘Take your money, Bird Dog,’ Frankie begged off, ‘it’s yours.’
‘No hard feelings,’ the boy assured him with a flat little laugh. Everyone watched him leave while Frankie boxed the deck, pretending it had all been the fault of the cards, and opened a fresh deck. The pot stayed in the middle for the next hand’s winner.
His palms were sweating and the deck, that had always slipped so lightly, seemed half glued to them. On the very first go-round with the fresh deck he dealt a card to the missing player’s empty seat and the cards had to be shifted all around the board. Schwiefka put his hand on Frankie’s arm with a meaningful touch.
‘Go down ’n get a drink, Dealer. You’re dealin’ like you got hairs in your teet’. I fired one guy awready who could deal that good.’
Frankie shoved back the chair, slapped on his cap, and all the way to the door fancied small laughter behind him.
And right in the downstairs doorway, just as though he didn’t know he’d ever been fired, the punk was waiting again. ‘How long you been waitin’ for nothin’?’ Frankie wanted to know. A cold wind came down the alley and the punk blew on his hands.
‘A long time, Frankie. Get me my job back. I’m broke.’
‘You always were,’ Frankie reminded him.
When he reached the Tug & Maul Sparrow hustled in right behind him and stood watching while Frankie ordered a double shot for himself. His right hand was shaking so that he had to lift the glass with his left. Anybody’s hand would shake, having a punk shadow him all night. The punk must be practicing to be a Pinkie again. He kept the hand in his pocket. He had two doubles before it stopped trembling.
‘You got a loose crowd up there tonight, Frankie?’ The punk sounded homesick all right. ‘You got to get back up there right away?’
‘I don’t got to go nowheres right away.’
When Frankie ordered a third double shot Sparrow sensed that something had gone wrong in the slot. Frankie stuck to coffee between shifts when things were going as they should.
‘Ain’t you goin’ back upstairs all night, Frankie?’ And felt a faint little twinge of hope that, just maybe, Frankie had been fired too.
‘Not tonight ’r any night. Nobody’s stairs. I’m gonna try downstairs awhile.’ The hand was fine now, steady as a die. ‘I’m gonna find out what’s doin’ in the basement.’
‘You still got rent to pay,’ Sparrow reminded him meekly.
Frankie turned on him. ‘It looks to me like you’re fallin’ behind in yours,’ he accused the punk, looking him up and down from the worn shoes and the pants so thin at the knees to the coat that had once been old Stash’s: it still bore the marks of an ice tongs faintly visible across the left shoulder. ‘You look like Vi has fired you too,’ he threw in.
‘I’ll get my own racket.’ Sparrow tried, at the last possible moment, to salvage something of his pride.
‘It’s pretty cold for rollin’ stiffs,’ Frankie observed.
Sparrow saw then it was no use; no use at all. He wasn’t even good for a shot with Frankie any more.
‘What’s yours?’ Sparrow really wanted to know. ‘What’s yours?’
And didn’t stay for an answer.
Frankie saw his tattered coat catch in the door as it closed behind him, then the punk extricated himself and was gone into the November night. ‘It was toward this time of year I first hooked up with him,’ Frankie remembered with a heart homesick for many Novembers.
Owner came up with the bottle. ‘On the house,’ he told Frankie, and poured evenly for both the dealer and himself. Frankie shoved a half dollar toward Antek. He wasn’t so hard up as some people seemed to think.
‘See that sign of yours?’ he asked, pointing to one of the bar legends:
Our cow is dead
We don’t need your bull
‘Well,’ Frankie told Owner, ‘my cow’s dead too. So don’t gimme none of your bull. Just give me a square count on my change.’ And spat, slowly and provocatively, making a great show of the act, between his knees and down to the floor at his feet.
Antek was hurt. He’d only been trying to patch things up between a couple old buddies and this was what he got. He withdrew the bottle and his own glass, returned with change for the half dollar and said, ‘Suit yourself, Dealer.’
Then spat, just as slowly, just as provocatively, between his own feet.
‘You call that spittin’?’ Frankie laughed with a huge contempt, hawked once and blew a beautiful round gob straight over the bar to splash across the mirror where the photographs of Antek’s wife and daughter hung in gilt-edged frames. Antek picked up a sodden bar towel and slung it straight into Frankie’s face.
Frankie wiped his face absent-mindedly with the rag precisely as though it had been handed to him politely for just that purpose.
‘After all, Frankie,’ Antek apologized in all humility, ‘a bartender got feelin’s too.’ Then saw that Frankie was crying.
Antek watched this spectacle a minute, figuring something slowly to himself. Frankie handed him back the towel.
‘I’ll say this much about somethin’ that’s none of my business at all,’ Antek told him, measuring each word as though fearing to say one word too many. ‘I think you’re dead wrong about the punk. That’s all.’ And turned away.
So it really had been Pig – and the punk had been right in guessing that it had been Owner who’d given Pig ‘some kind of count’ on Louie’s roll. Then his pride came up to deny flatly what all his senses had told him at last. If he’d been wrong this long he’d just stay wrong. If the punk had gone, let him go. Let everyone, let all of them go.
It was too hard to get slapped in the teeth with a wet bar towel twice in a row.
He didn’t tell Sophie of his determination to quit Schwiefka. Why hang on? He didn’t even tell Schwiefka. The whole day following the night of the shaky deal he lay on the bed waiting for the old strength to return, in a single jump, to his wrists. He lay fully clothed, with his cap in easy reach of his hand; as though in order to be ready to go back to work the moment the touch returned.
But the feel of the deck had died with the light that had died in his eyes, leaving only a loneliness that was a loneliness for more than any lost skill.
More than a loneliness for careless nights when he and the punk had first gone on drunks together. More even than the gnawing need for Molly-O.