Bluff Read online

  “Oh, Natalie,” she said, “we have such good news.”

  I was immediately on edge because of the manic tinge to her voice that she got whenever she was on the verge of making a terrible decision.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “So you know how Chip is really good with people?”

  I had no knowledge of this. “I guess,” I said, and then stayed quiet while my mother told me about the plan they’d hatched.

  It could have been worse. They had decided to become pawnbrokers.

  “Our niche is going to be motorcycles!” she said.

  “Pawnshops have a niche?”

  “Oh, Natalie. In today’s marketplace, you have to have a niche.” I wondered what website she’d gotten that from. “And Reno’s a great town for pawnbrokers,” she added. That, I believed—all those casinos, all those people losing everything.

  I pressed the phone a little closer to my ear. “Mom, they have you working on Christmas morning?” For the last few months she’d been serving drinks at Harrah’s.

  “No, I’m not working today,” she said.

  “Because I hear … you’re in a casino, right?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  The bells and whirs continued.

  “We just have to raise a little more seed money, that’s all.” I didn’t say anything. The background noise was saying it all. “Relax, Natalie. Chip’s been on such a roll lately. I wouldn’t even call it luck. He won two thousand a couple of weeks ago.”

  That did it. I couldn’t resist. “How much did he lose winning that?”

  “See? Now you’re just being very negative. I called to wish you Merry Christmas and to tell you about this great new business we’re both so excited about, and I hoped that my own daughter …” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you have your opinions, and that’s good. That’s how I raised you.”

  We talked a while longer about her pawn business. How Chip had found a great storefront location, “perfect for growing into.” She was studying up on how to differentiate diamond from moissanite. Everything she said made me uneasy. Then she asked about me, and I’m sure I made her uneasy, too, with my vague and cagey replies. By the time we got off the phone I think we were both glad it was another four months until Easter.

  And my apartment smelled like burnt cookies.

  Ellen was due at five. She had proven to be habitually prompt, and it didn’t surprise me when, at 4:50, there was a knock on my door. Only it was Calvin, not Ellen, standing on my stoop, in his blue jeans and gray shirt, looking as if he were in physical pain.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, stepping outside and shutting the door behind me.

  With the stores all closed, the street was quieter than usual. There was no trace of the wind that had rattled my bedroom window overnight and found its way into my tornadic dreams. Now the sky was blue and the air felt crisp and pollution-free, as if New Jersey had finally settled on an ideal autumn day now that it was winter.

  “Here,” Calvin mumbled, shoving a box at me. “Merry Christmas.”

  The box, which was crushed in one corner, contained a Christmas tree ornament visible behind a layer of clear plastic. Painted on the large silver ball was the face of Rudolph with his red nose. Beside the reindeer was the word Joy.

  “Wow,” I said, without overdoing it. I didn’t want to condescend. This was a sweet gesture from a kid who didn’t specialize in sweet gestures. “This is great. Thanks so much.”

  “You can hang it on your tree,” he said.

  “I sure will.” He didn’t need to know I had no tree. He might break into someone’s home and steal one.

  His mission done, Calvin now stood stiffly, hands in pockets, unsure what to do or say next. I asked him, “So what do you guys have planned for today?”

  “Going to my cousins’ in Kearny,” he said.

  “Is that good?”

  He exhaled wearily. “It is what it is.”

  Calvin’s sincere tree ornament, I realized, would be the only present I received this year. But even sadder was how many presents I had planned to give to others. A fat zero.

  “Hey, can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “You just—” He stopped himself.

  “Nice catch,” I said. “So you gave that girl some records, right? Which means you also like records? Like on vinyl?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but not for some hipster bullshit reason. Vinyl just sounds better.”

  “Hang on a sec.” I went back inside and returned a minute later. “Merry Christmas,” I said, handing him the three remaining quarters of the hundred-dollar bill. “Go buy yourself some records. You’ll have to tape the bill together first, obviously.”

  He stared down at the pieces of bill in his hands. I was afraid he might start to cry.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I’m so stupid.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head angrily, as if trying to unloosen something. “I lost the other piece!”

  Then I got to reveal that wonderful, little-known fact about American paper currency: more than half a bill and it’s legal tender.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Positive.” I warned him that a merchant would probably be suspicious when he handed over three-quarters of a taped-up hundred-dollar bill. “But the law’s on your side,” I said. “And you can always take it to a bank, where they’ll exchange it for a clean one.”

  “Which bank?”

  “Any bank.”

  He studied the torn pieces in his hands as if trying to master the idea of them being real. Then he looked at me and smirked.

  “Sucker!” he said.

  “What?”

  “Now I don’t have to shovel.”

  “Hey, man, a deal’s a deal.”

  As he was waving the pieces of money in front of my face, Ellen’s Prius pulled up behind my car on the street. Calvin stuffed the money into his pocket while we watched her get out of her car. She had on her trench coat, blue jeans, and a stylish wool brim hat.

  Calvin’s eyes widened. “Nice,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. “You know her?”

  “She’s a friend of mine,” I said.

  When she got near, he said, “You two want to smoke up later?” He was Cool Calvin again, any trace of sadness or insecurity gone from his voice. “I can get us weed from my cousin in Kearny.”

  “Definitely not,” I said.

  Ellen gave him a quick once-over. “Good-bye, little boy.” She flicked her fingers at him.

  Calvin’s face reddened.

  “See ya, Calvin,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

  He gave Ellen an angry glance before turning toward the street and shuffling away, his mind full of tall mountains and weed, or vinyl records, or flaming excrement, or maybe nothing at all.

  After calling in the pizza order, I opened a bottle of better-than-usual cabernet, poured two glasses, and told Ellen I wanted to show her something. She followed me over to the bistro table, where I dealt out four hands, using the Greek deal to give myself two aces.

  “Not bad,” she said.

  “You know it’s better than that,” I said.

  “Keep practicing with those oven-mitt hands of yours,” she said, “and in another ten years you might really have something.”

  I knew Ellen was only ribbing me, but her words stung. Maybe because I’d been riding the high of impulsively giving Calvin a much larger gift than I could afford and he could have expected.

  “What?” she said, reading my face. “I said it wasn’t bad.” She drank some wine. “Coming from me, those words are probably the best compliment you ever received.”

  “Because your own skills are so amazing, you mean.”

  “Actually, yes.” She smiled. “That’s exactly what I mean. This wine is good.”

  “You know Ace said the same thing about his skills.”

  Ellen raised an ey
ebrow. “Now that’s a low blow. You saw me at the card table.”

  “I did. And you know how highly I think of your talent.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “But.”

  Her eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if she was just playing anymore. “But what?”

  I couldn’t tell if I was either. “Nothing,” I said. “Really.”

  “No, what?”

  I hesitated a moment. “Your deal wasn’t perfect. I’m just saying.”

  Ellen set down her wineglass. “My deal is perfect.”

  Maybe I’d overstepped, but false dealing was her livelihood. I hadn’t meant to insult her—yet did it hurt to be honest? “At the poker table in Atlantic City?” The wine was helping with honesty. “It was a wonderful deal, don’t get me wrong. I’d never seen the Greek deal before, and it caught me off guard. But don’t forget: I saw something. I still caught you. So was it amazing? Yes. Perfect?” I shook my head. “Not quite.”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “It doesn’t sound like you forget anything,” she said.

  I glanced out the window, wishing for the arrival of our pizza. “I just want us to be careful and prepared and not take anything for granted.”

  “No one’s taking anything for granted, Natalie.”

  “All I’m saying is, if I can catch you, then someone else can, too.”

  “You want out? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Ellen—”

  “No, really,” she said. “If I’m not up to your standards, maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

  “I’m not saying anything like that.”

  “No one’s forcing you to do this, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s just …” I supposed I wanted an assurance that she’d be as careful and prepared as I planned to be, but the last thing I wanted was to make her doubt herself. Walking into Victor Flowers’s house, we would need confidence. Both of us. Self-doubt could get us in deep trouble. I had thought Ellen was unflappable. Evidently, she was only as human as the rest of us. “This is pointless,” I said. “Really. I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen countless card handlers, and you’re at the very top. You know I mean that. And it’s Christmas. Come on.” I got up from the bistro table, went over to the loveseat. “We’re supposed to be taking one lousy night off. So please—Ellen—come over here with your wine and let’s watch this goddamn wonderful movie.”

  I gave her the gift of letting myself be glared at awhile longer. Then she came over.

  Q

  December 29 was our last practice session. Three days later she would pick me up and we would drive together down the Garden State Parkway to Victor’s house in the Highlands.

  When I opened the door, Ellen thrust a bag at me.

  “These beans are from Papua New Guinea,” she said. “Fair trade, organic, and ridiculously expensive. Promise me you won’t ever drink that mini-mart sludge again.”

  I thanked her.

  “And don’t store it in the freezer,” she said. “It kills the taste.”

  “Duly noted,” I said, and that was as close as either one of us came to addressing the tension of the other night.

  Cooking for one all these years had stunted my culinary creativity, and we were back to spaghetti with sauce from a jar, doctored with fresh peppers and onions. Ellen offered to cut up the vegetables while I checked the weather on my computer in the living room. The extended forecast had been calling for snow on New Year’s Day. Not a blizzard or anything, but still. It would have been devastating if after all the planning and practice, the poker game were to get canceled over weather. I was worrying about this particular devastating thing happening when another devastating thing happened.

  I had typed the zip code for the Highlands into my computer, and the website was loading up the five-day forecast when Ellen swore from the kitchen. I went to check on her.

  The kitchen faucet was on. Ellen was running her hand under it.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I just … slicing the stupid onion. Ow.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I think so. Hand me a paper towel.”

  I ripped a paper towel off the roll and handed it to her. She bunched it up and pressed it against her left thumb.

  “It’s not bad, is it?”

  “God, that was so stupid. I should have … it’s not a big cut. I sort of jabbed it. Do you have any Band-Aids?”

  I didn’t. I remembered that Harley had a first-aid kit but I’d heard her leave the apartment earlier. “I can run out …”

  “No, the paper towel should be fine.”

  “Let me see.” The last thing I wanted was to see her wound, but I knew I ought to. Ellen’s fully operational thumb was a lot more critical than my queasiness around blood.

  She was right: it wasn’t a big cut. Still, the bleeding didn’t seem to be stopping.

  “I think it might be kind of deep,” I said. Remembering how Harley had treated my dog bite, I said, “You have to clean it really well. So it won’t get infected.” Ellen had moved into the living room and was sitting on the sofa, head lowered. I knew we were thinking the same thing.

  I tried to imagine our whole plan, all our preparation, coming to naught over an onion. She removed the paper towel and we studied the cut. “It’s not going to close on its own,” I said.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said.

  “You won’t be able to deal the cards.”

  “Of course I will,” she said.

  “Ellen, I think you need stitches.”

  “You don’t know that!” she said harshly, then bit her lip. “I don’t even like onions. Why the fuck do you insist on putting fucking onions in your spaghetti sauce?”

  “It classes it up.”

  “Oh, my god.”

  We sat awhile, not saying anything, Ellen keeping pressure on the wound.

  “We can put it off,” I said. “You said Victor hosts this game every year?”

  “No way are we waiting another year.”

  There was a deck of cards right there on the table. She could have picked it up and proven right then and there that she could deal the cards, except that her right hand was holding the paper towel against her left thumb. “The thumb is really important for the deal,” I said. “Is there any chance you could be the shuffler?”

  “I’m the better dealer,” she said.

  “Not at the moment. And you said it yourself—all eyes will be on the dealer.”

  She winced. “I don’t know. Maybe. I could probably still control the cards. I won’t know until I try. But can you be ready to deal in three days?”

  The truth was, I had ignored Ellen’s advice, given to me on the night we first met up in my apartment. I had been obsessing on the Greek deal. And while it wasn’t the same as if I’d been doing it for years or even months, I probably had dealt several thousand hands in the last week and a half. Over the next three days I could deal several thousand more.

  But would I be ready?

  “For a prize this big,” I said, “maybe it’s worth being patient.”

  “I’ve been patient, Natalie.”

  “I know another year sounds long. I don’t want to wait, either. But—”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m thirty-eight years old. You know better than anyone what I can do, and it’s still taken me twenty years to get a quarter-million-dollar stake together. That’s pretty sad. But I can’t do any better. And now I have this one shot. I don’t know what’s gonna happen in a year. If Victor wins the election, will he still host a poker game? I doubt it. If he loses, will he keep the game going? I can’t wait around to find out. January first is my exit plan. I’m not gonna change that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘exit plan’?”

  She shifted in her seat, took a deep breath, and shook her head. “Have you
ever been to the U.S. Virgin Islands?” she asked. “Saint Thomas?”

  I told her I hadn’t.

  “It’s unbelievable down there. It’s paradise. Warm weather, great seafood, all those rich tourists looking to throw away their money in the casinos. But you know what they don’t have?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Enough Montessori schools.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  She removed the paper towel and inspected the cut again. Shook her head. Refolded the paper towel to a clean spot and reapplied it. “With a million dollars I can start up a first-rate Montessori school.” She must have seen the confusion in my face. “What, you don’t like kids?”

  “No, not especially.”

  “That’s because they end up like that idiot on your doorstep with the piercings everywhere. The little ones, though, they’re all right. But the school where I teach, it’s a travesty. It’s not just my school. It’s everywhere. It’s the system. The teachers’ hands are tied. The principals’ hands are tied. All the creativity’s gone. All the excitement. It’s like that everywhere.”

  “I still don’t get it. So no more poker?”

  “The players who play forever do it because they love the action. I don’t. And the cheats who cheat forever do it because they don’t know anything else. But I do. I’m good with kids. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll still play some cards. Or I’ll hook up with the local casinos, teach one of those ‘how not to get cheated’ classes. I really don’t know. All I know is, I’m done with this—done with Jersey, done with grinding out wins, done with having to rely on low-life partners. Not you, Nat. You know I don’t mean you. But no Band-Aids in your home? I’m just saying.”

  “Let me run out …”

  “No, forget it. The thing is, I’m tired, you know? And I’ve checked it out. There’s plenty of interest in Montessori schools down there. And with a million dollars, I could do it. I could get myself a nice place by the water, get the school going. I could have a life.”

  I wondered how many American daydreams ended with an epilogue set in Caribbean waters. Maybe Ellen would pull it off. Hell, maybe I would. The way she described it, I had to wonder what I was still doing in New Jersey when I could be soaking up the sun and performing for rich vacationers. Then again, I sunburned easily.