"I called House. Maybe she'll come over when she gets out of work,"
Stephanie said. I was typing at the computer, tired from a long day of
renovating the bodega. This was yesterday. I had spent hours removing the
fake bulletproof glass that was supposed to keep the customers from fake
shooting the storeowners. My pockets were filled with screws. I delighted
in the task - not only was it fast-going, but it seemed proper to dismantle
a security barrier in a dilapidated neighborhood where at first I was
insecure but had lately felt safe and welcome. Also, as I told a half-dozen
people who stopped by for some staple, it's not a store anymore. It's where
we live, Stephanie and me.
"Good," I told her, "I was wondering how I was going to stay up later than
seven-thirty tonight." My dog died last week.
House showed up at around nine. She's a Stephanie, too, so she goes by her
surname with us. (These names are true. The facts are changed slightly.)
House and I chatted about Roanoke, where she had just visited. Roanoke is on
the west side of Virginia and has a population of around 100,000, according
to a census bureau web site. Stephanie and I argue a lot and make bets about
who was in Single White Female, so we got the Internet. It was Bridget Fonda
and not Jodie Foster; I was wrong and it cost me a dollar.
"So, then, do you not want to play cards," Stephanie asked us. No one had a
problem with Rummy 500, so I dealt the first hand. I'm not sure if we play
by the right rules, but normally we don't have any problems. I usually lose,
but one time I beat Stephanie in a best-of-three tournament and she drew for
me a four-page comic book. It happened to be about a horse and a chipmunk
confessing to each other (had I lost, I would owe her a love song). On this
night, House beat Stephanie by only five points. I've got the scorecard
right here.
The game lasted ten rounds, which is fairly long for Rummy 500; it means
that the winner only scored an average of 50 points each round. (The first
player to earn 500 points is the champion, and you score by setting down at
least three cards of the same number, or a run of the same suit - for
instance a nine, ten, and Jack of hearts. That particular combination would
give you 25 points, because tens and face cards are worth ten, by our count,
and everything lower is worth five. Aces are fifteen.)
I dealt five cards and House won the first round quickly, with 65 points.
When she played the last set in her hand, Stephanie and I had to give her
our remaining cards. I hated to lose a King.
"Does anyone need another beer?" Stephanie asked. The night was young. Why
not?
I was thinking about my dog, and how if she were alive she'd be sitting next
to my chair, looking at me. She'd look at me. Last week she was doing that
but her lungs or something were filled with blood. I found all sorts of rat
poison in the bodega downstairs, and Thunder was part Rat Terrier. How
funny!
But that couldn't have been it - you should see how hearty are our mice
minions. They live in the shelves of the bodega. They bathe in poison and
dine in Ramen. Oh, we have Ramen. We have hundreds of cans of French-cut
green beans. Ravioli with meat sauce, peanut butter, mustard, enough tomato
soup to blood up a horror flick. The mice make tunnels through our products
and our walls are made of squalor. But it's nothing a coat of paint can't
fix.
In the fourth round, Stephanie played a Jack, Queen, and King of diamonds.
On my turn I drew the Ace of diamonds but didn't play it in Stephanie's
straight because I already had the Ace of spades. I took a risk, hoping I
could finagle another Ace and play the three together. That way I would make
45 points instead of just fifteen for finishing the straight.
I discarded and said, "D.G.O." which stands for "Don't Go Out." Stephanie
made that up weeks ago when she secretly didn't want me to play my final
card and win. In our games, saying "D.G.O." instead of the unabbreviated
version passes for a poker face.
It struck me that the letters, rearranged, spell "dog."
Then Stephanie went out.
But it was under controversial circumstances! She had used a wild card
(Jokers are wild) to represent the Queen of diamonds, so she thought it'd be
fair to switch it on the next turn when she actually drew that card. She
inserted the real Queen and made the wild into the Ace. I jumped on that
right away. I thought I had a chance.
"It doesn't make any sense!" I said. "Nihilist!" I said, but House noted
that in an earlier round she herself had played a hard ten over a wild in
Stephanie's pile. I asked if doing that required shifting runs around but
the clarification was lost in the greater argument. House rules, as the
saying goes, so Stephanie compromised by winning but not netting points for
the questionable move. She said it cost her the game but that's a
"counterfactual." There's no way to know what would have happened if the US
hadn't bombed Hiroshima or if Stephanie hadn't cheated.
My brother taught me that word, "counterfactual" on Saturday. I was telling
him about the White Sox game when the umpire called a passed ball and the
batter took first; the score was tied and the Angels could have lost either
way. Heisenberg said it years ago - just looking at something changes it.
We looked at each other wrong and my mood was spoiled. I nursed another beer
but it didn't help. The cheater nursed three or four. House looked on,
drinking normally and winning another round. I let all conversation and
social niceties go. I knew that I was being unpleasant, knew that humans
have the power to change their attitudes and that that strategic ambiguity
is no reason to be glum, but what the heck? So I'm hopeless.
Then I scored ninety points on the next round and was happy. I didn't want
to show it, though, thinking that to be in a good mood suddenly might seem
disingenuous. And besides, we had moved from listening to XKS Gets Tight
onto Triple XKS, which wasn't as good. Stephanie declared that we would
listen to it over and over. One day we listened to London Calling several
dozen times, morning to night. I love "Lost in the Supermarket" for its
simple truth. Long distance callers do make long distance calls, actually.
You said it, Joe, and we danced to it for twelve hours.
XKS is Stephanie's old band. With her friends Xav and Kiki, they formed in
Milwaukee around 2001. They'd drink coffee, then write and record albums
real fast, making sexy songs (Triple XKS), and spooky songs (Super Scary).
They had an album called Psychics (also spooky) and their newest, XKS Gets
Tight, features twelve different drummers. I love the idea of XKS, they were
so weird, but their last album is the only essential one. The song
"Somnambulist" lays out their roles. Xav sings, "K on the Quest Black Magic
coming through the Peavey/S is on the Korg keys also through a Peavey/And
me, X, I'm on a Technica and we're all coming out of a Sony, Panasonic, GE."
That's just some gearhead talk.
House has a boyfriend who plans to move to Baltimore and live with her. He
lives in Memphis but decided out of nowhere to quit his job, sell his car,
and head east. We discussed that as the game progressed. I had two sevens, a
nine, a King, and a three. I drew a six and discarded it.
I only moved to this city in August. Stephanie, heartsick, left Milwaukee
and bought her bodega in East Baltimore. A couple weeks before she moved we
started to do things together. It was a hot summer and we kept going to the
beach. Just think of it! Wisconsinites at the beach, everyday, getting tan.
One time I saw a fellow with a surfboard! We were beach bums, all of us,
and Stephanie led us in "Sun Salutations." Yoga hurts my back.
I called her from Milwaukee on the day she first unlocked her new door. The
day before, the night before, the last time I saw her, at the Polish Falcon,
she was all, "I have a crush on you," and I was all, "Whoa, cool," because,
you know, wow. But then, the morning she left she lit a cigarette and said,
"Oh. So you're just a normal person, huh?" She blew smoke, and I suspected
she was just uncrushing the crush so we could go on - because that's the
thing about a crush, right? It's a crush, crushing.
And she arrived in the new city and left a message while I was away from my
desk. "Gimme a call," she said, "and I'll tell you about my new place." So
I did. I was having a hard time picturing the boarded-up bay window as she
described it, so I said "hold on" and flew out the next day to see for
myself. The bay window is boarded up, I saw, and covered with stucco. It
was emotional. Back in Wisconsin I quit my job and sold my car, and Thunder
and I headed east.
Stephanie said it's a nice story and asked House if her beau had any reason
to move here aside from her. No, he didn't. That's a lot of pressure for
her. Him too. I had a number of reasons to move and felt that no matter how
things between Stephanie and I played out, it was a win-win situation.
I can't remember how the rest of the round went. In fact, it wasn't honest
to note the cards I was holding or what I drew. I just invented those
details to keep the story focused. In fact, I hardly paid attention during
the game, because winning Rummy 500 isn't that important to me. One time I
lost and had to buy Stephanie cheesecake, fresh strawberries, brandy,
six-dollar orange juice, and fancy coffee for breakfast. (Had I won, she
would have brought me a tuna fish sandwich and a Bloody Mary with
cheese-stuffed olives.)
And if our relationship wasn't a winner, I planned to move in with my
brother, who is a teacher living in Westminster. He knows about politics and
is interesting to talk to. I called him a few minutes ago to ask what that
word was, the one he taught me on Saturday.
"Hang on a second," he said, "it's on the tip of my tongue."
"Uncountable or something," I prompted.
"No, 'counterfactuals'." He also taught me about the economic concept of a
"sunk cost," so I knew it didn't matter that there was a different girl I
liked in Milwaukee. I wanted Stephanie more.
It's interesting to note that Stephanie introduced this other girl to me, on
purpose. She happened to be the third person doing "Sun Salutations." And -
there was another woman a few weeks before that, also a setup of
Stephanie's. She was a journalist who came to a party after the opening of a
play I wrote. We had a great weekend - went to the beach - but she dropped
me on Monday.
I recounted all of this to House while we discussed her situation. I mused
that her boyfriend must be nervous about the step he was taking. I mean, I
certainly was. I was a neurotic mess during the two weeks between my visit
to Baltimore and the day I moved. I spent every night at the Polish Falcon
watching Brewers' games with Dimitri, my friend who said that if Stephanie
called and told me not to move in with her, he would pay me $100. See how
quickly he turned even that into a winning situation? And the Brewers were
dabbling with a .500 record.
"I was just hoping I could get out here," I told House. "I just didn't want
Stephanie to freak out and tell me not to come."
"I was hoping that you wouldn't freak out and change your mind," Stephanie
said. It was nice to hear. I had known and admired her for several years,
since I saw her perform "Maid Sailor" as Ms. Money Money. She was stunning.
We talked a few times but I think it wasn't until she helped me out at a
rehearsal for my play that she really noticed me. At that time there was a
mild disagreement between two actors so I said to them, "Okay, but can you
say it nicely?" Apparently, that struck Stephanie as very likable.
I don't think I mentioned all that to House while we played Rummy 500. The
point I made to her was that I had a contingency plan if things didn't work
out. I learned about contingency plans from my brother long ago. I learned
about being impetuous from my father, who called me that when I first moved
out to Milwaukee. Originally, I'm from upstate New York.
"That was another factor in moving here," Stephanie said. "He'd been wanting
to move back East for a while."
"Yeah, it worked out perfectly," I agreed, discarding the three (maybe). All
of the talk about my love life cheered me more. I crave attention.
Maybe that's how come I'm a writer, for the attention. Once I had a short
story contest with my friend from Chicago, but the story was the prize. The
contest was Major League Baseball - particularly that the Brewers would end
the season above the Cubs in the standings, and the loser had to write a
short story for the winner. The Brewers won by four games!
I keep checking my mail but my prize hasn't arrived yet. When I asked him
about it, he said that some people owe him some stories and once he gets
them he'll be able to send mine. Get it? I win. I don't always win, but I
rarely lose for losing. So I have to write a short story? I crave the
attention. So I have to serve Stephanie cheesecake in bed? I love bed. If
Stephanie dumped me early, I'd score a hundred bucks. If she dumps me for
being grumpy last night, I'll move in with my brother and we'll stay up late
talking about Karl Rove. I've got the system rigged.