Condo Conversion, Chapter 9

            We awoke fully dressed in the same bed, my brother and I, feeling bad but not annihilated.  In the first hour several waves of nausea washed over my body, but I never vomited.  I jogged in place, did push ups and crunches, all in an attempt to exorcise the minor demon.  It worked.  While showering I reminded myself that this was precisely why I had quit getting high.  Cocaine had the capacity to add a sinister glacial layer to my hangovers, filled with grains and pebbles of depression and boulders of self loathing.  This was absent when my hangover was merely alcohol fueled.  Now I just felt like shit.  And that, believe it or not, was progress. 

            Nicholas and Rick were absent, as they had been when we returned to the room the night before.  This was no surprise.  During dinner, I had overheard them talking about a trip to one of the out of town whorehouses outside Reno in the desert.  To tell the truth, I was pondering a similar move myself, just not on this trip and not in the company of other men.  That had always confused me, the testosterone-fueled camaraderie that surrounded the event.  I had always thought of it as a private, though hardly shameful, affair. 

            We went down to the coffee shop and ordered breakfast.  I was having the Denver omelet, my brother a short stack of pancakes.  We heard our dynamic companions stampeding through the lobby before they saw us.  Moments later, they were sitting in our booth.

            Rick was a vision, an exemplar, the paradigm of the robust partyer.  The night had taken its toll, there was no evading that.  His eyes were bloodshot red, his face droopy.  His hair was out of place and his clothing wrinkled.  But he had a glow, indeed a healthy one, which only emanates at the end of a long and satisfying bender.  He sat down opposite me.  Nicholas appeared far more wounded by the events of the night, but amazingly was still hanging in there.

            “The things I did last night,” Rick exclaimed, shaking his head.  “They would make your head spin.”

            “We’re all ears,” I said enthusiastically.  My brother rolled his eyes.  He worked day in day out with Nicholas and Rick, and tired of their ways more quickly than I.

            “Well, where do I begin?”

            “At the beginning,” I encouraged.

            “After you guys went to gamble we retired to the suite.  After a fat joint and some more powder I just had a hankering for some pussy.  You know what I mean?  So Nick and I, we took a cab out to the Squirrel Ranch.  You wouldn’t believe what they do there.  When you walk through the door they ring a bell and all the available girls line up for your inspection.  I let Nick go first.  Would you believe he picked the ugliest broad in the bunch?”

            “I liked her,” Nicholas interrupted, “she was a real person.”  A truly excellent statement, I thought, especially coming from a guy so good looking.

            “Whatever,” Rick continued.  “I chose not one, but two hot blondes.  They took me up to what they call the Jacuzzi room.  There was a menu on the wall listing every possible sexual perversion along with the price.  We fucked for what must have been two hours.  I had one of ‘em licking my balls while the other one tounged my asshole.  I felt like a Roman emperor.  It was the best thousand bucks I’ve ever spent.”

            “How many mortgages does that come to?” I asked sarcastically.

            “Let me tell you something, you can’t put a price on an experience like that.”

            I took his word for it. 

 

            By four o’clock, we were driving home, my brother at the wheel, me in the front passenger seat.  Rick and Nicholas were passed out in the back, mouths agape, faces pale, limbs limp, a couple of inanimate marionettes.  We passed high above Donner Lake and I looked down at its azure quietude.  On the mountain in the distance a train made what appeared to be a precarious journey through tunnels and over passes.  It was summer, but there was still some snow on the peaks.  A hundred and fifty years ago crossing the Sierras was a mortal risk; now we did it in absolute comfort, completely detached from the elements.  I wondered if this was better or worse. 

            We had gambled for a couple of hours before our departure, but it wasn’t the same.  The casino had regained its primacy; the laws of statistics could not be resisted.  Luckily, we were playing very small, in the hopes of escaping with a profit.  In the end, I left up eight hundred dollars and very happy.  It is not a bad thing to give back a few bucks when you have won big – the God’s of gambling demand and indeed deserve their sacrificial tribute.     

            “Are you gonna say it or do I have to?” David asked.

            “Say what?”

            “You know.”

            “I already told you that you were right.”

            “Let me hear it again.”

            I laughed.  “Fine: you were right.  I would have been a fool not to come on this trip with you.

            “Remember that next time.”

            “Okay.” 

            “So, what are you going to do with your new found fortune?”

            “I don’t know.  Stave off starvation and homelessness, I guess.”

Condo Conversion, Chapter 8

There Nicholas stood, resplendent in his tall, dark and handsome magnificence, shaking the dice wildly in his clenched fist.  There are few men that I acknowledge as exceptionally good looking but he was certainly one of them.  He was the kind of guy who could have any woman he wanted.  A light shone behind him, giving him an almost divine appearance. 

            “Eight, come on eight,” he repeated several times.

            “Hit it for us Nicky,” my brother called out.

            “Four-four,” I chimed, “do it the hard way.”

            He threw the dice.  One skidded and tumbled on the felt, never more than half an inch off the table.  The other bounced two feet high, spinning in mid air.  I watched it twist and turn.  It was almost eye level.  Time slowed down.  This must be how a great baseball hitter feels, watching the movement of the seams as the ball catapults toward him at ninety miles an hour. 

            Then time accelerated.  Both dice hit the back of the table and magically flipped over: four-four.  Hard eight.  The entire table burst into screams of elation.

            We received our chips and walked away.  Everybody was up big.  I was up about seven hundred.  My brother put his arm around my neck.

            “What did I tell you?”

            “You were right,” I admitted.

            “Let’s go upstairs.  Rick is probably there.”  

            We cashed out and went to the suite.  And sure enough, there was Rick hunched over the glass coffee table chopping up a gratuitous pile of cocaine, several long lines already prepared: four, to be precise.  I had been drinking heavily.  These things were always hardest when you’ve had a few drinks. 

            “Let’s get this party started,” Rick said, extending a rolled up bill my way.

            “Ahh, thanks anyway, man.  I’m on the wagon.”

            “But not this weekend,” he argued.  “We’re on vacation.”

            “I’ll just stick to my drinks,” I responded, proceeding to kitchen to make myself a bourbon and coke. 

            “Well I’m not waiting any longer,” he said, snorting up the biggest of the lines.

            Nicholas was next, taking the bill without comment and sucking up another line.  He offered the bill to my brother, who politely declined as well.

            “What the hell is going on here?” Rick said, outraged.

            “We haven’t even eaten dinner yet,” my brother replied.

            “So?  This won’t have any effect on dinner.”

 

            An hour later we were at the steakhouse.  And damn it if Rick hadn’t been perfectly correct in his statement.  Despite having enjoyed two more huge helpings of Columbia’s finest, he was attacking his porterhouse with gusto.  It was quickly devoured.  He even picked up the bone in his hands and gnawed on it, just to make his point clear, in my opinion.  He downed the last of the expensive Cabernet, some of which trickled on to his chin and meaty jowls. 

            “Jesus,” my brother said, “you fucking killed that thing.”

            Rick smiled contentedly.  His face was a deep purple, which contrasted dramatically with his light blonde hair and pale blue eyes.  His hefty arms were crossed in front of him as he belched soundly.  “It’s my Norwegian heritage,” he said proudly.  “We’re a stout people.  I’m a goddamned Viking.”

            “You know what else you are?” I asked.

            “What?”

            “A bon-vivant.”

            “What the hell is that?” Nicholas, who was completely drunk by this time, asked.  He always tried to keep up with the pace of the party, but invariably fell short.

            “A person who lives luxuriously and enjoys good food and drink, a lover of life” my brother answered perfectly.

            “You really mean that?” Rick asked.

            “Of course,” I replied.

            “You’re all right, man.”

            “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

            We split the bill between the four of us and got up to leave. 

            “I’m going up to the room,” Rick said.

            “Me too,” added Nicholas, swaying back and forth.  He desperately needed a pick-me-up.

            “I’m gonna go play the tables,” I said.

            “Yeah,” agreed my brother.  Rick shook his head in consternation.  All that coke and here he was with two abstainers: what had the world come to? 

            Dave and I proceeded to the roulette table, where there were no other casino patrons.  I like to play alone or with a friend.  Large groups crowded around ruin the experience for me: too many arms and fingers invading my domain.  I always play the same inside numbers: 0, 00, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18, 21, and 24.  Sometimes I play the outside as well, red or black, odd or even.  But for starters I generally stick with my numbers.  They’re all lucky to me in one way or another, hand selected, containing personal significance.  Numbers are important to me, imbued with portent.  Anyway, it’s easier to just stick with the same ones time and time again.  That way you don’t lament your choices because you don’t really have any.  Either you are lucky or you are not. 

            My brother was wagering on the outside bets, playing small.  He doesn’t enjoy roulette as much as I do.  He thinks it’s a bad proposition, which is perfectly true.   The player suffers a disadvantage of close to five and a half percent on most American wheels, much larger than on craps or blackjack.  But if you find a run of luck on the roulette table you can increase your money exponentially, unlike any other game in the casino.  Besides, I like facing the tough odds. 

            I spread two dollar bets on all my numbers and the croupier gave the wheel a spin.  My brother and I began to talk offhandedly as I scrutinized every movement of the ball.

            “Rick’s on fire tonight,” he said.

            “He has an incredible constitution.  It makes me jealous.”

            “You’re really sticking with the no-drugs thing.  I’m impressed.”

            “I just couldn’t take it anymore.  But I could fall at any moment.  There are times when the desire is very strong.”

            “What holds you to your resolution?”

            “I just weigh how good it would feel immediately versus how bad it will feel tomorrow.  Nothing is worth that pain.  Nothing.”

            “Seventeen,” the croupier exclaimed.

            “Yes!” I pumped my fist and jumped up from the table.  I noticed a pretty waitress behind me. 

            “Would you guys like something to drink?” she asked. 

            “I’d like a jack and coke, please,” I said.

            “Scotch,” requested David. 

            I tipped the dealer and doubled all my bets.  The ball was alive and moving once again. 

            “People are surprised when they hear about you,” David said.  “There was even a rumor going around that you’d quit drinking too.”

            “I hope you dispelled that one quickly.  I’d hate for people to think I was a twelve stepper or something.”

            “I never realized what a huge reputation you had.”

            “That was precisely the problem.”

            “Eight!”

            “Fuck yes!” I yelled, my hand shaking nervously.  I was now up almost two hundred since sitting down.  I doubled all my bets again. 

            “What about you?” I asked David just as the waitress quickly returned with our drinks.  I took a long pull.  “You’re not indulging either.”

            “I never really liked it to begin with.  I just did it to be a part of things, you know?  If you were partying I probably would, too.  It makes it easier that there’s two of us.”

            I raised my glass.  “Cheers to that.”  We toasted and felt good. 

            “Double zero.”

            “You have to be kidding me!  I can’t lose!”  I was beside myself and David was jumping up and down screaming, scotch spilling on the floor.  The croupier had run out of roulette chips in my color and paid me in twenty five dollar green chips.  I tossed one his way, now up over five hundred dollars in five minutes.  

            After that the spell broke.  The next spin missed my numbers and we both knew the time had come to leave.  I colored up my chips and we walked toward the blackjack tables. 

            We played for about forty-five minutes.  It was a good even run: win one hand lose the next and so forth.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  It keeps the drinks flowing, the entertainment alive and the conversation civil.  It also keeps a steady stream of tips moving toward the dealer, which I consider important.  If you are going to piss money away gambling, some of it at least should go to the people working. 

            I was getting drunk and very happy.  It had been a great day for a gambler.  I knew that time was short and I wouldn’t lose it all back, my once full tank of compulsion having been emptied by the action.  Our dealer’s name was Clarissa.  She busted on a sixteen.

            “Clarissa, we love you,” Dave said, also very drunk.  He gave her a five dollar chip.

            “My brother shall not exceed me in generosity,” I said, also giving her a red.

            “You are the two sweetest guys I’ve dealt to all week,” she responded.  That was probably partially true and partially her desire to extract more money from us.  If so, her plan was working.

            The Billy Ocean song “Caribbean Queen” began playing.  I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but I consider it a real classic of 80’s pop.  My brother and I looked at one another and simultaneously began singing along and dancing awkwardly in our seats, unwilling due to our intoxication to stand up.  Clarissa continued dealing the cards as we sang.  The song and our exuberance worked in our favor somehow and she busted every hand.  Soon we were singing directly to her, serenading her with our drunken adoration.  Players at other tables, pit bosses and other dealers stared our direction and laughed, some mockingly.  We clearly looked like idiots, but at least we were pleasant idiots who weren’t trying to hurt anybody.  Our joy leaped in a crescendo of broken notes and good energy.  It was a sublime moment neither of us would immediately remember the following day, but would recall when reminded by the casino manager.  No more love on the run…

 

Condo Conversion, Chapter 7

 

I awoke to the sound of the phone ringing.  I answered it groggily. 

            “This is Peter.”

            “This is your brother.”

            “How ya doin’, Dave?”  My brother David is two years younger than me but vastly more successful.  He is a mortgage broker in the city and has been on a very good run of luck these past few years. 

            “The question is how are you doing?  Have you banged any seventy year olds yet?”

            “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

            “I expect details.”

            “Of course.”

            “The reason I’m calling is I’ve lined up a suite at the Reno Peppermill this Saturday.  Rick will be there, as well as Nicholas.  You should come.”

            “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered hesitatingly.  “I don’t really have the dough.”

            “What do you mean you don’t have the dough?  Didn’t you just score a retainer today?”

            “Yeah, but that has to go to rent and supporting myself for the next little while.”

            “Listen, don’t be difficult.  The room is free; the drinks are cheap. I’m paying for gas.  All you need is gambling money.”

            “That’s what I’m worried about.”

            “What worry?  If you get down you can always borrow more money from me.”

            “Then I have to pay you back.”

            “So?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “All right, I didn’t want to have to say this, but I’m going to anyway.  I’m worried about you, Pete.  You’re not the same.  You’ve lost your gambling spirit.”

            “No, I’ve lost the losing spirit.  I haven’t won on the table games in like two years.”

            “See what I mean?  You have a bad attitude.  You can’t win with a bad attitude.”

            “That was a low blow, what you said.  Nobody has more gambling spirit than I do and you know it.”

            “So, are you coming?”

            “Yeah.”

            At six-fifteen I was getting ready for my dinner with Marion.  After brushing my teeth I scrutinized my countenance in the mirror.

            Not a bad face, I thought, but one of a person nearer to forty than thirty.  Premature lines in the corners of my eyes, small hairline red cracks and splotches on my large Roman nose, a lack of color in my face and barely visible but burgeoning freckles on the top of my head where male pattern baldness had laid waste to my once great forest of hair.  I had gained some weight as well, which gave my neck and cheeks a paunchiness I was not used to.  When I was younger I was so skinny and all I wanted was to be able to put on a few pounds.  Now that I was older I realized how hard it was to lose weight once you had it. 

            But still, not a bad face.  God had not been unfair to me.  It had character; it was a face that merited female company.  I wondered what Marion must have looked like fifty-five years earlier.  She was probably a decent babe in her day.

            At six twenty-nine I exited my bungalow and walked across the small lawn to hers.  The door was open a couple of inches, but I knocked anyway. 

            “Come in,” she called.

            I entered.  There was a small card table that had been set with a lace tablecloth, old floral plates and antique silver wear.  As Marion was nowhere in sight, I indulged my interest by picking up and inspecting a knife off the table.  It was heavy, real silver: stamped Tiffany.  She had brought out the good stuff for me. 

            She emerged from out her bedroom dressed in dark blue sweatpants, a soiled baby blue sweater and white slippers.  I was glad she was comfortable.  If she had been all dressed up it would have made me uneasy. 

            “Hello Peter,” she said softly.  “I’m so glad you came.  Tonight we’re having a dinner of Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.  I hope that sounds good to you.”

            “It certainly does,” I replied.

            “I’ll get started on it after Jeopardy.”  And with this, she turned on the television and offered me a seat on the couch next to her. 

            The program began.  I like Jeopardy.  It is truly one of the great game shows of all time.  I don’t watch regularly, but when I do I like to play along.  I’ve always been under the assumption that everybody plays along.  That, I believe, is what makes it such a compelling program.  On this particular night I was on fire, hitting more than half the questions to the answers. 

            “What is Liberia?”

            “Who is William Randolph Hearst?”

            “What is a sonnet?”

            “Who are the Carthaginians?”

            “Could you please stop that?” Marion snapped.  I was totally confused.

            “Huh?”

            “You are ruining the show.”

            “Oh,” I responded, embarrassed and a little taken aback.  “Sorry.”

            We watched the rest of the program in silence.  I guessed at the answers in my head, but it just wasn’t the same. 

            When the show was finished Marion rose from her seat. 

            “You just stay where you are.  Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

            Fifteen minutes? I thought.  How could that be?

            “No, Marion, allow me to help you.”

            “Absolutely not,” she responded pleasantly.  She walked over to the refrigerator, opened the freezer and removed two blue boxes: frozen dinners.  I understood and was pleased that she wouldn’t be straining herself.  Anyway, I like frozen dinners. 

            Soon the plates on the table were removed, replaced by the plastic boxes that contained our dinners.  She poured two waters for us to drink.  So there we were, eating Swanson’s Hungry Man with fine silver.  The steak was a little chewy, but the green beans and potatoes were quite palatable.  The meal even included an additional treat: a chocolate brownie.  What more could be desired?  A beer, perhaps. 

            I took responsibility for keeping the conversation rolling, asking her about her family.  When she tired of this topic I queried her on some of the events and personalities of her lifetime: FDR and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini.  She had remarkably accurate and clear memories of this history.  She recalled the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House during Christmas 1941 and the heroic welcome he received.  “He was a very great man,” she said.  “He understood the danger in our world before anybody else, even the President.”  I listened intently, as I am always enthralled by these increasingly rare first person narratives.  Those were truly weighty times that forged great men.  Today we live in a historical cesspool.  Our leaders, I think, have diminished accordingly. 

            When dinner was finished we cleared the table together.  We sat back down on the couch but had little left to discuss.  She yawned, which I took as a sign to make my exit.

            “Marion, thank you so much for dinner.”

            “It was my pleasure.  We must do this again sometime,” she said as she led me to the door.

            “I look forward to it,” I replied.

 

            Two days later I was awakened by loud noises outside my window.  It was fairly early, eight o’clock in the morning.  As I don’t like to rise unnaturally unless I have some business to conduct, I was perturbed.  I put on my robe and went outside.  Three men were crowded around Marion’s open door, shouting at one another.  They were strangers to me.  Two of them were young and dressed in blue uniforms, the other a middle aged fellow in plainclothes with an expression of complete anguish on his face.  I walked toward them.

            “What is the meaning of all this racket?” I asked. 

            They turned as a unit and looked at me dumbfounded, as if my very presence was surreal.  Just as the first whiff of that foul odor penetrated my nostrils, I peered over the shoulder of one of the men and saw the source of their dismay: there was Marion, dressed exactly as I had left her two days earlier, dead on the couch.  She had a strange look frozen on her face, a look of surprise.  At least she had been sitting, I thought. 

            “Oh,” I said.  I turned and walked back into my apartment.  It was impossible to get back to sleep.  I felt like getting high.