Lay the Favorite (13 page)

I tossed the paper aside and slid deeper into the tub. My expenses—car payment, gas, rent, Otis, food and entertainment—came to twenty-four dollars a day, seven hundred twenty dollars a month. Seven grand could’ve lasted me close to ten months. But what then? My inability to work toward a goal was getting on my nerves. I forced myself to consider the future and make a plan.

I applied for a job as an assistant to a knife thrower. When that didn’t pan out, I applied to film school in Savannah, Georgia. I copied the résumé of my most successful ex-boyfriend—the one who complimented me on the stories I made up for my Web site—and wrote my own glowing reference letters. Still I doubted I’d get in. I thought of calling Yitzhak. His number was on my nightstand. But if I ran off to Prague, what would I do with Otis? Otis didn’t want to move to the Czech Republic. And on second thought, yes, Yitzhak
had
been rude to the Yucca Mountain teenager. I blamed the early morning mimosa for my hasty crush, but it wasn’t the champagne’s fault, it was my nature. One minute I could be so excited about a guy, complimenting the restaurant he’d chosen, telling him how nice he looked. The next minute I could become so bored or disappointed by his conversation that I’d grab my purse, excuse myself to the restroom, walk past the hostess stand and out the front door. I did this often while at college, leaving my roommate, Jamie the actress, to deal with the distressed phone call that always followed. Holding the receiver tight to her chest, she’d
ask me what she should say. “Don’t tell him I’m here!” I’d whisper back. “Just tell him I do this a lot. Tell him it’s because I’m adopted. Fear of abandonment, so I abandon first.” Never one to pass up even a bit part, Jamie recited her lines, perfectly.

With my ears submerged beneath bathwater, I willed Dink to stop by. It was nine on Sunday morning. He’d be at the office all day. But there was a small chance he could visit before driving over to the Den of Equity. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine seducing him. I had tried to do this before but my imagination was never able to build up enough momentum for a complete scene, let alone a narrative. Behind my eyelids, images and story lines stuttered and cut to black, as the movie projector in my head kept breaking down. There was so much I admired about Dink: his sense of humor, taste in music, ambition, generosity, and confidence. But I couldn’t imagine him naked and it frustrated me that I felt nothing animalistic toward him. No heat, no rush of blood.

Ah, but wait. That wasn’t true. Flash back to the ’70s, turn up the klieg lights, and zoom in on Dink, in color, age twenty. One afternoon I had snooped through his wallet and came across his Queens College ID card from 1973. I definitely felt lust for the boy in the picture. The tips of his brown curls were sun-tinted blond. His face was thin and tan; his features sharp. With his head tilted to the side and his pale pink lips slipped into a sexy smirk, he looked like a young, pompous drug dealer. I wanted to be in bed with Dink age twenty. I stared at it, mesmerized, until Dink, age forty-eight, came along and snatched it from my hand. His double chin, bouffant hairdo, and flaccid arms made my stomach flip. “Good-lookin’, huh?” he said, sliding the ID back into his wallet. I felt cheated and it showed. For the rest of the day Dink kept asking me what was wrong.

I stayed in the bathtub and sang “Dark End of the Street” to myself until the drain swallowed the last drop of water. Then I turned the faucet to the left and filled the bathtub once again. I felt a little better, but I still wanted to hit something. Which is how I ended up at Johnny Tocco’s Boxing Gym.

Resisting the urge to scribble my name into the steamy mirrored walls, I stood in the corner and kept my hands at my sides. But Johnny Tocco’s was so small that no matter where I stood, I seemed to be in someone’s way. Men threw medicine balls into each other’s stomachs and combinations into the heavy bags. Others callused their knuckles by punching sand inside a bucket. Their grunts resounded. To make room for a boxer to do push-ups, I stepped up onto the corner of the ring. Drops of dried blood were splattered like raindrops across its blue canvas. The buzzer ended the round. Jump ropes stopped smacking, torsos stopped crunching, and the hypnotic triple beat of the speed bag came to a halt. Something warm and wet splashed against my forearm.

“Don’t stand so close to the spit bucket,” a boxer said.

I asked if girls were allowed to box here.

With the help of a translator, Señor Morales agreed to be my trainer. In the weeks that followed, I reported to the gym every day at six p.m. Facing the steamy mirror, I assumed my fighting stance and lowered my chin to my chest. For the next two hours I practiced throwing my jab and snapping it back. Humidity turned my curls to frizz. Sixteen-wheelers roared down West Charleston, rattling my reflection. In the ring behind me, a pair of lightweights sparred. Breathless and glistening, they circled one another before exploding into battle. Trainers stood to the side, white towels spotted with blood slung over their muscular shoulders. Put ’em together, they shouted. Use your left. Your other left. Think!

Dink’s absence and rejection had created a void. And looking back, I think that what led me to Johnny Tocco’s that evening was my instinctive need to find someone in my life who could provide me with guidance. Lucky for me, I found so much more than that. Boxing was the most challenging thing I’d ever done. It gave me the discipline I had been craving, since I had no professional life to speak of. I felt a natural affinity to the boxers and their rugged individualism. I enjoyed developing a style and expressing myself
through rhythmical punches. And unlike the day-to-day at Dink Inc., gym life provided me with a substantive goal to work toward, a reason to look forward: a fight!

Eso, eso
, Señor Morales encouraged. Concentrating on staying loose and quick, I threw my jab and snapped it back.

Tulip’s cheeks had swelled up and over her eyes. Her bloated neck was propped against a white silk pillow. Pink, purple, and blue bruises camouflaged her face. Grease oozed from her pores. Long staples protruded from in front of her bandaged ears. Her hairline had receded an inch, maybe two.

The face-lift had been a success.

But Dink didn’t think so. He was out forty-five grand and his wife’s face looked as though Barry Bonds had just used it for batting practice. He regretted having agreed to the surgery. She didn’t even need it, she was cute the way she was. It disturbed him that she had put herself through that much pain voluntarily. He didn’t like that she moaned so much. Was that normal? Yes, Tulip’s sister assured him, it was normal. She massaged Tulip’s face with a Ziploc bag packed with frozen peas.

Many adults notice the progression of time through the growth of their children. Dink considered his hamsters children but they had a maximum life expectancy of only three years, not exactly a full measure of time’s passing. Dink had the same lifestyle he’d had when he was in his twenties. Now, as then, his days revolved around sports, money, and friends. As he stood over a battered and bedridden Tulip, it became clear that time had indeed passed. The best years of his life had been lived and now he was old.

If Dink could be granted one wish it would be this: every morning he’d wake up to a shoebox full of money falling from the ceiling. Without answering to anyone, he’d spend the cash—and his day—however he pleased. That’s what his life was like when he was a bookmaker in Queens and that’s when he was happiest. Now he felt stuck. He didn’t enjoy gambling as much as people thought
he did. It was just the only thing he knew how to do to support himself. If he could make book from his house, he would, but he couldn’t, so he gambled, which was a lot more pressure. He felt he had passed the point in his life when he could be successful at other things. For a moment, he considered opening a bagel restaurant or a rock club. No, he told himself. Now it’s too late.

He felt squeamish. Looking in the bathroom mirror as he brushed his teeth, he saw that his tongue was turning green. He didn’t want to keep this ailment to himself; he was in need of consolation. But when you gamble for a living, you learn early on that civilians are quick to judge. It didn’t matter the condition—stomachache, headache, fatigue—they were all attributed, immediately, to “your gambling.”

Jyrki the hamster sleepily made his way to the cuddle spot inside his five-star hamster hotel. The last game of the day ended and Dink graded his work. He had spent the last thirteen hours sitting in a chair, working, and he still lost for the day. He was falling behind in his hockey handicapping. He didn’t think he could do this anymore, or at least do it well. He thought about the smart and successful gamblers he knew when he was in his thirties. Most of them were now selling their homes to pay off debts. Would he be the next one to fall? Smarter people had fallen because they risked too much and didn’t realize their earn was over. He was tired of worrying about going broke and he didn’t want to be sick anymore. Maybe he was allergic to the floor cleaner the housekeeper used. Or maybe he’d been sick for so long that parasites were beginning to take over his body. He counted out the bankrolls and rubber-banded them in the middle so they’d be ready for the runners in the morning.

Lying in bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about an earlier game.
Why did Syracuse foul when they were down eight with six seconds left? The game was over. There was no hope to win. Why foul? It wasn’t even a bad mental error. It was a stupid, irrelevant situation that occurred for no reason and it beat me out of a bet
.

Which reminded him:
Canucks, under. Better go bet it now
.

He returned to the computer and punched in his bet.

If he thought about me, he never let me know.

For weeks I had imagined my phone ringing and Dink being on the other end. When the moment came, his voice lacked the emotion I was hoping for. I could barely understand his mumbles. Long stretches of silence were filled awkwardly with horse racing commentary blaring from his television. After a long tirade directed at the seven horse, Dink grumbled, “You can have your job back, if you want. There’s a Dink Inc. field trip on Tuesday to Costa Rica.”

I jumped up and down and screamed as though I were a lucky contestant on a game show. “Yes, I want to go! I miss you! Why did it take you so long to call me?”

Dink had mentioned Costa Rica before, in passing. Over the last couple of years many of his friends and acquaintances had moved to San José, the country’s capital, to set up online sports books and cash in on the Internet gambling boom. The legalities were hazy, but for the time being, bookmaking was legal there. More than half the bookmakers we placed our bets with were based in San José. I always thought that if Dink moved to Costa Rica and started a business, he’d make billions. With all of his connections, and knowledge and good name, how could he not?

“Don’t get too excited,” he said, raising his voice over mine. “I just wanna see the environment. I just wanna see if it’s a place where I can make money and obtain fun.”

“Of course we’ll be able to obtain fun!”

“Consider it a fact-finding mission,” he said. “Pick me up at ten. Fuckin’ seven horse! Why’d he ever leave the farm?”

I felt uneasy arriving at Dink’s house on the morning of our flight. I hadn’t a clue if Tulip had agreed to Dink’s decision to rehire me, or if she even knew that I was accompanying him to Costa Rica. Dink greeted me at the door and, in a whisper, told me of Tulip’s face-lift. He made it clear that he didn’t want me sneaking a peek at Tulip but I did anyway. I waited until the sister left Tulip’s
side for a beer break by the pool, listened for the patio door to slide shut, then let my curiosity guide me down the hallway.

Tulip’s room was golden yellow and enormous. Windows overlooked the ninth hole, partly shaded by swaying king palms. On the nightstand, beside bottles of prescription medication, lay travel magazines, worn and tattered. Tulip was delirious on painkillers. Her blood-speckled eyelids flickered and she gazed up at me. Her milky eyes watered like an elderly dog’s. Cupping my hand over my mouth and catching my breath, I made no secret of my shock. She closed her eyes and she looked dead. I reached out and snapped my fingers beside her ear, something I did to Otis when he was a puppy and I feared he was deaf. She lifted her hand and clumsily groped the damp curls trapped beneath the industrial-sized staples in her head.

“Don’t get old,” Dink whispered, as I walked into the den. He held Jyrki close to his heart and gently stroked his fur.

Out of habit, I searched the couch for change before falling onto the cushions.

“Does she know we’re going to Costa Rica together?” I asked.

“She knows. She wants you to return the severance pay.”

“Not gonna happen. Tell her I lost it playing Flip It.”

“We have a layover in Miami. Florida’s a felony registration state. So remind me, I have to check in at the Felony Motel and Laundromat. It’s on Collins at 41st Street. Right near the Fontainebleau.”

“There’s a Felony Motel and Laundromat?”