One On The House (6 page)

“Oughta be a law everybody has to take a trip every two years just to make ’em realize how good home is.”

“What did you like best?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked Mrs. Feeley.

“I don’t guess I could choose,” she said. “It was all fine. One thing better than another. But that daily double will sure stand out in my mind for a while.”

“The Empire State Buildin’ was just like I thought. I had the whirlies for half an hour after I got outa that elevator,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“Except for your company, and beer,” Miss Tinkham mused, “I have very little to ask of life now that I have seen Sir Laurence Olivier in
Henry the Fifth.
I was so carried out of my usual composure that I rose at the Battle of Agincourt and cheered, my dears! Cheered aloud! I wonder how I would look with a Henry V cropped hair-cut? With bangs, like Sir Laurence?”

“Be cool, anyway,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“On account o’ the big day tomorrow,” Mrs. Feeley said, “what do you say we get in some rack-time? Let’s start the sack-derby now: I’m sleepy.”

“To sleep, perchance to dream….” Miss Tinkham rolled into bed lost in visions of English Harry and his Kate. “The sound of his voice when he said, ‘Take me, Kate! Take me!’ Ah……”

“Them hot Mexican peppers!” Mrs. Feeley winked at Mrs. Rasmussen and turned out the light.

“G
AWD
!
THEM SNOT SALESMEN STEP LIVELY WHEN
six hundred an’ fifty dollars get flashed under their nose, don’t they?” Mrs. Feeley crowed to her friends as they leaned back in a taxi on the way to the races Tuesday afternoon.

“Didn’t they deliver it fast?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Monday afternoon at five sharp, just like you told ’em.”

“That’s because of C.O.D.,” Miss Tinkham explained. “Once you pay them you can wait until doomsday for your purchase, but when the money remains to be collected…well, you saw what happened!”

“The set was almost home before we was,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Did you ever see anything like Katy an’ Danny’s faces?”

“Katy was cryin’ like she always does when she’s real pleased.”

“Danny was so thrilled he couldn’t hardly talk or nothin’,” Mrs. Feeley smiled. “All he done was hit his head with his fist an’ say: ‘Alaska! My God! Alaska! The jumpin’-off place!’ He knows nobody in Alaska will have nothin’ like that…them things is splinter-fired bran’ new!”

“Katy was apprehensive about us spending so much money,” Miss Tinkham said. “She took me aside and expressed concern about our railway fares. I prevaricated a little: I told her we had already purchased our tickets.”

“That’s just a white lie!” Mrs. Feeley rapped on the glass of the taxi: “Is that all the fast you can go, driver? We’re gonna miss the daily double!” She turned back to Miss Tinkham. “You could even say you was just a little bit previous…we’re gonna buy the tickets tonight, ain’t we?”

“Finest an’ longest tickets they got,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. The cab stopped at the gate of the race track and she paid the driver. The three ladies started to push their way through the turnstile.

“Just a minute, ma’am!” the ticket seller said. “How many?”

“How many tickets?”

“Three.” Mrs. Rasmussen laid down a five-dollar bill. She looked significantly at her companions. “Didn’t even know you had to pay to get in. We never had our hand in our pocket once Saturday.”

A program vendor approached with programs and pencils.

“How much?” Mrs. Feeley said.

“Seventy-five cents apiece.”

“What’s them things?” Mrs. Feeley pointed to the shoulder-boards on his uniform.

“My epaulettes.”

“Oh. I thought they was your buttocks, everythin’s so high around here!” She sailed majestically through the crowd.

“I have my silver pencil,” Miss Tinkham whispered.

“An’ we can pick a program up off the ground,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

Mrs. Feeley led the way towards the table they had occupied Saturday. The weasel-faced waiter was watching her with an interest that amounted to usury.

“They’re all taken,” he headed her off nastily.

“They ain’t a soul sittin’ at one of ’em,” Mrs. Feeley barked. “I’ll take that one.”

“Oh no you wont!” He gave the headwaiter the high-sign.

“So sorry! These are all reserved!” the oily menial purred. He looked at the ladies insolently. “You might just try standing up at the bar.”

“That’s the last run o’ shad!” Mrs. Feeley said.

The headwaiter smirked and seated a man who came up waving a greenback.

“Instigators, accomplices, and accessories,” Miss Tinkham hissed.

“Thievin’, lyin’, graspin’, low-down, no-good bastards! Take your table an’ chairs an’ put ’em where you have the most room! An’ the umbrella, too!” Mrs. Feeley hustled across the green to the ticket windows. There were no seats of any kind in sight. The day was hot and her feet were beginning to hurt already.

“Gawd! I need a beer!”

Mrs. Rasmussen looked in her purse, considered for a moment, then nodded.

“We gotta be careful! That taxi took a lot, an’ then the crust of him: makin’ us pay to get in!”

They went towards the bar, pushing through the crowd that surrounded it even at that early hour. When they finally reached it the bartender told them that they did not serve ladies.

“Who said we was ladies?” Mrs. Feeley snapped. She looked around disgruntled, but not discouraged. She went over to a sailor she spotted.

“How’s to bring us three beers, Mac?”

Mrs. Rasmussen handed him two dollars. When they got the beer and the change, they went back to the ticket windows and studied the board, swigging away at the beer bottles.

“Now we gotta get in on this daily double,” Mrs. Feeley said.

“Wish I knew who was gonna win it!”

“Best Trick is the favorite in the first,” Miss Tinkham studied the board.

“How much does he pay?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“Four-twenty to win…just one-ten odds. That’s because everyone thinks he will win.”

“Hell! He ain’t nothin’ for us!” Mrs. Feeley said. “We gotta pick out one that nobody thinks is gonna win. That’s how Dusty an’ Spud won us all that money Saturday. Pick out one that ain’t never been heard of, in both races. We’re sure to win.”

“In that case, we must take the one with the greatest odds against him.” Miss Tinkham read the names through her lorgnette. “Here’s our horse!” she scribbled excitedly on a soiled program. “Can’t Lose is his name and he has all kinds of odds! Seventy-six fifty-five for every dollar we invest. Even his name is a good omen!”

“For a two-dollar ticket we’d get over one hundred and fifty dollars, ain’t it?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

Miss Tinkham nodded. “That’s how it would appear.”

“Put ten dollars on the beetle,” Mrs. Feeley said, “an’ let’s get seven hundred and sixty dollars and be done with it! No use foolin’ with them two-dollar bets. Then we’ll pick his runnin’-mate for the other half o’ the daily double.”

“Here’s a lovely horse!” Miss Tinkham said. “Sixty-two sixty-five he pays for every dollar.”

“What’s his name?” Mrs. Feeley said.

“Dancing Home!”

“That’s us!” Mrs. Feeley rolled her empty beer bottle to the ground and almost floored a very fat man who stepped on it.

“We can’t miss with a name like that.” Mrs. Rasmussen handed Miss Tinkham three ten-dollar bills. “You buy the tickets.”

Miss Tinkham held the money carefully. She copied the numbers and said: “Ten dollars on Can’t Lose…shall I play him right across the board?”

“What’s that?”

“Win, place, or show. My bartender friend at the Foreign Club in Tijuana initiated me into the jargon of the racetrack.”

“Anyway at all…just so he gets the most money! We’re sure to win on one o’ those nags! More’n enough for our fare.”

“Ten dollars on Can’t Lose in the first, ten dollars on Dancing Home in the second, and ten dollars on Can’t Lose and Dancing Home in the daily double, correct?”

“We’re practically millionaires!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Let’s have a beer!” She grabbed and sat down on a wooden box that a man abandoned when he went to the ticket window.

Mrs. Rasmussen looked cautiously in her purse. “This’ll be the last beer.”

“How come?”

“Bettin” thirty dollars after payin’ the taxi an’ the tickets don’t leave us but eight dollars. Them horses better run good!”

“Nothin’ to worry about,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Miss Tinkham’ll go right over to the window the way the boys done an’ come back with thousands of dollars…anyway hundreds. Maybe ten!”

The announcer was screaming out the line-up over the loud-speaker.

“Wanna go down an’ look?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

Miss Tinkham came back carrying the precious tickets. She peered anxiously at the track.

“Dancing Home has a leg bandaged…someone said so at the ticket window. I hope he is not in poor form! We need him in the second.”

“Makes me nervous,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Guess we better have a beer whether we can afford it or not…maybe that sailor’s still around.” She turned wistfully towards the bar.

“There isn’t time now,” Miss Tinkham said. “I’m so excited! They’re lining up! They’re off!” She ran down to the fence cheering her favorite. Round and round the track the sleek bodies flew, slender legs flinging sand from side to side.

“Come on, Can’t Lose!” Miss Tinkham implored. “Live up to your name! We are counting on you!” Can’t Lose was a hardhearted beast or he was hard of hearing. He slowed down to a walk and sauntered in several minutes after the name of Best Trick, the winner, had been flashed on the board and lines had already formed at the ticket windows to collect the bets. Miss Tinkham went back to the grandstand. Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen were sharing the wooden box like a pair of Siamese twins.

“Take him to the sausage factory,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“The glue factory.” Mrs. Feeley looked dejected for a moment but brightened quickly. “Hell, the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s butt all the time! Let’s have that beer…our luck’s bound to change in the second.”

Miss Tinkham went off with two dollars in search of an accommodating male. She returned with the beer in a few moments and handed Mrs. Rasmussen the fifty cents change.

“Better make this one last,” the treasurer said. “Only six-fifty.”

“Let’s drink to Dancing Home!” Miss Tinkham said. “Even if we can’t win the daily double, he’s sure to pay us over six hundred.”

“Who says we can’t win the daily double?” Mrs. Feeley said. “We bought a ticket for it, didn’t we?”

“Both horses have to win,” Miss Tinkham reminded her.

“Well, by God, we put out ten dollars on that daily-double ticket an’ they gotta give us somethin’ back on it! Half, anyway…when this second horse wins.”

“I don’t think it’s customary, but we can ask,” Miss Tinkham said. “They’re getting ready for the second race now. I don’t think I’ll look this time. Perhaps it annoys the horse to have us admonishing him: it shows a certain lack of confidence on our part.”

“I’m losin’ my confidence in horseflesh mighty fast.” Mrs. Feeley stood up on the box. “This beetle better do somethin’ in this race! What’s his number?”

“Five,” Miss Tinkham said.

“Come on, Five!” Mrs. Feeley shouted. “Stretch them legs!”

Dancing Home arched his graceful neck and stretched his legs as per instructions. His performance drew an anguished shriek from Mrs. Feeley. The people in the grandstand and the announcer were shouting at his performance, too. He was running beautifully and quite fast, except for one slight peculiarity: he was running the wrong way.

“Turn around!” Mrs. Feeley screamed. “What’s your name? Corrigan? Goddam fool! Runnin’ backwards!” She sat down on the box with a thud. The laughter of the crowd struck her with great bitterness.

“Who finally won?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

“The favorite. Surrender,” Miss Tinkham said, “but he was hardly worth the bother. He only paid twenty cents on a two-dollar bet.”

“We won’t surrender!” Mrs. Feeley said. “You sure they won’t give us nothin’ on that daily-double ticket?”

“Quite positive.”

“Where do we go from here?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Six dollars.”

“Shoot the works,” Mrs. Feeley said. “That ain’t enough to do us any good, an’ we’re sure to win this time. We’ll just bet a buck at a time instead o’ two.”

“Two-dollar tickets are the smallest they sell.”

“Should we each pick a horse in the next race an’ play two bucks apiece?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“That is a little reckless, considering the precarious financial situation,” Miss Tinkham said.

“Yeup. Guess we better take one in each o’ the three next races. Should we go by them odds again? Don’t look like we made out so hot, somehow.”

“I think it is time we abandoned that system,” Miss Tinkham said. “Let us rely on our feminine intuition and our innate psychic powers! I shall read aloud the names of the horses running in the next race, and if one name rings a bell, we will bet on the hunch. Is that agreeable?”