The Pigman's Legacy (The Sequel to The Pigman) (13 page)

“We can't take it,” Lorraine said. “We should get out of here.”

“
I'll
take it,” I said. “This place looks like fun!”

“Live it up, kids,” the Colonel said. “Live it up!”

Dolly nodded that it was okay, but I could see Lorraine look at me suspiciously when I pocketed the hundred, and I tried to change the subject. The look on Lorraine's face was so disturbed you'd think we had come down there planning to gamble. Not only that, you'd think that we were going to gamble for the Colonel's life and future. But he had a few hundred more. It wasn't going to be life or death. And he wanted us to have it. But what he seemed to really want was for me and Lorraine to go off by ourselves and leave him and Dolly alone. We took the hint and everybody agreed to meet back in front of the Rendezvous Lounge and Oyster Bar in an hour and a half—just so we could check on each other and see if we wanted to walk down the Boardwalk at that point.

“I'll take my fifty dollars,” Lorraine said right off the bat as soon as we were alone.

“I thought you didn't want the money.”

“Well, I
do
.”

I changed the hundred dollars and gave Lorraine her fifty. But I knew she just wanted to hold on to the fifty so I wouldn't blow it. I could see she was really nervous. I just took her hand and we walked around the place sizing it up. We watched them play craps at a few tables. One guy was rolling a lot of sevens and yelled, “Yahoo!” and eventually the whole table was yelling, “Yahoo!” It looked like he was winning a whole lot. But except for that table the whole crowd seemed extra dull. If it hadn't been for croupiers shouting out numbers at the roulette tables every once in a while, and some big brute running the Wheel of Fortune booming like a cannon, you would have thought we were in a tomb. Nobody spoke to anybody else, which made me realize we were in the company of diehard gamblers. We decided to play a few of the slot machines, and it took over an hour before they devoured five dollars worth of nickels. By that time there were so many lemons, cherries, and oranges rolling in my head, I thought I was on a psychedelic fruit trip. At one point we were surprised when we found Dolly and the Colonel sitting at a blackjack table. They were perched on these high stools looking very regal. Dolly was the only one really turning over cards, and we saw that she won a hand. The two of them howled and the Colonel kept patting Dolly's hand. They were both so sophisticated. Dolly sat adjusting her ashtray six or seven times, smoking a very long filter tip and fiddling with their betting chips. Lorraine and I stood back far enough so they wouldn't see us, and at one point the Colonel placed a bet on the spot next to Dolly.

He was dealt a ten and a five, so I figured he was certain to be a loser. After a moment Dolly screamed out, referring to the dealer, “He went over twenty-one, my darling. You
won
!”

“And
you
got blackjack,” the Colonel said, like a surprised little boy.

“Oh, you're right,” Dolly said. Then she hugged him. Dolly even shouted to other people at the blackjack table. You could tell some of them thought she was a nuisance, but a few people who were looking particularly sad seemed glad at the sound of her infectious laugh. You could tell everyone was impressed by her earrings, which were without a doubt the brightest thing in the whole casino.

By this time Lorraine and I weren't as uptight, so we walked down toward the slot machines again where people were lined up three and four deep like cattle about to be slaughtered. I started to take notice of one machine that was lit up and ringing as it spit quarters out. I thought it was a very interesting comment about civilization. That so many people would flock to this place to yank on all these machine handles in an atmosphere of red velour walls and fake gold decorations. I just got to feeling like we really were all one big herd, and that frightened me so much I bumped into a waitress who was serving free drinks. Her name was Number 43 and she asked me if I wanted a drink. I told her I'd go for a scotch on the rocks and my girl friend would like a Tab.

“You don't drink scotch,” Lorraine chastised me after Number 43 left. “Besides, if there's a raid you'll be up on
two
charges.”

“She'd know we were kids if I ordered a Coke,” I explained. By this time I noticed that all the workers in the casino had numbers instead of names. What a horrible world! Can you imagine people going around saying, “Hello, Number 3.” “How are you today, Number 8?” Finally Number 43 came back and Lorraine took big gulps of her Tab. I took a sip of my scotch. I'd always thought it was amazing how much like Mercurochrome it tasted. I think if you really have class you order something like a milkshake with a shot of brandy in it, or Dry Sack on the rocks. After a couple more sips of the scotch, I thought it would be a good idea if I switched to a horse's neck or a Singapore sling. There are some benefits you get from having a father who was an alcoholic, and one of them is knowing the most picturesque ways to tie a load on.

“John, you know what you were like when you used to drink,” Lorraine reminded me.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I'm not going to get stoned.”

After a few minutes Lorraine wanted to check the Rendezvous Lounge and Oyster Bar, but I told her we still had a lot of time to go before meeting Dolly and the Colonel. She started to bellyache about how she really didn't feel secure enough to start playing one of the real games. I could see she was almost afraid to talk to anyone, and absolutely terrified about a raid. Finally Lorraine broke down and got ten dollars worth of nickels. I could see she was finally getting the feel of things. But her philosophy was, just because she had some money she didn't want to spend all of it right away. She still insisted on playing only the nickel slots.

I was playing the twenty-five-cent slots and got behind an oversized woman with short hair who kept turning around and smiling, but she wouldn't let me get at the machines. She kept plugging quarters in five at a time. By the time ten minutes passed I was still standing there. I felt like giving her a karate chop on the back of the neck. I couldn't wait to get at that particular machine, because I felt good vibes about it. At that point a middle-aged couple passed by and I heard the man say to his wife, “And here, Helen, is where the poor people line up.” His wife replied, “Well, that's what we are,” and got right in with the rest of us.

At last the corpulent dame in front of me turned around and said, “That's it. I'm wiped out. Twenty-five dollars and I didn't even get three lemons.”

I zipped in like a ferret and started sticking quarters into the machine. I could feel the lady's eyes burning into my back. One of the quarters got stuck halfway down and I felt embarrassed.

“Pull the handle a little more,” the lady coached me.

I did as she said and suddenly the winner's light lit up and the machine started coughing quarters out like there was no tomorrow—ten, twenty, fifty dollars worth of quarters.

“Lorraine, Lorraine,” I called out, jumping up and down. She was speechless watching me. The fat lady wasn't so speechless. “Those are my quarters you're winning,” she said and took off in tears.

“I feel sorry for her,” Lorraine said.

“So do I,” I admitted, filling a paper cup with all the loot. I was so excited by now, I wanted to do cartwheels. I wanted to scream out loud, “I won! I won!” I put in another quarter and this time I won three quarters. The time after that I got two lemons and a hammer and won fifteen quarters. By then I got so daring I started playing five quarters at a time in the machine. And I heard Lorraine's little voice in my ear beginning to pray along with me. But her prayer had a slightly different twist on it.

“Please win.
Win for the Colonel
” Lorraine kept saying.

Sometimes the machine listened, but more often than not it didn't. Nevertheless I kept feeding the machine and some man next to me won two thousand quarters on his machine. But there was absolutely no expression on his face because he was with the mortuary convention. Finally, I decided the whole thing was a losing proposition and I took my quarters to the cashier and had her stick them into this automatic counting machine. I found that I hadn't really lost anything. In fact I came out about seventy-five cents ahead. Then I took Lorraine's hand and dragged her to the big Wheel of Fortune. The spirit suddenly moved me, and I plopped down a fifty-dollar bill.

“Money plays,” the guy running the thing yelled out. I was going to stick it on a twenty-to-one space, but I decided the five-to-one space was risky enough. The little spinner went around and around, ticking in and out of the little slots. It took a long time to slow down, and it passed a lot of five-to-one slots. Our hopes went up and down until miraculously it stopped solidly between two pegs clearly marked five-to-one. I let out a scream so loud eight hundred people turned around. “I won!” I kept screaming. “I won!” Two hundred and fifty smackers I got, and I was so bananas I couldn't stay in one spot anymore. I took a twenty-dollar bill and slapped it right in the hand of the guy running the thing.

“What are you doing?” Lorraine wanted to know.

“
Tipping
”

“Are you crazy?”

“That's how it's done,” I told her.

“Holy cow!” Lorraine moaned, shaking her head back and forth in disbelief. “Holy cow!” I finally recovered and was about to try again when we heard another “Yahoo!” come tearing across the room. We recognized Dolly's scream, but it took us a while to locate her. We listened carefully for the next “Yahoo!” and found her with the Colonel at a different blackjack table where the minimum bet was ten dollars instead of five dollars.

“Oh, my darlings,” Dolly said. “We're
four thousand dollars
ahead! I can't believe it! I'm so happy!”

Dolly got down off the stool and grabbed Lorraine and they began to dance in the aisle. They were just jumping up and down, and I was more thrilled than either of them. I could just smell the four thousand dollars as we all marched on the cashier's booth and turned in the chips. Dolly held the Colonel's arm the whole way and hugged it tightly against her body.

We made our way out of the joint. I tipped the valet guys a five and asked if there was another “special restaurant” around, and they told me there were three others down at the south end of the Boardwalk. Dolly's ecstasy and her electric blue swirl dress caught everyone's attention. We were almost up onto the Boardwalk when the Colonel suddenly stopped. I thought he might be in pain, but it was just the opposite. He wanted to go into a jewelry shop.

“What for?” Dolly wanted to know.

“I want to buy you a diamond,” the Colonel wheezed.

Dolly started to cry. She opened her little doghouse purse, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, my darling,” she said. “I don't need a diamond. All I need is to know that you've got a decent roof over your head and three square meals a day. This money is going right into your bank account, and it's going to be ready for you whenever you need it.” She beamed.

“But I want to buy you a ring.”

“No, my darling,” Dolly said, “not now.”

“If I could afford it, you'd be covered with diamonds,” the Colonel said, “
covered
”

Dolly grabbed his hand and pulled him right past the jewelry store and up onto the Boardwalk. It was really great that the old guy wanted to lay a diamond on Dolly. The only thing shiny I ever saw my father buy for my mother was a soup pot.

We weren't on the Boardwalk two minutes before we were almost knocked down by a bearded man wearing glasses, a white apron, and a paper chef's hat. He was walking around in an absolute daze as though he'd had marijuana brownies for breakfast.

“He's an omen,” Lorraine said. “That man is an omen.”

The guy disappeared into the crowd and we pushed our way farther on down the Boardwalk. It was populated with a bunch of ancient-looking old ladies who were attacking every snack stand in sight. Then there was this open bus contraption that went up and down the Boardwalk on little rubber wheels. And it was filled with the saddest-looking old faces in the world. I called it a geriatric perambulator. One woman was walking around in her bare feet and I couldn't understand how she wasn't crippled with splinters. The wood on the Boardwalk was in a complete state of disrepair and looked ready to topple over into the ocean. The whole scene made me doubt my basic belief that reality is only a crutch for those people who are afraid to face science fiction. The Colonel and Dolly held hands, and the Colonel lit Dolly's filter-tip cigarettes. She fed him sesame-seed crackers, and she bought some popcorn. Her miniature doghouse purse seemed to be loaded with a lot of surprise goodies. She offered me a Tiger's Milk Health Bar.

The next “special restaurant” was pretty far down the Boardwalk, and we passed a lot of old stores and fast-food stands. There was a lot of window-shopping to do, and a saltwater taffy store. Another place was called the “Earring Tree,” where they sold a lot of weird jewelry. Halfway down the Boardwalk we turned and went through this little teepee village, but we were chased out. All along the Boardwalk they seemed to sell everything from cameras to iron-on shirts. And we passed Madame Charlotte's Temple of Knowledge, and she was waving at us to come in for a phrenology reading. It was only a dollar.

“Should we give it a try?” Lorraine asked.

“I'm not going to pay any gypsy to feel the bumps on my head.”