The Winners Circle (7 page)

“
You’ve been on the farm for the whole summer. You need to get out.”

“
I’m out this afternoon.”

“
Under protest.”

“
I’m here.”

“
What would you do if ...?”

He waited for her to finish. He hated when she didn’t. It drove him crazy. “What would I do if what?”

“
Nothing.” She pulled into the barbed-wire parking lot for The Manhattan Cruiser. A hulking orange and blue ferry rocked beside the pier.

“
Finish your sentence.”

“
Don’t you have any hobbies?”

She was his hobby. He cooked gourmet meals for her. He managed the farmhouse. “I’m a gentleman farmer.”

“
Then where are the crops? How about those horses?”

“
I’m working on it.”

“
I thought so.”

“
What’s that mean?”

“
Don’t sulk, Jerry.”

“
I’m not sulking.”

Chelsea presented their passes to the man at the gate. She tossed the keys to the kid by the valet station, as if she’d done it hundreds of times before.

“
Oh no,” she said. “Did you pop a pill?”

Jerry rolled down his window. A stale sea odor gusted from the pier. The Hudson River looked gray and choppy, and crests of foam rode the mini swells. “Big boats never make me sick.”

“
Will you be alright?”

“
I’m fine.” He’d left his motion pills on the counter at home. He’d have to rough it.

“
Do you want to stay ashore?”

He forced a pleasant expression. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Pulsating music greeted them as they boarded ship. Jerry disliked loud music and blinked his eyes, barring against the sonic assault. Millionaires churned to a familiar dance tune. They dressed in evening attire. Some were studded in diamonds and gold, as champagne and cocktails drifted past. One man draped his arms around two women. Another staggered from the crowd without shoes. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

Jerry paused before the extraordinary scene. It was another example of what he’d learned about lottery winners. They owned no sense of time. They weren’t bluebloods or corporate raiders with eminent careers and estates to manage. The men and women assembled on the Manhattan Cruiser were dislodged from routine, roaming the planet without a firm agenda. Jerry’s buddies on the assembly line used to fantasize about this kind of free time—days filled with nothing better to do than fish, watch ballgames, or hang out in bars—an endless blue collar weekend, only this version had black ties and caviar.

Chelsea’s feet moved in a half-strut, already picking up the beat. “This is what I call a party.”

Jerry held his tongue.
This is what I call an excuse to leave
.

“
I’m going in.” She sashayed into the crowd, a flurry of blonde perfection.

He watched her head bob to the music. Men twisted their necks to check her out. They noticed the line of her stockings over her calves and the shape of her tight ass tugging beneath her skirt. He considered joining her on the floor but didn’t picture himself inside her halo of glory.

The boat jarred loose from its moorings and coupled with the choppy water. Jerry recovered his balance with a quick sidestep. The stilted peeks of the skyline rolled through the oval portal windows. He felt a twinge in his gut. He grabbed the studded steel post, which supported the upper deck.

Someone was watching. Jerry noticed a man at the next steel post. The stranger came forward. He had short-cropped hair and a pointed nose. He wore a black turtleneck, a tweed sport coat, and precisely creased pants. He dressed like one of the catalogs Chelsea kept flashing in Jerry’s face.

Jerry waited to engage the stranger. He’d have to speak with someone at this shindig. He pivoted toward the dance floor to catch Chelsea’s eye. He was being a good husband, meeting the other guests, but she was mixing it up herself. She wove in a chain of dancers around the edge of the floor. A man with glasses clutched her hips. He whispered in her ear, and she laughed hysterically.

The man with the short hair held his gaze upon Jerry. “Your first time?”

Jerry prepared for small talk and a quick retreat to the outside railing. “Yes.”

“
You look new.”

Jerry checked his watch. “When do we get back to the dock?”

“
I’m with you. This is a bore.”

“
I didn’t say that.” Jerry knew he was blowing it. He better summon some charm and pretend he was having a good time. “This is nice.”

“
This isn’t my idea of a party. I come because it keeps me in touch. I get to see who’s who.”

“
So who’s who?” Jerry thought he recognized celebrities.

“
That’s a good question.”

“
So what’s the answer?”

“
This party’s not for our benefit.” The man pointed out the camera crew standing beside the bandstand. “It’s a promo for Super Pick Millions. Haven’t you seen the commercials?”

“
I think so.”

“
Life’s a non-stop party once you win. That’s what they’re selling.” The man looked to the dance floor. Heads shook with the music. Chelsea folded inside the crowd. “If the poor slobs only knew the truth.”

The stranger was thinking out loud, and Jerry didn’t like it. You shouldn’t be inside someone else’s head.

“
Dick Leigh,” the stranger said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“
Jerry Nearing.”

Dick raised his chin. “The pitchfork man?”

It took a moment for Jerry to realize what Dick meant. He recalled the ordeal on the farm during the spring and the awful snapshots in the newspapers. The reporters had smuggled photographs off his property, and the papers mocked him up as a millionaire farmer gone mad—the pitchfork man. “I guess you heard about that.”

“
I saw it in the news like everyone else.”

“
It was embarrassing.”

“
It was great for morale.”

Jerry saw Dick’s eyes. The fine lines beneath them were smiling.

“
We need more of that take charge kind of attitude,” Dick said.

“
The newspaper almost pressed charges.”

“
But they used your story instead.”

“
Right.”

“
That’s what they wanted from the beginning.”

“
Everyone wants something.” Jerry shrugged, wondering what Dick wanted.

“
Welcome to the club.” Dick shook Jerry’s hand. His grip was as intense as his stare. He used it to draw closer to Jerry. “From here on out, hold onto your wallet.”

“
So it’s like that for you too?”

“
I have a buffer.” Dick looked past Jerry’s shoulder. “You have to be careful. You don’t want to end up like him.”

Jerry turned and recognized one of the celebrity guests. He was a former NY Yankee who was arrested so many times for cocaine possession that his convictions became a spectator’s sport of its own. He was bald now but retained a fresh athletic look, regardless of the endless urine test failures and rehab stints. He was a walking poster child for genetics and strange luck.

“
I never use drugs,” Jerry said.

“
Not him. The chubby man with the dark curly hair coming this way.”

Jerry refocused his sights. “I don’t know him.”

“
Tom Veris, a friend of mine. Seven million completely down the drain. One stupid business decision after another.”

“
I can’t imagine that.”

“
It happens.”

“
Is he broke?”

“
More or less.”

Tom arrived holding a vodka tonic and a foaming beer in a tall fluted glass.

Dick snatched both glasses from Tom’s grasp. “Do you like beer?”

“
Sometimes,” Jerry said.

“
Do you want something else?”

“
This is fine.” Jerry accepted the foaming glass, obliging with a sip.

“
Wait a minute.” Tom’s voice was higher than Jerry expected.

Jerry pulled the glass away from his lips. “Is this yours?”

“
Why don’t you get yourself another?” Dick said.

Tom frowned and retreated to the bar.

“
Does Tom work for you?” Jerry asked.

A young man with broad shoulders stood several feet away. His ears curved from the side of his head like satellite dishes. He was listening, snickering at Jerry’s questions.

“
That’s Tucker,” Dick said, “my bodyguard.”

Tucker nodded to Jerry and then panned a disinterested gaze on the party. He plugged his ears with headphones from a portable stereo. He looked like a Secret Service agent in need of a President.

“
Bodyguard?” Jerry asked.

“
He’s Australian, the best, rugged people. You might think about one for yourself.”

“
I can handle things.”

“
That’s right. You have that pitchfork.”

Jerry wanted to switch the subject. He saw Dick’s friend at the bar. “What did Tom do for a living?”

“
That’s not really discussed here.”

“
Why not?”
You just told me he blew seven million.

“
If you must know, he owned a bakery.”

“
What’s so secret about that? Isn’t it appropriate to know where people come from?”

“
We try to forget the past, and you should too. You cashed it in with your first lottery check.”

Jerry filed the comment away. Chelsea was forgetting the past. She buried it deeper with each surgical procedure and change of clothes. Every catalog and portfolio that arrived in the mail seemed to cover the past with another disguise. He hardly recognized her, much less saw her around the house.

“
There’s no looking back once you’ve won,” Dick said. “Even Tom can’t. He’d trade a leg to be tossing loaves of bread in the oven again.”

Jerry scanned the bandstand. The people on stage were a popular 80’s dance group, rendered gray and overweight from the passing decades. They performed a medley of their hit tunes. Jerry struggled to attach a name to the bouncy songs. Why did he ever like them in the first place? Their computerized beats held the appeal and longevity of a paper cup.

“
It’s like the old adage.” Dick stirred the ice in his glass with a plastic cocktail straw. “Even if you stand still, things will change.”

Jerry realized Chelsea had vanished from sight. He returned to Dick Leigh, no longer interested in his candor. Why do people with money feel the need to philosophize? Does idle time spawn the illusion of wisdom? “I know things change.”

“
It’s evolution.”

The boat swayed in the open harbor. Jerry searched for a distant point to fix his sights, but the skyline undulated in disconcert with his stomach. “I need to get up top for a while. We’ll talk later.”

“
I plan on it.”

Jerry checked Dick’s neatly groomed facade and set the beer glass on a passing tray. He left without another word.

The dance floor resonated with the heat and smell of millionaires at play. Jerry nudged through the grinding bodies to reach the stairs, but crossing the deck felt like strolling atop the ocean. The boat rode the breakers in the harbor. In the distance, Lady Liberty waved her torch.

Near the stairs, Jerry spotted Haskell Cogdon. His wiry silver sideburns reflected in the portal light. Even indoors, he wore those brown tinted shades.

Haskell snatched a pair of champagne glasses and faded from view. Jerry felt glad that he’d jettisoned that man from his life. People never changed, contrary to Dick Leigh’s speculation. Haskell was probably canvassing other suckers at the party.

Jerry climbed to the upper deck. A warm breeze whipped off the Atlantic. He grabbed the railing and aimed his face into the wind. The whitecaps sprayed salty water upon his bare arms and face. He focused on the horizon. The ocean curved off the end of the Earth. He tried to be still inside.

Tom Veris came beside Jerry. His face was tan, plump, and pitted like the head of a bran muffin. Perspiration caught in the dark curls near his forehead. A half-empty glass of beer dangled from the tips of his fat fingers. “So you’ve met our fearless leader.”

“
Dick Leigh?” Jerry asked.

“
Yeah, he runs the group.”

“
What group?”

“
The Winners Circle.”

“
Is that what you call this?”

“
Not this. It’s a chat group.”

“
You chat about what?”

“
Think of it as therapy. We discuss our lives, issues, whatever. Dick’s a psychologist. We meet on Tuesdays at the Trenton JCC.”

Jerry returned to the horizon, attempting to settle his stomach. He gulped the air. “That explains a lot.”

“
What does?”

“
The shrink part.”

“
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”