Authors: Beth Raymer
“I’m worried you’re going to be arrested,” he said, looking forlorn on the morning of my flight. “You’re going to go out one night and have fun only to be arrested in the morning.”
“I’m pretty sure that won’t happen,” I said, packing my suitcase.
“I’m worried your car is going to go off a cliff. Are there cliffs where you’re going?”
Killing time as we waited for the taxi, Jeremy played me a bluegrass song on his guitar. He sang in a voice high and lonesome. Something about a sad good-bye and a maiden longing for a home that is no longer there.
The air was so moist you could drink it.
Trade winds stirred the fronds of tall, leaning palms and whipped through the rolled-down windows of our company car, a Lincoln Town Car, long and white as a speedboat. Bernard navigated the washed-out roads lined with cacti and I found it hard not to stare at him. His pillowy chest and the loose flesh of his face and neck had vanished. He was almost thin! Yet he seemed only dimly aware of his body’s resized dimensions. Still assuming a seat belt wouldn’t fit, he didn’t wear one. To accommodate a doubling stomach that was no longer there, he had the seat reclined as far as possible and the steering wheel tilted to its highest angle. He hadn’t even bothered to buy clothes that fit. His oversized T-shirt slipped off one shoulder and he kept his shorts up by gripping the waist in a bunch.
Tanned Dutch girls in bikini tops zoomed by in rental cars. In the shadow of a dilapidated Colonial mansion, paint shedded from the fluted columns like bark from a tree and Rastafarians played dominoes. “My favorite nail salon!” Bernard said, pointing to a sun-scorched bungalow. “Wish we had time for a mani pedi.” He
held out his hand to check on his cuticles. “Are you seeing how skinny my fingers are? This surgery’s been good for me. Except for last night. I blew a game and couldn’t eat anything to make myself feel better. Just had to sit there like a normal human being. Torture! But I notice I have more stamina for gambling, so I can’t complain.”
The road curved and I caught my first glimpse of the Caribbean Sea. Its glistening turquoise roused me like a forceful, unexpected kiss. “I can’t believe we live here!” I said. Then, louder, over the wind: “How do I get to the beach?”
“No idea,” Bernard said. “But I’m sure you’ll find it.”
Bernard had been on the island for nearly a month. Except for his left arm, glowing crimson from hanging out the driver’s-side window, his skin was as white as a fresh Ronkonkoma snowfall.
“I want you to enjoy your life down here,” he continued. “There’s a lot of bosses out there who want you to be miserable. It’s a bit of their strategy. Like when I sold the candy business in ’93, I went to work for this company selling gourmet nuts. My boss couldn’t stand that I was happy. And I wasn’t even happy! Oh my God, look. The animals.”
I thought Bernard was being racist until I looked over and saw wild goats grazing a church parking lot. Bernard locked the doors.
“I know you like your adventures. You’re like my first wife. As long as there was some degree of thrill she was happy. Just make sure you’re at work by eight o’clock. I depend on you to get everything set up. Other than that, there’s really no whaddayacallems.”
“Rules?”
“Yeah, no rules. Girl Friday, dream therapist, thrill seeker. That’s you.”
Bernard named the sports book ASAP, for All Serious Action Players. For months I’d heard the acronym being tossed around in abstract ways. As in:
A-sap is going to deal very thin, with special emphasis on alternate spreads
. Or,
Where most sports books deal a money line three hundred, come back two-fifty, A-sap will deal it two-eighty-nine, come back two-sixty-one
. I thought of ASAP more
as a pattern of firing synapses in Bernard’s brain than an actual place of business. So it took me a few moments to respond to the charming two-story house covered in bougainvillea that was, in fact, ASAP.
Up the quarried marble stairs and through the French doors, I followed Bernard into an outbreak of nervous fluorescent lights, a dizzying number of ringing telephones, and high-definition blue emanating from dozens of flat-paneled computer screens. At ten minutes to post, it was the busiest time of day. Wiseguys scrambled to protect their bets and squares wanted action on the televised games. News broke of a thunderstorm in Florida and Bernard dashed for his desk. Briefcase bouncing at his side, free hand gripping his waistband, flip-flops falling off his feet, he made low buzzing sounds as he lowered the Marlins total. Keeping true to his nickname, the Industrial Sander increased his voltage.
Behind a long curving desk lined with keyboards and monitors sat the “Italian crew,” a moody, thickset, elbow-to-elbow syndicate of Tonys, Vinnys, Genos, and Jimmys from Philly and far Long Island. In front of them stretched rows of Afro-Caribbean clerks sitting at individual desks. Sufficiently tall—the Dutch genetic imprint—with the upright postures of aristocrats, the clerks gracefully switched from one phone to the other. They shouted questions and the frenzied Italian crew shouted back. The rushing and the accents led to some confusion.
“Do we want de Dollars or de dog?”
“Youse guys gotta listen up! The Dollars are the dog!”
“I don’t understand shit what dis Chinese mother
focker
is askeeng me. I don’t know if he have no teeth or what.”
“Transfer him, line three.”
Once everyone fell into rhythm, voices were only raised to ask Bernard for counsel. Staring slack-jawed at the projection screen hanging in the middle of the room, he watched color-coded bets roll in from over the Internet: one thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand dollars in red, white, and blue.
“Pepe de Cuban looking for Milkmen
on
der seventeen,
on
der for one-nine dimes.”
“Howie Pork Chop crying my
fock
ing ear off. Wants Gringos minus run and a half minus forty. Say he don’t give a
fock
if it’s forty-tree.”
Even though I knew there were other sports books on the island and that most of our clerks came to ASAP with several years’ experience, hearing them throw around bookie jargon with such aplomb made me smile. For most of them, English was their fourth language, a technical language they used to earn a living, but along the way they’d invented their own patois. On this barren, thirty-eight-mile-long rock in the middle of the sea, the Dodgers were the Dollars, the Yankees the Gringos, and Milwaukee the Milkmen. It was exciting to see a whole new group of young people stretching my language and making it theirs. In my head, I picked out those I hoped would be my friends.
“Dookie say he knowed de peetching changes,” said a young man in the front row. “Asking for twenty dime on
Tom
pa Bay over de yo.”
“Yo” is actually a craps term for the number eleven. Despite his “Jesus Is Lord” baseball cap, the clerk had clearly been around a lot of gambling.
Abruptly, as though a ghost had snuck up from behind and spooked him, Bernard jumped into motion: “Check on Motown! Check on the Cuban! Give HPC … fuck, we’re buried on that game. Give Pork Chop five dimes minus the forty. Now! No one talk for two point two seconds. Complete silence! I need to know right now who’s sweating the Cubbies? Who’s my sweater?”
Generally speaking, gamblers can be very superstitious. But it seemed to me that Bernard was steadily becoming insane. He believed that watching games brought bad luck so he turned off the TVs hanging from the ceiling and hid the remotes. A strong believer in the power of telepathy, he took the most incompetent employees and, instead of firing them, established a team of “sweaters.” While everyone else answered phones, took bets, and made bets, the sweaters were paid (eight dollars an hour, plus benefits) to sit in silence, stare at yahoosports.com, and telepathically root for the need. The only time the sweaters were permitted to
speak was when the game ended and they reported the score. God help them if they didn’t say the winning team first.
An older, unhurried gentleman raised his hand. “I sweating de Cobbies, Mr. Bernard.”
“Ronald, yesssss!” Bernard said, pumping his fist. “Guys six and oh in sweating preseason. Keep up the good work, Ronald. ONE MINUTE TO POST!”
Over the course of the next minute, the telephones must’ve rung seventy times. Sweat trickled from Bernard’s hairline and his breath came in short gasps. “And quick, before I suffer a brain hemorrhage. Everybody meet Beth. She works here. Her laugh is on a ten-second game delay so don’t feel bad if she doesn’t get your jokes right away.”
The clerks looked at me, intrigued. They’d seen plenty of gringa wives and girlfriends come to visit. But only the men came to work. I think they assumed I was either Bernard’s daughter or mistress. When they greeted me, contorting their faces, it looked almost painful for them to pronounce the
th
in Beth, so we settled on Betty.
First pitches took the games off the board. Three-quarters of the room headed for the smoking porch, unlit cigarettes dangling from their lips. Fifteen-hour workdays were not uncommon, thus the crew’s only breath of fresh air came filtered through a Marlboro red. Jaundiced yet relieved, Bernard collapsed into his chair. He washed down Xanaxes with lukewarm Nescafé and dripped Visine into his eyes. In Bernard’s mind, ASAP was a five-year project. Five years of high, high intensity, then he would sell it, perhaps to Pinnacle, our competition down the street. But as I watched his eyelids sink, lower, lower, as slow and fluid as a bottle drifting to the bottom of an ocean floor, I wondered how he’d be able to last that long. Five years in the vacuum of high-stakes offshore gambling is like thirty years in any other line of work. After all, Internet gambling doesn’t close on weekends or holidays. It exists 24 hours, 365 days a year. A mere two weeks into preseason baseball and already Bernard looked sickly and spent. I never dreamt I’d say this, but he needed to put on some weight.
By the four o’clock games, he’d recovered. His eyes, as wide and clear as those of any expert in his element, darted from one game to the next. He formulated mathematical probabilities and barked orders no one dared question. At a moment of peak intensity, the forty, fifty bets that came in
per minute
were the size of mortgages and yearly salaries. In the midst of the commotion, drunk on the adrenaline-testosterone cocktail—the house specialty—everyone managed to keep their head. Inspired by the sheer absorption, I sidled beside the Italian crew, grabbed a phone, and joined them.
We lived in a house so fancy it had a name: Quinta Cindy. Quinta Cindy’s walls opened to a lush garden landscape, allowing in the breeze and yellow-bellied birds looking for places to nest. Sunshine covered every square inch of the mahogany floors, and from the hammocks on the wide veranda you could smell the sea, just one mile away. I shared this lovely, tranquil spot with the Italian crew, who in their paranoia briefly believed I was a private detective working on behalf of their wives, and Lionel, a McDonald’s drive-thru clerk Bernard hired one morning on the fly. Highly self-conscious and quick to criticize, Lionel had the squat build of a wrestling coach and shoulders like granite boulders. He wore sapphire pinky rings, chain bracelets, and a heavy gold necklace from which hung a fist-sized horse medallion. It thumped against his chest as he walked. You could hear Lionel coming before he turned the corner.
Bernard brought dozens of characters over from the mainland to work at ASAP, but one thing stayed the same: I was the only woman. Having spent the last four years working in sports gambling (not to mention my boxing and in-home stripping), I felt I had spent enough time in the company of men to become inured to their waywardness. But I hadn’t. In the States, desires pushed up against social mores and familial responsibility. Fear of the law tempered the scope of their gambling and drug use. They could cheat on their wives, sure. But they still had to be home by eight to tuck in the kids. In Curaçao, I witnessed complete unbridling of
these desires. The heat’s sensuality; young, exotic women, topless beaches, the soft swells of buttocks; Heinekens served in seven-ounce pony bottles, the perfect size for ensuring cold beer to the last drop; inexpensive, high-quality cocaine and hookers: the lifestyle was all set up. All you had to do was get there.
The looks the men exchanged made it clear. They couldn’t quite believe their newfound freedom. The money Bernard offered them was so astronomical that even their wives couldn’t say no. But had their wives actually said yes? Had the words
Go, honey. I’ll take care of the kids
really crossed their lips?
They had. And once the men overcame their initial shyness and stopped brooding over their receding hairlines, their inhibitions broke free like long-awaited exhales. Most waitresses, and any Venezuelan hooker, totally unhinged them. Loud, grunting, wild sex. They’d almost forgotten what it was like to participate in it, and not just stare at it on a screen. Returning from their lunch breaks flushed and dazed, lost in a mélange of body scents, they splayed across the carpet and stared at the ceiling, as though they had just plunged down a sloping field of wildflowers and needed a moment to recover.
But no one—no one—fell harder for a woman than Bernard Rose fell for Maritza de los Santos.
ASAP happened to be having a meeting at Club Havana—the cheap open-air strip club where all executive decisions were made—the night Maritza first took the floor. Her nervous, unvarying dance moves made it clear she was new. More comfortable facing the concrete back wall than the sparse crowd, she spent most of her stage time shaking her backside to an impossibly fast Shakira remix. When she did turn to us, through an uncoordinated twirl, her barrette unclipped, and her thick black hair spilled over her smooth brown shoulders and small, unsupported breasts. The slight disruption turned her forced smile sad. She lost her rhythm, her poise. Her song was not yet over when she bent at the waist, retrieved her clip from the floor, and walked offstage.
In an instant, Bernard jumped to a standing ovation and
searched frantically for a translator. “Someone! You. Anyone. Please help me! Find her and ask if she’d like to join our table for an iced tea!”