Lay the Favorite (7 page)

The host’s young Mexican wife, an ex–cocktail waitress from Binion’s, breezed through the room in a low-cut silk dress, looking as posh and polished as a movie star. A diamond-encrusted Star of David, a present from her husband when she converted to Judaism, fell into her cleavage. She offered the guests fresh-squeezed orange juice, toasted bagels and lox, and more chocolate hors d’oeuvres. She delivered a prepared plate to her husband, who sat behind his glazed desk. As lissomely as she entered, she departed. And once again, I was the only female in the room if you didn’t count sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein.

And, let’s go down to Bonnie Bernstein. Bonnie?

The camera cut to Bonnie, standing on the sidelines, composed. A silver clip kept the wind from blowing her hair into her face. A quilted magenta coat protected her from the Green Bay chill. She brought the CBS microphone close to her mouth and began to speak.

Our host muted her commentary. “Cunt,” he spat.

Dink came to her rescue. “Hey, don’t be rude to Bonnie. She’s one of the tribe.”

“Cock! Sucker! I have too much on San Fran under. Anybody wanna piece of it?”

“I’ll take two dimes.”

“I’ll take three.”

“How do you have two dimes to bet on the game but you can’t pay me back the money I loaned you at Saratoga?”

“I got a joke for you guys. Two Muslims and a Jew are sittin’ next to each other on an airplane …”

On the TV below, players piled on top of each other.

He fumbles the ball and here comes the Ravens and … they … got it!

On the top TV, the Redskins prepared for kickoff.

“FUCK you, Schottenheimer, you inept FUCK,” Hair Plugs shouted. The camera cut to the coach pacing the sidelines and Hair Plugs lunged at him, the way high school bullies do when they want to make someone flinch. I thought he was going to spit at the screen. I had to look away.

“Baltimore’s shootin’ their load a little too early.”

“Niners’ defense is horrendous. This may be a very profitable day.”

“Can somebody mute Dierdorf?
‘An inopportune time to fumble.’
Is there ever an opportune time to fumble, jerk-off?”

“Fuck. I forgot my Xanax.”

On the divan sat a man so entranced by the game’s unfolding drama that he absentmindedly peeled psoriasis scabs from the back of his hand and popped them like movie candy into his mouth.

“Eating it’s not gonna make it go away,” Dink said, and then turned to me and asked, “Are you having a nice time?”

I nodded my head yes.

“You’re allowed to talk, you know.”

I shook my head no.

“You wanna piece?”

In addition to my salary, Dink gave me “pieces” of games we watched together outside of the office. It was an all-reward, no-risk situation. If he won, he’d give me two, three hundred dollars. To make it more fun for me, he said. He gave me my first piece of a game while we were in San Diego. Now, one week later, I was up eight hundred dollars for the week, in pieces.

I nodded yes.

“We need Falcons and under. Our root is for no one to score. But if someone must score, we want it to be the Falcons. We need the Redskin total to go over thirty-four in the first half, that’s a big one. We need Tennessee to get destroyed …”

Falafel was reprimanded for rooting too loudly for his three-hundred-dollar bet while his friend, the host, had five grand riding on the opposing team. This, Dink said, was one of the reasons he liked having me work for him. I didn’t gamble on sports, so if Dink needed one team, he could rest assured that I didn’t have a bet on the other side and was secretly rooting against him. That situation happened quite often with the guys in the office. It was one thing to like a certain team; it was another to root against your boss, who’s paying your salary.

“WHY IS THERE A RECEIVER ALONE IN THE END ZONE?”

Eyeballs bulged and faces reddened. Palms smacked the top of the coffee table. Teeth bit deep into knuckles. Hair Plugs took a knee. I smelled the first wave of body odor.

Touchdown! Washington
.

I was confused. Was that good for Dink?

Dink read my mind. “That’s good for us,” he whispered.

We returned to Dink Inc. to bet on the later games. Field goals, foul shots, flip shots, and snaps pushed the afternoon into nighttime. Trying to remember who and what we needed on each event was exhausting. In the first half we rooted for a team to score a lot of points, and in the second half we rooted for them not to score. We rooted for a team to make a field goal and twenty minutes later we rooted for them to fumble. It was important for one team to win by 3 or 5, but definitely not 4.

“See these tickets,” Dink said. There were enough of them now to fill a shoebox. “This is what I’ve been talking about. These bets could be sold for something. Hopefully the gambling gods will be on my side, but I can go to sleep tonight knowing I have the best of it.”

My brain was mush. I didn’t have the energy to even feign interest. Dink noticed the sullen look on my face and assumed my spirits were low because I had yet to make a bet. To boost my morale, he allowed me the honor of making the day’s last wager.

“Okay, here. You’re gonna do this right now,” he said. “Call Top of the World and ask for game two twenty-four, Minnesota money line for one dime.”

“Come on, baby, you can do it,” Robbie J said.

I lifted my cheek off the table and reached sluggishly for the phone.

“Sports.”

“Hi, six four six Double D.”

“Go ’head, Double D.”

“Game two twenty-four, Milwaukee money line?”

“Game two twenty-four, I got Bucks minus the fifty-five, total at one twenty-one.”

“Okay,” I said. I slid a three-ply ticket from my own little pile. “I’ll take the fifty-five …”

“No, no, no, not
take,”
Dink said.

Oh, God. Enough already. My instinct was to hang up.

“Stay on the phone,” Dink instructed, in a hushed tone. “Milwaukee’s favored. You don’t take the favorite. You
lay
the favorite. You take the dog.”

“You there, Double D?”

“Yeah, hi. Actually, can I
lay
the fifty-five to win a dime?”

On the Don Best screen in front of me, the basketball game changed from minus 155 to minus 159. I realized Dinky’s opinion was so respected that when he or his crew bet money on a game, the office we bet with changed their odds. I thought that was cool as hell.

“You got it. Bucks money line risking fifteen-fifty to win a dime. Name and password for confirmation.”

“Six four six Double D.”

Robbie J blew me a kiss. My heart swelled with pride. In girly cursive, I wrote the bet neatly onto a ticket and tossed it to Dink. For the remainder of the evening, the three of us unwound. We pushed the boxes of leftover pizza to the side and stretched our legs over the banquet table. Otis slept at my feet, surrounded by empty two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola. It was like a Norman Rockwell portrait of a family, but instead of bowed heads and palms in prayer, we rooted for the Bucks to hit a three.

It wasn’t that I had misrepresented myself to Dink on the afternoon of our interview. I
had
worked as a social worker. As the weeks passed, though, and Dink showed interest in the details of my past, I considered, for the first time in my adult life, whether it might be best just to tell someone the simple truth about what I had been up to for the past two years. Watching Dink try to make sense out of the disparate anecdotes I shared with him made me feel guilty. Whenever I met someone new, my tendency was to ask a lot of questions, many of them squeamishly personal. Dink was so candid. Whenever I asked him about the frustrations of gambling life or regrets he might have, or the particulars of his financial situation (How much were you making when you were my age? What was the most you ever lost in one year? One day?), he always answered with honesty and careful consideration. He was becoming a friend and deserved better.

I waited for an evening when we were alone in the office. Dink was seated at the head of the table, contemplating a racing form. Sitting in my chair, I tucked my legs under me and leaned my body over the table, toward him. I held myself up with my elbows.

“Yes, Ms. Raymer?” he said, eyes on page.

“Remember how I told you I was a social worker?” I started, trying to be nonchalant. But casualness was never my forte and over the next sixty seconds I hit every point on the emotional spectrum. Ambivalence to worry and back again. My face blushed, I laughed, went serious, broke a sweat, and then took a deep breath to regain my composure. I gauged Dink’s reaction, though I hadn’t told him a thing.

“I remember,” Dink said.

“Well, remember how I got fired for letting the girls run away?”

He folded the form and put it aside. “I remember.” His attention was now all mine.

Well, here’s the thing. After I got fired from the residential home, I had to find another job. I was living in Tallahassee, and it was summertime. My rental had no air conditioner. It did have a large front porch that looked out onto a red dirt road, so that’s where I spent the mornings of my work-life hiatus, dropping ice cubes into my coffee, listening to the cicadas hum their courtship songs, and browsing the
Democrat
classifieds. The ad that caught my attention was the size of a postage stamp.
Nude Dancers Desired, Real Money, Real Fast
. It was strange to read such an ad in the newspaper of a city that prohibited strip clubs. Nude or even seminude entertainment was definitely outlawed in Tallahassee, something my male friends often griped about. I adorned the ad with a doodle.

The coffee kicked in and I couldn’t resist checking myself out in the bathroom’s full-length mirror and assessing my chances as a dancer. I had no idea what the sex part of the job would entail, but the promise of “real money” made my blood sing. I had the feeling I’d be free. Nude dancing brought to mind a glorious universe free of time sheets, dress codes, schedules, or rules. I’d be in charge of me. I took a pair of heels from my roommate’s closet and situated myself into positions that accentuated my curves.

Nightmoves was listed in the phone book under Live Entertainment and the six (seven, counting me) girls who worked there went by the title “in-home stripper.” For $150 an hour, we performed at
a client’s home, office, or occasional parked car. Our services included a striptease, a body rub, and what would soon become my personal favorite, adult conversation—a phrase characterized less by the sharing of hushed dirty desires and more by intimate stories of erectile dysfunction, the humility that accompanies balding, and general discussions on how to protect finances during a divorce. At twenty-two, I found these topics incredibly “adult.”

The Nightmoves girls, including Madam S., were all under twenty-five years old. Madam S. started the business when she was sixteen, after both of her parents went to jail for embezzlement. To support herself, she quit school and began walking around her neighborhood with a boom box, asking men if they’d like to see her dance. Tiny jean shorts and a gingham bikini top exposed her long, lean legs and perky breasts. Men ogled her body and asked her age. Madam S. twisted the small silver hoop in her nose and talked price. Seven years later she was piercing different body parts, getting into fistfights, and dating temperamental drug dealers. But she was also a very ambitious businesswoman with an expertise in networking and as a result her black book of clients was as thick as the GED workbook that lay beside it.

At the interview, Madam S. had been happy to see someone with a “sweet smile” and for that reason she gave me the job and the stage name Angel. “Nobody understands Nightmoves until they
do
Nightmoves,” said Madam S. on the afternoon of my first shift. Her boyfriend sat on the floor, between her legs, rolling a blunt. She chain-smoked and braided his hair. I lay across from them on the living room couch. My nerves jumped with the beat of a Public Enemy song pulsing from the stereo.

In the sparsely furnished duplex that doubled as Nightmoves’ headquarters, my new co-workers watched
Days of Our Lives
while waiting for calls. They passed joints and celebrity magazines, their covers limned with coke. They spoke of the best dealers in the area and the most affordable day care and answered the ever-ringing telephone with a sweet, breathy “Nightmoves Entertainment, where the night never ends.”

“Can we go over the negotiation process again?” I said.

“Charge the customer for
eve-ry-thing
. Even hugs.” Madam S. yanked her boyfriend’s head back for a better angle.

“How much for hugs?”

She shrugged. “Twenty-five?”

“But, do I say, right then, ‘That’ll be twenty-five dollars’?”

“Fuck, yeah. Get the money upfront, always.”

The customers, she said, would be just as nervous as me. They didn’t know who the hell the strange woman was stepping inside their home. How did they know that I wouldn’t hold them at gunpoint and steal all their shit? We, the women of Nightmoves, knew more about the customers than they would ever know about us. We knew their names and addresses, we saw pictures of their wives and kids, we knew the layout of their homes. We could blackmail them if we wanted to. Some girls had.