Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues (28 page)

The waitress walks over. “Where’s your friend?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

A nod. No further interrogation. “Turkey on rye?” she guesses, and Roy shrugs. Sounds right. The waitress walks away.

It’s empty in the diner tonight. That’s the way it goes some days. Full one hour, empty the next. Roy remembers that from the old days. The way people used to flow in and out. The way he would size them up. The way he and Frankie would watch them eat. Watch them move.

There’s a conversation to his right, muted speech. Whispers. Roy doesn’t focus on it, but it’s not hard to make out. A couple of college kids, laughing. Giggling. They’re getting more frequent
in here. Roy wonders if he should choose a new place to eat.

“So I got a new trick to show you,” one of them says loudly. “I got a new game.”

“Please,” says the other one, just as loud. As obvious. “You and card tricks.…”

Roy closes his eyes. He can smell the food in back, frying. He can feel the dirt beneath his feet, the ground-in grime on the diner floor. Hear the clink of dishes, the chatter of patrons. Taste the oil saturating the air.

“No, no,” says the first kid. “This’ll be great. I got this one down good.”

There’s a tap on Roy’s shoulder. A presence to his right. He opens his eyes. Turns. There’s one of the kids, brown hair and sweatshirt. Grinning. “Hey, mister,” he says. “You wanna see my friend mess up a card trick?”

Roy takes a breath. Looks at the two of them. They can’t stop smiling. Like they’ve already pulled the trick. Like they’ve already got the cash in their pockets. “Sure,” says Roy. “I’ll see a trick.”

They introduce themselves as Bob and Dan, and go through the motions. “Pick a card,” Dan says, “and don’t show it to me.” Roy slides a card out of the deck. It’s a joker. “Okay, now put it back, anywhere. Good. Good.”

As Dan shuffles, Roy lets his mind go. He wonders if Frankie’s playing this game right now. Wonders if Angela—or whatever her real name happens to be—is playing the straight man. Wonders if they’re pulling it off better than these two stiff college kids. He knows they are. Knows they can pull off anything.

“Right,” says Dan, fingers fumbling with the deck. “Now I’m
gonna flip over some cards, here, and … and I’m gonna find your card, mister.” He awkwardly starts throwing cards onto the table, faceup. Soon, the joker pops up, and Roy catches Bob giving his friend a big wink. It’s a lousy signal, a blind man could see it coming, but Roy doesn’t let on.

“See,” says Bob, late on his cue. “You suck at these.”

“No, no, wait, wait.” Dan pauses. Thinks. “Betcha the next card I take off—I mean, the next card I flip over—
flip over
—I bet that’s your card.”

Bob digs into his pocket and takes out a ten-dollar bill. Slaps it on the table. “I’m in on that,” he says. Turns to Roy, his eyes closed once again. “Mister? Mister?” Roy comes back. Looks at the joker lying there. Ready for the game to be closed. For the final pinch. “You wanna get in on this, mister?”

Roy nods. He stands, reaching into his pockets. Pulling out the bills inside. The quarters. The dimes. The pennies. All of it. A hospital ID tag, receipts from dinners with Angela. Everything. Into his jacket pockets, finding a few dollars there. Pushing the cash into a pile, shoving it into the middle of the table. Forty-seven dollars. All the money Roy has left in the world.

The college boys look at one another and shrug. “Time for magic,” says Dan. “I said the next card I flip over’ll be your card, right? Voila!” He clumsily flips the joker face-side down, and he and Bob erupt into a fit of laughter. Roy sits at the counter, nodding his head. A touch of a smile at the corners of his lips.

Dan slides the money into his wallet, and Bob slaps Roy on the back. “That was a good one,” he says. “You gotta admit, mister, that’s a pretty damn good one.”

“It was. It was.”

“No hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings.”

Bob and Dan continue to congratulate themselves, ordering up dessert and a new round of sodas. Roy turns back to the counter and waits for his turkey on rye to arrive. He’s got no way to pay for it now. It doesn’t bother him. It might bother the waitress, but it doesn’t bother him.

“You gotta watch yourself, mister,” Dan calls out to him, still celebrating his triumph. “Friendly word of advice, you know? You can’t trust everyone these days.”

“Yeah,” says his friend. “Next time, you gotta be careful. Next time, it won’t just be a card game, I bet.”

Roy doesn’t answer. His turkey will be coming soon, and then he will eat. After that, he doesn’t know what will happen. It’s been a while since he’s felt that way. Not knowing. Not planning. But he will eat, and he will drink his coffee, and that will be that. Something will come to him. Something to do. Some way to do it. This is his diner, after all. This is as good a place to start as any.

This is the point in the book when I get to thank all those people who have helped along the way. Like an awards acceptance speech, it has the potential to drag on way too long; unlike an awards acceptance speech, you can always turn the page. Perhaps, then, I should keep this brief:

Thanks to Barbara Zitwer, all-around fabulous literary agent and doll baby, who bulldogs when she needs to bulldog and keeps my ego properly inflated.

Thanks to Jon Karp, editor extraordinaire, who lines his punches with velvet and makes sure I stay true to what I want to do.

Thanks to Brian Lipson, living proof that Hollywood agents can still have bite without being sharks.

Thanks to Jack Rapke, who clicked with this book—all of it—and knows how to make good material even better.

Thanks to Manny and Judi Garcia, my parents, for not disowning me after I lampooned them in my first book, and for always supporting my creative efforts since childhood.

Thanks to Howard and Beverly Erickson, for allowing me to marry their daughter, and for having faith in me when I was but a young, brash kid with stars in his eyes.

Thanks to Nathaniel Spiner for being the biggest
Matchstick Men
booster south of the sixth grade; if we grab the elementary school market, I owe it all to him. Thanks, as well, to his family—Noah, Blanche, Cheryl, and Eitan—for their constant excitement over all my projects.

And, of course, eternal thanks to my beautiful wife and daughter, Sabrina and Bailey, for making every moment of every day brighter than I ever could have imagined. Sabrina is the one for whom I write every word, and Bailey is my heart wrapped up in a giggling two-year-old body.

E
RIC
G
ARCIA
grew up in Miami, Florida, and attended Cornell University and the University of Southern California, where he majored in creative writing and film. He lives outside Los Angeles with his wife, daughter, and dachshund, and is currently at work on
Hot and Sweaty Rex
, the third novel in his acclaimed series featuring dinosaur detective Vincent Rubio. He can be reached via the Internet at
www.ericgarcia.com
.