Never Too Late for Love (14 page)

"You'll never leave Ida," Frieda said suddenly,
without anger, gently, a statement of fact. She knew that from the beginning.

"How could I, after all these years?"

"But, Frieda, I swear to you. It has never been like
us. Never like us. I can't remember the last time..." His voice trailed
off.

"Don't be embarrassed," she said.

"I'll see you again?" he said, standing up and
putting on his pants.

"Can we stay away?"

"Maybe once a week," he said.

"Of course." It would be impossible any other
way. She remembered how furtive they had been, the smell of the cellar, the
back porch, all of that repeated now. It was all part of it, she thought. When
he was dressed, she straightened his shirt and kissed him on the cheek.

"Watch out for the yentas," she said, letting him
out the back door, seeing his flowered shirt fade into the distance as he
walked toward the clubhouse. He seemed to move away very fast, as if he were
seventeen again....

Poor Herman, she thought, puffing up the pillows of the
couch.

The game began in earnest a month after Hymie Cohen got
married. He was still living in his father-in-law's house, on the corner of Strauss Street and Dumont in Brownsville. His father-in-law worked for Silverstein's Movers,
and there was always a huge moving van parked in the oversized garage at the
rear of the house. There was plenty of room in the garage for a table, so they
could make noise and play cards in peace without disturbing the rest of the
house.

There had been games there before Hymie was married, but
not on a regular basis; the routine had not yet been established. Hymie's
marriage settled that. He and Muriel had agreed that Hymie would be allowed a
weekly "night with the boys", though the controls were rather rigid.
The "boys" were made up of the crowd that used to "hang
out" around Hoffman's Candy Store on the corner of Dumont and Blake. They
had all gone through public school together, played on the same team in the Betsy Head Park baseball tournaments, and shared their most profound adolescent
experiences, especially after the traditional Saturday night dates. After they
took the girls home, they would gather at Hoffman's for a report about the
evening's events.

"I got bare tit," Solly Lebow would say proudly,
his sallow face beaming with the knowledge of his sexual prowess.

"Off Gladys?" Gladys' endowments were a
neighborhood legend, and anyone who could penetrate that first line of defense
must have had formidable powers.

"Wow."

Itzie Solowey, who was small, with a big nose and a pimply
face, would merely snicker. He never could attract girls, so he took refuge in
a pose of superior contempt.

"Big deal," he would say.

"If I don't get stinky pinkie," Mortie Krubitch
would say, patting down his shiny curly hair, "I walk."

"And did you get it tonight?" one of them would
ask.

"Smell." He would put out his middle finger and
pass it around like an Indian peace pipe.

"Yuk."

"And you, Hymie, what did you get?" they would
ask.

Hymie, by then, was in love, and beyond sharing his
experiences. He had been going with Muriel since the eighth grade. Once, at the
beginning, he had told them that he had gotten her pants off and had nearly put
it in. But when he knew he was in love and that her body was sacred and
private, he stopped talking about it. Besides, he had never put it in. In those
days, you waited for marriage. Hymie was, of course, the first of the gang to
marry. He was twenty-one and because his father-in-law was reasonably
comfortable by the standard then, they had a big wedding in the Brooklyn Jewish
Center on Eastern Parkway, complete with a fancy "hupa" and a
sit-down dinner. All the boys from Hoffman's were ushers, looking stiff and
self-conscious in their rented monkey suits, as they called them.

After his marriage, Hymie spent some time with the boys in
front of Hoffman's, but it was different. He was one of them, he knew, but he
sensed a gulf between them.

He missed being with them, sharing the guys' talk. Life had
changed.

Perhaps that was why he started the game in the first
place, just to be with them. The stakes weren't that high, five and ten,
dealer's choice, but he looked forward to the weekly games with great anticipation.
He especially enjoyed the time over coffee and donuts--provided by
Muriel--after the game, which gave them a chance to gab and catch up with what
was happening to each of them.

Solly Lebow was the second of the boys to marry; again,
they all trooped down to the tux-for-hire shop and stuffed themselves into
starched shirts for the ushering ordeal, which netted them the usual reward of
gold-plated cufflinks.

"Now that Solly's married" Muriel said one night
after the game,"can't they have it in his house sometimes?" Actually,
Hymie knew that, in her heart of hearts, Muriel didn't approve of the game, nor
any activity in which she did not share. The idea of separating her from the
game made her bitchy at times, but he ignored it.

"How much did you lose?" she would ask when he
crept into bed beside her after the game. One time, he actually told her, and
she kept him up all night with threats and recriminations. He eventually
learned to tell her that he'd won a few bucks--even when he lost. Actually, he
wasn't a good poker player and lost most of the time. Benny Bernstein, with his
steel mind for figures and his cool rubber-lipped face, was always a winner.
When Benny played out a full hand, he usually had the cards. But sometimes he
would bluff. Occasionally, someone would reach over and grab Benny's cards
before he could slip them back into the deck, which never failed to cause an
eruption.

"He bluffed. The son-of-a-bitch bluffed."

"Eat your hearts out," Benny would say, sweeping
the table of its chips.

After Mortie Krubitch and Blintzie Goldberg got married,
they started holding the game in other houses. It had somehow evolved to
Tuesday nights and it fell to Hymie to keep track of where the game would be.

"Where's the game next week?"

"Mortie's place. And the week after, at
Blintzie's."

It was only after Benny Bernstein got married that the
logistics of the game grew complicated, at least once every five weeks. Benny
married Shiela Schwartz, whose father was a furrier and, therefore, a cut above
them all economically. His in-laws insisted that Benny and Shiela move into a
fancier apartment house in Crown Heights. Benny was, by then, manager of a
stationery store in Manhattan and, with his poker winnings and his excellent
ability to manage money, was able to afford a better apartment.

"You couldn't move around the corner from here,"
Solly Lebow admonished. "Now we gotta take a subway."

"Look," Benny said. "I'm the one that has to
take the subway most of the time. Once every five weeks won't kill you. It's only
four stops, anyway. No big deal."

"Maybe we could keep playing in this
neighborhood." Blintzie Goldberg said, his glasses sliding over a greasy
nose. It was one of those natural afflictions from which there was no escape,
and he had developed the annoying habit of constantly pushing the frames back
to the bridge of his nose.

"That means somebody has to go twice," Benny
said.

"Well, we never have it at Itzie's place," Mortie
Krubitch pointed out. Itzie lowered his eyes in shame. He was single and still lived
with his parents above their grocery store. There was hardly room for them to
eat their meals in their kitchen.

"Itzie does his share. He brings us cakes."

"Stale cakes," Mortie added caustically.

"They're fresh," Itzie rejoined.

"Maybe I should drop out of the game," Benny
suggested.

"And me," Itzie agreed, his tiny face flushed
with anger.

"Maybe you both should," Blintzie pointed out.

"Come on guys, deal," Hymie said, and the crisis
was over as the cards rained quietly onto the table.

There were times when the game was called off. A relative
had died. It was a Jewish holiday. Two of the boys were sick at the same time.
But beyond such acts of God, the game endured.

Even Blintzie's cheating could not shake its routine.

"He goes light, then pushes his light chips into the
pot." It was Itzie Solowey who spotted it first.

"I can't believe it," Hymie said.

"Watch it next time. I'll kick you under the
table."

But Hymie spotted the action before he felt Itzie's kick.
Blintzie would let his chips evaporate without replenishment during a heavy
bidding sequence. He would move a number of chips out of the pot to keep track
of his lights. When he lost, he would merely push the chips back into the pot
without making up for what he had borrowed.

"What should we do?" Itzie asked Hymie.
"Tell him he's a cheat?"

"No. Let me think about it."

Throughout the week, Hymie considered the dilemma
restlessly. Blintzie's actions were a major threat to the game.

"How could he?" he asked himself. "It's
supposed to be a friendly game."

By this time, the weekly games had been going on about five
years. Hymie and Muriel had two children, and others were beginning their
families as well. Their lives were changing.

Through various recessions, money was tight, but they kept
the game going by lowering the stakes. No more than ten-cent raises, three time
maximum.

But the matter of Blintzie's cheating was not settled
easily. It preyed on Hymie's mind for months, and he would watch with sadness
every time Blintzie did it.

"Sometimes, I actually hope he wins the pot,"
Hymie told Itzie.

"Yeah, it takes all the fun out of the game."

"I can't believe it, even when I see it."

"Should we throw him out of the game?"

It was the inevitable question. Finally, it reached a point
of no return.

Blintzie lost badly one night and repeatedly went light. He
got into such a rotten mood that he left early.

"What are we going to do with him?" Benny asked
when Blintzie had gone.

"You saw it too?" Hymie asked.

"You think I'm blind?"

"I thought I was the only one," Solly said.
"He doesn't even try to hide it anymore."

"So what should we do?" Itzie asked.

"We could throw him out of the game," Benny
suggested.

"How can we do that?"

"Easy. We tell him he's a damned cheat. How can he
have the conscience to cheat his friends?"

"I don't know," Hymie said. He looked around the
table at the faces of his friends, knowing that, despite their brave talk, they
were as confused as he.

"We could ignore it," Hymie said.

"We've ignored it for five years," Benny reminded
them.

"I think we have to make allowances," Hymie said
finally, looking at Benny. "We make allowances elsewhere." Benny
lowered his eyes and his face flushed.

"Let's compromise," Solly said. "Each night,
one of us plays watchdog. He watches the pot, calls the lights to Blintzie's
attention. Not nasty. Just a friendly reminder."

"Sounds OK to me," Itzie said.

The idea seemed to work, and the threat to the game passed
as Blintzie got the message.

"Maybe he didn't even know he was doing it,"
Itzie said.

"Maybe," Hymie agreed.

Blintzie certainly didn't serve up the only challenge to
the game over the years. Mortie Krubitch nearly dropped out. It was at the
height of one of the recessions and Mortie was barely able to provide for his
family.

"My wife won't let me come any more," he told
them one Tuesday night.

"She's scared, and I don't blame her." By a
strange coincidence, though, Mortie won big that night--the start of a hot
streak that lasted for weeks, in fact. He never did drop out. Then Itzie
Solowey nearly got drafted, but was saved by flat feet, a punctured eardrum,
and a double hernia.

"No wonder you never got married, Itzie," Hymie
cajoled. "You're a broken-down mess."

The once-pleasant neighborhood of Brownsville began to
deteriorate, and some of the boys started to talk about moving away. In fact,
Solly Lebow moved about an hour's drive away, but they all had cars by then, so
it was workable.

"I think you're crazy," Muriel protested when
Hymie came in at two in the morning after a game at Solly's house. "You
won't be fit for nothing tomorrow."

And Muriel wasn't the only wife who protested. Things got
worse when Benny Bernstein moved to Forest Hills.

"My wife is killing me," Hymie told them.
"She really gets pissed off when I come in late."

"Mine too," Blintzie echoed.

"I got a bad time last week," Mortie admitted.
"But I told her to mind her own damned business. I'll be damned if I'll
give up our game."

"It doesn't bother me," Itzie snickered.

"Shut up and deal," Hymie shot back.

But the constant pressure from the wives escalated, and it
was only after Solly Lebow came up with an idea that included the women that
the pressure abated. The guys would cut the pot--which had graduated to a
quarter and fifty cents with no raise limits--and use the proceeds for a
weekend at the Concord. Now the women had a stake in the game, too.

It took eighteen months for them to accumulate enough money
for the trip. And, in the end, it proved to be the most dangerous threat the
game ever witnessed.

"This room stinks," Muriel said, after they
checked in on Friday afternoon.

She sat on the bed to test the mattress, then stooped to
look out of the window. The room was under a dormer of one of the older
buildings. "And the view is crummy."

"It's only for two nights," Hymie said.

"It stinks," Muriel said again, her voice shrill
with anger.

Hymie was embarrassed, because the bellhop was still in the
room as Muriel complained.

"I'll bet we got the worst building," Muriel
squeaked, turning to the bellhop. "Is this the worst building?"

"No," the bellhop said hesitantly, shifting his
weight from one foot to the other. "It's a little older..." he began.

"See," Muriel cried. "I'll bet the
Bernsteins got a newer room."

"We're all paying the same."

"Molly Bernstein always gets extras.
Always.
"
She sat down on the bed and folded her arms. "I will not live in this
room," she announced flatly, her jaw set.

"They were pretty well booked..." the bellhop
began.

"Then I'll go home."

"Two lousy nights. Come on, Muriel. Be
reasonable."

"If Molly Bernstein can get a better room, then I
can."

Finally, Hymie went back to the desk in the main building.
He was steaming when he arrived, determined to vent his anger on the desk
clerk.

Benny Bernstein and Solly Lebow were there before him.

"You, too?" he asked.

"Molly is driving me crazy."