*
Abe filled a washbasin with warm water. Halfway up the stairs, he paused to watch Irene stagger from the bathroom and back to bed. He waited a couple of moments until he heard the bedsprings creak.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling off her nightgown when he entered, and he was struck by how much smaller her breasts looked from just a week ago, how pale they were, gray almost, these breasts he once had taken such pleasure in holding, squeezing, tasting, pressing them to his hairy chest, and now they just hung there. She slipped another gown over her head, and Abe felt relieved that she was covered again.
He cleared his throat, but if she heard him she gave no indication. “How are you feeling?”
She looked at him as if she were mystified as to how he’d gotten into the room. “What?”
Abe spoke slowly. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a little. I got up.”
“Here.” He set the basin down on the night table, along with a washcloth and a bar of soap. “I thought if you wanted to wash up a little.”
Irene turned her head slightly toward the water. “What I want is a cup of tea. Where are the boys?”
He thought twice about telling her they went to East Liberty. “Playing outside.”
“Isn’t it raining?”
“It stopped.”
Irene felt a wave of panic. “Where is Alex? Is he with them?”
“Yes, Alex is fine, you don’t need to worry.”
“Did you put his scarf on?”
“He’s fine, I tell you.”
Irene dropped her hand in the washbasin and let it linger, palm up, as if she had slit her wrist and was letting it bleed out. “I’m filthy.”
Abe wanted to say, I’m the one that’s filthy, a filthy philanderer that’s planning on seeing his lover this very afternoon, and all the soap and water in the world ain’t about to get me clean. He moved closer. “Here.” He dipped the washcloth in the basin. He rubbed the soap against it. “Hold still.”
“What are you doing?”
He laughed. “What does it look like? Can’t a man touch his own wife?” He swabbed her face.
“Gently,” she said.
A bit of color rose in her cheeks as he washed them. Maybe, he thought, it’s a little bit of hope rising.
“That feels good, Abe. Do it slower.”
He rinsed the cloth and smoothed it over her forehead and on the sides of her neck. He opened the top two buttons of her nightgown and swabbed where her breastbone connected to her shoulder. It seemed sadly erotic to him, the way she closed her eyes and let her head tilt back, as his hand moved close to her breast.
From the first floor, Arthur yelled, “Dad?”
He squeezed water out of the washcloth. “Up here, son. You boys home already?”
“Yeah. We had a good time. Can we have something to eat?”
Before he could answer, Irene said, “My hair is awful. Could you get my brush from the bathroom?”
His boy’s clothes covered the bathroom floor. Abe pushed them aside with his boot. He’d have to get on them about cleaning up after themselves, but wasn’t that always Irene’s job? Maybe he could find a housekeeper to give the place the once over, but then that cost money and would cut into his drinking allowance. Anyway, today wasn’t the day to get all worried about that. Today was the tournament at The Wheel.
Soap spatters clung to the mirror of the medicine cabinet like aphids. On the top shelf were Irene’s creams and lotions. Abe opened a jar. The cream was dried and cracked. He opened a bottle of perfume, half empty. Had he bought it for her? Wasn’t it an anniversary present? He wasn’t sure, but the smell was familiar. Nice, but not as provocative as the stuff Delia wore—damn, what was wrong with him, he shouldn’t be thinking about her at a time like this.
He thought her heard Irene calling him. “Coming, coming.”
By the time he got back to the bedside, her eyes had already closed.
*
Ida arrived before noon. She put out a lunch of baloney sandwiches, peanut butter cookies she’d made that morning and piccalilli. After stuffing themselves, Arthur and Benjamin slipped off to their bedroom. Abe left the house with Alex and a mostly clear conscience, feeling content that he had been attentive to his wife, done what he could, or at least the best he could muster, and anyway, how much could anyone do for her? With a bounce in his step and Alex on his shoulder, the short walk to The Wheel seemed even closer.
Six finalists had been competing in a toss-off to play against reigning champion Davy O’Brien in the tournament finals. Close to thirty dollars had been won and lost on the preliminaries. In addition, there had been three fist fights, one of which culminated when Raymond Kramer jammed a dart two inches into the left shoulder of Red Shipley, who’d accused Raymond of using illegally weighted bronze darts. He’d also accused Kramer’s mother of committing unnatural sex acts with large male herbivores.
The crowd had grown to upward of sixty men and a handful of women as one o’clock and the final toss-down approached. Edward “Pecker” Peck, Davy’s doubles partner, had emerged from the preliminaries as the man to challenge the incumbent, and although John was giving two-to-one on Davy, or maybe because of it, the brisk betting was divided evenly. There was an unspoken but growing suspicion that Davy’s drinking had finally caught up to him, that his hand and eyes were shaky, and indeed, the flow of drink that used to steady his aim seemed to be working the opposite way, as evidenced by some of the errant warm-up tosses Davy had thrown earlier that morning, two of which missed the dartboard entirely.
According to the unwritten rules of the tournament, the final round was one leg instead of the usual three, one game of 301, between the challenger and the champion, who by virtue of his title was permitted to skip the preliminaries. Each player was allowed nine warm-up tosses before the final match. Peck stretched his arms over his head, and with a quick thrust hit a double ring 10, then another double ringer, then a toss that came within a hummingbird’s feather of a bull’s-eye. He turned to Davy, who had yet to get out of his chair. “Well, will you look at that, Davy, hope to God I didn’t blow my wad in the warm-up. You gonna give the crowd here a preview, sir, or do you feel ready already?” He took a huge bite out of a ham and cheese on rye from a tray piled high with them, which John was selling for ten cents each, three for a quarter. Preparing the sandwiches and platters of deviled eggs was John’s temporary helper, Delia Novak.
Davy said, “Feeling your oats now, are you, Edward?”
Peck wiped his mouth with the cuff of his flannel shirt. “Like a champion stallion. Any time you’re ready, champ.”
Davy sipped a shot of Imperial. He stared at the front door. Without looking away, he said, “Five minutes, Edward, give us five minutes here.”
“I’ll give you six, how’s that? You waiting for Jesus himself to walk through that door?”
Davy smiled, but not at Peck’s attempt at humor, for at that moment, Abe walked in with Davy’s good luck charm riding on his shoulder. He struggled to his feet, flexed his arms over his head, interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles so hard the pops echoed across the bar. “There’s me boy.”
Men who had money on Davy knew he saw Alex as his good luck charm, and shouted, “Here we go, Davy,” and “Stick it to him good, lad.”
Abe and Alex pushed their way through the glad-handers and well-wishers to Davy’s table. Davy opened a rosewood box and took out the special darts he used only for tournament play. Turning to Abe, he said, “May I have the boy?”
Alex said, “I went to Woolworth’s.”
“Is that right, kiddo?”
“We ate éclairs.”
Davy took Alex’s right hand and placed it on each dart, one at a time. He then placed Alex’s hand on his heart and kissed him three times on the forehead, which made Alex giggle. He turned to the crowd and, looking Peck in the eye, said, “Now that we’ve had the blessing of the darts, Pecker, let’s play.”
Delia strutted her way across the floor, evoking a series of catcalls and whistles, carrying the dartboard used only for the Tournament de Darts. She mounted it on the far wall and waved cheerily to the men as they saluted her with a beauty pageant round of applause. Passing by Abe, she gave him only the slightest nod.
Davy toed the line for his warm-up tosses. He braced himself with his left hand on a straight back chair, and while no one was sure if that stance was allowed within the rules, no one was ready to challenge the four-time champion. Davy’s first throw grazed the left ear of Fritz Shutzmeir and lodged itself into the wall three feet to the left. Davy said, “Who’s the bastard that moved the board on me?”
His supporters laughed uneasily. It was a joke, had to be, wasn’t it? Several men rushed to the bar to put money on Peck.
The remainder of Davy’s warm-ups, although they hit the board, were only marginally more accurate. The mumbled opinions were divided. Some felt Davy had truly lost his skill and perhaps his vision as well. Others saw his erratic warm-up as a con job, to instill the challenger with a false sense of bravado, since the general belief was that tournament darts was at least as much a mental contest as a physical one.
The cuckoo clock behind the bar, which John had taken in trade from Stanley Kurtz to settle a two-month tab, hooted one o’clock. John climbed up on the bar and announced, “My friends, the betting has officially ended. Let the championship round begin.” The men cheered and whistled. “You boys know the rules. One leg of 301. Winner gets ten dollars and possession of The Squeaky Wheel Tournament de Darts silver loving cup.” He held the trophy high over his head to a hearty round of applause. “Mr. Peck, are you ready?”
“You’re damn straight, John.”
“Davy, what say you?”
“I say what I always say, let the best man win.” There was polite applause. “As long as it’s me.”
Abe moved away from Davy’s table and back toward the bar, to get closer to Delia. As they bumped and jostled through the crowd, Alex snatched a diamond stickpin from the lapel of Edward Small of Small Brothers Property and Casualty Insurance.
Delia perched on a stepstool behind the bar. Her feathered hat, somewhat worse for wear, sat cocked sideways on her head, and she smoked with a cigarette holder, pinky extended, emulating the way she imagined socialite women smoked. She blew a smoke ring at Abe. “Well, look what we have here.” She stretched out her arms.
Abe reached for her tentatively.
Delia said, “Not you, you lug. No, I want to see the little good luck charm.” She pulled Alex to her.
The match began slowly. Neither man was able to hone in, though Peck hit a double-ring fourteen to take an early lead. Davy steadied himself with the chair. On his second toss he hit a triple, but the dart fell out before five seconds were up, negating his score, turning his supporters’ cheers to groans. Each time the men had to retrieve their darts, Davy’s hobble became more pronounced.
By the third round, Peck was fifty points ahead, his score dropping into the low two hundreds, while Davy had yet to reach two-fifty. Some felt Davy was too drunk to carry the day; others felt he wasn’t drunk enough.
Up at the bar, Delia and Alex played Patty Cake Patty Cake. Alex slapped Delia’s palms with gusto. “My, my, my, what a strong little man you are, just like your daddy, right?”
Evidently, Alex saw in Delia what his father saw. “Pretty.”
“Ooh, I think I got a crush on you, pumpkin. You know what a crush is? You hear how he talks to me, Abe? Why don’t you ever tell me I’m pretty, huh?”
“What are you talking about? I tell you all that and more all the time and you know it.”
“Alex, did you know that your daddy never buys Delia anything nice?”
“Oh shush, will you, you’re mixing up the boy’s head.”
Delia pulled a paper bag from under the bar and took out something wrapped in brown paper. “Alex, can you guess what this is?”
Alex shook his head.
“It’s a present for you from your Aunt Delia. I got it just in case your daddy brought you today. Would you like to open it?”
“Daddy?”
“See how he asks? So polite. He got manners, Abe. I know he didn’t get them from you.” She bumped his hip with hers. “You, you just take what you want.”
Alex opened the bag. “It’s a man.” He held up a gingerbread man, with white icing for eyes and gumdrop buttons.
“It’s the Gingerbread Man. Do you know the Gingerbread Man song, Alex? No? Well, here’s how to sing it: Run, run, run, as fast as you can, but you can’t catch me I’m the…”
“Gingerbread Man!” Alex shouted.
“Oh, my goodness, you are so smart. Why didn’t you tell me how smart he is?” She kissed Alex on the forehead, leaving a faint trace of red lipstick. “He’s so yummy I could just eat him up. So anyway, Abe, how’s your wife?”
He had an image of Irene, lying flat on her back, looking like death warmed over. And here he was, letting her lie there, and instead of caring for his wife he was gawking at his sometime mistress, her lips full, her cheeks pink. The guilt grabbed at his gut. “Let’s talk about something else, all right?”
“I hear she got The Dip, bad.”
“You hear?”
She gestured to the crowd. “People talk.”
“Well, if she doesn’t perk up in a day or two, I’ll have to go for Malkin.”
“That lowlife? Oopsy, Alex, Auntie Delia said a bad word you should never, ever repeat.” She put her hands over his ears. “Well, I hope it doesn’t come to that, for her sake. Look, I don’t mean your wife no harm or nothing. It’s just that, you know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
Her boozy whisper cut through the din in the bar. “Now look, not that I am saying it should happen, but if she was to, you know, not survive, it sure would make things easier for us. Maybe I’m going to hell for saying it, but let’s be frank, people all around us are dropping like flies. It’s a wonder The Dip didn’t get you and your little one.”
Abe pulled away from her. “Or you.”
She laughed. “Oh no, no Dip will ever get Delia Novak, not this gal.”
A roar came from the crowd. Davy had finally tossed a bull’s-eye. “Davy, Davy, Davy,” came the chant. He’d cut into Peck’s lead and his score was down to one hundred ten. The men were saying, it’s over now, Davy got his eye back, but in the next round Peck got hot and turned the tide in his favor. Davy tossed another bull’s-eye, but for some reason, perhaps a soft spot in the board or a subtle jog in the Earth’s orbit, the dart fell to the floor before five seconds, nullifying his score. He knelt down to pick up the errant dart, and as he tried to rise his knees gave way. He collapsed with a dull thud. Hands thrust forward to help him to his feet, but he waved them away, he would have none of it, leave me be, you bastards. He rolled to his side, grasped a table’s edge, wheezed to his feet and limped back to the throwing line.