Then there was a carpenter peddling up and down the Boardwalk making signs while you wait. He looked like the type who worked part-time as a beautician. I was going to ask the Colonel if he'd like to make a sign commemorating our trip here, but I decided it would cut into our gambling time.
The sun was shining overhead as we walked into the second “special restaurant.” The outside of this building was covered with a lot of lopsided sheets of shiny gold plastic. It looked like a cross between a Chinese pagoda and a jukebox. The inside was different too. At least they had a sense of humor, and looked like they must have really paid the cops off. The cashiers and dealers were all dressed in ruffled shirts and tuxedo vests. There were different kinds of music coming from all parts of the huge floor. Actually the spirit in the place was sort of intoxicating. Dolly and the Colonel were immediately swept away by the atmosphere.
“Let's have some lunch,” Dolly suggested.
“I'm not hungry,” I said. “Besides, don't you want to gamble some more?”
“Not really,” Dolly said. “Do you, honey?”
“No,” the Colonel admitted. “I'm just worried about the money.”
“Darlings, would you mind holding it for us?” Dolly asked.
“
NO
,” I said right off the bat.
“You've got tight pockets on your jeans,” Dolly said, “and if you just shove all the bills down deep nobody will be able to get them out. Around here they steal purses and once in a while they will hit old people over the head. I would feel safer if you kept it for us.”
“Maybe it would be better if
you
just hung on to it, Dolly,” Lorraine suggested.
“Nonsense,” I said. “It's much safer with me.” Dolly gave me forty-three one-hundred-dollar bills, which looked like a mafia bankroll.
“Do you need another hundred dollars?” the Colonel asked Lorraine and me.
“No,” I said. We'd made a few dollars too.
“Yahoo!” Dolly yelled. “The Colonel and I are just going to get a little lunch at the Calypso Lounge until you come back in about an hour. Is it a deal?”
“You got it!” I said.
“
I really think you should hold the money
,” Lorraine repeated to Dolly.
“John is big and strong,” Dolly stated. “Nobody's going to take it away from him.”
Lorraine looked dubious, and as we walked away, Dolly was calling after us, “You kids are swell! You kids are just swell!”
I suppose I should have known the minute they gave me all that money to hold that maybe it really wasn't a very good idea. I really had no intention of gambling with it. I had over two hundred fifty dollars of my own from the last winnings, and there was no reason in the world why I'd have to dip into anybody else's money. I guess it was just the feeling that Dolly was the one with the lucky fingers who seemed to know her way around a blackjack table.
“Let's just have a soda and walk around,” Lorraine suggested.
“After we play a few cards,” I said. I finally found a blackjack table with only a few people at it, but the minimum was fifty dollars. Looking back now, I think it would have been better if I had waited for a five-dollar minimum, but they were all so crowded. I liked the luxury of space at this one particular one, and I felt that Lady Luck was calling to me. Lorraine said she was going over to the cashier's window to get some nickels to play the slot machines behind me. She decided sitting at a blackjack table made her much too nervous, because she definitely wasn't going to bet any fifty-dollar minimum and the dealer told her straight off that all the stools were reserved for players, not onlookers. Off to the right the Calypso Lounge was in view, and we could see Dolly and the Colonel seated at a dimly lit table drinking some exotic-looking drinks in a big coconut. For a guy who had intestinal problems, he didn't seem to care for some reason. When it came to eating and drinking that day, he was more like a guy going to the electric chair and having one heck of a final meal.
At least this place had a band, which was playing something like the “Anniversary Waltz.” It was all sort of tender and romantic, especially with the old-fashioned music. There was a rock band down at the other end, but we could hardly hear the beat from where I was sitting.
I lost a couple of bets, then I put down a hundred dollars. I have a theory that you should always start out big and then work down to smaller bets. That way if you're going to win a lot, at least you'll win it at the beginning, and if you lose a lot then you can just play for peanuts and have fun afterward.
“John,” Lorraine was at my side cautioning, “do you think you should really bet so much?”
“Start big, win big,” I said.
“Did Dolly tell you her system of playing in multiples of five?” Lorraine asked.
“I know that system,” I said. “It takes too long.”
Before she could say another word, I placed my last fifty-dollar chip in my betting spot. I was so nervous I asked for more cards than I should have and went over twenty-one. The dealer hit twenty-one and everyone at the table lost anyway, so I didn't feel so bad. So now I was down to my original twenty-dollar bill that I had borrowed from my father. But somehow, something went berserk in my head and I just couldn't bear starting small again. It's like some disciple of the devil just grabbed my hand and thrust it into my left pocket to pull out the wad of C-notes. I peeled off five, knowing I couldn't possibly lose it. I had lost four hands in a row and I was really due to win big.
“What are you doing?” Lorraine asked, her eyes looking as though I was about to commit a heinous crime.
“Just getting my money back,” I said.
“John, are you crazy? It's not your money.”
“I'm just
borrowing
it,” I explained.
“John, get away from that table.”
“Lorraine, stop it please. Don't worry about it—my luck is going to change.”
I was aware of Lorraine losing her voice. She began to pace back and forth behind me as though she couldn't bear to look at what was going on at the table. I think what happened was half her fault. She threw me off balance; she confused me. She charged the whole place with a lot of nervousness so I couldn't keep my mind on the cards. You're supposed to play blackjack with Lady Luck, not some girl who looks like she's ready for a loony bin. She spoke to me only one more time, and that was when I lost the five hundred and stuck a thousand on my spot. I have to admit now that I was going crazy. Suddenly chips didn't mean anything to me anymore. I had to convert the money into chips and it wasn't as though I was playing with money anymore, they were simply little round things. And the whole idea wasn't cash,
it was winning
. I just
had
to win. I couldn't lose. I'd had enough of losing in my life and I didn't want to lose then, not there. Not in front of all those people. I could hear the music pouring out of the Calypso Lounge. The band was playing a soft rhumba, and once in a while I would look up from the chips and see Dolly and the Colonel swaying to and fro across the floor. The chips began to run through my fingers like water. I was going down, and there off in the lounge was this thin, tired, frail old man keeping pace with Dolly Racinski every step of the way. They were having such a good time, it only made me feel even more guilty as I lost and lost again. I made larger and larger bets. I tried making smaller bets. I tried skipping a hand. Lorraine began to moan. Lorraine tried literally pulling me away from the table. Finally, I stopped playing. The money was all gone, and Lorraine was in tears. And then I realized how really off the deep end I had gone. I asked Lorraine if she would lend me the few bucks she had left. And she just stood there, her tears freezing on her face. Now she was completely mute.
The last thing I was aware of was the music roaring from the Calypso Lounge: “
Hold that tiger. Hold that tiger
.” I felt my own eyes clouding over with moisture and shame. I looked up to see Dolly and the Colonel again. They were gliding across the dance floor doing these tiny steps that made their feet appear to be inches off the ground. It was something like a dance I've seen old people do called The Peabody. Sometimes the music would pause, and the Colonel would spin Dolly around and do a big dip. How could I tell them that I'd lost everything? How could I tell them?
I couldn't look John in the face. I was beyond anger. I was horrified. He just wouldn't listen to me. I wanted to run out the door and not even look back. I just wanted to get on a bus and not have to face him, or anyone. He had taken the Colonel's life into his own hands and lost it playing cards. He had not only tried to act like some kind of professional gambler, he had tried to act like God. Maybe I was just as guilty. It seemed we had a habit of stepping in and taking control of other people's lives. It was only when I saw that the shame was so unbearable for John that he couldn't lift his eyes up from the floor that I began to feel sorry for him.
“You've got to tell them,” I said. “You've got to tell them
now
.”
“I can't,” John said.
“You've got to,” I demanded. I took his hand and pulled him away from the blackjack tables through the crowd. I dragged him right into the Calypso Lounge and stood him in front of Dolly and the Colonel at their table.
“
Tell them
,” I ordered John.
When he didn't speak, I just blurted it out. “He's lost all your money,” I said. “He's lost over four thousand dollars.”
Dolly's mouth dropped open. You could tell she didn't really believe it. It was some little joke the kids were playing. That's what she must have thought. The old man didn't say anything, but Dolly's eyes kept scattering looks all over the place like she expected to hear some voice tell her this was a joke and the money was indeed still in John's pocket.
“I mean it,” I said to Dolly. “He lost it. He lost it
all
.”
“It's true,” John said in a voice so low you could hardly hear it over the band, which was now playing “Good Night, Sweetheart.”
Dolly stood up and put her hands on John's shoulders. John lifted his head and looked at her.
“You lost all the money?” Dolly asked.
John nodded.
“Oh, John, I'm so ashamed,” I cried, and now I couldn't help putting my arms around him and burying my head in his shoulder. I started to cry uncontrollably. And for a long time John and I couldn't say a word. Then Dolly did something very strange. She moved us away from the Colonel's table and whispered to us, “It's all right. Don't worry about it.”
I looked at her amazed. “What do you mean,
it's all right?
”
“Just forget it,” Dolly said. “Forget it ever happened.”
“How can I?” John asked.
“Please believe me when I say
it really doesn't matter
” Dolly emphasized, tilting her head to one side so her pom-pom earrings cast a halo around her head. And that was all Dolly or the Colonel had to say. The Colonel stood up, looking very sad, and the four of us moved through the crowd to the doors and outside. The air from the sea now seemed cold and chilling. And the length of the Boardwalk from where we had started seemed enormous. Suddenly all the modes of transportation were very crowded. It seemed like everyone was leaving at once, like rats deserting a ship. We all managed to get on the geriatric perambulator when it finally stopped in front of us, because none of us had the energy to walk at all. Midway down the Boardwalk the contraption broke down, and a lot of the old ladies riding on it began to make nasty comments to the driver. Some were letting off high-frequency cackles about how they had to get back to their hotels to rest up. It was depressing to hear them. We sat there for over forty minutes waiting until the next contraption came along, and we were transferred into it.
From that point on everything got even blacker. The valet brought us the Studebaker and it wouldn't budge after we got inside. The retarded valet had stepped on the emergency brake so heavily that we couldn't release it until John inverted himself under the dashboard and yanked around at some wires and springs. Finally the brake released, cutting into John's thumb and drawing blood. I wanted to give him my handkerchief, but he refused it as though he wasn't worthy of it. All I wanted to do now was to get out of Atlantic City and go home. There seemed to be some kind of force that was holding us back, making us stay to remind us about the terrible thing we had done to this poor miserable man. As we drove down Atlantic Avenue, Dolly reached forward and gave me a Band-Aid she had in her doghouse pocketbook for John's thumb. I put it on as we passed the bull mural outside the Ramada Inn, and I couldn't help thinking how old Taurus had won. He had gored us good and strong, flung us into the air on his horns. Then we hit the Garden State Parkway and raced northward.
“We're sorry, Colonel,” I finally managed to say, turning around.
“Don't worry about it,” Dolly spoke up. “Everything that happened was my fault,” she insisted. “This was my idea. The Colonel wanted a day out, and I picked Atlantic City because I saw it in all the television advertisements. I thought it was glamorous and fun, and we'd all have a good time. I'm just a foolish old lady who should stick to pushing garbage around with my broom.”
“You're not foolish,” the Colonel said. “You're not foolish at all. If it hadn't been for you, I'd still be trapped in that house, and tomorrow, who knows? I had more fun today than I ever had in my life. I don't have any regrets. We tried, and that's the important thing. It's the people in this world who never try who go to their grave full of regrets. You're a wonderful woman, Dolly, and don't you ever forget that. And what's the big deal about the silver dollars? I only kept them because they were old. I didn't know they were worth money. I had a good time, and I don't want you kids looking like you just lost your best friend.”