Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues (7 page)

For a moment, Roy wants to tell him about the woman at the laundromat. He wants to tell Klein what he does for a living, how he makes his money. He wants to lay it all on the line, get it all out and start over. He wants to describe the laundromat woman. Examine her in every detail. The crappy rings, the crappy car, the crappy life. The bleached hair, the bad skin, the look in her eyes. The six thousand dollars he took from her, every cent of it. Three grand of it sitting in his house, topping off his ceramic statue. Half a drop in his bucket. He wants to tell him about the grift, about every game he knows and every game he wants to know. He wants to tell Klein everything he knows about everything he does.

“Nothing I can think of,” Roy says. The carpet, he notices, is still very dark.

Klein pauses. Waits. Roy shrugs. “Well, let’s see …” the doctor finally says. “Last time, we were talking a little about your ex-wife.”

“We were?”

“I was, mostly. You weren’t that interested, if I recall, but I thought today, since you’re feeling … a little better … I thought perhaps we could explore it a little.”

“I dunno,” Roy says. “I was hoping we could just shoot the shit, you know? Sports, whatever, and then you’d give me another bottle.”

“We could do that. We could. Same thing, though. Couple guys, sitting around, hey, how ’bout them Mets, them Dodgers, them Cubs, how’s your life, how’s things, how’s that ex-wife of yours …”

Roy can’t help but grin; Klein has an easy way about him. He almost likes the guy. “You wanna know about Heather?” Roy says.

“If you’re ready to talk about it.”

“Sure I can talk about it, but it ain’t that interesting.”

“Boring stories are my specialty,” says Klein.

“Okay,” Roy says. “I’ll tell you about Heather.”

She Was nineteen when they met, nineteen and well aware of her body. She moved like a belly dancer when she walked, and like a gymnast when she made love. There was nothing inflexible about Heather. She was open for anything, for fun and excitement and danger. She wasn’t there when you needed her and usually there if you didn’t. Heather was always on the fringe, always looking in. Never getting caught.

Roy caught her. He was eight months out of a failed army stint, discharge papers in his back pocket. Angry at nobody and everybody all at the same time. He fought a lot those days.
Drank a lot, too. Forgot most of the fights. The club that night was known for its brawls. Roy had never been. He would never go back, either.

She was dancing in the middle of a crowd of men, her long, waist-length hair shaking to the music. Ass wrapped up tight in leather pants. Halter top cupping the small, firm breasts. Center of attention on the lower left quad of the dance floor, and she knew it. Flaunted it. Later, once they were dating, Roy found out that she’d rub her nipples before stepping out onto any dance floor. She wanted them out like that. Needed them to announce her presence. That was Heather.

Roy was out that night with a buddy, a kid from the old neighborhood. He’d just been dumped, needed a trip out. But the guy was morose. Cried in his beer and wanted to leave. But Roy saw Heather at the bar and ordered her a drink. They had a cocktail together, they talked, they laughed. He put his hand on her ass, and she didn’t move it. After a bit, another man, a man she knew, came to the bar and dragged her onto the dance floor. Roy didn’t mind. Roy could wait.

He sat at the bar for an hour. Waiting patiently for the crowd to disperse, for the songs to end. For Heather to leave the circle of men, to come back to the bar. But the next song came on, and the dancing went on. More men joined the group. Heather and five guys. Surrounding her. Pressing against her. Groping her. Roy began to feel that pressure under his head, the one that made his neck hot and his vision blurry. It was the same feeling he got right before … right before he got his discharge papers.

He hit the dance floor. Tapped one of the men on the shoulder. “Cut in?” he shouted over the music. The guy didn’t even turn around. “Cut in?” Roy yelled again. This time, a hand appeared
in front of his face, palm pressing into his nose. Pushing away, pushing at him.

The feeling grew stronger, that terrible pressure under his hairline, like something was trying to get out. Something roaring inside. He tried again, tried to muscle into the circle, but the writhing bodies bounced him out. In the middle, he could see the girl dancing. Her hair, her breasts, her laughing lips.

When he tried to cut in again, one of the men—a boy, really, a skinny redhead no older than Roy—stepped out and pushed him hard across the chest. “Why don’t you leave it alone?” he yelled. “She’s ours now.”

Roy still doesn’t remember exactly what happened, but every time he tells the story, he can recall a little bit more. Like a collage, adding parts each time.

He caught that boy’s wrist, snapped it back, bent it, broke it in two. Bone poking through skin. Screams pierced the nightclub air, fighting with the music. The pressure increasing, his head expanding. An arm, caught up in his, a shoulder beneath his palms. Roy, dropping to one knee, exerting pressure, pulling back, and a pop. A squishy pop. And another man down and screaming. In the military, Roy had excelled in his hand-to-hand training sessions.

Two minutes later, and the circle was clear. Heather and Roy stood on the dance floor, Roy’s vision clearing, the club coming back into view. Five men on the ground, howling in pain.

Heather didn’t know what hit her, but she was in love.

They moved in together two weeks later, and got married a month after that. Five-minute ceremony by a notary who worked at a shipping shop. Roy didn’t have a job, and when he found
one, he usually lost it quick. Heather didn’t care. She loved the sex and she loved having her own place to come home to. They lived in a rented room inside a broken-down farmhouse, but it was theirs. She could scream if she wanted. She could wear what she wanted. Roy loved her for all of it. She was still nineteen.

Twenty when she got pregnant. Didn’t tell Roy for two months, but by then it had all gone away. Heather didn’t come home some nights, and Roy would spend the evenings in his car, driving the streets. Finding girls who looked like Heather. Beating up their boyfriends. Vision blurred. Finding bars nearby. Going through the motions. Roy hit Heather when she told him about the pregnancy. Hit her when she said she’d been hiding it. He’d never beaten a woman before, never would again. He hit her on the shoulders, on the legs, in the face. Stayed away from her stomach, even with his vision blurred and the pressure straining his head. She had bruises for weeks, she moaned for weeks, and then she was gone.

She was four months pregnant when she left. She was just beginning to show, a small belly on that supple body. Roy didn’t try to find her. He knew there was no point. She didn’t leave because of the beatings. She didn’t leave because of the baby. She left because she was Heather and he was Roy, and they never should have been Heather and Roy. The papers came in the mail a month later, and Roy signed them without reading. Like his signature could erase the memory. He stayed in the house for three straight weeks, and when he came out, the air was clear. It had rained, and it was over.

“And do you think about her?” Klein asks when Roy’s done with his story.

“Not really,” he says.

“What could have been, what might have been?”

“What’s the point? I got things to do in my life, I can’t be thinking about ancient history all the time.”

The doctor scratches his chin. “And the baby?”

“
If
there’s a baby …”

“If there’s a baby,” Klein echoes. “Do you think about that?”

Roy is silent for a moment. “I have. Sometimes. Just ’cause—it’s not for Heather, you know, it’s … You put something out there, part of yourself. So is there a Roy Junior running around? He look like me? That sorta thing.”

Klein nods. “He’d be, what … fifteen?”

“Fourteen, fifteen, yeah.”

“Ready to become a man.”

“I guess.” The chair cushions have become uncomfortable. Roy squirms. “There a point to all this?”

“We’re just talking, remember? No points unless you say there’s a point.”

“No,” says Roy after a time. “Unless …”

“Yes?”

“I dunno. Sometimes I think it might be good to know if there is a kid. Not to see ’em or anything or interfere, but just so I
know
. That make sense?”

“Certainly. Certainly. You know, Roy, there’s nothing wrong with a man calling his ex-wife to say hello. Even with the … problems you two had. It’s done all the time.”

Roy can’t think of it. He tries to picture himself calling Heather, picking up the phone. But the bile wells in his throat.
Climbing up, burning. He shakes his head. “Nah, I’d—better off the way it is. Don’t need that. Got no use with a kid.”

“Not everybody has to have a use,” says Klein.

“You’re a good guy, doc.”

Dr. Klein stands and walks behind his desk, opens a file cabinet. “We’ll talk about it more next time, if you like,” he says, and pulls out a bottle of Roy’s pills. Tosses it across the room. Roy snatches it from the air, pockets the bottle. “This is a month’s supply, but I’d still like you to come back every week. Will you do that?”

“Just to shoot the shit?”

“Like today.”

“Sure,” says Roy. “Sure, I’ll come back.”

Three weeks later, and Roy is watching Frankie set up a blow-off on a Spanish Prisoner game they’re working three towns over. The stiff is some Joe from a dry-cleaning convention and he’s about to put down three big in the hopes that his money will allow Frankie’s younger sister over in Romania to bring the family fortune back to America. It’s a gag with gray hairs, but it still runs nice at the conventions.

Roy’s not involved in this one; he helped to steer the guy in, but he’s been staying out of it ever since. Time to rest. The last few weeks have been productive, maybe the most productive in the last year. Nothing big, nothing too long-con, just short games run at breakneck speed. He’s got energy these days, and he can feel it. Yesterday, he pulled on an old pair of pants, and they almost fit. Waistband didn’t compress his stomach.

And Frankie’s been on the ball, filling in where he used to
slack off. Sharpened up his cue under Roy’s instruction. Good to see. Good partner, that Frankie. Getting better every day.

When it’s all done, when the mark’s been blown off and Frankie’s back in the car with the three grand, he and Roy whoop it up. Get drive-through burgers ’cause the diner is too far away. Roy takes a pill with his meal, burger in one hand, drink in the other, knees on the steering wheel.

“You still taking them things?” Frankie asks.

“Every day.”

Frankie nods, sips his drink. “That’s good, that’s good. Told you that doc was a good guy.”

“Good judgment.”

“You say that
now
 …”

“What?” asks Roy. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can give you fucking medical advice but I can’t steer a hot item our way, that’s what it means.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Saif,” Frankie yelps. “I’m talking about Saif.”