‘I have classes Monday and tomorrow Skip and I were going to go up to Oldtown. They’re having an open hoot at the Methodist church and we — ‘
‘Stop it, quit it, spare my achin scrote and don’t talk to me about that folkie shit. Michael can row his fuckin boat right up my ass, okay? Listen, Pete — ‘
‘Ronnie, I really — ‘
‘You two dimbulbs stay right the fuck there.’ Ronnie gave Ashley and Hugh a baleful look.
Neither argued with him about it. They were probably eighteen like the rest of us, but anyone who’s ever been to college will tell you that some very young eighteen-year-olds show up each September, especially in the rural states. It was the young ones with whom Ronnie succeeded. They were in awe of him. He borrowed their meal tickets, snapped them with
towels in the shower, accused them of supporting the goals of the Reverend Martin Luther Coon (who, Ronnie would tell you, drove to protest rallies in his Jiguar), borrowed their money, and would respond to any request for a match with ‘My ass and your face, monkeymeat.’ They loved Ronnie in spite of it all . . . because of it all. They loved him because he was just so . . . college.
Ronnie grabbed me around the neck and tried to yank me out into the hall so he could talk to me in private. I, not at all in awe of him and a bit repelled by the jungle aroma drifting out of his armpits, clamped down on his fingers, bent them back, and removed his hand. ‘Don’t do that, Ronnie.’
‘Ow, yow, ow, okay, okay, okay! Just come out here a minute, wouldja? And quit that, it hurts! Besides, it’s the hand I jerk off with! Jesus! Fuck!’
I let go of his hand (wondering if he’d washed it since the last time he jerked off) but let him pull me out into the hall. Here he took hold of me by the arms, speaking to me earnestly, his gummy eyes wide.
‘These guys can’t play,’ he said in a breathless, confidential whisper. ‘They’re a couple of afterbirths, Petesky, but they love the game. Fuckin love the game, you know? I don’t love it, but unlike them, I can play it. Also I’m broke and there’s a couple of Bogart movies tonight at Hauck. If I can squeeze em for two bucks — ‘
‘Bogart movies? Is one of them The Caine Mutiny?’
‘That’s right, The Caine Mutiny and The Maltese Falcon, Bogie at his fuckin finest, here’s lookin at you, shweetheart. If I can squeeze those two afterbirths for two bucks, I can go.
Squeeze em for four, I call some scagola from Franklin, take her with me, maybe get a blowjob later.’ That was Ronnie, always the gosh-darned romantic. I had an image of him as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, telling Mary Astor to drop and gobble. The idea was enough to make my sinuses swell shut.
‘But there’s a big problem, Pete. Three-handed Hearts is risky. Who dares shoot the moon when you got that one fucking leftover card to worry about?’
‘How are you playing? Game over at a hundred, all losers pay the winner?’
‘Yeah. And if you come in, I’ll kick back half what I win. Plus I give back what you lose.’
He sunned me with a saintlike smile.
‘Suppose I beat you?’
Ronnie looked momentarily startled, then smiled wider than ever. ‘Not in this life, shweetheart. I’m a scientist at cards.’
I glanced at my watch, then in at Ashley and Hugh. They really didn’t look much like real competition, God love them. ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘One game straight up to a hundred.
Nickel a point. Nobody kicks back anything. We play, then I study, and everyone has a nice weekend.’
‘You’re on.’ As we went back into the lounge he added: ‘I like you, Pete, but business is business — your homo boyfriends back in high school never gave you a fucking like I’m going to give you this morning.’
‘I didn’t have any homo boyfriends in high school,’ I said. ‘I spent most of my weekends hitching up to Lewiston to ass-bang your sister.’