Three years had passed since the Stranger talk. Now Alfred and I ate lunch together more days than we didn’t. I let a month go by before I asked him about Max sending me to the bar with Johnnie Dio’s cash. I waited to see if Max would send me on another errand. I waited to see if Alfred would mention the envelope. Neither did.
Then my birthday rolled around, my twenty-first. November 19, 1981, a big day for me. I planned to take my girlfriend, Sonja, to Aqueduct to celebrate, but those plans fell through at the last minute. I surprised Alfred and invited him to the track for my birthday instead. We’d never met outside the restaurant before. I thought both of us would be more comfortable talking about Max and the money in the open air.
“I’d be honored,” he said. He’d wanted to see the Wiz in action for a long time. That’s what they called me at the track: The Wizard. I wanted to celebrate turning twenty-one and finally being able to make a legitimate wager at the races.
I made my first big bet on the sly with a small-time gambler called Willie the Doorman when I was ten years old. Later, after I got kicked out of boarding school, I met Red, one of Ira’s touts. He made me his protégé and handled my wagers until I was eighteen and scruffy enough to pass for the age on my fake ID.
Now my birthday was here, my twenty-first, and I was off to the races, so to speak.
Alfred asked me to meet him at Cafe Riggio on MacDougal. From there, we planned to jump on the train at the West Fourth Street station and ride out to Far Rockaway. Alfred lived on the Upper West Side, but he said he was spending the morning with a friend in the Village. I suspected he spent more than the morning with his friend. Alfred lived what he called an “adventurous life” at night.
I had a place of my own – a converted warehouse basement on Howard Street in the Village, an old piano warehouse, north of Canal. I made my way up Sullivan Street in my sweatshirt and fatigue jacket, my hood up, headphones on, a Stones tape in the Walkman. I wore a glove on my right hand and bounced my Spalding High Bounce Ball with my bare left. When we were kids, we called the High Bounce a Spaldeen, and that’s what I call mine to this day. It goes with me wherever I go. It sets the rhythm of my walk and my thoughts: the slap of it on the sidewalk and sting of it on my palm. I looked up Sullivan past Washington Square at the Empire State Building towering over the city. Even though it looked like a ghost of itself in the wintry light, the sight of the building gave me a feeling like it wasn’t just the center of the city, but the center of me.
I stopped at a newsstand on Prince and picked up a spare copy of the Daily Racing Form for Alfred. I bought mine the night before and studied it long enough to find a horse I liked, a colt called Legerdemain in the fourth race. I planned to give Alfred a lesson on how to read the Form, so he could have the thrill of finding a horse of his own. Part of my mind was thinking about the thrill Alfred would have when his horse crossed the finish line in front and another was listening to the Stones and feeling the cold slap of my ball and the last part, the biggest part maybe, was thinking about Sonja, who wouldn’t ever go to the races with me again.
I taught Sonja how to read the Racing Form. She had a pretty good head for the horses, but I could tell she didn’t love them. She’d go to the track with me or she’d wait for me on the street outside the OTB because she loved me, not the horses. Sonja was Turkish and Muslim, and I was a Jewish kid sleeping here and there when I met her. That didn’t stop us.
I didn’t think anything could, until I met Antonella.
I met Nelli at the laundromat on Elizabeth Street. She saw me reading the Form and started asking questions. She had green eyes and chestnut hair and she was as lean as jockey. I told Nelli about Sonya, but she didn’t seem to care. After I gave her a few lessons with the Racing Form, she fell in love with the horses, which I confused with falling in love with me.
I didn’t figure that out all by myself. Alfred knew about the mess I’d gotten myself into with Sonja and Nelli. It was an ongoing saga during our lunches at the Pier. By the time Alfred helped me get things straight in my head, it was too late, and I lost both of them.
I found Alfred waiting for me in the Reggio at a table by the front window. He wore a long gray coat with a black fur collar and he looked a little like the hollow-eyed man in the painting on the wall behind him. His scarf was folded neatly beside an empty coffee cup. I gave him his Racing Form. He told me he had a present for me at home and invited me to his apartment later for homemade chili con carne. Sounded good to me.
Then he said, “So, how are you doing?”
I felt cozy at the little table by the window. I liked the way the place smelled – like coffee and cinnamon.
“Okay,” I said. “I found a horse in the fourth called Legerdemain. Whatever that means.”
The Racing Form lay on top of Alfred’s scarf. He reached for it, like he was going to open it and take a look, but he just slipped it under his scarf, like he wanted to hide it.
“I love the names,” Alfred said. “Legerdemain? That means trickery or sleight of hand. Like a magician or a juggler.”
Alfred liked to teach me new words and I liked to learn them. I was his protégé in that regard.
“Legerdemain,” I said. It felt different to say it now that I knew what it meant.
We drank our coffee while Alfred talked about a play he saw with his friend the night before called A Taste of Honey. That’s all I remember about it, because I wasn’t paying attention to the story he was telling. I could feel time ticking down toward post time. I don’t wear a watch, but I looked at my wrist where my watch would be, if I wore one. Alfred understood. He nodded and wiped his lips with a napkin. He looked at me. In the light from the window, his eyes looked sad and sunken, the skin underneath them gray.
He said, “Michael, how do you feel? About Sonja not being here. For your birthday.”
I felt something. It wasn’t good, how I felt. I didn’t know all the words to describe the way I felt. But I knew Alfred, and I knew he wouldn’t get on the subway with me until I told him something.
I remembered sitting in a café once waiting for Sonja. I looked up from a book I was reading called Fat City about a young boxer and an old boxer. I looked up from the page and saw Sonja hurrying across the street with her hair blowing and her face bright with a smile because she saw me watching her. Her smile and the beating the kid in the book had just taken made me feel like saying, I love you. By the time she came through the door and sat down across me, the feeling passed, and I didn’t say it.
That’s what I was feeling, but I just said, “I’m a little sad, I guess.”
I don’t remember feeling sad on the subway train. We found seats over the heater, which brought back my cozy birthday feeling. Alfred and I sat side by side, me in my army surplus jacket and jeans, and him in his gray overcoat and slacks and polished shoes. Alfred was the best-dressed man in our car by a longshot. I opened my Form and folded it to the fourth race and gave him a tour of the page, from the past performances of the field and the published odds and where you can find a horse’s pedigree and the barn it came out of and its trainer’s name to the workout times and the trouble line.
“What’s that?” Alfred asked.
“The trouble line?”
“Indeed.”
“It’s won me some money, that trouble line. They got these guys called chart callers who watch the races and make note of the trouble. If a horse came in fourth in his last race, but he was bumped or blocked or boxed in, he may be in better form than that fourth place finish shows.”
I double-checked Legerdemain’s trouble line, but he didn’t have any interesting trouble to speak of. He looked good to me because his owner, Charles Sinclair, and the trainer, Toby Weeks, were shipping him up from Florida and dropping him into a thirty-grand claiming race, when he’d been in the money in three out of his five last trips, one of those trips being a six length win.
“And they were all allowance races,” I said. “And see that X by Legerdemain. It means he likes to run in the mud.”
Alfred put his hand up and shook his head. “I’m here to celebrate your birthday, Michael. I’m here for the sights and sounds. I’m here for the spectacle.”
I knew Alfred and I knew he liked a show.
“But it’s not that complicated,” I said, “It’s like baseball. Cheap claiming races are single A. Allowance races are triple A. Stakes races, like the Derby – they’re the major leagues.”
Alfred nodded while I talked, but he was watching a gray headed man with a mustache and lady who was wearing a shiny black wig. They sat across from us playing a card game. The deck sat on a metal lunch box between them. When the man laid down a card, the lady shouted “Cheater!” and threw her cards in the man’s lap. Two or three cards fell to the floor. About that time, the train rose out of the tunnel into the light of day. The man with the mustache, picked the cards up off the floor and put the metal lunch box in his lap. He looked at Alfred and grinned from ear to ear. There was not a single tooth under that mustache. While Alfred and the man grinned back and forth at each other, the lady took some tinfoil out of her purse and unwrapped a greasy chicken leg. She gnawed on it and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Alfred gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. He gave me a sly little smile and we both enjoyed the spectacle of the cheater and the chicken lady.
While we were stopped at the Atlantic Avenue station, Alfred reached into his coat pocket. I thought he’d take his own Racing Form out and open it and ask me to help find a horse of his own, but instead a Playbill for A Taste of Honey came out of his pocket.* I looked out the window at the brick storefronts and factory windows shining in the wintry sun. Something in me went flat, like the train was dragging me somewhere I didn’t want to go.
As we passed station after station, Max and the money ran circles in my mind. Johnnie Dio and the envelope began to crowd Sonja and Legerdemain and making the first honest wager of my life right out of my head.
Why hadn’t Max sent me on another errand? Was it Joe’s idea in the first place? Did Alfred know?
I was just about to open my mouth and interrupt Alfred’s reading, when he closed the playbill and said, “That won’t happen again.”
Alfred looked like he’d had a hard night with A Taste of Honey and his friend in the Village. His face looked pale in the wintry sun, his beard not up to its usual trim.
I said, “What won’t happen?”
“Your… you know … adventure … with the envelope,” Alfred said. He sounded weary saying it. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about Max’s … well … his mistake, but the time has never been quite right.”
“Mistake?” I said.
“Indeed,” Alfred said.
He told me my Grandpa Joe learned about Max sending me to make the payoff from Johnnie’s brother, Tommy Dio, who was not pleased to hear that a kid, even Joe’s grandson, had his hands on Dio money.
“Max made a mistake, but Joe had a talk with him. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”
I wasn’t a kid. Alfred knew it was my twenty-first birthday, didn’t he?
And I wasn’t worried. I wanted it to happen again.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“It’s no concern of yours, Michael. Forget it happened.”
“But it happened,” I said, “And I thought maybe it was Joe’s idea.”
“Joe’s idea? No, no, no.” I lost track of how many times Alfred said no while he shook his head back and forth. “Max made a mistake. It’s been taken care of.”
I said, “Who are these guys?”
When Alfred sighed, a soft puuuf sound came through his lips. He said, “Your grandfather has a number of business associates. But the Dios might be the most important ones.”
“You pay them with cash?”
“Not me. I balance the books. Max is supposed to take care of the Dio brothers. He knows that.”
“But he sent me”
“Max may be slipping. He’s old. He’s … Max.”
Alfred stuffed his Playbill in his coat pocket and patted down the flap, smoothed it. He folded his hands in his lap. I looked at him and he looked back at me.
The book was closed on Max and the envelope.
I thought about the basement at the Pier— the floors slick with fish slime, the rot, Max’s voice barking Hey, Kid at me. It clung to me like a bad smell.
The train stopped at the Aqueduct Station and we followed the cheater and the chicken lady through the turnstiles, along the concourse, to the track.