The Best American Noir of the Century

2007 LORENZO CARCATERRA MISSING THE MORNING BUS

I lifted the Lid on my hold cards and smiled. I leaned back against three shaky slats of an old worn chair, wood legs mangled by the gnawing of a tired collie now asleep in a corner of the stuffy room, and stared over at the six faces huddled around the long dining-room table, thick mahogany wood shining under the glare of an overhead chandelier, each player studying his hand, deciding on his play, mentally considering his odds of success, in what was now the fifth year of a weekly Thursday-night ritual. I stared at the face of each of the men I had known for the better part of a decade and paused to wonder which of these friends would be the one. I was curious as to which of the six I would be forced to confront before this night, unlike any other, would come to its end.

I wanted so desperately to know who it was sitting around that table responsible for the death of the woman I loved. And I would want that answer before the last draw of the evening was called.

I tried to read their faces much the same as they would the cards in their hand. There was Jerry McReynolds, wide smile as always plastered across his face, a forty-year-old straight and single man free of the weight of day-to-day worries, a millionaire many times over due to a $5,000 investment in a small computer start-up outfit working out of a city he had never heard of, let alone visited. Jerry never missed a Thursday-night game, boasting of his streak as if he were a ballplayer about to make a move on Cal Ripken Jr.’s long-standing record of consecutive games played. He came outfitted in the same casual manner in which he approached the cards dealt his way, catalog-ordered shirts and jeans, nothing fancy, nothing wild. I could count on him to come in with two high-end bottles of Italian reds and quickly ease into the steady flow of cards and chatter that filled our weekly five-hour sessions. Jerry was the guardian of the chips and kept a small pad and a pen by his side, starting off the game with a $50 feed and dispensing out whites and blues to any player running low or chasing empty. Jerry kept his cards close, doing a quick fold if he felt his hand weak, playing the table as he did his life, on the up and up and without a hint of bluff. In five years of play, I could never recall a time when Jerry left the room with less in his pockets than he had at the start.

I sat back, rubbed the stiffness from the nape of my neck, and tried to recall how I came to know Jerry in the first place and couldn’t quite place it, my cloudy memory confining it to one of the holiday receptions my wife used to host on a semiregular basis back in the days when our marriage still had the scent of salvation. God, how I hated every one of those parties, forced to make small talk in a room packed mostly with her friends since the few I had were seldom invited or welcomed into her cloistered world. I took a long gulp from a glass of scotch and looked back on those long and tedious nights and did a quick flash of Jerry being dragged by the hand in my direction, a glass of white wine in one hand, my wife’s in the other. “You two will be good friends in no time at all,” she said as she made a quick U-turn back into party traffic, her short and tight black skirt giving strong hints of the curvy body that rested beneath, long red hair hanging just off the edge of her shoulders. She was about forty-two then, give or take, and looked at least ten years younger, the quick smile and easy laugh a sweet antidote to the onslaught of age. I wasn’t quite sure how Dottie and Jerry came to know one another and I never did bother to ask, but there was always more to their friendship than they were willing to let on. There was that look between them. You know the kind I mean? As if someone was in front of them telling a joke and they were the only two in on the punch line.

“Five-card draw, jacks or better to open,” Steve said, giving the deck one more shuffle before the deal, waiting for us all to ante.

“I need a refill.” I tossed my one-dollar chip into the center of the table, pushing my chair back and walking over to a crowded countertop, filled with half-empty bottles of scotch, bourbon, gin, and wine. I spun open the top of a Dewar’s bottle and stared over at Steve as he doled out the cards meticulously, eyebrows thick as awnings shading his eyes. I had known Steve since forever started, both of us only children raised in the same Bronx neighborhood and going to the same Catholic schools straight through till college. And even then, while he froze his ass off studying economics and law at Michigan and I was smoking and doping my way through four years of English, a language I already had a leg up on, at Williams, we never drifted very far apart. We saw each other during breaks and vacations, hustling over to the same parties and looking to score with the same girls. I guess if I had to pick one, I’d point to Little Stevie Giraldo as my best friend, the fast-talker with a good line of shit and an innate ability to talk the unwilling to tag along on any outing he thought was worth the time and money. As he got older and life started dealing him a tougher hand of cards, Steve’s youthful edge took a sharp nosedive and by the time he hit his forties, he was a man adrift, moving from one mid-tier job to the next, in debt to credit cards and street lenders, a decade into a loser’s marriage and with two kids who cost him ten for every five he earned. I was the only one in the room who knew he tried to do a final checkout about eighteen months back, but even there his bad luck stayed that way. He chugged enough pills and booze to knock off Walter Hudson — that guy who was so fat they had to bury his ass inside a piano — and all it got him was a long night at a crowded hospital, his stomach pumping out everything he had managed to shove in. I was the one who waited for him, rushing over from a nearby bar where I was nursing a few, soon as I got the word from Mackey, a mutual pal working the wood that night.

Dottie came by at sunup, driving the old Nissan she would never let me sell, and took us both back to our place, where she made some coffee and let him sleep the rest of the OD off in the back bedroom. She didn’t say all that much about it, and I said even less. But I couldn’t help but catch the look of concern on her face, odd since she never much cared for Stevie one way or the other. Made me wonder what kind of look I would have earned if it was me instead of him lying in that bed, one pill removed from the long nap.

“Are you in or not, Ike?” Joe asked. “I mean, you going to pony and play or you just looking to mix drinks all night?”

“I’m in for a dollar,” I said, dropping two cubes into my tumbler and glaring over at Joe, decked out as he always was in a battered New York Yankees baseball cap, Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt, and San Diego Chargers workout pants. A walking billboard of sports franchises. Joe was a trash-talking ballbuster of a work-from-home bond trader who left his Upper West Side apartment only for poker games or sporting events. Other than on those semiregular occasions, he shopped, ordered food, chatted with friends, and read for both leisure and business on his laptop. His two-bedroom condo, bought with the inheritance he scored off the daily-double death of his mother and a great-aunt three days apart in 1995, was a smooth blend of Ikea, sports and movie memorabilia, furniture, and utensils. Dottie disliked Joe with an intensity that bordered on the fanatical, which, if he knew how she felt, he would ironically appreciate, able to compare it to his rabid feelings toward both the Boston Red Sox and the New York Islanders.

I guess I liked him for the same reasons she didn’t. Joe was filled with passion and was never shy to let anyone with ears know how he felt about his teams, his favorite movie or TV show. Hell, he would even get into a beef and a brawl over the athleticism of pro wrestling. Funny though, in all the years I’ve known Joe, and I’ve been doing his taxes now going on ten years this next April, he’s never once asked me what my favorite sport was or which team I liked. For all he knows, I can’t stand the sight of any sport, let alone follow one close enough to dip into my savings for season tickets and wear the team colors to my best friend’s wedding or wake. But Joe did know that Dottie liked basketball and that she never missed a New York Knicks game on television during the season and, on rare occasions, the playoffs. I know that only because he mentioned it once during a poker game, after the Knicks by some miracle had beaten the Miami Heat the night before, how happy Dottie must have been to see that happen. How the hell could he have any idea that she was a fan or was even at home to watch the game?

I was back at my seat looking down at a pair of tens and a queen high, the fresh drink by my side. I glanced to my left and caught Tony’s eye and was given a warm smile as a reward. “Everything good with you?” he asked.

“Good enough,” I said, trying to keep the conversation light and not veer it toward the personal, which is the road Tony always seemed to prefer.

It made sense that he would, of course, what with him being a shrink and all. Tony enjoyed doing hit-and-run probes into the lives of the men around the table, treating the entire night as if it were a casual group session with cards, chips, and money added to the mix. He would keep it all very chatty, never giving the impression he was picking and pawing or even the least bit curious about any one of us but always leaving the table owning a lot more information than he had when he first walked in. When he wasn’t busy jabbing at our collective scabs as casually as he would a platter of potato salad, Tony regaled us with tales of his sexual conquests, most of them arriving courtesy of his practically all-female practice. It was difficult not to envy any man who in a given week would bed as many as five different women, so you can imagine how well his tales traveled around a poker table filled with either those who had gone without for longer than they would dare to remember or the few who felt strangled by double-decades’ worth of marital gloom.

“This is one you won’t believe,” he said, dropping his cards on the table in a fold and sitting back, wide grin flashed across a face that looked far too young for a man one month shy of his fifty-second birthday. “I have this new patient, right? Drop-dead blonde with stallion legs and a killer smile. Only on her second visit, asks if it’s OK for her to call me at home. You know, just to shoot it whenever the urge hits.”

“You ever see any ugly patients?” I asked. I really didn’t want to believe that every woman who paid to tell Tony sad tales of an unfulfilled life was poster-girl material even though, deep in my heart, it figured probably to be indeed true.

“Only on referrals,” Tony said. “Anyway, I’m supposed to say no to such a request, I suppose. I mean if I’m going to do a line-by-line with the rulebook.”

“But you never have before,” I said. “No sense finding religion now, especially when it’s a different promised land you’re looking to find.”

“So, I give her my home number and go about the rest of my day,” Tony said. “I had no doubt she would make use of it down the road a bit, maybe get a few more sessions under her garters before she made the move.”

“Let me take a stab at a guess here,” Joe said. “She dialed your private line right about the start of the second period of the Rangers game. Right or not?”

“If that’s about eight or so, then yes, you win the stuffed bear,” Tony said. “She was very upset, needed to talk, and couldn’t make it wait. I offered to do a free phone consult, but she wanted a face-to-face. An hour later we were down a half bottle of red and doing a wild roll on the water bed.”

“I didn’t think anybody still had a water bed,” Steve said. “Or that they even made them. You don’t have a lava lamp, too, do you?”

I brushed Steve’s question aside with one of my own: “This woman, was she married or single?”

Tony stared at me for several seconds before he answered. “Would it make a difference either way?” he asked.

“It might,” I said, “to her husband.”

“She is married,” Tony said with more a sneer than a smile. “Truth be told, most of the women who come to me for help are bound to the ring. If they weren’t, then maybe they wouldn’t be so damn unhappy and I wouldn’t be pulling down seven figures to dole out my pearls of acquired wisdom.”

“Does any of that ‘cause you concern?” I asked. “I mean, forget about the doctor-patient mumbo-jumbo crap. I’m talking here as a man. Does it bother you one inch to be taking another man’s wife into your bed?”

“It never has.” Tony stared right at me as if his measured words were meant for my ears alone. “And it never will.”

“Is there any more pie?” Jeffrey asked. “I don’t know what it is lately, but I can’t seem ever to get enough to eat.”

“That may well be because you’re celibate,” Tony said. “You need something to replace what the body most needs. If you took my advice, which I rarely offer for free, you would switch gears and reach for a warm body instead of a warm plate.”

Jeffrey hated to talk about sex or at least that’s the impression he wanted to convey. He was a Jesuit priest when I first met him, waiting in line to see Nathan Lane go for laughs in a Neil Simon play— an original, not a revival. It was a cold and rainy Wednesday and the matinee crowd was crammed as it usually was with the bused in and the walk-ins. We both should have been somewhere else, doing what I was paid to do and, in Jeffrey’s case, what he was called to do. We made a valiant attempt at small talk as we snaked our way up toward a half-price ticket window and were surprised when we scored adjoining orchestra seats. “Now if the show is only half as funny as the critics claim,” Jeffrey said, “we will have gotten our money’s worth.”

We stopped by Joe Allen’s for drinks after the show and I had just ordered my second shaken-not-stirred martini of the afternoon when I invited Father Jeffrey to join the poker game, eager to fill the void left by Sal Gregorio’s spur-of-the-moment move to Chicago to tend to his father’s meatpacking plant. Even back then, Jeffrey seemed to me a troubled man, grappling with the type of demons I would never be able to visualize in the worst of my black-dog moments. I came away with the sense that he had reached the top of the well when it came to his chosen vocation, not sure whether it was the pedophile scandal rocking the church that did it or just the very fact that he was a modern man forced to live a sixteenth-century life. “Do you miss it?” I had asked him that day.

“What, the women?”

“We can start with that,” I said, trying my best to make light of what would have to be considered a serious deal-breaker in any contract talks that brought into play a lifetime commitment.

“There are moments,” Jeffrey said, “when I don’t think about it. It is, by a wide margin, the biggest obstacle a priest must overcome. At least it has been for me. But hidden beneath the cover of misery, a silver cloud often lies.”

“What’s yours?” I asked, maybe crossing deeper into the holy water than I should.

“That it’s young women who draw my eye and not innocent boys,” Jeffrey said, the words tinged with anger and not regret.

“Are you one of those rebels in a collar who think Christ and Mary Magdalene were more than just pen pals?” I asked, doing what I could to steer the conversation away from the uncomfortable.

“I am one of those rebels in a collar who think Christ was too much of a man not to be in love with a woman as beautiful and as loyal as Mary was to him,” Jeffrey said.

One year later, just about to the day, Father Jeffrey turned his back on his vows, handed in his collar, and walked out of the church life for good. Yet, in the time from that eventful day to this, he stayed celibate or, at least, so he claimed, though not from a lack of effort but more from a lack of experience. Now, of all the guys in the poker group, he was the only one Dottie liked, the one she didn’t roll her eyes or mumble beneath her breath if we ran into on the street or in a local restaurant. She even mentioned once that she had gone to church to see him celebrate mass and listen to one of his sermons.

“How was he?” I asked her that day.

“He looked like he belonged up there,” Dottie said about Jeffrey in the same awed tone I would have reserved for Frank Sinatra or Johnny Cash. “But then again, it’s not like it was his first time.”

“Full house, kings high,” Jerry said, resting his hand flat on the table and reaching over to drag a small mountain of different-colored chips his way.

“Was that deck even shuffled?” Adam asked, shaking his head, thick hair covering one side of his thin face. “I mean, really, just look at all the face cards that are out. I don’t think it was shuffled.”

“You only ask that when I win a hand,” Jerry said. “There a reason for that?”

“That’s because the only hands you ever win usually come off a deck that hasn’t been shuffled,” Adam said.

Adam and Jerry hated one another and I never understood why one, if not both, didn’t just walk from the game. It wasn’t as if the city was lacking weekly poker gatherings, and God knows most of them served better food and had a nicer selection of wines to choose from than what I offered and set out. Adam was a doctor and a noted one, often cited in medical journals and in the Science section of the New York Times as the gold standard in regard to matters pertaining to women and their bodies. He was handsome, with an easy smile and a scalpel-sharp sense of humor, except of course when he found himself sitting across a table from Jerry, cards in hand and a stack of poker chips resting between them. And while I could never quite put a finger to the pulse that got the feud started in the first place, in many ways I felt myself to be the one responsible. After all, as with the rest of the group, I was the one who brought Adam into the game. And I would just as soon bring the weekly session to an end than to see it go on without Adam holding his usual place at the far end of my table.

Dr. Adam Rothberg had saved Dottie’s life.

Three years ago, after a long bout with a flu that wouldn’t quite surrender the fight, Dottie, fresh off a five-day siege of heavy-duty antibiotics mixed with cough syrup and aspirin, collapsed on the floor of our tiny barely walk-into-it-and-move-around kitchen. She was doubled up and clutching her stomach, foam thick as ocean spray flowed out of her mouth, and her body shook as if it were resting on top of a high-speed motorboat. I was about to jump for the phone and dial 911 when I remembered that the new face that had moved in down the hall during the last week belonged to a doctor. I rushed out of the apartment and ran out into the narrow hall, banging at a door two down from mine. I felt like a boy sitting under a tree crammed with packages on Christmas morning when I saw Adam’s face as he swung open his apartment door.

He saved Dottie’s life that day, and we have been friends ever since.

In that span of time, Adam’s practice flourished and his stature rose, while mine pretty much hovered at the same level it had been for years. I don’t hate the work I do really, it’s just that I don’t love it, either. I look around this table and don’t see anyone happier at their chosen work than I am, except maybe for Adam, who truly loves putting on the white coat and playing God twelve hours a day. I am good at what I do, bringing a financial balance to the lives of my clients, despite the fact I can’t seem to accomplish those same goals for myself. I could never get it to where I was a step ahead, with all the bills paid and some money set aside. And I could never figure out where the hell it all went, especially since we didn’t have the financial burden of kids and had lived in the same apartment for more or less the same rent since we were first married and, except for a two-week splurge in Italy during our first year together, seldom took long or expensive vacations.

It bothered Dottie — I knew that. Not that I was an accountant, but that I was one without money and minus the drive or the talent to earn it. Women like Dottie go into a marriage and expect more out of it than they first let on, not wanting to be the kind of woman who lives her middle age in a financial and emotional rut. And the truth of that, the belief that I had let her down in some way, ate at me more than I would let on. I had failed her, and over time it chipped away at the love she felt for me. I could see it, sense it, her eyes vacant and drawn when she looked my way, her manner indifferent at best, her kisses directed more to the cheek than the lips, as if she were greeting a distant relative with whom she would prefer to have very little contact. It was so different from when we first met. Back then, I was sure we would love each other forever.

I first saw Dorothy Blakemore at a counter on the second floor of a department store on the Upper East Side. It was a week before Christmas and the place was mad crazy with shoppers with a hunger for gifts, credit cards clutched in their hands. She was staring down at a counter filled with men’s gloves and kept shaking her head each time a tall, thin, and harried salesclerk made the slightest attempt at a suggestion. “I don’t even know his size” were the first words I heard her say, her voice a sultry mix of Southern warmth mixed with a Northeast education.

“If I had an idea as to his height and weight, then perhaps I can narrow down your choices,” he said to her, his tone more condescending than consoling.

Dottie paused for a brief second and then glanced in my direction. When she turned and our eyes met, I knew that I was in the middle of a movie moment, standing a mere distance from a woman as beautiful and striking as any I would ever be lucky enough to see in my lifetime. “He’s about the size of this man,” she said to the salesclerk as she walked toward me.

I helped her pick out a pair of black leather gloves for her brother, who lived in some town in Maine whose name I could never remember. I wasn’t the type to move fast when it came to women, but I knew in my heart if I didn’t connect with Dottie on that day, then I would for sure never see her again. There have been few moments in my life when I’ve been able to manage to put the pieces together and not muck up the works, and that early afternoon was top-of-the-list one of them. I offered to buy her a cup of coffee at a nearby luncheonette that if it were anywhere else other than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan would be called a diner, and she smiled and nodded. I fell in love that day and have been ever since.

“Cards don’t look to be falling your way tonight, Ike,” Steve said, dropping a three of hearts next to my six of spades. “But then, why should tonight be different from any other game?”

“I used up my run of luck looking for love; there wasn’t any left over for cards,” I said with a slight, shrug, my words sounding much meeker than I intended

“So things between you and Dottie are good now?” Tony asked.

“Did I ever give you a hint that they weren’t?” I didn’t bother to disguise my annoyance at the question.

“How about we just play the hand?” Joe advised. “You ‘want to talk about unhappy marriages, let’s talk about Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury. Not only are they mucking it up with each other, they’re destroying any remote chance the Knicks have at ever sneaking into the playoffs.”

“Dottie and I are not unhappy,” I said with as much vigor as I could muster. “And if I did or said anything to give you that impression, it was wrong and unintentional.”

“And there it shall end,” Jeffrey said with a nod and a smile. “To be quite honest, I never realized how much men loved to gossip until I started playing poker. Unless it’s just this particular group that happens to be so chatty.”

“I can only imagine what you and your crew talked about back in your rectory days,” Steve said. “I would bet a full load it covered nastier terrain than who was swigging too much of the communion wine.”

I sat back, smiled, and listened as the kidding and ribbing continued around me, holding my anger in check, knowing that the moment was at hand, the killer soon to be revealed. It was all very easy in some way to piece it together, deciding who in the group sitting around my table would bear the responsibility that had led to my Dottie’s sudden and unexpected death.

It was his fingers that were wrapped around the thick black handle of the carving knife as much as mine. It was his hand along with mine that plunged that blade into Dottie’s frail and tender body again and again and again until she fell to the floor of the back bedroom, her head slumped to one side, blood oozing out of the deep, severe wounds and staining the thick Persian rug she had bought with the proceeds from my first-and-only Christmas bonus back during that first year of wedded bliss.

I was a forty-four-year-old man, alone and in debt, out of shape and mentally drained, my hair thinner than it had any right to be and my stomach rounder than anyone my age would prefer. I had a past that was filled mostly with dark and gloomy days and empty nights, touched only on rare occasions by the light and tender glare of happiness. I had a future that promised to be even bleaker, doomed to live out what was left of my time alone and in a constant struggle to survive.

So I needed to keep my focus on the present.

In one room, staring up at a chipped and stained white ceiling, an overhead fan on low, circulating warm air in gusts, was the body of a woman who had shared twenty-two years of my life.

And in this room, surrounded by poker chips, two decks of playing cards, near-empty bowls of nuts and salsa, drinks waiting to be finished, sat the man who had forced my hand and directed it toward murder.

“Looks like it’s your deal, Ike,” Adam said. “And your call. What’s it going to be?”

“Let’s make this the final hand,” I said.

“It’s not even ten,” Joe protested. “We usually go to eleven, sometimes an hour or two later. Why make it such an early call?”

“If it’s the last one, can we at least make it interesting?” Steve asked.

“I intend to,” I said. “Midnight baseball, no peak, threes and nines are wild. You draw a four and you can buy yourself an extra card.”

“How about we double the ante, then?” Joe asked. “And let’s put no limits on the raises. That square with everybody?”

“You go that route and the pot can start to get a little steep,” Jerry said. “It’s always been a friendly game. This will take it out of that ballpark, no doubt.”

“What, you afraid of losing something off the heavy pile of dough you got stashed?” Joe asked.

“I’m afraid of sitting here and watching you lose money I know you don’t have,” Jerry said. “Nothing more.”

“You should all be afraid,” I said. “This is the one hand none of you can hide from and not one of you can afford to lose.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Adam asked. “Just deal the cards, and let’s get this over with. These weekly games are starting to wear a bit thin. It might just be time for me to move on.”

I shuffled the deck one final time and pushed it over to my left, waiting for Tony to cut the cards, and turned to Adam. “And if luck singles you out, then you may well get your wish, Doctor,” I said.

I had their attention now, each staring at me not sure whether I was drunk or tired or had totally spun my wheels off the rails. Slowly and with great care, I doled out seven cards to each player, myself included. “This isn’t at all like you, Ike,” Jeffrey said, more than slightly annoyed. “Maybe Adam is on the right track. We may all need to call it for tonight. You look like you could do with a good night’s rest.”

“You might be right on that score, Padre,” I said. “I might just need a few solid hours of shuteye. But before I push back and trot off to bed, I need to bring our little game to a fitting end. I think that’s something we all would want. So how about you sit back and sit tight? This won’t take very long.”

I caught the glances racing across the table from one set of eyes to another, the looks a mixture of confusion, anger, concern, and indifference, and it made me smile. I had them now, these six friends of mine, men I had trusted and confided in, to some had even bared secrets I would never want spoken outside this room. For a long stretch of time in my troubled life, they were the raff that I could wrap my arms around and ward off, however briefly, the arching waves, dark clouds, and approaching storm of an existence that seemed destined to end with my drowning death. But they all carried with them the Judas coin, and the blood of a good woman was now smeared across it.

We all turned our first card over. Steve was high with a jack and casually tossed a one-dollar chip onto the center of the table. I stared at him and waited for him to return my look. “She cared about you,” I told him, “and took good care of you after your minor mishap a while back. It was her idea to put you in bed— our bed —and leave you there until you were well enough to walk out on your own. But even after all that, you seemed to act as if you didn’t even notice when she was around. Or was that a charade meant only for my eyes?”

Embarrassed that his suicidal secret was now open for discussion, Steve looked around at the others before he turned to me. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Ike,” he said. “You’re a bit out of control and not just tonight, but for a while. We’ve all picked up on it and let it slide figuring you needed to work a few things out, is all. But now it’s reached a tipping point, and maybe we should bring it all to a stop right here and right now.”

“It’s only a game, Ike,” Jeffrey said. “It would be madness to let friendships be cast aside over some silly game.”

“What’s only a game, Padre?” I asked, turning my attention to Jeffrey. “The hand you’ve just been dealt, or the deal between you and Dottie?”

“What are you implying?” Jeffrey asked. “I have never had an improper moment with Dottie. Not one, not ever. And for you to even think something like that borders on madness.”

“If it wasn’t you, Padre,” I asked, “then who did have their moments with Dottie, improper or otherwise? Maybe it was you, Jerry. Dottie always did do a fast spin toward a man with money, and you have more than most. Or maybe you, Joe, Mr. Reebok himself. After all, how many games can one man go to without wanting to play in one of his very own? Of course, there’s always Adam, the good doctor and the one who once rushed in to rescue her in a time of need. What woman wouldn’t want to show how grateful she was for a second chance at an unfinished life? Or maybe it was the one obvious choice in the room. That would be you, Tony, the shrink with the black-book Rolodex. Dottie’s main complaint about me was that she talked but I never listened. And who better to listen and be receptive to her problems than someone like you? A man who has devoted his life to soothing and comforting women in need.”

“Is that what all this is about?” Joe asked. “You think one of us is having an affair with your wife?”

“You’re a fool, Ike!” Tony’s voice was crammed with pure hatred. “And you may live under the same ceilings as Dottie, but you don’t know the first thing about her, or you would know she is willing to do anything to help salvage the shambles you’ve made of your marriage.”

“You’re right about one thing, though,” Steve said. “We haven’t been square with you about our relationship with Dottie. We’ve all been seeing her, everyone sitting at this table. She insisted on it.”

“All of you?” I didn’t bother to mask either the shock or the surprise. “You’ve all been with her?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “but not for the reason that’s currently racing through your mind. Her visits with us were not of a sexual nature.”

“Then what the hell were you seeing her for?” I shouted, pounding a closed right fist onto the table, knocking over Steve’s wineglass, the red liquid flowing over a stack of chips. “Why was she spending time with any of you? And if it all was on the up and up like you’re trying to sell me, then why didn’t she tell me about it?”

“She couldn’t — at least, not yet.” Adam’s words were weighed down with a certain edge of sadness. “There were a few more items she needed to clear up first.”

“Dottie was sick,” Jeffrey said. “Very sick. That bout with the stomach that Adam helped clear her of was merely the first indication of how deep her illness ran and how serious a final outcome it would lead to. That was what brought her to us, individually at first, and then later in small groups.”

“What did she want from you?” I asked, the words forcing their way from my mouth. My throat burned and I felt my heart doing a Keith Moon pounding against my chest. I held on to the edges of the table as if it were a life vest, doing all I could not to scream out in agony.

“She asked us to take care of you, look after you after she was gone,” Steve said. “Each in a way she knew we could. Adam would make sure you took care of your health. Jerry would pull you out of debt with whatever was left of the insurance money coming your way, working to set your finances in order. Me? I had been your closest friend, and she asked that I stay that way, no matter how much of an ass you turned into.”

“I would take you to as many games as you could stand,” Joe said. “Dottie told me how often you wished you had a chance to see one team or the other play, and she felt going with a friend would help take your mind off your loss. Tony could show how good a therapist he really is and would see you free of charge. Only you wouldn’t know it, since all your bills would be going to Jerry, anyway.”

“And Adam and I were asked to simply look after anything else that fell through the cracks,” Jeffrey said, “either spiritually or physically. Dottie covered every base by simply turning to the only friends she knew you had. The men at this table.”

“It was also important to her that the game keep going,” Jerry said. “She felt the weekly poker nights served as an anchor against all the other crap that was going on in your life. She thought you needed it. But after tonight, I’m not all that sure she was right on that count.”

“Your suspicions were right,” Steve said, “only they were headed in the wrong direction. We were all involved with Dottie. And Dottie was involved with all of us. We each had a mutual interest, and that was you.”

“Feel better now?” Adam asked.

I looked at them, scanning their tired and worn faces, and nodded. “I’m sorry.” My mouth was as hot and as dry as an August afternoon. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I most likely said a lot of the wrong things. And I did something horrible which I know can never be undone.”

“We might be pissed at you, Ike,” Joe said. “But trust me, we’ll get over it. Dottie is right. We’re friends here. Even Adam and Jerry, whether they want to admit it or not. And that gives us all quite a bit of leeway. By the time the next game rolls around, what happened tonight will be only a memory.”

“I hope that’s true,” I said. “You don’t know how much I want that to be true.”

“It will be,” Jeffrey said softly. “There’s no reason for it not to be.”

“How much time did — excuse me — does Dottie have left?” I directed my question mainly to Adam.

“It’s a fast-moving disease,” Adam said, “and it was caught very late. Based on her most recent tests, I would say a month at best, two if she’s at all lucky.”

“And is there any chance she might beat it?” I asked.

“No,” Adam said. “I can’t lie to you about that. There’s no chance at all. What Dottie has is terminal.”

“And did you all agree to help me?” I asked. “To do all the things she asked you to do for me?”

“What kind of friend would say no to something like that?” Jerry said. “We would do anything Dottie asked. And to be honest, we would have done it even if she hadn’t asked us.”

“We’re all you have,” Joe said. “We’re all what each of us has. The poker game is just a good excuse to get together. We’re family. This is it, all of it, right here in this very room. No matter how crazy or stupid some of us get at times, we are all here and will always be here for each other.”

“Dottie was right,” I said. “You are my friends and my family. She always could see that in a much clearer light.”

“She told me if we could keep it all together, then none of us would ever be alone,” Tony said. “And there’s no reason why we should ever not let it be so.”

“Would you help me then with Dottie?” I asked. “See that she gets buried properly, with respect and with care.”

“You know we will,” Jeffrey said. “You don’t even need to ask.”

“Dottie’s in the bedroom,” I told them. “I’m going to take a few minutes alone with her. Once we’re ready, I’ll call for you. I will need your help then.”

“We’ll be here for you,” Steve said. “Count on it.”

“I will,” I told them. I eased out of my chair and began to make my way toward the back bedroom and the bleeding and ruined body of my wife, Dottie.

“Believe me, I will.”