alive,” Stone said. He hadn’t even been aware he was scratching at itches all over his torso and arms. “And my father is not.”
“Let’s get out of here. We’ve got one more stop.”
This was just too much for Stone to handle, and he told Pinky he wanted to go home now, right now. Something was haunting him, everything was haunting him, and he just wanted to drift away into a dreamless sleep and wake up free of his past.
“You know, I think my father would still be alive today if it weren’t for Nation.”
“Fuck Nation,” Pinky said, starting up the Thunderbird. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Take me back now,” Stone said.
“We’ve got one more stop, and I’ll take you back.”
A few minutes later, Pinky parked the car on a side street. Stone sank down in the seat and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would take him.
“Come on,” Pinky said. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’ll wait here.”
“No, you won’t.”
They walked a few blocks in silence, Stone feeling winded, emptied out. He had no idea where they were, but the simple act of walking shook him somewhat from his lethargy. A breeze blew past, a hint of ocean salt in the air.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Here,” Pinky said.
They stood before an old Art Deco movie marquee, its chrome oxidized and stripping in places, a three-story tower rising from the top. The burned-out remnants of the word PALATIAL were faintly visible. At one time it had been arranged vertically in neon bulbs, but the bulbs had all been smashed. The title of a long forgotten movie from the late seventies clung beneath the words ELC ME TO T E ALAT AL.
Layer upon layer of movie posters covered over with handbills, advertisements, and announcements had been peeled away from the wall at a corner, revealing burnished chrome beneath the phonebook-thick agglomeration of glue and paper. The windows had long been smashed and the booth behind the bronze cage was filled with assorted detritus, including a haphazard pile of plush velvet chairs, their torn seats the result of age and vandalism. The door, by contrast, was new and was the type one might find on a suburban home, with its raised moldings, mail slot, and knocker. Pinky knocked twice on the door, and it opened after a moment.
He shook hands with an unshaven man who must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds; his close-cropped skull was shaped like a warhead and his tiny eyes looked cruel. What was Stone doing here? This creature was absurd. What was this beast supposed to be, an idiot, a prophet, a warning? His eyes were so small, like pencil dots on a blank sheet of paper, and Stone stared into them, trying to decipher what, if anything, was behind them.
“He’s here to play?” the man asked Pinky, with a lumbering Russian accent.
“No. He’s with me.”
The lobby was stripped and bare, and a clutch of middle-aged women in gaudy housedresses pressed forward toward the candy counter. A sign read: OASIS BINGO—CARDS, DAUBERS, CHIPS, WAITERS, CUSHIONS, ETC. alongside a list of prices. The whole scene before Stone’s eyes was grotesque, and he had the urge to run, if only his body would agree.
“What is this?” Stone said.
“I’m here to make sure no one cheats.”
“And why am I here?”
“You’re here because you’re here,” Pinky said, allowing no room for response. He threw an arm around Stone’s shoulder as they passed through a curtain into an auditorium. An oppressive wall of cigarette smoke burned Stone’s eyes.
“B-12,” a gruff voice said into a microphone, echoing through the hall. “B-12 vitamins. Take ’em every day.” A false ceiling hung dangerously low; banks of fluorescent tubes lit the room with a greenish glow. Stone was shocked to see that the original seats had been plucked from the sloping floor of this vast theater, and folding card table after card table had been set up to accommodate what must have been at least four hundred people.
“N-41,” the caller said. “Forty-one. A year that will live in infamy.” He coughed rudely into the microphone.
Dozens of heads bobbed up and down, in sync. They sat waiting for the caller to pull another number, their necks bent like supplicants, heads dropped like Christians at prayer.
“I-30,” the voice on the stage called. “That’s a thirty.”
Stone followed Pinky as he wound through the rows of tables. He walked with more of a swagger than usual. The players were mostly women, white and Hispanic and something else. They looked like grown-up parochial school dropouts. Many of the women were old enough to be grandmothers, and some wore nets in their hair, cheap dye jobs burning against the greenish light. In the taut silence of the room between calls, Stone realized these people had prematurely gone to their graves; a walking death that was more impulse than desire, their lives flaming out beneath the low fluorescent sky.
“N-43.”
Stone caught up with Pinky. “What’s going on?”
“Just stand right there for a minute,” Pinky said, throwing his arm around him again, flashing what he thought was a charming smile. “Don’t move. Just stand there.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Stone said. The ceiling pressed down on him, his senses overwhelmed by the humming babble of voices. “What is this?” His mouth was so dry the words barely came out.
“I am their worst nightmare.” Stone smelled a strong musky odor emanating from Pinky’s body. “Half the players are addicted to the fuckin’ game—welfare cases, unemployed, and losers—it’s gambling for the lower classes. A quick fix.”
“O-61. Maris, sixty-one in sixty-one,” the caller said.
“Like going to the racetrack,” Pinky continued. “Except there’s no bookies and no ponies. But it’s serious shit. They cheat, they’re out.” Pinky shot a sharp glance at a woman who sat before a half-dozen cards, a plastic troll at the head of her table. “On average, I would say they drop over fifty bucks a pop in here.”
The entire scene was incomprehensible to Stone, and he managed to say, “That still doesn’t explain why I’m here.”
“O-75,” the caller said.
“Bingo! Oh my God. Bingo.” A woman moved with a speed and dexterity that belied her bulky form. A collective groan rose from the room as the woman rushed to the front to verify her card. A woman in a HEAVENLY MOTHER OF GOD T-shirt ripped up her cards, threw the pieces in the air, and muttered, “Shit on a stick.” A woman wept quietly before a spread of cards. A man in a heavy ski jacket and hat called out “I ga a goo one.”
There was some invisible creature under Stone’s skin, tormenting him, and he wanted to peel his skin back and find that little bastard. Terminate, with extreme prejudice. His heart beat deep within his body, a slow, distant banging of a drum.
“All
