Marc seemed tense. He didn’t joke around; he sat on a chair inside the kitchen and watched TV, as if borrowing time, and would look to the door when there was a noise outside. We all sat and waited for a while.
Marc had the door of his weight room open. There was an old football jersey hung against the sidewall of the room. It looked like a flag that had been through a war and now slumped proudly, retired in the General’s quarters.
Eventually the front door knocked. Marc sprung up from the chair like he was in an ejection seat, walked over quickly, and opened the door. Sean threw me a glance and then pretty soon there were two girls inside the condo. One was a fairly cute but chunky blonde and the other a brunette, gawky and plain. The blonde carried a time-spent poster board, with thick red ink reading: GO MARC SANDOVAL #46.
Marc and the blonde talked in the kitchen while the other girl sat in the room with us. She hadn’t known Marc before and was just a tag-along with the blonde, who was ecstatic seeing the “great” Marc Sandoval again.
Marc and his old friend seemed nervous. He was sucking in his stomach; I could tell because his chest was bigger than ever. He took the poster from her, walked over and placed it in the weight room graveyard with all the rest of the stuff. He came back out, a silently prideful ghost of a grin across his face, and closed the door. Marc’s mom was upstairs. The girl wanted to say hello. Marc had one those proud single moms that adored his high school friends.
After they went upstairs it was Sean, myself and the other girl, bored, sitting in the TV room. None of us said a word. That is until the girl picked up a photo of a thin, handsome Marc Sandavol, a portfolio shot of when he’d, right after high school, attempted a break into commercials.
“Is he a model?” the girl asked Dusk.
“Who?”
“Marc.”
Sean smirked, chuckled a bit - laughter not completely absent of envy. He pointed to the empty staircase.
“Yes, in fact he was then, and still is. Only then his name was AFTER, now it’s BEFORE.”
The girl didn’t laugh. She smiled wanly. Dusk sighed. He seemed out of it, like he wanted to go home.
I picked up the portfolio picture, and then tossed it to Dusk. Dusk looked at it a second, but not really. Then he tossed it on the floor.
“That’s not very nice,” the girl said.
“I’m not nice,” Dusk said to her. I was taken aback at his bluntness. “In fact, I’m bored evil.”
“Bored evil?” the girl repeated, but in question form.
Dusk got up, went though the kitchen and from there into the downstairs restroom. Mark and the other girl were upstairs a while, longer than Dusk was in the bathroom.
It turns out that Marc’s mom was never even home that…
Poker nights: Dusk was never around. These nights came around once a month, usually Fridays. Sissy would have his friend Rory over. Rory Blacksmith was a tall, built guy with jet-black wavy hair and porn star mustache. Rory was a nutty guy in his early thirties. He was just as funny as he was annoying. He’d bring over the poker chips and cards. Rory was the card shark. The guy loved poker. I don’t think he had too much else going in his life other than those poker nights. He lived about an hours drive away, lived alone. And you could tell he really admired Sissy. Sissy was somewhat like a father to him.
Sean Dusk never came over during poker nights because he didn’t know how to play game at all. He was a rarity, being a guy in his twenties who didn’t know even the basics of the game, but I guess he’d never learned it growing up. He’d act as if he wasn’t interested in cards, but - I knew - his disinterest was simply because he didn’t know how to play.
One night everyone but Sean was at the Cavern: Sissy, Cudd, Rory, Ed, David, Gale, and Marc (even though he wasn’t desired around there because he was quite a shark).
It was pretty fun that night but it felt like there was something missing. There was no joking around except an occasional wisecrack from Gale or Cudd. Every word spoken seemed like ash on a black cloth. It was too “normal” of a night and it felt like the entire mundane world was doing exactly what we were doing. We were actually bachelors now.
But at the same time, there was a relaxing quality hard to describe: no one had to prove anything or “perform”: we could be ourselves, as boring as that was…
Marc was the only element that added anything special. His skill kept me interested, as if I was watching Steve McQueen in THE CINCINNATI KID. Marc turned the guys from laidback card players into edgy foot soldiers – as his skill itself was, in itself, the war.
Ed would usually take second in winnings; Rory third; Marc, of course, was usually number one. Ed was a silently skillful player. Sissy would act mannish and brash and would even curse on occasion; and, in the end, like this particular night, he’d lose the most cash.
The first poker night was the only time David ever played. Marc couldn’t figure it out. During the next game, David absent, Marc was perplexed.
“Where’s David tonight?”
Rory, who’d wear a ridiculous orange poker visor, simply answered: “Who in the fucking fuck cares!”
Rory cursed like a third grader who’d just learnt how.
Marc, I could tell by his pale expression, seemed perturbed by David’s absence - and he knew the answer: Sean Dusk.
Since Dusk wasn’t around the night seemed different anyway; but without David it was just plain lonesome.
“I think David’s over at Sean’s house,” Ed said belatedly to Marc, answering Marc’s private mental concern.
None of them, except Ed, had been to Sean’s (parent’s) house.
“Where does he live?” Marc asked.
“West Harbor Estates,” Ed replied. “His parent’s house.”
We all knew that was an upper class suburb tract. Marc didn’t say a word - although, to me at least, his silence screamed.
He even started to lose his edge towards the end. Ed surpassed him that night in gross winnings…
Part of the next poker night’s conversation (a month later):
RORY: I can’t stand women. Fuck them all.
CUDD: You might be insane, Rory.
MARC: Or gay, maybe.
RORY: Chicks are demonic sluts. They hate themselves and never pay any attention to me. They are wicked inside and being nice is against their nature. I will kill one some day. That will be a very fine day for Rory Blacksmith.
Then, all of a sudden, Rory sat up in his chair, and reaching out slammed his fist into Cudd’s chest.
“Why did you do that?” Cudd groaned with pained laughter.
“I’m not crazy,” he said. “Nor insane. And I know that it’s true: girls are in fact terrible people. So never, ever disagree with me, ever again!”
“You’re on to something there,” Gale agreed with Rory. “They can be harsh, that’s for sure.”
Rory, who was sitting next to Gale, slugged him in the leg.
“JESUS!” Rory cried out.
“Don’t AGREE with me either,” Rory replied in his low, scratchy, gurgling voice. “I don’t like to be agreed with or argued with – both are the same to me.”
“Man, you’re extra violent tonight,” Ed said coolly.
In ten seconds Ed too was victim of a hard punch – right on his bony shoulder.
But through all this, the game went on…
“I once dreamt I got married,” Rory said about a minute later. “I came on the side of her leg and it looked like a big tear drop. So I grabbed a knife I had under the bed, and stabbed her in the neck. She died very slowly. It was a fine dream.”
“Hey, man,” Sissy said in a disgruntled tone. “I think you’re starting to take things a little bit too…”
Sissy never finished that particular sentence. Rory sat up and slugged him square in the chest. It made a hollow sound, like a brand new basketball hitting the pavement.
“DAMMIT RORY!” Sissy screamed.
“Don’t tell me when I’ve gone too far,” Rory said in the same even tone. “I drew the line at the end of the world, and that’s where it stays. I speak my mind. That is how things are. That is how they’ll always be.”
“I didn’t interrupt you. I was trying to make you…”
Rory sat up again, shaking his head like he just couldn’t believe it, and slugged poor skinny Sissy in the chest again, only not as hard.
“WHAT THE HELL’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?” Sissy shouted.
“Don’t correct me; I don’t like to be corrected,” Rory said, back to calmly scrutinizing his cards. “It’s against my nature to be corrected just as it’s against a woman’s nature to be nice to me. So never correct me again, ever. Or that dream I had just may be imparted on to you…”
Rory did this stuff a lot. He’d haul off and punch us for no reason, and then give some cosmic explanation why he did it. Or else he’d give some comic explanation of life, and then when one of us would comment, he’d hit us then. It was as if he were trawling for flesh to press his wide hard knuckles into.
He hit me one time in the face - not too hard but hard enough - and said I was being too opinionated. I told him that I didn’t say anything, which I hadn’t – and he hit me again, this time in the arm, and said: “That was an opinion. I said, NO opinions.”
It was sort of a joke when he’d hit us, kind of his role in our “fraternity”, but it sure did hurt each time…
Rory Blacksmith never did punch Marc though. He was a strange and spontaneous guy, that Rory, but not an idiot…
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