Little Casino (23 page)

BOOK: Little Casino

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Dolores lies on the blanket next to him and her thigh, her warm, smooth flesh, touches his. Her hair is so black that it shines in the sunlight with deep blue and dark red glints. Her buttocks are round and perfect in her yellow bathing suit, whose little skirt completely and erotically subverts its purported function of modest concealment. He bites the flesh of his forearm to calm his longing. Hopelessly shaken by lust, he fights against a surrender to impure thoughts, however inaccurate their images may be.

The jukebox in the pavilion was playing a song that would, of course, be freighted with poignancy in years to come. I had a feeling you weren’t going to come, she said. How could she think that? It was obvious, from his stupid, beaming, stricken face that he was captive and slave to her, that he would be, forever, should she wish it, her chump and patsy. She was sitting on the blanket, her forearms crossed on her knees, squinting up at him, her face in a nimbus of honey-colored hair. Her thighs were slightly open, and he smiled vapidly, staring at her chin. Well, I’m here, he said. Here I am. The fucking dimwit idiot.

They played gin on the blanket, the cards sticky from the salt wind, the sun beginning to go down, the beach almost empty of people, the lifeguards packing up their gear. The children were cold, and clustered together in their sweatshirts, wrapped in a blanket, giggling and chanting a word that had struck them funny. He finished the last of the vodka and orange juice, and asked Ben if he wanted to play another hand, but it really was getting late. His wife sat, some few yards from the water’s edge, watching the ocean tumbling in ragged echelons, as she’d done for the last three hours. The bitch. Go get your wife and let’s go home, Ben said, as he handed his wife the folded blankets and the plastic cooler and thermos. Are we ready?, his wife said.
All
of us? He got up and called to his wife, then began walking toward her with her denim skirt and worn sandals under his arm. She turned around but looked, not at him, but toward the children. He thought that maybe he should just throw her fucking clothes at her and take the bus home. Or somewhere.

The day was terribly hot and windless, and the sun on the Sound was so bright that it hurt their eyes. This was not a day to be at the beach, especially this pebble beach, which seemed hotter than sand. She was exquisite, glowing dark gold in her black one-piece suit, and he asked her if she wanted to swim, but she said that she just wanted to get wet and go back to the cottage. We can take our lunch back and eat on the patio. Under the trees, the lovely shady trees. They went into the water and then packed up quickly and walked the half-mile back to the cottage. Inside it was dim and cool. Shall we take a shower before we eat?, she said. Sure, he said, and pulled his trunks down, half-turning away from her. Well, look at
you,
she said. He blushed. It must be the heat, he said, unless it’s the company. She pulled the straps of her bathing suit down and began to strip it of. What do we say, handsome, to the beach? The suit was around her dark-gold thighs, and she stood still and looked at him. We say, he said, you beautiful tomato, Farewell beach, Hello shower! Come on and do some dirty things to me, she said, I love you, God knows why.

There are additional lakeside and oceanside scenes that might have been here included to strengthen the figures of love desired, love burgeoning, and love dying, but the stern demands of organic form must be met, and I am, most of the time, the man to meet them. And since love’s magic spell is everywhere, dear reader, you may add your own remarks or amorous aquatic memories in, perhaps, the margins.

However, be cognizant of the fact that remarks are not literature, as Sylvia Plath once read.

“Nor are amorous aquatic memories,” Miss Stein says.

Budd Lake, Lake Hopatcong, Lake Hiawatha, Lake Ronkonkoma, Riis Park, Jones Beach, Coney Island. That’s the ticket!

“Those are not even remarks.”

“The turn of the wave and the scutter of receding pebbles.”

“Poluphloisboio thalassa.”

“Pollyfizzyboisterous.”

Then, of course, speaking of beaches, you have Gerty McDowell, sweet, yearning, lascivious, lame Gerty. That’s another ticket.

“You’ll never know,” Mr. Bloom, yet another beachgoer, mutters.

The color of stars

T
HE BUDD LAKE CASINO IS A DAZZLING
citadel in the summer sunlight. It is set back, in its gleaming whiteness, from a pale-golden beach, and offers shade and coolness, and the glamour of rattled ice in silvery cocktail shakers, the romantic smell of whiskey and bitters, lemon, and cigarette smoke, and the easy, crisp swing of white big bands on the jukebox. The tunes say, again and again, “peace,” as if the sudden ebbing of the Depression has come about without a price to be paid. The casino was not really like this, as you surely will know, save to a boy of twelve, and by the time he wanted to know just what it
was
like, it was gone, and the people who could tell him the truth, or, perhaps, their truth, were dead. So it exists, a white dream, “whose terraces are the color of stars.”

A casino is a “little house.”

“Little casino” is a neat tautology.

Hoyle, on the card game, Casino: “Suits are of no importance.” And yet, in the game, a Little Casino is the Two of Spades, and is worth one point. Such contradictions and blithe disruptions are the stuff of poetry.

Like many other things, the game is no longer in fashion. Just as well. There are many instances and objects of value and beauty that should be kept private, even secret. For instance, it is surely all for the best that perhaps fifty people in the world know the author of:

Take me back to the days

Of an old walnetto song

To a walnetto blonde

That pinned the white blossoms over the bosom,

and pulled at the heart’s strings of the world.

Selah.