Читать книгу The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze - James Thurber - Страница 11

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In the first place it was a cold and rainy night and the Cortrights lived eighteen miles away, in Bronxville. “Eighteen hundred miles,” Mr. Brush put it, bitterly. He got the car out of the Gramercy Lane garage, snarling savagely at the garage man, an amiable and loquacious fellow who spoke with an accent and who kept talking about winter oil and summer oil, and grinning, and repeating himself. As they drove out, Mrs. Brush told her husband that he didn’t have to be so mean, the man hadn’t done anything to him. “He kept yelling about oil, didn’t he?” demanded Mr. Brush. “I know about oil. Nobody has to tell me about oil.” Mrs. Brush kept her voice abnormally low, the way she always did when he was on the verge of a tantrum. “He wasn’t yelling,” she said. “He’ll probably ruin the car some night, the way you acted.”

The drive to Bronxville was as bad as Mr. Brush expected it would be. He got lost, and couldn’t find Bronxville. When he did find Bronxville, he couldn’t find the Woodmere Apartments. “You’ll have to ask somebody where it is,” said Mrs. Brush. He didn’t want to ask anybody anything, but he stopped in front of a bright little barbershop, got out, and went inside. The barber he encountered turned out to be a garrulous foreigner. Sure, he knew where eez these Woodmare Apartamen. “Down is street has a concrete breech,” he said. “It go under but no up to the first raid light. Quick, like this, before turn!” The barber made swift darting angles in the air with his hand. He also turned completely around. “So not down these light, hah?” he finished up. Mr. Brush snarled at him and went outside.

“Well?” asked Mrs. Brush. She knew by his silence that he hadn’t found out anything. “I’ll go in and ask next time,” she said. Mr. Brush drove on. “The guy didn’t know what he was talking about,” he said. “He’s crazy.” Finally, after many twists and turns, most of them wrong, they drove up in front of the Woodmere. “Hell of an apartment building,” said Mr. Brush. Mrs. Brush didn’t answer him.

The dinner, fortunately, was quite nice. Mr. Brush had expected, indeed he had predicted, that there would be a lot of awful people, but the Brushes were the only guests. The Cortrights were charming, there wasn’t a radio, and nobody talked about business or baseball. Also there was, after dinner, Mr. Brush’s favorite liqueur, and he was just settling comfortably into a soft chair, glass in hand, when the doorbell rang. A man and a woman were brought into the room and introduced--a Mr. and Mrs. Spreef, as Brush got it. The name turned out to be Spear. Mr. Brush didn’t like them. They were quite nice, but he never liked anybody he hadn’t met before.

After a flurry of trivial talk, during which Spear told a story about a fellow who had been courting a girl for fifteen years, at which everybody laughed but Brush, who grinned fixedly, the hostess wanted to know if people would like to play poker. There were pleased murmurs, a grunt from Brush, and in a twinkling a card table was pulled out from behind something and set up. Mrs. Cortright brightly explained that one leg of the table was broken, but she thought it would hold up all right. Mr. Brush didn’t actually say that he thought it wouldn’t, but he looked as if he did.

Mr. Spear won the deal. “This is dealer’s choice, Harry,” his hostess told him. “Change on each deal.” Harry squealed. “O.K.” he said. “How about a little old Duck-in-the-Pond?” The ladies giggled with pleasure. “Whazzat?” grumbled Brush. He hated any silly variation of the fine old game of poker. He instantly dropped out of the hand and sat staring at Mr. Spear. Mr. Spear, it came to him, looked like Chevalier. Mr. Brush hated Chevalier.

The next deal fell to Brush and he immediately named straight poker as his game. Mrs. Spear said she was crazy about Duck-in-the-Pond and why didn’t they just keep on playing that? “Straight poker,” said Mr. Brush, gruffly. “Oh,” said Mrs. Spear, her smile vanishing. Mr. Brush won the straight-poker hand with three of a kind.

Mrs. Spear was the next dealer. “Seven-card stud,” she said, “with the twos and threes wild.” The women all gave little excited screams. Mrs. Cortright said she was crazy about seven-card stud with something wild. Mrs. Spear said she was, too. Mr. Brush said yah. Mrs. Spear won the hand with four kings--that is, two kings, a deuce, and a trey. Mr. Cortright, the next dealer, announced that they would now play Poison Ivy. This was a nuisance Mr. Brush had never heard of. It proved to be a variation of poker in which each player gets four cards, and five others are placed face down on the table to be turned up one at a time. The lowest card, when all are turned up, becomes the wild card. Mr. Brush rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and narrowed his eyes. He scowled at Chevalier, because Chevalier kept repeating that Poison Ivy was the nuts. Brush folded up his hand and sat stiffly in his chair, rolling his cigar and grunting. Four aces won that hand, and in doing so had to beat four other aces (there were two fours in the hand on the table, and they were low).

So the game went wildly on, with much exclaiming and giggling, until it came Mr. Brush’s time to deal again. He sat up very straight in his chair and glared around the table. “We’ll play Soap-in-Your-Eye this time,” he said, grimly. Mrs. Spear screeched. “Oh, I don’t know that!” she cried. Brush rolled his cigar at her. “Out West they call it Kick-in-the-Pants,” he said. Mrs. Brush suggested that they better play Duck-in-the-Pond again, or Poison Ivy. “Soap-in-Your-Eye,” said Brush, without looking at her. “How does it go?” asked Cortright.

“The red queens, the fours, fives, sixes, and eights are wild,” said Mr. Brush. “I’ll show you.” He dealt one card to each person. Then he dealt another one around, face up this time. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “Mrs. Spear draws a red queen on the second round, so it becomes forfeit. It can be reinstated, however, if on the next round she gets a black four. I’ll show you.” Mr. Brush was adroit with cards and he contrived it so that Mrs. Spear did get a black four on the next round. “Ho,” said Brush, “that makes it interesting. Having foured your queen, you can now choose a card, any card, from the deck.” He held up the deck and she selected a card. “Now if you don’t want that card,” continued Brush, “you can say ‘Back’ or ‘Right’ or ‘Left,’ depending on whether you want to put it back in the deck or pass it to the person at your right or the person at your left. If you decide to keep it, you say ‘Hold.’ The game, by the way, is sometimes called Hold Back or Right and Left. Get it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Spear. She looked vaguely at the card she had drawn. “Hold, I guess,” she said.

“Good,” said Brush. “Now everybody else draws a card.” Everybody did, Mrs. Brush trying to catch her husband’s eye, but failing. “Now,” said Brush, “we each have four cards, two of which everybody has seen, and two of which they haven’t. Mrs. Spreef, however, has a Hold. That is, having black-foured her red queen, she is privileged to call a jack a queen or a trey a four or any other card just one point under a wild card, a wild card. See?” Nobody, apparently, saw.

“Why don’t we just play Poison Ivy again?” asked Mrs. Brush. “Or a round of straight poker?”

“I want to try this,” said Brush. “I’m crazy about it.” He dealt two more cards around, face down. “We all have six cards now,” he went on, “but you can’t look at the last two--even after the game is over. All you can look at is the four cards in your hand and this one.” He put a card face down in the middle of the table. “That card is called Splinter-Under-Your-Thumb and is also wild, whatever it is,” he explained. “All right, bet.” Everybody was silent for several seconds, and then they all checked to him. Brush bet five chips. Mrs. Spear, encouraged in a dim way by the fact that she had black-foured her red queen, thus reinstating it after forfeit, stayed, and so did Mrs. Cortright (who always stayed), but the others dropped out. The two ladies put in five chips each, and called Mr. Brush. He turned up the card in the middle of the table--the queen of diamonds. “Hah!” said Brush. “Well, I got a royal flush in spades!” He laid down the four of diamonds, the eight of hearts, and a pair of sixes. “I don’t see how you have,” said Mrs. Spear, dubiously. “Sure,” said Brush. “The queen of diamonds is a wild card, so I call it the ace of spades. All my other cards are wild, so I call them king, queen, jack, ten of spades.” The women laid their hands down and looked at Brush. “Well, you both got royal flushes, too,” he said, “but mine is spades and is high. You called me, and that gave me the right to name my suit. I win.” He took in the chips.

The Brushes said good night and left shortly after that. They went out to the elevator in silence, and in silence they went out to the car, and in silence they drove off. Mr. Brush at last began to chortle. “Darn good game, Soap-in-Your-Eye,” he said. Mrs. Brush stared at him, evilly, for a full minute. “You terrible person,” she said. Mr. Brush broke into loud and hearty laughter. He ho-hoed all the way down the Grand Concourse. He had had a swell time after all.