It was as if he had been gone for a year instead of a week.
Once Race entered the Brooklyn house, he could hardly take a step without someone clapping him on the back or shaking his hand. On top of that, he was promised the only unbroken chair in the place and was told that some old newspapers had been wedged under one of the legs so it wouldn't wobble. Race stifled a smile, half-expecting rose petals to be strewn at his feet. He bet they never gave Spot the unbroken chair.
Sure, they were acting nicer, but that didn't mean they would cheat any less. He wouldn't be surprised if Spot had told them to rob him blind as a welcome back. Not that they would be able to, their attempts at cheating were clumsy at best and easy to catch.
Race kept his eye out for Spot as he weaved his way through the mess of furniture and bodies. He was nowhere in sight. Though, between the haze of smoke and the constant movement of people, it was hard to tell.
"The boss in?" he asked the nearest kid as he found the game table.
"Don't worry about it," the boy assured him, misinterpreting the question. Race wasn't worried about any trouble from Spot, he could handle that. He just wanted to know if Spot was around, much the same way he'd want to know if there was a shark in the water where he was swimming.
Race didn't ask again. He gave the room another once over, just to be sure. Satisfied Spot wasn't there, he sat down at the crowded table. It didn't surprise him. He was probably out stealing other people's prized possessions to throw in rivers.
Race pulled out the deck of cards he had borrowed from Blink for the night. He spread them face-up on the table so everyone could see it was a full deck before he picked them up and began to shuffle. The cards were all right, though they vaguely smelled like the old sock Blink kept them in and were too stiff to shuffle smoothly. His own deck had been broken in perfectly over hundreds of hands. They were soft from being handled so often and black smudges of fingerprints had turned the paper gray over time. He knew the backs of the cards almost as well as the front, but he never told that to anyone.
Spot knew how much he liked those cards, but he still ruined them.
He didn't know when or how, but he'd get Spot back for it. Fifty-two times over, if he could. Half the time he didn't know what they were getting back at each other for, but he'd remember this one. Spot would be sorry he was even born.
Race tried to push it from his mind, he had money to win.
As he dealt the first hand, he started up a conversation. Nice and harmless, something easy to listen to. The weather, the tracks, in didn't really matter. In his experience, conversation was just as important as skill in cards. There was an art to distracting people at key moments in the game, getting them to look away from the table for a split second or not realize how high the stakes were going.
After a few rounds, he managed to win enough to get ahead, but not enough to scare anyone off.
Inevitably, the talk turned toward recalling the glory days. The stories were violent, almost ridiculously so, and often embellished beyond reason. Race didn't contribute much, though he knew quite a few good ones. They weren't his stories to tell. He wasn't one of them anymore.
So, as the Brooklyn boys tried to top each other's best yarn, he played the game, taking advantage of the frequent lapses in attention to accumulate a respectable pile of coins. He tried not to laugh as they brought up a few about Spot, some he had helped to make up. It was priceless how they took each bullshit detail so seriously. Of course, he used to take it seriously too, but that was back when he was stupid.
"So," Race interrupted one particularly colorful story, unable to resist, "How exactly did Spot aim the slingshot, when he was chokin' a guy with one hand and fendin' off a vicious dog with the other?"
The boy who had been telling the story furrowed his brow, thinking for a moment. "Well, he…I guess he musta…I 'spose he could've…Hell, I don't know!" The boy scowled at Race for ruining his story.
"I pushed the guy toward the dog, let the dog take 'im out, then hit the dog with the slingshot," Spot answered easily.
Race's attention snapped to where the voice had come from.
There he was, just visible over the top of his newspaper. Sitting not ten feet away, and Race never saw him. He'd probably been there the whole time, too. Race tightened the grip on his cards.
There went his night.
"See?" the boy said triumphantly. "If you're so smart, you tell one better."
"All the good ones been told," Race muttered.
"What about the night Spot took a crack at Joey Pudge?" another boy from across the table suggested. "That's a good one. You was there when it happened, right?"
Race stiffened. He looked to Spot briefly only to find Spot was looking right back at him. His expression was stoic, hiding every bit of the fear Race knew was just below the surface. He could feel Spot's eyes boring into him each second he didn't answer, but he kept dealing the round. Spot could sweat it out for a few minutes.
Joey Pudge, the last kid that had stood between Spot and the top. Race hadn't thought about that night for a long while and with good reason. It was the night Spot showed he was willing to do anything it took and proved himself a Brooklyn boy through and through. It ended with Pudge dead and Spot bloody victorious.
It was a terrible night, a glory night.
It was Spot's big story, his real claim to fame and what he wanted in the back of everyone's mind each time they thought of him.
Too bad it never happened.
Race put the last card down and picked up his hand. "That's right," he replied finally, lying though his teeth.
The foundation of all Spot's greatness was built on a lie. One small lie he could never pass as the truth, no matter how many times he told it or how badly he wanted to believe it. No matter how high Spot climbed, how far he thought he'd gone, he was always only one step from falling. The threat of exposure always lingered because Race also knew the truth. In Spot's mind, Race would eternally have the upper hand and Spot hated him for it.
"So tell us how it went," one of the boys prompted him impatiently.
"You know how it went," Race said, looking over his cards. He knew the bloody version they wanted to hear, but he never liked telling it. Building up Spot wasn't exactly his favorite pastime.
It was true Spot went out looking for Pudge that night, along with everyone else who wanted to step up. It'd been time for change. Pudge knew it was coming, but he was too proud to leave. Spot even warned him, but he was too damn proud.
Against his better judgment, Race went along with Spot. He wanted to keep him from doing something he'd regret. Fortunately, Spot never got the opportunity. Pudge was dead long before they found him, probably from the kid that was lying nearby. Spot never laid a hand on Pudge, never even touched him. The closest he got was touching the ground next to the boy, rubbing blood and dirt on his hands to make it look like there'd been a fight
Spot had been in the right place at the right time, took the credit and never looked back. It wasn't exactly the stuff legends were made of.
"Come on! Tell us."
"He came here to play, not talk," Spot said abruptly.
Race laughed to himself. Spot probably thought he was mad enough to let the truth slip. Sometimes, Race thought that was the only thing that kept Spot from digging into him more than he already did. So he let Spot go on thinking it.
He'd given Spot his word on several occasions that he wouldn't say anything, but Spot didn't trust people who gave their word.
Though Spot would never believe it, his secret was safe. Race had no interest in ruining him, making his life difficult certainly, but nothing that would destroy him. Besides, he'd given his word and even though it meant nothing to Spot, he wouldn't go back on it.
"He don't mind," the boy said. "Come on, Higgins, out with it."
"I don't mind," Race said innocently, getting a kick out of seeing Spot squirm. "I think I even remember a few things I never told no one before-"
Spot looked at him severely before he turned his attention to the rest of the table. That put an end to it. Nobody pursued the topic any further, becoming suddenly interested in their own cards. Race grinned smugly. Spot wasn't amused.
"What are you smilin' at?" Spot glanced at Race's cards. "A pair ain't gonna win you nothin'."
Race shot Spot a biting glare. He'd already put thirty cents on that hand and was well on his way to bluffing a win. Cursing under his breath, he folded.
He was ahead, but not by enough to call it a winning night. Just as he was beginning to gain ground, the game had stopped for a break. The other players were either down the street trying to find a drink or outside watching the fight that had erupted a few moments before. Race wasn't interested in either, so he'd stayed behind and laid out a game of solitaire.
A few moves into the game, he became aware that someone was standing over him, but he chose to ignore it. He kept playing. Red nine on black ten. He was distracted again by the sudden rapping of the annoying someone's knuckle on the table, trying to get his attention.
Race looked up briefly, setting his jaw as he looked back down at his cards. The night had just gone from bad to worse.
"What, you ain't talkin' to me?" Spot asked, smiling as if there was nothing else in the world that would have pleased him more.
"I got nothin' to say to you," Race answered sharply. He flipped over a black eight and pretended to be preoccupied in where to play it. Any reasonable person would've taken the hint and keep walking, knowing they weren't wanted. Spot, however, was a pain in the neck.
"What a coincidence, I got nothin' to say to you neither," Spot said as he pulled a chair up to the opposite side of the table and sat down. The chair creaked as he leaned back and put his feet up on the table. He pulled out his own deck of cards and started shuffling them idly. True to his word, he didn't say anything.
Race fought the urge to get up and leave; he wouldn't let Spot win this one. He kept playing, trying to ignore everything but the game. Black six on red seven. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat under the unwanted attention. Spot just sat there, sprawled out lazily as he watched him play, shuffling those stupid cards.
Between the creaking of the chair, the bumping of the table every time Spot moved his feet and endless shuffling of that deck of cards, Race lost his concentration. But that was probably the whole point. It wasn't long before he hit a dead end. If no one were watching, he wouldn't have thought twice about looking through the deck to find a card to use. Though, with the peanut gallery fixed on his every move, he knew he wouldn't hear the end of it if he tried.
Angrily, he admitted defeat and began to pick up the cards.
"You shoulda put the four on the five diamond," Spot said offhandedly.
It was probably the most civil thing Spot had said to him in recent memory, so he wasn't sure why that one statement set him off. Maybe it was because he knew he should have played the four or because Spot was responsible for him missing the opportunity in the first place, but whatever the reason, his frustration finally boiled over. Race slammed the cards on the table. "You know what 'solitaire' means? It means mind your own damn business."
"Don't be sore. I'm just sayin'-"
"See, that's your problem. You talk too much. You wanna sit over there like a bonehead, you be quiet about it," Race snapped.
"There's that mouth again. You're forgettin' whose house your in," Spot said as he continued to shuffle his cards, taking the room in with quiet glance.
There was no one else within earshot, but Race already knew that. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered to start anything. He saw Spot relax a bit.
"What, you gonna kick me out again? Be my guest. We all know how that went," Race shot back.
Spot stretched out his legs and made himself more comfortable. "How 'bout I just kick you and call it a day?"
"You can try. It'd surprise me if you didn't trip over your own feet first, they're big enough to kick over half the town."
"Better than havin' a big head," Spot replied. "I bet you have trouble gettin' through doors."
"Well, I don't feel too bad for you, I hear they got jobs for people with big feet at the circus. Clowns or somethin'."
"You don't need to be a clown, people laugh at you just 'cause you're so ugly."
"Your mother wouldn't even look at you 'cause you were so ugly."
"At least I had a mother," Spot pointed out.
"Yeah, me and her had a lot of fun nights together. She didn't charge much."
Spot gave him a look. "That was low. "
"Well, pardon me," Race continued. "I didn't know you turned into such a little girl. Why don't you go cry about it?"
"You cry enough for the both of us. Besides, at least I'm taller than a girl."
Race caught himself before he laughed. Without fail, it always came back to the fact that he was short and Spot had a prostitute for a mother. Both were true, though the latter was rarely admitted to.
"What, you done already?" Spot asked with a small smile, proud of himself for getting the last word. "Christ, you're rusty. What do you do all day in Manhattan? Pour each other tea and dress your dollies?"
"You ain't exactly Paul Bunyan yourself," Race started again. He was just warming up, there was no way Spot could best him once he put his mind to it.
"Who the hell is Paul Bunyan?"
"I ain't surprised you don't know. See, it's a Tall Tale."
"Oh yeah? Well-"
A rather drunk boy suddenly staggered through the front door and wobbled toward the stairs. Spot fell silent. Race remembered he wasn't in a good mood and Spot was the cause of it. The smiles disappeared and they both looked back down at their cards.
As soon as the boy was up the stairs, Spot pulled his feet off the table. As he stood, he held up the cards he had been shuffling so Race could see them. There was something very familiar about those cards. Spot flipped the deck in his hand, showing Race the back for instant before he tossed them down on the table.
If there was any doubt in Race's mind before, it was gone. They were his. The ones that were supposed to be fish food, waterlogged and otherwise ruined. They were just as he had left them, not a corner bent or a side torn.
"Keep better track of your things. Next time I won't give 'em back," Spot told him.
Race hesitated before reaching across the table to take them, still not quite believing that Spot had given them back and they were in usable condition. Once the cards were safely in his hand, his disbelief quickly turned to suspicion. There were undoubtedly strings attached. Spot didn't make things that easy and he certainly didn't do them out of the kindness of his heart.
Spot doing something for nothing was something to be wary of. But an even exchange, that was something Race could understand.
"I guess I owe you one, then," Race said slowly, still trying to figure out his motive.
"I guess you do," Spot replied, a smile finally snaking to his lips.