He walked over and peeked through the port window in the door to Lucky’s bar. The place was empty.
Jerry slipped his hand into his pocket and fingered his last hundred. He could catch a bus, get as far as Colorado or Wyoming and hope Caesar doesn’t come looking for him, but the longer he ran, the more likely Caesar would put a bullet in his head on principle.
No, this is better, he thought as he pushed into the bar. Get drunk enough to dull the pain, find Caesar, tell him he doesn’t have the money and pray he wakes up in a hospital instead of a casket.
The lonely strains of Johnny Cash lamenting about the connection between pain and feelings poured from the jukebox. The coned lights created circles of warmth that faded out into cold shadows where dust goes to settle. The combined effect gave the place a false sense of intimacy.
A single dock hop with stringy red hair twisted into a messy bun smiled at him through gapped teeth. Jerry diverted his eyes and sat at the other end of the bar, dashing her hopes of a transaction.
He took out his ledger—money owed, bets he’d placed, and a handful of people who owed him money. Maybe he could find enough scratch to buy himself a minor beatdown.
The bartender, a tall, thin, Black man with an almost comical set of chops framing his carved cheekbones, appeared and looked Jerry over.
“Scotch, straight up,” the bartender announced. His voice was as deep as a well after a rainstorm, both comforting and authoritative.
Jerry nodded. He hadn’t been sure of his order a moment before, but he knew now that Scotch was the right choice.
“How’d ya know?” he asked, running a hand through his greasy hair.
The bartender had a full ’70s-style Afro. Hair like that always made Jerry more conscious of the stray mousy wisps that circled his skull. To go prematurely bald in his twenties had been a nightmare, but now, his forty-year-old face had finally grown into the look.
The bartender shrugged. “I just know. Just like I know that if Scotch isn’t handy, a standard whiskey will do,” he said, setting up the drink from the bottom shelf.
“What if I want something a little more mid- or even top-shelf?” Jerry asked, drinking what was handed to him.
“Nah,” the bartender said, but did not elaborate. In an act that seemed almost scripted, he whipped out a rag from his apron and began polishing the bar’s dark wood finish.
“Just ‘nah’? What are you, the drunk whisperer? Explain how you knew.”
For the first time in three days, Jerry felt distracted by his impending doom. It wasn’t just the accuracy, it was the confidence in the accuracy. If Jerry had half this guy’s ability, every game would be an “A game.”
The bartender stopped wiping and fixed him with a weary look. “You really want to know? I’ll tell you, but don’t punch me in the face.”
Jerry chuckled and placed his hands behind his back. “Punch the guy serving me drinks? Never that.”
The bartender sighed and began.
“For starters, it’s a Tuesday. The slowest of all bar days. Only drunks, lonelies, and the desperate drink on Tuesdays. You’re not a drunk and you looked upset when you walked in, like this drink may be the only thing saving you from wandering into traffic. Then you chose to sit down here alone. Now people only look that bad for one of three reasons: chicks, chips or coffins. No wedding band and you look like you’ve gotten used to being alone. Wrinkled clothes, five-day shadow.” The bartender rubbed at his chin when he said it. “How am I doing so far?”
Jerry nodded and the bartender continued.
“So not a chick. Which leaves death or finances. Grief-stricken folks usually want to sit quietly and reflect. They don’t study little black books. So death is off the table. That leaves money, and by the way you’re studying that black book for answers, I’d say a nice chunk of it. Maybe a foreclosure, but I myself am a gambler of sorts and I’m getting gambling debt vibes, hence the cheap drink.”
Jerry clapped for the bartender.
The dock hop at the end of the bar, who had been nodding off into her drink, started awake.
“You trying to kill me,” she yelled.
The bartender bowed and she flipped him off.
Jerry paid little attention to this. He was still thinking about this guy’s skills.
“What are you, a part-time shrink? You must kill at the tables.”
“No, I’m a writer. Getting my master’s in English. If you want to write good fiction, you have to be a people watcher.”
Jerry nodded and finished off his drink. “You must be a great writer.”
“I do all right, but if you don’t mind me asking, how much you owe?”
Jerry tapped the glass and Mike refilled it. “Ten racks to a guy named Caesar. You said you gamble—you know Caesar?”
Mike whistled and slapped the bar with his rag. The dock hop looked up again but said nothing.
“Wow. Yeah, I know Caesar. Caesar Meeks, right?”
Jerry drained the glass and said, “the very one.”
“Well I guess it could be worse. At least you have the grace period. I knew a guy owed three hundred racks to Mr. Wang. Knew, past tense, you feel me? They won’t kill you for ten racks, but they’ll make you hurt,” Mike said.
Jerry grimaced, swallowed hard, but said nothing.
“You gonna be able to get the scratch before they take it back in fractures and sutures?”
Jerry tapped the glass. “I’m hoping to get drunk enough to make the beatdown bearable. Kind of burned my credit at the tables in town. At least the ones I can afford.”
“You got a wife and kids? Anyone Caesar can visit?”
“Nah, just my mom, lives downtown in a nursing home, Alzheimer’s,” Jerry replied.
Mike leaned against the bar and stared at the ceiling, like his mind was chewing on something and only after Jerry figured the conversation was over did he say anything.
“I have a game for you. Great odds. Low buy-in.”
Jerry’s face brightened. “How low?”
“What’ve you got?” Mike asked.
Jerry dragged the hundred out and placed it on the bar. “That’s all I have.”
Mike considered this for a minute. “That’s fine. Drinks on me, if you promise to come back and tip me tonight after you win.”
Jerry nodded excitedly. “Of course. I wouldn’t stiff a guy who threw me a game.”
“My man,” Mike said and extended his hand. Jerry shook it. “Let me see that book of yours.”
Jerry handed it to him and Mike scribbled “ten thousand” in large letters and an address. Then with painstaking effort, he drew a symbol at the bottom of the page.
“That’s the address. Just a couple blocks away. Show him the symbol I drew here and the guy will let you in.”
Jerry looked at the lines and arrows then looked at Mike. “What does it mean?”
Mike laughed. “It means the guy will let you in. But hey listen, when you reach your goal, think long and hard before you continue. It’s a legit game but it’s real easy to overextend yourself at this place.”
Jerry thanked Mike and hurried out into the brisk cold. A smile, the first since the mark came due, creased his face.
The bay was cranking up the fog machine, and he could only see what was ten feet in front of him. That was all right, though. He knew this city like he knew his own face. The address was on Humboldt, right off of Third, less than three blocks away.
He was halfway down the block before he realized he hadn’t asked what the game was. Didn’t really matter, the buy-in was a hundred bucks, and he would either win or lose. The seed of hope was planted.
Ten minutes later, Jerry stood in front of a fish-and-chips shop. The address matched, but the windows were papered over and the door padlocked. He checked the address again. This was the place but there was no action here.
Jerry’s heart sank. The kid was jerking his chain. Smug college prick.
He was heading back to tell the bartender off when he noticed a red light glowing above a single door on Illinois Street, on the opposite side of the building. The seed of hope sprouted a few leaves and Jerry smiled again. The familiar flush, the pregame I-could-win flush brightening his cheeks.
He approached and saw a glowing doorbell. He rang and after a moment the door opened and a small, round man in mechanic’s overalls stood before him, silhouetted in the illumination from the red bulb overhead.
The man had the face of a pug. His jowls hung like flesh-colored bunting on his tan cheeks. His eyes, large and glassy, gave Jerry the once-over, but the man said nothing,
“Hi, uh … Mike said to show you this.” Jerry held up the notebook page.
The man nodded and waved Jerry in. He turned and went noiselessly into the darkened room, motioning for Jerry to follow. As the man walked, his shoulders moved up and down, giving him the look of a cartoon character. Jerry couldn’t see his face but he imagined the guy’s cheeks flapping up and down. He stifled a laugh.
They approached a source of light at the far end of the room, a doorway into a kitchen that looked and smelled like it had been scrubbed within the hour. From the kitchen they exited into another room, this one with papered-over windows. Jerry nodded in recognition. Outside, he knew, was the sign for the fish-and-chips shop.
The room was dimly lit, what his long-dead father jokingly called suicide lighting, and cold as a crypt. At the center of the room, two chairs flanked a table. On the center of the table sat a large bowl of what looked like gray Nerds candy. The man motioned to a chair. Jerry sat, and the man took the chair opposite him.
Jerry shivered. “No heat in this place?”
The man leaned forward and crossed his meatpacker hands on the table. “Can’t have heat. The game requires cold.”
Jerry already had questions and the man’s statement—the game requires cold—birthed a few more. But this didn’t seem like the time or the person for questions.
“You have the buy-in?” the guy asked.
Jerry handed him the money and waited for the guy to question the amount, but he didn’t. Instead he tucked the bill into his overalls and picked up one of the gray pebbles, showing it to Jerry.
“This is a dried doba berry.” He handed the berry to Jerry. “Put it in your mouth. Whatever you do, don’t swallow it or take it out of your mouth. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Jerry did as he was told and the guy left.
Jerry sat with the berry pressed between his cheek and gums, contemplating the chances that this was a prank, after all. If so, this guy sported an epic poker face.
He was strongly leaning toward prank when the guy came back and handed Jerry a napkin. “Spit it out.”
Jerry did, wondering what Twilight Zone shit he’d just stepped into. He’d heard stories of people who walked into buildings and never walked out. For all he knew, this guy might be a weird butcher killer who planned on wearing his skin later.
“Show me the berry,” the man commanded.
Jerry unfolded the napkin. The berry was now the size of a cranberry.
“The doba berry is a plant native to the Arctic. It’s extremely difficult to grow, and it takes years of practice and the right temperature to grow them properly. The plant when stored at forty-five degrees Fahrenheit or lower will stay this size.” The man plucked a berry delicately from the bowl and held it up. “When you expose it to heat, natural, artificial or in your case, body heat, the berry expands. This makes it a bang-up laxative. Models go crazy for this shit. Swallow a few of these, you can skip a meal. Do it a couple times a day and you can skip all your meals. Not exactly healthy, but convenient. Like eating cotton balls but less dangerous.”
Jerry stared at the man, wondering what this had to do with the price of tea in China. Was he wasting time before the other players showed up and if so, where were the other chairs?
“There are about five hundred of these in five ounces. That’s the equivalent of a box of those little candies you were probably thinking of when you saw them. So ten ounces is one thousand of these. Do you follow?”
Jerry nodded. He followed but he had no idea what he was following.
“For each of these you eat, I will give you ten dollars. But here are the rules. Once you start, you cannot stop until you are done. By that I mean, you can walk away any time, but once you do, the game is done and if you haven’t eaten at least a thousand, then you lose your money and we call it a day. You never come back here.”
Jerry stared at the berry in the napkin and said nothing. This seemed too easy.
“The second rule is that you swallow them one at a time. You can drink water anytime you like but I don’t recommend it. Everyone I’ve seen complete the game successfully dry swallowed mostly, only drinking a sip from time to time.”
Jerry finally braved a question. “So people have actually been able to do this?”
“Sure. Many people. Didn’t Mike tell you this was a legit game?”
Jerry thought for a second. The exact same word. Legit.
“Yes, he did,” he said.
“Well it is. I’d say at least fifty percent of folks can do the full thousand. And like I said, some do more.”
“And if I can do more?” Jerry asked.
“Ten dollars per berry. Once you hit the ten grand, you walk away with whatever you make above that up to 20K.”
Jerry did some quick math in his head. He tried to recall how much room is in the average stomach. Then he decided it didn’t matter because he’d eaten at least double that on several occasions. He once ate a two-pound steak and a baked potato, with a large banana milkshake and a side salad.
And leaving wasn’t an option. He needed the money.
“Can I use the bathroom first? Start with an empty vessel?”
“Sure.” The guy nodded vigorously and his jowls flapped. “If you have to, uh, Number Two, that’s fine too. Best if you do. Bathroom is back there next to the kitchen door.”
Jerry used the restroom and came back a few minutes later. Before he sat, the man motioned toward his coat.
“I recommend you take off as many layers as you can. The colder you are, the slower the berries expand.”
Jerry nodded, slipped off his coat and then pulled off his sweater, leaving just the T-shirt and jeans between him and the frigid air. The cold rattled his body like a loose ball bearing.
The man handed him a metal object nearly as long as a pair of chopsticks but connected like tweezers. “Practice a few times but don’t eat them. Just practice picking them up.” Jerry picked up a few of the berries, then he stopped and announced he was ready, eager to get this over with.
There was no real fanfare, just the portly man saying “go.” And go he did.
Once he got the hang of picking up the berries, things moved along at a clipped pace. Ten berries, fifteen berries, twenty-nine berries, forty-six berries. Occasionally his body shook involuntarily from the cold and he dropped a berry, but most of the berries he picked, he ate.
At the sixty-berry mark, he noticed that he was no longer producing enough saliva to swallow properly. He cleared his throat, trying to bring something to the surface, but found no relief from the dry, itchy pocket that had formed behind his tongue.
“Don’t throw up,” the man cautioned. “You will have to start over.”
Jerry had no choice. He took a small sip of the water and then another. Confident that the dry pocket was gone, he started again. He repeated this ritual twice more before he reached three hundred berries and this was when he noticed that the fat gap he liked to keep in his jeans for expansion purposes was almost nonexistent. He could feel the top of his belt buckle against his bare belly. Still he continued on.
When he reached five hundred, five small sips and a half a glass of water later, the man announced he was halfway there.
Jerry had been keeping count, and he had expected the man to keep count but the accuracy was surprising, like Mike guessing his drink.
His belly felt a lot like it had at the end of St. Patrick’s Day. Full of corned beef and cabbage and, of course, pint after pint of green beer, but where he knew relief was just a visit to “flushings away on St. Patty’s Day.” He was only halfway to his goal with no relief in sight and while his outer flesh was still cold, a warm wave had begun radiating from inside his body.
“If I stand up to take off my belt, does that disqualify me?”
“No. So long as you don’t relieve yourself or leave the room, you’re fine.”
Jerry stood up and loosened the belt and was happy to discover he still had a tiny amount of give in his waistband. He sat down, slightly uncomfortable, but it was bearable.
He continued, and after taking four more sips of water and downing two hundred fifty more berries, the man announced, “seven hundred fifty,” and Jerry nodded. He no longer felt the cold. Or if he did, it was a lot less pressing than the actual pressing of his belly against his jeans. He was swimming in perspiration, and occasionally the sweat from his brow dripped down into his eyes, stinging them and blurring his vision. The buttons of his 501s felt like BB pellets digging into his gut.
“You’ve got this,” the man said.
Again, Jerry nodded, but his mind was filled with stuffed things. Sausage. Pigs in a blanket. Twinkies. Thanksgiving turkey. He squirmed in his seat, which only served to press the buttons deeper into his already raw flesh. He’d barely made a dent in the bowl of berries but here he was two hundred fifty from the goal.
He tucked in again.
Somewhere around the nine hundred mark, something miraculous happened. The pain in his gut numbed over, and then he felt a shift in his belly and the girth seemed to spread more evenly across his abs. It was just the push he needed. He was going to reach his goal.
When he did, it was to the mental theme of Rocky. But he didn’t stop, didn’t even think about stopping. He was feeling that winner’s buzz, riding the wave of a royal flush.
He no longer felt the cold or the way his pants cut into his gut. He was the eye of the fucking tiger, we are the champions, big shot, winner.
The internal soundtrack of glory drove him forward past the eleven hundred mark. The twelve hundred mark. Fourteen hundred.
A little past sixteen hundred, the top button of his jeans flew off, hit the table and ricocheted back and snapped into his belly. He farted involuntarily and it felt like he’d been shot in the gut but it made a little more room for berries.
He murmured an apology and the man waved it off.
He should have quit then but the winner’s high wouldn’t peak until he hit jackpot. This was a sure bet, the wet dream of all gamblers.
Seventeen hundred, another button gone.
Eighteen hundred, and another.
Tonight he would get a hotel downtown and order room service, or maybe just cocktails.
When he reached the two thousand mark, his mind stood up and took a victory lap but his body remained stationary. He’d never been more full, and his thoughts wandered down the road of paranoia. What if by some freakish accident of nature, he couldn’t shit this out? What if he stayed this way, constipated until he died of sepsis? He’d heard that could happen.
The man rose and exited the room unceremoniously, and Jerry’s apprehension shifted gears to the even more realistic fear that he might be left alone. The tragedy dawning on him that in his current state he couldn’t catch a crawling baby.
He braced himself and stood, and the last remaining button popped off. He lifted his shirt. His gut, distended and red, had a bald-headed sheen to it, and it sat low, on the cradle bones of his hips. He took a step forward and a gurgle, deep and guttural, emanated from his belly. He patted it gently and waited. After a moment, he took two steps.
“You gonna be okay? Maybe you should sit down.”
Jerry glanced up toward the sound of the voice and realized the guy was back. He held a stack of hundreds, which he handed to Jerry.
Jerry knew he should count it, but he didn’t think he was capable. Instead, he bent for his coat but his belly stopped him. “Could you help me out here?” he asked.
The guy grabbed his coat and helped Jerry slip it on. He went for Jerry’s sweater but Jerry shook his head and said, “leave it.”
He stuck the money in his inside pocket and thanked the man. As he did, a belch escaped and the sour stench of regurgitated Scotch wafted between them. “I’m so sorry, man.”
The guy clapped him on the shoulder and said it was okay, and Jerry made for the door. Before he left, he turned and asked, “What do you get out of this?”
The guy smiled.
“Most people that come in here bet more than a hundred bucks. Sometimes we lose but we win a lot of the time. There are also cameras in the room, you know, for spectators, and they bet on whether you will win and by how many berries. Only one guy bet that you would finish, one-hundred-to-one odds. He’s a very happy guy right now.”
Another burp bubbled to the surface and Jerry wasn’t confident that it was just a burp. He stumbled through the kitchen and back to the bathroom, leaned over the rim of the toilet and let go. But it was just a burp, after all.
He slipped off his jeans and tried to move the product as his dad used to say, but to his great displeasure, nothing came out. After a few more attempts, he left the bathroom.
The man would later find Jerry’s jeans discarded on the bathroom floor.
As Jerry wandered out into the night, the moon peeked between ominous clouds and the air tasted like rain. The crisp breeze was welcome on his burning skin. His belly burned like a coal furnace on the inside, heating the rest of his body.
How much time had passed since he went into the building? Was it enough time to develop a strong fever?
He didn’t know, but he knew he wasn’t fit for travel. So he headed back to the bar to make good on his promise to Mike.
He gave little thought to the air that gusted up beneath his trench coat, billowing it out to show his underwear underneath, or the unsettling gurgling coming from below his chest. His thoughts seemed to be floating above him in jumbles, and every once in a while he plucked one down for examination. These fragmented thoughts told him Lucky’s made sense. He peeled a hundred off the top of the stack and held it like a talisman out in front of him and marched on. In twice the time it took him to make it to the fish-and-chips shop, he was once again standing in front of that glowing lucky shamrock.
His stomach tight as a steel drum, sweat so thick he felt as if he were melting, he reached for the door, and a tearing sound split the silence. He prayed it was his coat but the sudden release of tension in his gut, the soul-stripping pain that followed, and the hot, wet liquid rushing down his groin told him otherwise.
He went down to his knees as if, in a last effort at redemption, he decided prayer was the answer.
With every bit of anything he had left, he stood and pushed his way into the bar. He lost whatever momentum he had left and stumbled, did an almost graceful pirouette, then toppled and fell face up onto the floor. He was dead before his head slapped the cold tiles.
The bar had remained mostly empty, just Mike and the dock hop napping on her stool.
Mike rushed over and crouched next to Jerry. He checked for a pulse, but the man’s life status was written in the bloody entrails and the now-cherry-sized doba berries that rolled from his belly to the front door. The midsection, finally freed from the pressure, had peeled away from his body, leaving his empty rib cage on display like a dinosaur fossil.
Mike started for the phone behind the counter, then noticed the bill clutched in Jerry’s fist.
Gently, he extracted the hundred from the dead man’s grasp. Then, putting on a pair of gloves, he searched for the notebook. Mike had written in the book, and though he was pretty sure they wouldn’t find him guilty of anything more than bad judgment, it was better to not have to answer any questions at all. He found the book and the 20K.
He turned on the bright lights and counted the money as he dialed 911. After he gave the operator the few pertinent details, he walked to the register and rang up two Scotches, used the hundred to pay and slid the change into his pocket. He split the 20K and put half into Jerry’s coat pocket. He’d already made fifty grand off the guy. No need to be greedy.
The dock hop stirred awake and, seeing the carnage, she screamed and began babbling questions at Mike.
The only reply she received was the still-distant wailing of an ambulance moving through the night.
Again, Mike picked up the phone, lifted a finger to silence the dock hop—she didn’t stop crying, but she did quiet down—and dialed Caesar. When the bookie picked up, Mike said he had payment on a 10K marker for a guy named Jerry. Caesar had no questions, as payment was being made within the grace period. A plan was made for collection and Mike hung up. Now he could be sure that Caesar wouldn’t be paying Jerry’s mom a visit. He walked the dock hop to the back door and handed her a hundred dollar bill. This quieted her up, and without another word, she wandered off into the night.
Mike rationalized, she had been drunk enough that in the morning light, she might wake up and convince herself that she didn’t see what she thought she saw, or that it wasn’t half as bad as she thought it was.
With the dock hop on her way, Mike returned to the front of the bar and turned off the neon shamrock sign, carefully avoiding Jerry’s body. The light blinked a few times and flickered out. Then, he waited.