Balling the Jack. Frank Baldwin

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      To me she seems exactly the kind of woman who would destroy anyone before she’d slip one rung on the social ladder. As she speaks, her eyes slide around the room.

      Mrs. Garrett says she served everything as she received it. Prego delivered the hors d’oeuvres about 5 P.M. and stayed to put the final touches on the bean dip. He sprinkled a seasoning over the top of it and she asked what it was. He said it was pegrini.

      “The name jogged something in my memory, some cautionary note about its safety, the way it reacted with other spices, something. I raised the question with Mr. Prego but he waved it off. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You can never have enough pegrini. It goes with everything.’ Well, not being a chef myself, of course, I took his word for it. He came well recommended, after all. I felt a little uneasy, but I put the dip on Rose’s tray and sent it out into the crowd. And then … oh, it hurts even to think of it, but you know the rest. As soon as people were taken ill I knew my suspicions were right. I called Mr. Prego immediately and confronted him and he—why, the man denied everything. Denied he had added any pegrini at all. And the names he called me! My word. I know I’m under oath, but I’d just as soon not repeat them. Anyway, that’s just how it happened.”

      And I’m a Choctaw Indian.

CHAPTER FOUR

      THE FIRST DRINK of the day is the best. Cools the head and marks the formal start of the evening. I could use one. I just came from the pad, where I walked in on this exchange:

      “Come now, Mike, remember what we talked about. You don’t want to say the Mets got killed. How about they were defeated? Or better yet, outscored?”

      Mike gets a puppy-dog smile on his face and says, “Right. They were outscored.”

      I left without a word. What is there to say?

      “Hi, Mason. Draw me the coldest one you got.”

      “Coming up.”

      Mason bartends here at Adam’s Curse on dart night. He’s the only real person I know who rolls up his T-shirts and keeps a pack of cigarettes in the sleeve. He slides me a pint, pops a toothpick in his mouth, and leans forward on his hands on the long wooden bar.

      “I’ll say it once. Ready?”

      I nod.

      “But in the town it was well known when they got home at night their fat, psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives.”

      “Pink Floyd. The Wall. ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part I.’”

      He shrugs. “That was a gimme. I know you got a big match tonight. Next time you’ll earn your suds.”

      I don’t doubt it. Every week Mason gives me one line of rock ’n’ roll. If I name the band, song and album, our team gets a round on the house. Tonight he went easy on me. When he wants to be a ballbuster he’ll drop something from Hüsker Dü, or PiL. I’ll run it by the whole team and still strike out.

      The match he mentioned is the reason I’m here. Tonight our team, the Drinkers, takes on the Hellions for the Manhattan Tuesday Night Darts Championship. The Hellions beat us out for the league title and this is our chance to even the score.

      It won’t be easy. They don’t make dart teams any tougher than this crew. They play out of County Hell Pub, a blue-collar Irish joint in Hell’s Kitchen. One of Papa O’Shea’s bars, and if you’ve seen it you know why they got into darts. If I drank in that neighborhood I’d carry a weapon too.

      The Hellions have walked off with the last three titles, and their captain, Joe Duggan, is a piece of work. As mean a mick as ever washed onto our shores. I get spooked just looking at him. Thin and strong and pale, with yellow eyes and a bad complexion. More on him in a minute.

      First, a little background on darts. To me, it’s the best bar game there is. Full of skill and strategy, and best of all, you get better the more you drink. Up to a point, anyway. I learned to play from Dad, who grew up throwing for drinks in neighborhood bars in south Jersey. In college I kept a board on the back of my door and played for shots with the fellas.

      One night after graduation, Dave and I challenged a couple drunks to a game in a West Side dive. Loser buys. We beat ’em four straight with their darts. After the last game they showed us empty wallets and the bigger one steadied himself with a hand on my shoulder.

      “So you see, gents, we kenna pay. But a debt is a debt, so I give you this.”

      He handed me a business card with “Adam’s Curse” printed on it.

      “Go there and see Stella. Tell her Jerry sent you. She’ll put you on a team and you can stop beating up on the likes of us.” They rolled out the door.

      The next day we looked up Adam’s Curse and met Stella, the seventy-fìve-year old matron of the place. “So you beat Jerry, did you?” she asked.

      “Four straight, ma’am.”

      “Don’t let it go to your head. Every time he sends me a new team I let him drink on the house for half an hour. I run eight squads out of here on two nights and Jerry sent half of them to me. Now—you’ll need six players to field a team. Can you do that?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Good. I’ll put you in C division—the rookie league. You can pick up your schedule Saturday night.”

      Dave and I signed up our whole gang from college—Jimmy, Bobby, Tank and Claire. At first, we saw the team as a drinking club. A chance to meet once a week, check out different bars, get trashed, and throw a few arrows besides. As time went on, though, a funny thing happened: we got good.

      Stella gave us old boards we put up at home and practiced on a little each day. Sunday nights we entered her five-dollar luck-of-the-draw tournaments. Once we got the hang of the league matches, we found we all had the right makeup for darts—we love to drink and we hate to lose. Especially to some of the cows in C division. Every team carried at least one porker, and the lesser teams two or three. Guys who couldn’t make the bar softball team but didn’t want to go home to the wife, with bad breath and bellies that could stop a truck. Beat ’em and they retreated to the bar, but lose and you were in for it. They’d take you aside, give you a few pointers, tell you their whole darting history, if you let them, from the day they first picked one up. Facing guys like that week after week was a powerful incentive to get good in a hurry.

      That first season we sneaked into the playoffs as the fourth-place team and pulled a couple upsets before losing in the semis. We’ve moved up and gone farther each season since and now, in our first crack at A division, we’re in the finals.

      I’m the captain and the third-best shooter on the team. No one can touch Jimmy, our ace, and Tank’s more consistent, but I’m streaky and when I get on a roll, look out. I’ve come on strong this season since resolving not to worry about my form. Used to be I’d spend a lot of time on technique, breaking down the dart throw to its component parts—the proper grip, the angle of the elbow, the release point. I’d work on keeping my head still and minimizing arm motion. In the end I gave all that up. You can’t have a hundred things running through your head when you step to the line. Now СКАЧАТЬ