Clareified

I’ve actually seriously started working on a novel. It’s my first real attempt at fiction writing since miserably failing the NANO experiment two years ago. It’s a murder mystery and not really funny. Well, not intentionally funny, but I don’t think the makers of Showgirls intended for that to be the comedic work of art that it is. Anyway, I’ve decided to post the first chapter and possibly serialize it every Monday depending on the feedback I receive. I’m as always most interested in comments, but not just the “wow, that’s awesome, they should give you the Pulitzer right now.” Um…actually on second thought, what am I crazy? Yes, those are the only comments I am interested in. Nah, just kidding. Let me know what you think, any feedback via the comment section or my email will be most welcome.

By Jenny Field

Jesse Michaels was the first woman to win the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. She was also the first black person to win the coveted bracelet and the $13 million first place prize money.
In the days leading up to her victory, as she accumulated more chips and eliminated more than four dozen opponents, the throngs of media surrounding her grew daily. First came the specialty press – Black Entertainment Television, Jet, Women’s Weekly. Then, as the field dwindled to thirty then twenty and Michaels had more than two-thirds of the chips in play, the mainstream corps followed – The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN. And on the final day, when she beat the aggressive poker professional, Gus Hansen, in 23 hands, and captured the most prestigious title in the poker world, the President called her to congratulate her.
“That was a trip. Her office called the day before to ask for a number where I could be reached if I won it. The whole thing made me nervous…like it would jinx me, you know? But she’s the goddamn President…what could I do? I gave them the number and threw some salt over my shoulder for insurance.”
Michaels’ mother was at her side in every picture following the historic win. Madison Avenue was knocking at her door. She was young, talented and suddenly rich. At 36 she was at the top of her field and the world was her oyster.
Four days later, she was dead.
A housekeeper at the Venetian found her naked in the bathtub. She had been stabbed more than a dozen times. There was no trace of the money. The Las Vegas police department said the investigation suggests her murder was robbery related. They gave the standard answer about following all available leads. But the only lead was a lawsuit filed by two of Michaels’ former friends from New York. About four days into the Main Event they held a press conference claiming that they were each owed one-third of any money she won. “It’s all bullshit…fucking leeches. They find a warm body and suck the blood until there’s nothing left. It’s bullshit.” Michaels, a lawyer for seven years before moving to Las Vegas, said she didn’t take the claims seriously. But when security footage showed that both Cara Fleishman and her boyfriend Moshe Schwartz were in the Venetian lobby the morning Jesse’s body was found, the lead homicide investigator, Capt. Leonard Smith, said Michaels may have underestimated the threat from the pair and she may have paid for that mistake with her life.
“Jesus effing Christ – paid with her life? This is Vanity Fair, not Cliché Quarterly,” Joe said pushing his chair back from the screen.
“Okay, okay…it’s just a first draft….what about the rest of it?”
“It’s a start. You’ve got a lot of work to do girlie, and not a whole heck of a lot of time. And for Chrissakes, we don’t mention fucking Newsweek in our articles. And get the blood higher up in the story…nobody fucking cares about poker. They care about the dead girl and the missing money. That’s your story.”
He stood up abruptly, shook his head and walked back to his office.
I stared at the screen. The only part of this story I was sure of was right there at the top. Jenny Field. My name. Give me the 400 points. The rest…I’m so fucked.

I met Jesse a couple of years ago when she first moved out here. She met my boyfriend at a local Scrabble club and they started playing on their own a couple of times of week, gearing up to play in the Scrabble National Championships in Reno at the end of July. She quit her job in New York to play poker fulltime, but like most poker players, she was a natural competitor. She played Scrabble, backgammon, basketball, you name it – if you could keep score, she was willing to play until she could beat you. And then she was willing to play for money.
Not that she was a gambler, far from it, once she put her money on something, it was as good as a sure thing. Most people who played cards with Jesse said her greatest asset was her reputation for never betting unless she had the ‘stone cold nuts,’ the absolutely best hand. With that reputation, she could pretty much bet ‘napkins’ – nothing cards, and get a guy to fold the winning hand. Dean said her Scrabble game was the same way.
“She knew so many words, that she could but down a string of consonants and I’d believe it was a real word.”
I was still doing freelance work for any publication that would have me. I even managed a semi regular column in Young Catholic Digest, which was quite a feat for a 26-year-old Jewish girl from North Carolina.
“I’ll give you my first interview if I win,” Jesse told me during her dinner break on the last day of the Main Event, “It’s the least I can do for making you a Scrabble widow every week.”
There were only five players remaining and she had almost more chips than the other four combined.
“Are you shitting me? You’re the biggest story in the country right now!”
She laughed.
“And I’m all yours.”
“Fucking A! You’re awesome! You can have him the rest of the week for all I care!”
“Hey now! Man cannot live on Scrabble alone,” Dean protested.
We all laughed.
It was the first time Jesse’s face relaxed the whole meal. She barely touched her Pad Thai and the Corona she was nursing was still more than half full.
By dawn, we were on top of the world. She ‘no comment’ed her way back to the hotel room, took the call from the President and over the next three days she kept her word and granted me exclusive access to the reigning champion of the poker world.

“I was seven years old the last time I had sex.”
We were sitting in beach chairs overlooking the pool at the Caesar hotel. She took a long pull from the straw sticking out of her strawberry daiquiri and set the glass down beside her beach chair.
Jesse’s face is a smooth shade of caramel, she has course medium length brown hair and brown eyes. Sometimes, with her hair pulled back under a baseball cap or hooded sweatshirt she looks like a teenager. I’ve actually seen her get carded twice in one night at a poker room. “We call those good days!” she beams whenever I tell that story.
She never wears makeup and on the whole, she’s a pretty average looking woman, but when she smiles, the full effect of 32 perfectly straight white teeth makes her whole face shine. The whole room even.
“I’ve never told that to anyone before,” she adds, giving me her trademark smile now.
I’m stunned at her confession and confused that she’s chosen to start our interview with this, but I sit still. I keep my hand on the recorder and listen. Silence, Professor Johnson taught me, can be a reporter’s best friend.
As if on cue, Jesse continues.
“He was the super in my building. My mother and I moved there in 1983 after my dad split and we couldn’t afford a three bedroom apartment anymore. We moved to a shithole about ten blocks away. We never had any heat, hot water was an occasional treat, the windows never really closed all the way and there were mice everywhere. But, I got to have my own room – a small alcove across the hall from my mom’s room — and the kitchen was nice, so you know, whatever. We made do. Mr. Hall, that was the super’s name, was a friendly guy. He always offered to help out fixing shit in the place or picking me up from school if my mother had to do an extra shift at the hospital. I guess my mom liked having him around because she thought he was interested in her, but about six months after we’d been living there, he started fucking me. ‘Special hugs,’ just for me, he’d say. What did I know, you know?
I got special hugs from him for a year. Then one night my mom’s watching Thorn Birds on TV, you know that miniseries about the Priest and the girl…with Richard Chamberlain?” She sits up suddenly.
“Can you believe he’s gay? It’s like wow? Really? Have you ever seen it?”
I shake my head.
“Too bad, it’s pretty umm…vivid…so anyway, we’re watching the show and the Priest is going at it with the girl…Rachel something and I say ‘he’s giving her special Mr. Hall hugs!’ And my mother laughs, one of those ‘aw kids say the darnedest things’ laughs and asks what I mean.
That was the last time I heard my mother laugh. When I told her about the special hugs, she got real quiet and just started to shake. I got up and pushed the towel deeper into the space between the window and the ledge because I thought she was cold or something.
But she just kept shaking. I guess she saw that I was scared because she suddenly told me to go get some ice cream out of the freezer, “If you think you can reach it.”
“Of course I can!” I said, already halfway to the kitchen.
I was dragging a chair over to the refrigerator because there was no way I could really reach the freezer and I heard my mom dialing the phone in the bedroom. It was one of those rotary dealies – do you even know what a rotary phone is?”
“Yeah…I…do…” I stammered.
She smiled at me.
“Anyway, I can hear her speaking in Spanish. My mom’s from the Dominican Republic, so I can’t understand a word, but I know she’s talking to my Uncle Junior. With everyone else, including me, she likes to practice her English because that’s what real Americans speak. Her voice was unsteady and I know that she’s still shaking.”
A couple of days later, my uncle comes over with my cousin Freddie and these two guys who I’ve never seen before. I’m a little kid, so they look like men to me, but they were probably 17 or 18 and Freddie was 20. They’re standing there in white jumpsuits, like the Super Mario Brothers outfits. They’ve got a giant roll of plastic leaned up against the wall and my mom had piled every towel and comforter that we own, in a heap in the middle of the floor. She and Uncle Junior were talking in the hallway when they noticed me watching them. He picked me up and swung me around like an airplane. I was immediately giggling in his arms.
“Put her down, Junior,” my mother yelled.
“Yeseñia, go to my room and close the door. You finish up your math homework. Do not come out of there, you hear me?”
Jesse stops and finishes the last swallows of her daiquiri before signaling to the waiter to bring her another. Her fourth. And it wasn’t yet 11 in the morning.
“Did you know that was my real name? Yeseñia Maria Michaels.”
I did.
“Yeah, it was on –“
“Oh, right. All the tax forms. Right.”
She seems disappointed.
“So anyway, she sends me to her room. My cousin winks at me as I grab my books and I know something is up. I go into her room, open up my math text and my notebook and leave them in the middle of the floor so I could get to them in a hurry if my mom comes in, but I glue my fucking eye to the keyhole in the door and just stare at the ten legs in the hallway.
I hear the bell buzz and my mom answers the door.
‘Who is it?’
I can’t hear the answer, but my mom says ‘just a minute’ and opens the door. She’s using her “work voice” but I can hear the anger just below the surface…like when she catches me reading in the dark when I’m supposed to be asleep and gives me the speech about how expensive glasses are.
I hear Mr. Hall say ‘good evening’ a couple of times and then he asks “Where’s Jesse?” And then he says “Fuck.”
I crack the door open a little and see Mr. Hall on the floor. Uncle Junior and Freddie are on top of him raining blows on his face and chest. The other two guys are standing at the side. After a while, Mr. Hall stopped fighting. Freddie and Junior stood up and my mother spit in Mr. Hall’s face. He groaned and tried to turn his head away from her. The other two guys picked him up and carried him toward my room. I closed the door quickly and resumed my post at the keyhole. I could see straight into my room. They put Mr. Hall on my bed. Exactly where he would lay when he was babysitting me alone. He was still groaning. My mother followed them into my room. She was calling him a sick fuck over and over again. My uncle told her to calm down. That he would handle it. I cracked the door open again, certain that no one was coming to check on me or my math homework any time soon. I saw my mother push Junior out of the way. She raised her arm and a flash of silver disappeared into Mr. Hall’s belly. He screamed. And in an instant they were all on him, cutting and stabbing. He was screaming and yelling for help, until the screams suddenly stopped. They were replaced by a raspy gurgling and then silence. I didn’t see who cut his throat.
One of the teens turned and headed toward me, so I shut the door again. He came back carrying an armful of towels and blankets. The other teen followed suit. Freddie walked by with the plastic roll. They worked in silence for the next few hours. I forgot about pretending to do my addition or to keep the pencil in my right hand. I knelt at the door frozen with my eye pressed against the keyhole.
My uncle and the two guys took the body out of the room. It was wrapped in a mash of linens and plastic. My mom and cousin stayed behind to wash the walls. They threw the soiled cloths into a big garbage bag. When the teens came back, they removed each piece of furniture from my room one at a time. The mattress, the box spring, the dresser and my bookcase. It took hours, but I didn’t move until I saw my mother headed for her bedroom door. The men had left and she had just finished locking the front door.
I slid across the floor until I was sitting in front of my open math book.
“Tomorrow you’re getting the pink canopy bed that you wanted, baby. It’s an early birthday present,” she said hugging me, “Would you like that?”
I nodded silently.
She went into the bathroom to shower. I stayed in the middle of the floor. When she came back, she took me to the bathroom, washed my face, changed my clothes and watched me brush my teeth.
‘Come on, you’re sleeping in my room tonight.’ She kissed my cheek and we walked back to her room. She got into bed and I climbed in beside her. My mother fell asleep almost immediately, but I still waited. I waited a full hour before slipping out of bed and walking to my room.
The door creaked when I opened it, so I waited a little bit to see if it woke my mother. It didn’t. I pushed a little harder and squeezed inside.
It was dark. My eyes adjusted fairly quickly, I had always been a bit of a night owl and self preservation meant I had to learn to see in the dark. The walls of my room were painted, I couldn’t tell what color just then – but the next morning I could see if was a deep shade of pink, with white trim. The floors had been washed and polished. The smell of paint and polyutherine made me dizzy. I sat down in the middle of the floor and stretched out. There, in the left corner of the ceiling was dark patch. It looked like a half moon, but the edges were too jagged for it to have been deliberately painted there. I made sure the door was closed and pulled the shade back. The moonlight confirmed that it was blood.
The next day my uncle and Freddie came back with the powder pink canopy bed I had coveted ever since my best friend Isla got one for her fifth birthday. I got a new dresser, a new armoire, a new mirror and a strawberry shortcake poster for my wall. But that first night, and every night I slept in that room after, it was the blood stain that I saw every night before I went to sleep. It was how I knew I was loved.”
Jesse emptied her glass and sat up in the chair. She was finished.
I had a million questions and I knew I had gotten all I was going to get from the silence trick.
“What about Mr. Hall?”
“What?” She seemed startled by the question, like she’d forgotten I was there.
“Mr. Hall…the super?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s still dead.”
“Yes, but…umm…” I scrambled for the right words, “was there an investigation or anything?”
She smiled broadly and then laughed. “People disappear all the fucking time in the ghetto, kid. Super doesn’t show up to work for a few weeks, landlord puts his shit in the street and hires a new one. That’d be Miss Catalina. She was pretty nice. Moved in with her retarded son about a month later. She actually ran the building for a long time – maybe fifteen years until she died…cancer, I think. Life isn’t worth very much where grew up. I think that’s why I eventually left the East Coast. All the navel gazing by the New York intellectuals I went to school and worked with drove me nuts. Everybody whining about why they weren’t happy and how they needed to find a purpose and while we’re at it, what’s the meaning of life? It’s like I just wanted to scream: Survival, you dillholes, it’s about survival. And if someone else’s survival gets in the way of your survival, you cut their fucking throats.”
“God, give me a Vegas poker table any day of the week over all that bullshit.”
She was standing now, stretching in her black onepiece.
She stepped toward the pool and I stopped recording. She turned and gave me a look.
“Look, Jamie, all that…it’s off the record, just between us…as friends. I don’t need my mom dealing with all that, you know. Well, you can use that stuff I said about survival, that’s good shit.”
She headed for the pool and signaled the waiter for another drink.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.