Pickle's Progress by Marcia Butler

Author:Marcia Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Published: 2019-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

THE LIPSTICK BUILDING, NAMED FOR ITS TUBE shape, glistened as spears of sunlight glinted off the imperial red granite façade. Karen and Stan stepped out of a cab and she shot a glance to the top of the building. What she wouldn’t give to be up there—in the blue yonder—flying with a sharp-eyed hawk, or just a flock of dumb pigeons. Birds found freedom when a warm wind lifted them away from the dangers on the ground. The notion appealed to Karen; she wanted to escape.

The meeting had dispersed quickly after Pickle’s tantrum. Patrick expressed dismay, doubting he could work for such a brute. Karen stepped in to placate him with assurances that she would act as a buffer. Stan wandered over to the front window to focus on anything but the discomfort of the drama that had just unfolded. These men. They behaved like a couple of temperamental musth elephants she was forced to herd with a ringmaster’s whip—trunk-to-tail and tail-to-trunk.

Karen had grown up with men, lots of them; they filed into her home every weekend. The high-stakes poker games began on Friday evenings after she and her sister, Betsy, finished dinner. They ended late Sunday mornings, just in time for the weekend lineup of football games, when the men would then ease back into sobriety.

While the men bet their money around the dining room table, Karen and Betsy lounged in the adjoining small den watching TV, which was always kept at a low volume so Karen could hear when her father called on her to provide something for the men. It was important that she remain obedient—vigilant, really—a girl who, as the oldest, was ready to do her father’s bidding, all so the poker games could flow without interruption. With the curtains drawn shut, night eased into day and back again to a longer night. No one seemed to notice and that was the point.

Karen learned from the men’s banter that for some reason aces were the best, kings the next, and so on down the line. But there was something called a royal flush that she understood had great power. A flush was a feeling of blood rushing to her head or water down a toilet and in a secret way, she enjoyed the contrary associations. Still, she kept her eye on the progress of the game, and noted her father’s knee under the table. When it jiggled a bit faster, this usually meant he was “up.” If there was no movement, he was “down.” Her father’s quiet legs, like stiff, uncooked spaghetti that could snap with little effort, kept Karen particularly on guard.

It was all so beautiful and perfectly choreographed, a timeless Ashton ballet. The cards, held in the men’s chubby fingers, spread out like wings of a preening peacock. Their gold rings weren’t on the usual ring finger (and so she assumed they were all bachelors), but on the pinky, with heavy chunks of metal swallowing small stones in the center that occasionally caught the light of the dining room drop chandelier.

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