Better

“Jacks or better to open,” Steve said, like we didn’t already know. We’d all set up for poker night in our tiny kitchen, drinking and betting on our luck. It was a good night for it. The well was well stocked, we had beer in the bathtub and the back of the commode to stay cold and fresh and a bottle of whisky to share with some to spare. We were flush cuz we’d pushed our luck making another withdrawal from the beer bank below. Sam couldn’t figure out how this happened. His beer came up missing, but the alarm never went off. Simple. Steve and Charlie didn’t go through the doors, they went through the floor. We figured out one of the benefits of sharing the place above a beer bar (and eats-- boasts the greasiest food in a college town full of greedy people) was that we could pry the floorboards and drop down through the drop ceiling and pass the beer up and squirrel it away, like aluminum nuts. We didn’t touch the food, Sam never did figure it out and the place went up in flames and burned to the ground years after we’d all moved out and went our separate ways. There was some other guy there besides the five of us, playing a hand while Rob made a run for food.

It was easier to get out now when we’d had a sip or two of a beverage because we’d got ourselves some metal fire escape stairs that we looked up in the alley in place of the rotting worn down downtrodden steps that took up and threw in some dumpster. We stole the steps. They were better for drinkers, had some tread and tilted in such a way that if you were going down them, you’d fall backwards and land on your backside; going up you’d fall on your face. Either way was better than just falling, falling, and falling.

So the strangest part was when my deaf white cat Beethoven fell out of the ceiling. I lived in the attic, up a ladder, through a narrow hatch in the floor-- and he decided he’d had enough and left. Tom almost always won anyway. even got the good chair with the armrests. He taught me how to play cards, but he was still the short and I was just a minnow. I needed to work on poker face. Tom has his face just how he want it.

Johnny popped a beer, Rob came with snacks, potato chips, beer nuts. We drank til we were beyond drunk. I remember the rainbow I’d painted in the kitchen sink where its water staggered on its way down the drain spinning, its colors mixing into a dull black. Tom was winning, as usual. I finally folded, folded up the like on an old ironing board that was embedded in the wall.

I took Beethoven and climbed straight up the ladder to my side of the attic and laid down into sleep, broke and drunk. I wanted to puke but I was too messed up to go back down the ladder.

“Bang, Bang!” Who is it knocking on my hatch?

“Bonnie! I need you!” Tom’s voice far away through the hatch but right in my ear. “I can’t get up now. Can’t it wait?” Then Steve and Charlie’s voices some hours later, “Come down now!”

And I did. And there was Tom, still in his chair at the kitchen table, still wearing his poker face, but with eyes closed. Cards unshuffled, chips uncashed.

- Bonnie Kallfelz