s  u  m  m  e  r

For a card game to work you need four people willing to sack each other for the duration while laughing all the time. You need good music that gets under your skin and reminds you of your youth but doesn't distract you too much from betting tricks.

Our game was spades.

Play the night and plan on staying. No one leaves the table except to change a CD, piss, or go home after all things alcoholic are gone. Ashtrays are dumped into pottery near by when they get full. Smoke overtakes the room and the five bladed fan hums away just above the cherry table. You have to have just the right glass, just the right ashtray, just the right volume coming out of the Bose, just the right chair...and just the right company. Not just anyone can stand the long game of spades without falling out, drunk or pissed or left far behind in the score. The mix must be damn near perfect or there's no use and it'll all fall apart.

Some folks play for years with the same people. We'd never played cards together in our lives. But we had everything right.

You know you don't hold shit but bet tricks anyway, coming out strong knowing your partner will carry 'cause he just told you so with the look in his eye. You laugh at the fellow reading cards to your left. You watch the other team build up sandbags until they could stop the Mississippi and then you play your hand.

You "Send the bastards up" every chance given and take a few in between.

I talk like I know cards, but I don't. I don't really even play but every time I do I enjoy the hell out of it and this is what it is like. It's more atmosphere and companionship, than a deck of fifty-two individual cards. It's four people not four suits. It's the subtle things that come out in conversation during the game. The little pieces you learn about somebody that no opportunity but cards could lend you. It's the wicked smiles that learn to say "Fuck you man that was awesome" and you just know, know what is meant.

It's the knife in the back that feels good. Dig?

Think of the sound of well worn shuffled cards. The clink of ice on glass. The gradual progression from sobriety to drunkenness. The one perspective and the sounds coming off the street outside. Cars and people passing by on Tate, windows thrown wide, our voices drifting up from the table and softly mingling with the night. Hemingway said it was a clean well lighted place where a man could find his own. What a man deserved. To me it is a card table. A well played game with other men. All the more sweet when you lay down that final hand and turn points enough to tip the balance.

It's all cleaned up in a hurry. The table folded, disguised and pushed to the wall. The cards put away and the glasses washed. The pictures put back and the clocks wound. The footsteps down the stairs as company leaves. Nothing left but the stale odor of cigarettes and the empty bottles on the black and white checker board kitchen floor. The score sheet is tossed aside and the cuts are forgotten.