Lead Story

A Host of Troubles.

If a tree falls in the forest on top of Hank would anyone care? That’s what I asked Edict as we walked to my car in the industrial dark of Long Island City after an interminably long night of poker last night. “Someone’s going to kill that guy one day.” We left Hank at Lymie’s stoop, unfortunate witnesses to the morbid crescendo of his temper.

Hank was all hot about Lymie and his hosting of the game—which admittedly deserved a bit of derision—I think he lost money as well. As I said, Lymie hosted last night after over 3 months of excuses, and though we all expected a certain amount of disappointment, (Lymie did serve us Dominoes Pizza at his inaugural night of hosting:) he plumbed new depths of discontent with his latest gastronomic foray. Pizza again. It was every bit as bad as Dominoes only it took an hour and a half and cost twice as much.

We all kibitzed about the food a bit, but Hank took it personally.

Poor Lymie. Although a true gentleman in nearly all aspects, he just can’t seem to get the whole hosting thing down. In a private moment in his kitchen, the game blaring in the next room, Lymie, with bowed head, confessed that he was having a rough time hosting. He had just flown in from London, work had been rough, he knew he fucked up the food again, and Hank was on a “full tilt boogie.” I gave him a sympathetic patting on the back as he turned to his countertop abundantly stocked with top shelf booze, mixers, and limes, but his mottled dour reflection in the glossy black tile told the story of another host defeated by the mob.

We re-entered Lymie’s tastefully decorated “dining alcove” to find Chowhound using his industrial-mod red plastic folding chair like a jungle-gym and discussing the finer points of prison rape with his brother Hank, and Koneo. “I’d shave my head—make myself look mean so no one would mess with me,” Chowhound blurted. “All that’s going to do is give them one less thing to grip when they’ve bent you over.”

“Down by the ri-ver…I shot my la-dy….........Dead.”

Neil Young’s greatest hits album, Decade, played an ominous soundtrack to the evening. Players nodded and strummed through awkward rhythms and dark disheveled solos. Joey Ramone had died the day before and literally everybody had a story about him. A Joey Ramone encounter was like a Boy-Scout badge to whole generation of manhattanites.

Hank just couldn’t drop the whole Lymie situation and desperately sought out sympathetic ears to complain to. “He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about this game. He has no class. You call this hosting.” Lymie, as if on cue, asked for $7 for dinner. Hank, reddened, folded his hand and walked away from the table bitching. “$7 for 2 slices of shitty pizza,” I asked thumbing his first edition paperback version of Nabokov's Ada. “And salad…,” Lymie added half embarrassed referring to the plate of 4 olives buried under a handful of undressed iceberg lettuce. From the corner of my eye I saw Hank walk past Lymie’s French-blue frisée upholstered sofa to a lone antique rocking chair. I saw him sit down hard, dropping into the chair. We all heard the crack. “That’s my granddaddies rocker you asshole!” Lymie is southern. “So what...relax, I didn’t do it on purpose”, Hank rattled from the unbroken but considerably shaky rocker. No one believed him. He ran his hands along the rails to assess the damage. “Feels pretty bad when people come over your house and break things, huh Lymie” said Ken referring to Lymie’s un-apologized breaking of a small radio at his house. Lymie was very close to snapping.

“OK, last deal” said Lymie dealing Omaha to the blinking players. “First you charge us 7 bucks for pizza then you throw us out at 11:30?” challenged Dan. Overpowering our host, we forced another round of play. Hank continued to ride Lymie trying to gain consensus from the other players. Unsatisfied, he began literally to quake with hostility. With Lymie and Hank seemingly on a collision course, I discretely pivoted in my seat ready for a quick exit. “OK, I wanna deal Indianhead,” said Hank. Indianhead: a poker game designed for fighting. This would be it, I thought.

But the game burnt cold like a beat bottle rocket. We all stood around an extra second but there was no launch. No report.

The players gathered their coats and paraphernalia and left in congealed groups. Hank was in mine along with Edict and Koneo. The depressingly familiar cold air hit my face as I stepped outside. Hank was still jawing about Lymie, getting angrier as he rehashed the argument to himself, like he was looking for that second technical. Putting on my coat on the stoop in front of Lymie’s brownstone apartment, I witnessed a 41 year-old man cartoonishly dealing with more rage than he could rightly handle. It was also more rage than he should have had, but that was beside the point. Still muttering and grinding he said finally, “You don’t know…I could just snap….like this.” And looking around, yellow eyed, for something, anything, he shoved me. My hands still searching for my coat-sleeve, I collapsed into the stoop. Getting up, my hands finally emerged from my sleeves as fists. “Go the fuck home,” I said. He was already walking away, down the block, muttering and maniacally giggling to himself.

The drive home was distracted by thoughts of vengeance and violence and despite the vivid gore I could not help but notice that the path that took me there was well worn.