De Niro's Game Read Free Page A

it is not a good thing that he sees us together, I said, thinking of the poker machines.
    He hardly ever comes to the casino. Not to worry.
    Maybe there is a way to get a cut of the money, I said. And it might be simple. I come and pay you the money, and you press the credit in the machine while I am playing. Does the machine keep records . . . I mean, if you have a straight flush, for instance, would it record the winning strike somewhere?
    No. I don’t think so, George said.
    We have to be sure. I will pass by on Monday. We can try it. While I am playing, inject some credit in there. A small amount, not much, just to try.
    Come by in the morning, early . . . usually there is no one there, George said.
    And maybe we should stop meeting in the open for now, I said.
    I WENT TO THE little girl’s funeral, the little girl who was on her way to Roma. Her mother was wailing. Women with veils over their hair filled the little alley. My mother went to the funeral too. They come to our funerals, we go to theirs, she whispered to me in a moral tone.
    The girl’s father flew back from Saudi Arabia, where he worked in the burning fields of sand and oil. He walked to the front, crossing his thick hands, his sunburned face in flames, his dark eyes sobbing, his feet dragging on dust and sand. The small white coffin was carried by the girl’s cousins and neighbours on the long walk to the cemetery; as the sunlight landed on the white wooden box it twinkled, the wood and the metal twinkled, everyone twinkled, even I twinkled.Men in grey suits and black ties moved slowly, past the closed stores, and sagged their heavy heads toward the floor. Tony was behind me, stuttering and telling his tale of driving, death, and hospitals. I was surrounded by familiar faces filled with grief. Behind us, the mother was fainting, hanging on to the women’s arms. She was pulled forward, slapped and sprinkled with rosewater by women who were beating their chests, chanting farewell and wedding songs, wailing, waving white handkerchiefs high in the air toward the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

3
    MONDAY MORNING, I WALKED TO GEORGE’S WORK. NO ONE was there but him. I paid; while I played, he injected credit into the poker machine. Success! I collected and left.
    I met George that evening, on the stairs of the church.
    Let’s wait and see if they notice, I told him. Maybe they have a way of finding out. It is not too big an amount. If they find out, we could pass it off as a mistake.
    I gave him half of the money, and we separated.
    On my way home, I went by Nabila’s place. There was no light on at her house. The city was dark. No TV was on, no water was cold; ice cream melted in cube-shaped fridges and the old men drank whiskies with no ice. I saw Rana, our neigh-bour, and hardly recognized her at first. She said,
Bonsoir
, and I replied,
Bonsoirayn
for you, and where are you going in the dark with a silk shawl on your shoulders?
    To the store to buy candles.
    With a face like yours, who needs candles? I said.
    Rana laughed and told me to go home and to be careful not to trip on the stairs. It is dark, she said.
    There is a moon close by, I said.
    It is still dark.
    We can light a candle, I said.
    Where? she asked. Your mother’s place or mine? And she put her hands on her curved hips. Her hair fell onto her shoulders, and her wide black eyes waited for my response.
    In Roma, I said.
    What?
    I did not answer and crossed to the other side of the street.
    SAAD, OUR NEIGHBOUR , got a visa to Sweden.
    He threw a party the night before his departure. He knocked at our door and invited me to the goodbye celebration.
    Stockholm, he said. Yeah, Stockholm, and shook his head.
    At seven that night, I showed up at his place, hungry. His mother had prepared a
mazah
. I broke the bread and dipped my fingers in small, round brown plates. The electricity was still cut off, but there were candles and a lantern lit up. Some flies had travelled over