He had no “home”-maybe. He wasn’t one to especially want a “home” like other people. Near as he could figure, “home” was a weight dragging at your ankle. Unless “home” could be something he could take with him anywhere he went, like his car.

Rebecca was struck by Tignor’s words. She knew no one who had ever articulated such thoughts. There was a precision here of thinking, though Tignor’s actual words were commonplace, that thrilled her. Like Herschel, he was. A crude expression yet something subtle beneath, and unexpected. For wasn’t “home” a trap, really? Confinement, a prison. A dank airless cave. You crawled into your cave, to die. What would a man like Niles Tignor want with a mere home?

Rebecca said eagerly, “I don’t have one, either. A ”home.“ Just someplace I keep things. I live on Ferry Street with my friends but it isn’t my home. I could sleep out anywhere-by the canal, or in a car.”

Tignor laughed, and stared at her, and drank. Rebecca was drinking beer now, from a glass someone had set before her.

It was past nine o’clock: Tignor ordered food for them.

Roast beef on kimmelwick bread, a specialty of the Tap Room. French fries, dill pickles. Foaming glasses of Black Horse draft ale. Rebecca would not have thought she could eat, in Niles Tignor’s presence, yet she was surprisingly hungry. Tignor devoured not one but two of the enormous roast beef sandwiches, washed down with ale. His big teeth flashed, he was utterly happy.

“Gin rummy, girls. Know it?”

Rebecca opened her heavy-lidded eyes. Suddenly there was Tignor shuffling cards.

Out of nowhere, a shiny, new-looking deck of playing cards! With remarkable skill Tignor shuffled, caused cards to flash in the air in a kind of waterfall, fascinating to observe. Rebecca had never seen anything like Tignor’s skill with cards. And such big, ungainly hands! “Cut, babe.” He’d slapped down the deck, Rebecca cut it, and Tignor snatched up the deck again and continued to shuffle, grinning at his audience. Like glittering blades he dealt cards to Colleen, to Rebecca, to himself, to Colleen, to Rebecca, to himself…When had it been decided that they would play cards? Rebecca recalled the gin rummy games she’d played at the Greb house, and wondered if Leora had taught them correctly.

Tignor announced this game would be Gypsy-gin-rummy, a variation of the other.

Gypsy-gin-rummy? Neither Colleen nor Rebecca had heard of it.

Tignor removed his jacket and flung it across the back of the booth. His white cotton shirt was of good quality but had become damp and rumpled. His face too was damp, a rivulet of sweat at his temple. The strange steely hair looked like a cap of wires. His eyes were pale, as if luminescent against his ruddy face. A deep-sea predator’s eyes, Rebecca thought. For a man of his type Tignor had surprisingly clean fingernails, close cut, though thick and somewhat discolored. He wore a wristwatch with a black leather band, not Baumgarten’s watch. And a ring on his right hand, a strange figure like a lion, with a human face, in bas-relief, in gold. “Pick up your cards, Rebecca. See what you have.”

She picked up her cards, eager but fumbling. Tried to recall what the point of the game was. You counted cards in a sequence, of the same suit; or in a group, of identical value. There were two piles of cards on the table, the discard and the stock and you were expected to do something with these. The object was to accumulate points and go gin.

Colleen was disappointed with her cards. She laughed but bit her lower lip, pouting.

Rebecca stared at the shining cards in her hand. The queen of spades? Ten of spades? Jack, ace…?

Her fingers trembled slightly. The smoldering smoke of the birch logs distracted her. She had a vision of birch trees, beautifully white birches marked with striations in black, bent to the ground, broken-backed to the ground…She had no need to draw, or to discard. She played out the hand. She was too naive a cardplayer to question the odds of such a hand.

Tignor laughed, and congratulated her. He was keeping score with a stub of a pencil, on a cocktail napkin.

The game continued. Tignor dealt. The girls insisted, he must be the dealer for they loved to watch him shuffle the cards. Though Colleen complained, “Rebecca has all the luck. Shit!” A pretty frowning girl with a fleshy deep-pink mouth, large breasts firmly erect in a black knit jersey top, glittery hoop earrings. Rebecca sensed how desperate Colleen was to snag Tignor’s eye, to engage his interest that kept drifting onto Rebecca. “D’you need extra cards, girls? It’s Gypsy-rummy. Ask me, I’ll hit you.”

They laughed. They had no idea what Tignor was talking about.

Rebecca had been noticing how amid the busyness and frantic hilarity of the Tap Room, Tignor seemed to hold himself apart. If he was aware of others glancing in their direction from time to time, men who might have imagined themselves friends of his, or friendly acquaintances, hoping to be invited to join Tignor in his booth, he gave no sign. For he was not like the other men: he was so supremely self-possessed. He was not quite laughing at Colleen and Rebecca, these credulous girls who picked up the cards he dealt them, like children.

“Oh, look at my hand…”

“Oh, look…!”

Rebecca laughed, she had such beautiful shining cards king queen jack of clubs…She’d given up counting their value, she would trust to Tignor to keep score.

Tignor hunched over his own cards, and sucked at his mouth in dissatisfaction, or a pretense of dissatisfaction, saying, suddenly, “Your race, Rebecca. You are wanderers.”

“Race? What race?”

“The race to which you were born.”

This was so abrupt, Rebecca had no idea what they were talking about. Her eyelids, that were heavy, and stinging from the smoke, now lifted in antagonism. “I’m the same race as you. The same damn race as anybody.”

She was furious with Niles Tignor, suddenly. She felt a savage dislike of him in her soul, in that instant. He had tricked her into trusting him. All that evening he’d been leaning forward on his elbows watching her, bemused. She would have liked to claw his big-boned face that was so smug.

Yet Tignor frowned, his question seemed sincere: “What race is that, Rebecca?”

“The human race.”

These words were so fiercely uttered, both Tignor and Colleen burst into laughter. And Rebecca laughed, seeing this was meant to be playful-was it? She liked it that she could make Niles Tignor laugh. She had a gift for beguiling men, if she wished to. Catching their eyes, making them want her. The outside of her, that they could see. Since Tignor had greeted her she’d been intensely aware of him, the sexual heat that exuded from him. For of course Tignor wanted sex with her: he wanted sex from her. God damn if she would go upstairs with him to his hotel room, or out into his car for a nightime drive along the river…She felt the thrill of her will in opposition to his. She felt almost faint, exulting in her opposition.

Tignor was dealing. More flashing cards. Tignor’s fingers, the sphinxring on his right hand, snaky rivulet of sweat running down his forehead, and those big horsey teeth grinning at her. “Don’t need to be hit, eh? So show us your cards, girl.”

Rebecca spread her cards on the sticky tabletop: king, queen, jack, ten, seven, ace…all diamonds.

Unexpectedly then Rebecca began to cry. Tears spilled down her warm cheeks, stinging as acid.