Every night he counts the bears. If we missed an hour from six to midnight. “You don’t give away my giveaways! You ruin me!” He screams, he stamps, explains it all again. “I need for advertisement bears parade the Boards, yes? Where else can anybody win this bear? You listen? I must talk human language, not shit-forsaken English?” He speaks Serbian or Hungarian or French. He slaps his hand hard, he says in English, “I can not to pay teenies to walk around with this big armful of cheap bears. They loaf away and sneak home. But when they win, they love these bears. They walk them on the boards all night. They make their boyfriends pay me ten American dollars to walk my bears for nothing. They never loaf. Fifteen years old, they are Americans already, they don’t dare to loaf to have fun. So give away my bears! We. Don’t. Make. Money. Without. We. Give. Away. The Give. Away!”

              Rose is proud of her only scam. “I can spin the wheel, watch me with your watch.” She means time her. “It turns seventy seconds. Think wheel as a clock. Each time it stops one number more than where I start.”

              “We say time me not watch. Time me. I can throw seventy seconds. Ninety seconds, a hundred. One number more than where I start wins, or two, or five. Even the smartest Marks, and nobody’s smarter than a Mark, can’t figure how to bet. Unless I want them to. Your way, you lose too many bears. You might lose a watch.”

              She brushes my arm, her soft hand’s first soft touch, she fakes a comic sob. “Don’t say it. Already I lose four watch this week. They cost three dollar each one. This is why I needed you. Next watch I lose? My husband will kill me.”

15

  

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