Black Widow Naked: A Card Shark's Fire Escape

There is a special sort of trouble that begins with a woman in a black leather jacket and finishes with you broke on a fire escape. The regulars at the Rusted Anchor know her by a nickname, and the words Black Widow Naked get traded around the bar whenever she takes her usual seat. Her real name is Vera, though almost nobody in that back room bothers with it. They call her the Black Widow because the men who play against her leave with lighter pockets, and a fair number of them leave grinning as though they came out ahead.

The Back Room Before Black Widow Naked

The Rusted Anchor reeks of beer slopped on the floor, damp wool and frying oil that lingers after the kitchen has gone dark. The back room is a worse proposition: one bare bulb swinging from a cord, a felt table scarred by a cigarette burn, four chairs, and a deck so frayed at the corners that it shuffles like a damp cloth. That is her office. She wears the leather zipped to her throat, dark jeans, boots with the heels worn down to the nail. Her hair is the color of wet asphalt and tucked behind one ear. She rarely speaks. She taps the deck twice with two fingers and waits, and the sound is like a clock running down.

Tonight follows the familiar pattern. She takes three hands, gives back two on purpose—a small ration of hope—then slides a stack of chips across the felt with the flat of her hand and lets a plastered dockworker believe he has trapped her. He has not. She holds a seven and a nine of different suits and plays them as if they were a royal flush. When he folds, she rakes the pot in with the back of her hand and keeps her face still. Then her eyes find me. 'You have been watching my mouth for an hour,' she says. 'Buy in or leave.' I buy in. I lose. Naturally I lose.

Black Widow Naked on the Iron Stairs

She takes me out the back and up the iron fire escape. The rain catches us on the second landing, cold and needle-fine, spilling off the rail in sheets. On the third landing she stops, puts her back to the wet brick, and draws the zipper down one tooth at a time. She does it slowly and watches my face the whole way. Beneath the jacket is a grey vest that has gone see-through at the shoulders, and beneath that only skin and a black bra with a strap mended by hand. She shrugs the leather off; it hits the grating with a slap. 'Go on, then,' she says. 'You paid for the hand. You did not pay for the rest, but I am in a mood.'

So my hands go to her ribs, then to the small of her back where the rain has already soaked through, then under the vest. She exhales hard through her nose and lifts her chin at the sky as if daring it to pour harder. Her skin is warm and damp and tastes of salt and cheap cigarettes when my mouth finds her throat. She removes the bra herself, hooks and all, and her breasts spill out heavy and pale in the neon wash from below—red on one side, blue on the other, nipples tight from the cold. There is a tattoo low on her hip, a tiny black spider no bigger than a thumbprint, and she laughs when my fingers discover it. 'Original, right?' she says. 'Nobody has ever noticed that before.'

What the Rain Revealed

She kicks off her boots one at a time, pushes the jeans down over her hips and steps free of them. Then she is standing on the fire escape with rain falling and the street below never glancing up: Black Widow naked, gooseflesh along her arms, thighs pressed together against the chill, that flat, unhurried expression still on her face as though she is holding cards. I get my belt open. She watches that too. When I lift her, she locks both legs around my waist and her heels dig into my back; the wet brick scrapes my knuckles. She takes it with her forehead pressed to mine, breathing fast and ragged, saying almost nothing except a quiet 'yeah' now and then, as if settling a bet. The rail rattles. Someone below yells up for us to get a room. She does not even turn her head.

Black Widow Naked and Still Holding Cards

Afterward she does not turn soft. She pulls her wet jeans up, wrings her hair out over the rail, and sits on the top step with her knees apart and the jacket draped over her shoulders like a blanket. Only then does she take the notes from my shirt pocket—the money I lost at the table—and count them. Twice. 'You are short,' she says. I tell her I know. 'Good,' she says. 'You can owe me.' She strikes a match on the wet brick with her thumbnail and lights a cigarette. Smoke drifts sideways in the rain. She passes it to me first. That is the nearest thing to affection she has, and I have learned to accept it.

The Count After the Smoke

Why is she called the Black Widow? Because she wins at cards, and the men she beats keep returning for more. The little spider on her hip stays covered most of the time. Does she ever lose deliberately? Yes—early in a session she surrenders a couple of hands. It feeds the mark's hope and keeps him seated long enough to lose properly. What is the rule about paying her? Cash at the table, always. Come up short and she does not raise her voice; she writes your name down, and owing her is worse than losing.