The first time we played Danish after Sloop disappeared, Maggie O’Neill had a fever that nearly killed her. She put down a Queen and a seven and that meant it wasn’t going to be her night. I had a King and if I placed it upside down, I’d have taken a clean twenty dollar bill off Kate Ebbott. Something told me to wait, and Kate won the hand. Aisling sat out as she always did. Kate told Maggie to go home if she wasn’t feeling well, but at home, the police were outside Maggie’s home putting pieces together and she didn’t want to be there when the puzzle was complete. Danish is a good distraction. There’s no better game than the games you make up with friends that nobody else knows how to play. Sloop tried to learn the rules, and nobody’s ever going to see him again. I got a Jack on the next round. Nothing beats a Jack. Not even two Jacks. You have to get just one. Just one and you can win the whole game.
Sloop and I had been going steady for about a year when I found out he and Aisling were meeting up on the side. Careful not to spook him, I let it be known that I didn’t particularly care which houses he was stopping at on his way home from work as long as mine was the last one. I knew there was a shortage of men on the island. Far be it for me to prevent someone I’d known for my whole life from enjoying a little male attention. I don’t know if Sloop ever told Aisling about our conversation. I’m sure it took some of the fun out of it once there was nothing forbidden to the assignations. I won’t lie and say I didn’t get a small chuckle out of that thought. I won’t lie about that, but I might lie about other things.
Now, when I found out Sloop was stopping at Kate’s house I got a bit ornery. Kate is married and has been since her shotgun wedding in high school. She’d have no need to entertain someone else’s man even if Dale Ebbott did work nights. One night before Danish, I told Kate in no uncertain terms that she was to remove herself from my boyfriend’s dance card. Words were hard, and Maggie had to step in between the two of us. She wasn’t sleeping with Sloop, but that’s only because she didn’t like men all that much. Oh sure, she had a husband of her own, but he much preferred the men he went on fishing trips with to his wife, and Maggie was always having Sister Martha over for “Bible study.” Maggie made it clear that night that no man was going to break up the Danish Circle. None of us had much to look forward to, what with the town emptying out more and more with each passing year and our formerly attractive physiques melting into our ankles. She was not going to have us break apart over something as pedestrian as a man.
The following month, Sister Martha got transferred to another convent, and Sloop started stopping at Maggie’s house on his lunch break. I guess no matter how you feel about men, they’re still better than nothing if your house is cold and your rooms are quiet.
Maggie wasn’t the first one to notice that Sloop was missing. By then, she and Aisling had gotten friendly with each other, and truthfully, I don’t think either one of them was all that interested in my lover anymore. Kate was the one who called me, begrudgingly, and asked if I’d heard from him, because she’d loaned him fifty dollars for some unknown reason and then he skipped stopping by her place two days in a row. I had no idea what he needed the money for, but I knew why he’d taken a break from her. Kate’s husband had found out what was going on, and he showed up at the house telling me that when Sloop showed up, he was going to put him through a concrete wall. I suggested that he think in terms of eye-for-an-eye instead, and when he gazed at me quizzically, I remembered that Dale Ebbott is a profoundly dumb man, and I said “Rather than Sloop through a concrete wall, how about his girl through a mattress?”
By the time Dale put two and two together, I was already leading him up the stairs. I knew a few minutes under his sweat and cigarette breath would be worth it to avoid some violence that might put a dent in my walls or break my screen door. I don’t mind seeing my men banged up, but I’ll be damned if somebody busts up my house just because they found a strange pair of boots under their bed. I thought maybe Sloop was just laying low, but he still hadn’t turned up by the time I was playing a ten and a three against the other girls yelling out “Sejr!”
When Sloop’s boss reported him missing, the police showed up and asked me why I didn’t seem upset. I said that Sloop wasn’t good for much, but he did cover the electric and sometimes he’d shoot me a buck or two for the Circle. They asked me if I minded that he was soaking half the sheets in town, and I told them I only need my sheets soaked once a week. Anymore than that, and it just means extra laundry. The two male officers sitting in front of me were waiting for a jealous, vengeful woman to show up. The trouble is, you can’t be jealous of somebody taking something you only half-want. If I lived somewhere more metropolitan like Albany or Rochester, I’d have my pick of men and then maybe there’d be one I’d want all to myself, but Sloop wasn’t the be-all-end-all. He did have a nice set of arms on him though. I bet that’s what Kate liked most about him.
Small town investigators aren’t normally known for solving disappearances, but they were looking for a guy so I thought maybe they’d put a little extra effort in. They went around the whole town twice and then zeroed in on the Circle. I thought they’d wind up settling on me, but for some reason, they kept coming back to Maggie. I think it’s because she’d romped once or twice with the Chief of Police’s wife, but it’s hard to say. I can feel her leg shaking under the table, but that might be the fever. It could also be that she’s holding onto a Jack and only one.
Remember, you only need one.