In the Groove of a Scratched Record

He told us exactly what to look for, I mean, EXACTLY and then he did it.

We all smiled and applauded, but, truth is, nobody saw it.

There was nothing to see.

I mean NOTHING.

One minute, the world was one way and, the next, it was a whole different way:  the guy was that good.

Fifty years he's making a life with those hands and so you think he's gotta be good, but you also think, after that much time, there's gotta be some slippage, but no.  I mean, if he's lost a step or two in that time and we still can't see shit he must have been un-fucking-believable back in the day.

All the time in this business you run across people drunk on their own Kool-Aid.  They make a bit of a name doing whatever it is that is their thing and they stop doing the work and start talking.  They turn into librarians. Down goes the membership and up goes the shingle.

Funny how so many went into the Invisible Business looking for the spotlight.

I'm watching this guy working the tools of his trade and I'm thinking about the professionals I met along the way.  I am trying to think of the ones I knew that made their date with the sheet cake and I am seeing the faces of each of those that did not.

There was a period of time , back when we were working The Curtain, when there was a series of stories about how so-and-so had discovered another Japanese soldier on some out-of-the-way Pacific island who had been cut off and did not know the war was over.  

Can you imagine...?

It'd be like living your whole life in the groove of a scratched record:  the same musical phrase played over and over....  

That's your whole world....

Operators--real operators, not those waiting for a call from their publishers--would be fine with it.  You go in, you do your job and then you disappear; you don't wait around to be saluted, or to get a fucking sticker.  

Do the thing, disappear.

Soldiers have to be relieved; soldiers have to stand at attention and march in a line.  Operators can do neither unless they are playing a part, the part of a soldier.

I remember reading one of those stories about a Japanese soldier turning up on some island.  At the time, I was stuck on another one of those Albanian taxis with only all the God-damned gear that everybody else was too good to be seen with.  In the head I find this old copy of Look magazine that is being "re-purposed" one page at a time.  I was just about to tear off a sheet of my own when I saw the eyes of the "rescued" soldier.  The brought him back to the world, but you could see it in his eyes, the circuits were blown.  

We'd met guys like that.

Out in the field, at that time, you would still run across the True Believers for whom the world stopped when the Chancellery fell, or the wall went up.  There was nothing left to say, nothing new to learn.  Everything either fit, or it did not; you were either in, or you were out. There was nothing left for them but disappointment.

You don't send a soldier to do an operator's job.

When it does happens that current events get out in front of an operation--happened all the time back in my day--you fade into the background, or you become part of the landscape.  

After the Wall--those of us that were still around--we heard whispers about colleagues with second lives as loyal Party members.  We also heard about those that couldn't and took the pill.  When you're an operator, you find a way to operate; and when you can't, you disappear.

They took a break and re-set the room for some dice. 

As good as the guy was with the cards--a real mechanic--he was a whole different level with the dice.  Reminded me of watching Rollin get ready to take down a gambler.  

The guy told us how he was never the shooter, he would just position himself on the rail and "help."  He would pass the bones back up the table to the shooter and ring in the shavers and ring out the coolers.  

This one thing was the whole thing: a simple, fluid, innocent-looking move that passed right under your nose.  It passed.

When you knew what to look for, it still passed.

He did it with two different colors of dice and even after you saw the red dice go in and the white dice come out, I know there were still people in that room who would swear that he hadn't done a thing.

You gotta respect the skill.

The discipline that it took to get the touch and to run the tables on his terms right up until the last game had been played:  that's a real operator.

He was taking a well-earned victory lap and talking about a period when he could make a living, a period that is now long-gone.  He would show a move and tell a story about a time and a place and a person and some money and you could see he got a kick out of it:  not from his face so much, but the eyes.  They were lit a little differently when he was telling his war stories.

He said he was telling his stories for his grandchildren.  He wanted them to know the man their parents had never met.

I understood that; that was a move I could see.