My name is Frank. I'm a butler. I work for Patrick Conner. He's old money. Three generations old money. He's an old man too. Relatively old. 62 years. I've worked for him for the past twenty. I'm forty three myself. Seven years away from retirement. Then I won't be a butler anymore.

I didn't train to be a butler. Didn't train to be much of anything, really. I don't think anybody trains to be a butler. It just kind of happens. It's a step above being a waiter.

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I speak with a phony English accent. That's what makes me better than a waiter and earns me the big bucks. I told Mr. Conner that I was from England, and I used the upper crust English accent, not the cockney one. That's my genius. A lesser man would have gone with the cockney one.

Mr. Conner bought the trick, twenty years ago. The accent has changed a bit over those twenty years. I'm sure I've changed it entirely from what it sounded like back then. He hasn't noticed; the change was gradual. I haven't noticed either. My English accent is constant now, and I even talk with it while I am at the supermarket buying loaves of bread for Mr. Conner.

We live in Lake Forest, in Chicago. Mr. Conner lives there because he is extremely rich and can afford to buy a two million dollar house. I live there because Mr. Conner is my employer. As I mentioned before, I am his butler.

He has gotten old, and doesn't get out much. I see him more than anyone. Some times he sees no one but me during the entire day. You would think that over twenty years my relationship with Mr. Conner would have gone beyond the level of employer/employee. You might imagine that we would have become the best of friends.

But that's not the way it is. He is my employer, and I am his employee, and we are nothing else to each other but that. Except on Sundays.

Sunday is poker night. Mr. Conner has never been a religious man, so we gamble. Not with high stakes, mind you. That would make the playing field uneven. Mr. Conner could bet me out of the game on the first hand. So we play for small stakes. Dimes are the standard unit of currency, but we don't even use those, because the glint of the silver might convince us that the money wagered was meaningful.

We use pennies. Each penny represents a dime. A stack of ten pennies represents one dollar. Five such stacks equals five dollars. But we try to forget that and regard them simply as pennies.

'Don't think of them as dimes, or dollars,' Mr. Conner said, 'think of them as pennies. Simple pennies.'

Mr. Conner seemed extremely concerned to make me forget that we were playing with real money. I would have thought that he was trying to swindle me, were it not for the fact that he stood to gain nothing from it. A rich man swindling a poor man serves no purpose, they don't get enough money from it. A rich man must swindle a rich man in order to make any real profit. That or a million poor men.

But nonetheless Mr. Conner was always adamant about saying they were just pennies, simple pennies, and would tolerate no mention of them representing dimes during the game. I wondered once why he was so concerned to forget it was money why he didn't want to just play for fun anyway if he didn't want the pennies to be dimes.

'There's no such thing as fun,' he told me. 'And there's no reason to do anything without some reward. The dimes mean nothing to me, that's why I'd rather see pennies. It's the reward I'm concerned with.'

Similarly, things were only fun to Mr. Conner if he stood to lose something from poor performance.

Mr. Conner was always a little funny about our poker games. He would become an entirely different person for three hours on Sunday. He insisted that I change clothes. Normally I wear a tuxedo. Like all the butlers on television. Mr. Conner insists that I do this, and after twenty years of service he has not changed the dress code even slightly, nor did he tolerate the one occasion when I did not wear a bow tie because of a mishap with the laundry.

On Sunday, for the poker game, I am not allowed to wear my tuxedo. He insists that I wear a short-sleeved shirt, button down, with no less than three buttons undone at the top. Furthermore, I am required to wear a gaudy gold chain around my neck, with a gold crucifix on it, which he insists cannot be made of real gold, but rather a synthetic gold which turns my neck a slight shade of green if I am exposed to it for too long.

On Sundays I am required to wear shorts, which show off my pale, hairy legs. These shorts must be made of denim, they must be cut off and frayed at approximately thigh level. They must be worn exactly two inches off of my hips, so that if I were to bend over the crack of my ass would be exposed.

He also requires that I smoke a cigar. A big stinky one, which must cost no more than three dollars and forty nine cents for a pack of five. I must smoke these cigars throughout the three hour game. I must also drink beer. The beer must originate in America and can cost no more that five dollars and ninety-nine cents per six pack.

'Not a penny more,' Mr. Conner said, picking up off of the poker table a penny which was really a dime.

Also on poker nights, and this is the most bizarre thing of all, Mr. Conner and I smoke a small amount of marijuana, which Mr. Conner insists is for medical purposes.

'If it's for medical purposes, sir,' I said, 'why am I supposed to smoke it? I have no medical condition.'

'Exactly,' Mr. Conner said, and puffed heartily on one of his cigars, 'Let's keep it that way.'

In fact, I am required to obtain what is colloquially called a dime bag of pot every Sunday, which is exactly ten dollars worth of weed. Mr. Conner gives me this ten dollars in addition to the five hundred, thirty-three dollars and fifty cents which I make for a weekly pay-check.

Actually, the first time Mr. Conner asked me to buy reefer for him was one of only two job related anecdotes that I feel is worthy of telling.

Mr. Conner said, 'Frank, come here for a moment, I have a question.'

And I went into the library, where he happened to be sitting in a chair, with a quilt over his legs, a book open at his desk and a bright light shining into it illuminating one small comer of the otherwise dark room.

'What is it sir?' I asked.

'I was wondering,' Mr. Conner said, 'If perhaps you know anyone who might be in possession of some marijuana.'

This was when he was fifty-six, after I had been working for him for sixteen years, and after he had already begun to look like a very old man. Even at fifty-six he looked seventy. And now at sixty he looks as least eighty. At that rate he'll look almost two hundred by the time he dies.

'No sir,' I said, startled, thinking he was accusing me of associating with a seedy element, and imagining that he might want to start taking urine samples every month to test for drug use, as per the advice of Ronald Reagan, whom my employer was an acquaintance with, on account of a donation of no small quantity to a certain campaign fund.

'That's too bad,' Mr. Conner said. 'I could really use some.'

'Marijuana?' I asked.

'Yes,' Mr. Conner said. 'I have a medical condition.'

'What kind sir?'

'That's none of your concern. But I have it on good authority that marijuana is a cure for it. It's in this book, I have just double checked the source,' Mr. Conner said, scratching at a few gray whiskers on his protruding chin.

'Perhaps I could talk to some people,' I said.

'Yes, yes you do that. Keep in mind, of course, that this particular drug is not approved of by the government. 'Just say no' and all that, of course. It wouldn't do to have me implicated in any of this. But if what this book says is accurate..' He tapped the book as if that was all that needed to be said.

'Yes of course, sir,' I said.

A short while later I obtained some marijuana and that was added to the routine of our weekly poker games, which at that time were not yet a tradit

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