Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [86]
Then I realized. They’d filched my wallet, so they probably knew where I lived. I needed to call Karen, to warn her. But I didn’t have a working phone. The clock showed ten after 3:00. The traffic report said that there was an accident at the 101 interchange. I wasn’t moving.
Even on an ordinary day, an overturned tractor-trailer can destroy your plans in L.A. I don’t know why I expected anything different; my meeting was never going to happen. So I formulated a plan: I’d drive to my agent’s office, so he could fire me. But I’d at least tell him the story so he could call Karen and warn her not to come home, or hire a bodyguard, or something.
Oh, man.
Was I fucked or what?
Still, I did have $1,000 in my pocket, and that was enough. I couldn’t go back to Commerce for a while, and maybe never. Who knew how often the Russian haunted those well-trod carpets? My frequent-player’s card, however, was good to go in Gardena. I’d check in there, get a room for sixty-nine dollars a night, and easily win that back at the tables, no problem. Even if I hit a bad streak, I could probably survive for a month with what I had left in my checking account. And if I ran into a really good table one night, I might even be able to win Karen back with a wad of bills and a tale of pure success. Greater women, I figured, have been seduced by less. It wasn’t the best situation in the world. But at least I had the skills to win big.
So I turned my car around at the next exit. I drove off in anticipation of a big night, and of hundreds of nights to come. Because there was nothing like a night spent playing poker: It was the great equalizer, the great humanizer, and the great eraser of differences. Except when it wasn’t. But the hope remained for every numbers nerd, every bored housewife, every laid-off trucker, every hack screenwriter, and all the other poor saps out there who woke up one morning only thinking about cards and subsequently went about overturning their lives. Like everyone else in the world, it seemed, I floated along on a current of odds. Still, I figured that a little self-understanding would make me a dangerous man at the tables. And so I drove on, along the endless highways, thinking only of flopping trips, ace high on the river.
FISH
BY LIENNA SILVER
Fairfax District
Ivan Denisovich hated fish, but was obliged to buy several kilos of the rock-frozen cod. The loud and obnoxious saleswoman wrapped it in a piece of hard brown paper, her swollen red fingers with chipped nail polish barely bending from the moisture and cold. He obediently stuffed the package into the green net shopping bag, and struggled through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, almost losing his scarf to the pressing comrades.
Outside, he meticulously rebuttoned his coat and patted the treasured fish in the bag with his lined leather gloves. He knew Sofia Arkadievna would be happy with his purchase. A fat dvornik, an old woman in a padded cotton coat and white apron, was cleaning the sidewalk, her giant spade rhythmically scraping against the compressed snow. His breath fogged around him as he walked home through the narrow Arbat streets, listening to the crisp crunch under his feet. This sound was like balm to his wounds, mitigating the repulsive inevitability of having to eat and, even worse, smell the fish for a week.
“Ivan … Ivan … wake up!” He felt his wife’s elbow poke his ribs. “Come on. Turn that damn box off. Let’s go to bed.”
Ivan Denisovich opened his eyes and stared at the fan that was slowly spinning above his head. Where was he? Boje moy! Good God! The Russian snow and the fish melted away, and instead he was sitting