The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [180]
“Where are you taking me?” she said.
“This is kind of a Moses deal,” Leonard said. “This is kind of a Red Sea deal.”
They walked far out in the muck, their boots sinking. The smell was strong, fishy, clammy, half rotten: the smell of the primordial ooze. They bent their faces close to the seabed, digging and sliding around. When Madeleine looked back at the beach, she was frightened to see how far out they were. In less than a half hour they’d filled the bushel.
“Since when do you know about digging for oysters?” Madeleine asked.
“I used to do this in Oregon,” Leonard said. “Excellent oyster country where I come from.”
“I thought all you did growing up was smoke pot and sit in your bedroom.”
“I got out into nature once or twice.”
After they’d lugged the now-heavy bushel back to shore, Leonard declared his intention of throwing an oyster-eating party. He knocked on people’s doors, inviting them over, and soon he was at the kitchen sink, cleaning and shucking oysters, as the apartment filled up. It didn’t matter if he made a mess; the rough floorboards of the barn had seen worse. All night, plates of oysters flowed from the kitchen. People slurped the jiggling, opalescent blobs straight from the shells, drinking beer. Around midnight, when the party began to thin, Leonard started talking about this Indian casino at Sagamore Beach. Did anybody feel like gambling? Playing a little blackjack? It wasn’t that late yet. It was Friday night! A group of people piled into Madeleine’s Saab, the girls sitting on the guys’ laps. While Madeleine drove out Highway 6, Leonard rolled a joint on the door of the glove box and explained the intricacies of counting cards. “The dealers at a place like this’ll probably only use one deck. It’s easy.” The two guys, being Poindexters, got caught up in the mathematical details. By the time they arrived at the casino, they were fired up to give it a try, and headed off to different tables.
Madeleine had never been to a casino before. She was slightly horrified by the clientele, liver-spotted white men in baseball caps and hefty women, in track suits, parked in front of slot machines. Not a Native American in sight. Madeleine followed the other two bedfellows into the bar, where at least the drinks were cheap. Around three o’clock, the two guys came back, both telling the same story. They’d been up a few hundred dollars when the dealer changed decks, messing up their count, and they lost it all. Leonard appeared sometime after that, looking equally glum, before smiling and pulling fifteen hundred dollars out of his pocket.
He claimed he could have won more if the dealer hadn’t got suspicious. The dealer called the pit boss over, who watched Leonard win a few more times before suggesting that he might want to quit while he was ahead. Leonard took the hint, but he wasn’t done for the night. Out in the parking lot, he had a new idea. “It’s too late to drive back to Pilgrim Lake now. We’re too wasted. Come on, we’ve got the whole weekend!” The next thing Madeleine knew, they were checking into a hotel in Boston. Leonard bought each couple a double room with his winnings. The next afternoon, they reconvened in the hotel bar, and the party continued. They went to dinner in Back Bay and bar-hopping afterward. Leonard kept peeling bills from his diminishing wad, giving tips, buying food and drinks.
When Madeleine asked if he knew what he was doing, Leonard said, “This is play money. How many times are we going to be able to do something like this in our lives? I say, ‘Go for it.’”
The weekend was already becoming legendary. The guys kept chanting, “Leonard! Leonard!” and slapping each other’s hands. The hotel rooms had Jacuzzis, minibars, twenty-four-hour room service, and really big beds. By