The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [24]
Bobby said, “I might even have to skip mass this Sunday.”
9
THURSDAY, JULY 15
HER CHIPS WERE ARRANGED by color and ordered in a tight spiral of towers, from the smaller stacks of blacks and purples winding around to the taller columns of reds and greens and blues. A short glass at Canada Gold’s elbow, only as high as it was round, was a third filled with Tanqueray and about an eighth with tonic. The only other player at the table was a round woman named Fran with a Manhattan and a cigarette and a god-awful orange blouse with a flower print. By Wayne Jennings’s count, Fran had just lost her seventh hand in a row.
From the pit, Jennings watched Nada push a black chip into the betting circle with the tip of a long unpainted nail. The house responded with a pair of cards. Three and a deuce. Hit. Hit. Stay. Manhattan Fran busted. The dealer busted. Another chip added to Nada’s black pile. Another one hundred dollars pushed out to bet.
“If you hadn’t taken that second hit,” Fran muttered.
“If you hadn’t taken that third drink,” Nada said.
Three busts later, Manhattan Fran retreated to an empty chair at an adjacent table and Nada had the felt to herself. The dealer, a stoic and handsome young fellow named Jimmy, wore a black shirt with a white silhouette of the Colossus of Rhodes on the left breast. Wayne wore an identical shirt, three sizes larger, under his black blazer and ID lanyard. Jimmy had dealt Nada on many evenings in the past and now began sliding cards from the shoe at treble speed—phhht, phhht, phhht. Playing three hands at a time, Nada made instantaneous decisions—hit, stay, split, double down—indicating each with abbreviated (and barely differentiated) hand gestures.
There had been a lull on the floor for a day or so while the nation’s airlines had been grounded and tourists stuck in Vegas for an extra forty-eight hours had mostly been tapped out of cash, but the hotel was almost back to capacity again. A small crowd of players waiting for a chair had gathered at a short distance behind Nada, but none dared interrupt the frantic pace of the deal by taking a seat at the table. “It’s like watching a computer play,” one said. Even in a crowded casino, Nada Gold had managed to get what she wanted most: time alone.
I almost hate to break things up, Wayne thought.
Before leaving the pit, he let her play another ten minutes—maybe thirty hands, of which Nada collected on better than half. Watching her shoulders stiffen as he approached from behind, he wondered what detail had tipped her to his proximity. His measured footfalls on the thin carpet? The smell of his cologne? The sound of his inseams rubbing together? She didn’t look up, nor did she interrupt the barely audible and tuneful humming that often accompanied her play.
“Hey, Nada.” He sat next to her, his big scarred knees almost touching her chair.
“Hey, Wayne,” she said without looking. “Are you cutting me off already? That would really harsh my Zen.”
“Did I say that?”
“Do you ever come by just to say hello?”
“Would you like me to?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t want to be a distraction.”
“I’m undistractable, lover,” she said.
Wayne swallowed. Four months ago, nearly a year after he first spotted her on a security camera, after beers and martinis at one of Club Nikita’s tiny, tall round tables, Wayne and Nada had driven in separate cars to his apartment, where she stayed the night for the first time. He hadn’t forgotten a second of it and he was damn certain Nada remembered it all, if only because he was pretty sure Canada Gold didn’t forget.
Specifically, he remembered how small she was, how light in his arms, as if she were hollow inside the tan skin and tight sinew. He handled her gently, conscious of the difference in their sizes, but from the moment they were behind the door of his apartment, her vulnerability evaporated. Her eyes drilled through his, changing focus as she examined each layer inside him. Her teeth bit into his swollen lower lip, a small drop of sweat appeared at the end of her nose, and in the places they touched