by Tasha Black
“What can I bring you?” she asked.
Nikki ordered for both of them.
The waitress dashed off to put their order in.
“So how do I do this?” Indiana asked.
“Most people sort out the bills and then put them in the biggest section with the larger denominations in back and the smaller bills in front,” Nikki explained, opening the wallet all the way to show him the compartment.
“Neat,” Indiana said. “It’s got a lot of hidden compartments.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“It’s an ingenious little thing,” Indiana said. He had discovered the change section, and was trying to see how to open it.
“That’s Velcro,” Nikki said. “You just pull it apart.”
“I don’t want to rip it,” Indiana said. “I just got it.”
“No, that’s how you open it,” she said. “You won’t rip it. Look.”
She took it from him, trying not to smile when he winced at the ripping sound when she pulled the pieces apart.
“Hey,” he said indignantly.
She closed the flap, then opened it again, causing the same noise.
“How did you do that?”
“One side is tiny hooks and the other is tiny loops,” she explained. “They cling to each other and then pull apart.”
“So it is okay for them to be wrenched apart?” Indiana looked skeptical.
“Yes,” Nikki said. “That’s their purpose.”
“Are they alive?”
“N-no, they’re made of nylon,” she said.
“Oh,” he looked a little disappointed. “I thought that might be their way of mating.”
Nikki stared at him in wonder.
“It’s foolish,” he said.
“No, no,” she said. “Earth is very different from Aerie. It’s natural to question things. But Velcro is not alive.”
“Then how do they reproduce?” he asked.
“How does who reproduce?”
“The wallets,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“My wallet, it has a grandson,” he said, sounding exasperated. “How did this happen if wallets can’t reproduce?”
Nikki gazed down at the embroidered phrase “For the small amount of money my grandson hasn’t spent” on his wallet, which took on new meaning when she saw it through his eyes.
She began to laugh again.
Indiana laughed too, though of course he did not know why he was laughing.
The waitress came back with their drinks.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” she said to an imaginary waiter and pointing at Nikki, who was still laughing.
She handed them their drinks and headed back to the wait station.
“Why don’t I see you laugh more often?” Indiana sounded serious.
Nikki stopped laughing. She pulled one of her curls down straight to her clavicle and let it spring back up before she could stop herself.
“Is it because you are undercover?” he asked quietly.
“I guess I just have a lot on my mind,” she said with a shrug.
“It must be hard not to be able to share what you’re doing with your friends,” he said.
His expression was sincere.
“I have a mentor in New York,” she told him. “I normally call her once a week.”
“What about your family?” he asked.
“They’re not that interested,” Nikki said, smiling and shaking her head.
“How could they not be interested in what you’re doing?”
“They just have different priorities,” she said.
“What are their priorities?” he asked.
“Well, they’re very traditional,” she explained.
He nodded, but still looked puzzled.
“I guess you don’t have much of a basis for comparison,” she laughed.
“I do not,” he concurred with a smile.
As much as she didn’t want to, she knew she was going to have to explain it a little better.
“Well, it used to be that people married when they were younger,” she explained. “Women stayed home and took care of the children and the house, and the men went to work.”
“Like on The Simpsons,” Indiana offered.
“Um, yeah,” Nikki said. “Anyway, my parents married young and my mom had me and my sisters. There were four of us.”
“Four children,” Indiana said. “That’s nice.”
“Sometimes it was nice,” Nikki said, trying not to remember the arguments and petty jealousies. “Anyway, my sisters are all married. Two of them stay home with babies. One works as an admin assistant but I’m sure when she has a baby she’ll stay home too. They take good care of those kids, volunteer in the community, and absolutely love their lives, and I can’t knock it. They’re all super happy. But it just isn’t for me. I never wanted to stay in Ohio. I wanted to see the world. And I always wanted to write.”
“And they don’t respect your decision?” Indiana sounded concerned.
“It’s not that they don’t respect my choices,” Nikki said. “It’s just that they aren’t that interested. And I think they worry about me. They think I’m lonely.”
“Are you lonely, Nikki?”
Damn.
She’d walked right into that one.
“I don’t regret my decisions,” she said carefully. “I wouldn’t be happy back in Ohio with my high school sweetheart.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he pointed out.
The waitress returned, sparing Nikki from having to answer.
“Okay, two bacon burgers with sweet potato fries,” the woman said, sliding the plates onto the table.
“Thank you,” Indiana said.
“You are very welcome,” she told him. “Have you ever had our sweet potato fries before?”
“I have never had sweet potato fries at all,” he said.
The waitress began explaining what made sweet potato fries the very best kind of fries.
Nikki watched as Indiana listened carefully and cracked the waitress up with his questions - some of which were genuine, while others were clearly intended to amuse her.
He was a good man.
He was the kind of person who would always be interested.
Keep an even head, Nikki, she told herself.
She could only hope that she would listen to her own advice half as enthusiastically as Indiana was listening to advice on proper French fry thickness.
Indiana
Indiana was feeling nervous as he approached the pavilion at twilight.
He’d had a wonderful adventure in town with Nikki and they had played poker for an hour. One glance at the leaflet that came with the cards and Indiana had memorized the rules, but he enjoyed feigning a learning curve just to see her delight when he finally caught on.
Maybe Nikki wasn’t the only one who was good at being undercover.
He felt bad hiding things from her, but Dr. Bhimani had cautioned the men to hide their gifts except from their mates.
And no matter how he might try to convince himself to the contrary, Nikki was not his mate.
At least not yet.
Indiana was way too determined to let her push him away forever. If other women’s reactions to him were any indication, he was also as sexually attractive as he was designed to be. He sorely hoped that those two characteristics would be enough to win her over in the end.
He jogged up the steps to the pavilion and the sounds of crickets and owls gave way to the laughter of old men.
The space got quiet as the players looked up and saw him.
“Hey,” a husky voice called. “You’re the kid from the restaurant, aren’t you?”
Indiana looked up to see the man who had told him he had good eyes today after spotting Mr. Travers’s ledger under the table.
“Yes, sir,” Indy said with his smoothest smile, striding up to the table. “I heard that the real men at Maxwell’s
spent their evenings playing poker, so I thought I’d try my hand.”
His statement was met with silence at first, but when Sam Travers’s deep laugh rang out, the rest of the players followed.
Someone pulled up a chair.
“Sit, kid, sit,” Mr. Travers said.
And just like that, Indiana found himself seated at a round table with Mr. Travers and his friends. Around them, a handful of other tables already had games in progress.
“So you got tired of skinny-dipping and playing Monopoly with the staff kids, eh?” The man who had recognized him said with a wink. “I’m Ed Rogers.”
“Hello, Ed,” Indiana said, responding to the introduction and ignoring the question, which he interpreted as joking. “I am Indiana.”
“Interesting name,” Ed replied. “I guess your dad was into eighties movies.”
Indy nodded and hoped that there would be zero follow-up questions.
“Are you in, kid?” Travers said. “It’s ten bucks.”
Indy got out his wallet and carefully counted out ten dollars, placing it at the center of the table with the other money, as Nikki had explained he would.
The men grew quiet.
“My wife has that wallet,” the man sitting next to him remarked, giving Indiana an odd look.
“It was a gift from a friend,” Indy said with a polite smile.
“Ha,” Travers barked. “And you carry it anyway. Priceless. That’ll teach him to try and prank you. I’m starting to like you, kid.”
Indiana winked back at him, unable to imagine what Travers was talking about, but glad that the man liked him.
The game began.
Indiana was relieved to see that he wound up with the proper number of cards in his hand. And it was a pretty good hand.
Around the table the men examined their cards.
To Indiana’s left was the small elderly gentleman who had said his wife had the same wallet. He was wiry and had a pair of thick glasses.
Past him, a middle-aged man with a thin blond mustache stared his cards down mercilessly.
Next to the mustache man and across from Indiana, Sam Travers tapped on his wedding ring, a big smile on his face.
And to Indiana’s right was Ed, the muscular but balding gentleman who had first introduced himself.
They began to play.
Indiana knew the rules inside and out. And it was easy for him to remember what cards he’d seen and calculated his odds for winning with any given hand. He decided it was better to lose the first few rounds, even if he had the right cards to win, It was best not to draw too much attention to himself. Plus it gave him more time to observe the other players.
Poker really wasn’t just a game of chance and skill. There was more to it. Nikki had taught him well.
This afternoon they had played a few hands together, but in spite of his superior ability to keep track of the cards, Indiana kept losing.
While Nikki had explained about “bluffing” Indiana didn’t really think she would try to trick him.
But sure enough, when he paid attention, he could see that there was a certain sweet upturn of her lips, a funny little smile that appeared on her face only when she was bluffing.
Now Indiana looked around the table.
Sam Travers was grinning and tapping on his wedding ring again.
And Indy’s memory for cards told him that the older man couldn’t possibly have the hand he was indicating he had with his smile.
He wondered if Travers might have poor eyesight and thought he had a hand that he didn’t.
That was unlikely.
No, the tapping must be Travers’s “tell” - the way that Indy would be able to determine whether he was actually doing well, or only pretending.
“You see the new lifeguard?” The man with the mustache asked, arching a brow.
“Kitty? Candy?” Ed tried to remember her name.
Indiana knew it was Charlotte, but kept his mouth shut.
“She’s got the best set of tits in the camp,” declared the tiny old man to Indiana’s left.
Ed laughed.
Indiana was a little shocked. Charlotte did have impressive mammaries. But yelling about her private parts didn’t seem like good manners.
“No.” Travers shook his head.
Indiana was relieved that he wasn’t the only one who thought there was something wrong about the conversation.
“Her tits aren’t as good as Monique’s,” Travers added.
“Oh, not this again,” Ed rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.
“What do you see in her?” The tiny man beside Indiana was incredulous.
Again, Indy was horrified. Monique was quiet and kind.
“What don’t I see in her?” Travers had a gleam in his eyes. “She’s got a sweet ass and she seems like the obedient type.”
“Her tits,” the little guy next to Indiana was practically weeping he was so impassioned. “They’re tiny.”
“More than a handful’s a waste,” Travers said dismissively.
The conversation continued in that vein. There was no talk of the stock market. There was very little talk about poker. The elderly men just went on and on about the young women at Maxwell’s that they wanted to mate with.
Indiana kept his ears open but his mouth shut, and hoped that the conversation didn’t turn to Nikki. He would not be able to stand hearing her loveliness cheapened by this idle talk.
After a time, he noticed that the man with the mustache was speaking less often. He didn’t look offended, though his lips were slightly pursed in a way they hadn’t been before.
The man with the mustache won the next round.
And he won the one after that.
Indiana noticed the man stop pursing his lips in the next hand.
And he lost.
Something seemed fishy.
The man was pursing his lips in the next round.
And then Indiana noticed the problem. He had been keeping track of the cards, of course. And when the mustache man won, he had cards he should not have had.
“Damn, boy,” Travers said, shaking his head in admiration.
“How did you get that ace?” Indiana asked.
The mustache man’s face went white. “Same as you got your cards,” he laughed weakly.
“No,” Indiana said. “Something’s not right. I have an ace in my hand, Mr. Travers had one in his and there are two in the deck.”
He could feel Ed swivel in his seat to face him.
Mr. Travers smiled a horrible smile, his nostrils flaring. “Is this true, Flanders?”
The blond mustache guy shook his head vehemently.
“Let’s just check the pile then, shall we?” Travers said. “Ed?”
Ed grabbed the deck and everyone’s cards.
There were 6 aces and 5 kings.
The extras were all in Flanders’s hand.
“Take his money,” Travers said in a bored way.
“Mr. Travers, I’m sorry,” the man said in a high-pitched voice.
“I don’t care,” Travers said.
“Midge lost her job before we came here,” Flanders whined. “I didn’t want to ruin the summer for the kids, so I thought I would… I could just…”
“Steal from me and the boys?” Travers’s voice was cold as ice.
“I’m sorry,” Flanders said again, looking miserable.
“Get your family out of here,” Travers said. “If you leave tonight I won’t go out of my way to ruin the rest of your life.”
Indiana watched as Flanders got up from the table, hands shaking, and left the pavilion.
Everything had gone quiet. All the tables watched him leave in the stillness. Only the chirp of the crickets reminded Indiana where they were.
“A round of drinks on me,” Travers yelled, his throaty voice ringing in the darkness.
There were rousing sounds of appreciation, and Ed was sent to the lounge to order up a round to be delivered.
Trav
ers patted Ed’s chair and tilted his head for Indy to slide into it.
Indiana moved next to Mr. Travers.
“Thank you, boy,” Travers said affably. “I appreciate you looking out for me. That was twice now.”
“It was my pleasure, Mr. Travers,” Indiana said.
“To show my appreciation for a young man of your talents, I’d like to invite you to the real poker game,” Travers said with a smile that told Indiana he was supposed to be very excited.
“I- I thought this was the poker game,” Indiana said, feeling confused.
“This is a fun casual game night. I won’t knock it,” Travers said. “But we’ve got a game going with real stakes and real players. I’d like you to be my guest Saturday night at the Crow’s Nest.”
The Crow’s Nest was how Travers referred to his private suite at the top of the lodge. It was said to be enormous and lavishly furnished. But no staff ever went in there. Mr. Travers even had his own housekeeper.
“I’d be honored,” Indiana said.
“I thought you might be,” Travers laughed and slapped him on the back.
The idea of a night in private with Travers and his cronies was daunting. But Indiana knew Nikki would be very pleased with this development. And perhaps he might be able to find the information she needed if Travers was in an environment he thought of as safe.
Nikki
Nikki waited breathlessly at the staff commons cabin.
She knew it was unlikely that Indiana would be finished with the game for hours, but she had planned to meet him here and was too amped up to be with her friends.
She had brought a book with her, but it sat abandoned on a picnic table as she paced the screened room, looking out onto the lake and the bit of lawn she could see from her vantage point.
The moonlight was just right to allow her to see one wall of the cottage on the island in the middle of the lake. A trick of the water’s reflection made it seem as if there was a light coming from one of the windows.
The sight gave her a little shiver of dread. It was only a silly ghost story, she knew, but things seemed less silly when you were alone in the dark on top of a hill.
She decided to light a couple of candles. There were several left over from the last staff party.