Card Sharks

by Liz Maverick

  The waitress returned very quickly with the refreshments and prepared an attractive little presentation on the table next to Bijoux’s chair.

  Bijoux ate her snacks and sipped her cocktail as she surveyed the scene over the top of her sunglasses. There were several very nice-looking men out. Perhaps some of them had all of the qualities Bijoux was looking for.

  One of them sat up to apply more sunscreen and made eye contact. Bijoux smiled and licked cheese-ball grease off her fingers. He smiled back and then proceeded to rub suntan lotion into his male companion’s back in a way that implied he wouldn’t be coming over to share snack balls.

  Bijoux sighed and pushed her plate aside. She stretched out on the lounge chair, arranged her bikini top to maximize the presentation of her assets, closed her eyes, and waited for someone of wealthy persuasion to come over and try to pick up on her.

  She could sense the moment someone was hovering and slowly opened her eyes.

  The cocktail waitress bent down. “I’m sorry, but this card didn’t go through.”

  Bijoux’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

  The waitress looked sympathetic, but didn’t offer a comp. “Do you want me to charge it to the room?”

  “Um . . . um . . .” She looked around for a white knight and, giving that up, tried to conjure up how the numbering system might work for the rooms at Caesar’s. “No, I’d rather go to the ATM. I hate debt.”

  “There’s one just around the corner on the casino floor.” She looked at Bijoux’s skimpy getup. “I’m really sorry. . . . Are you sure I shouldn’t just charge it?”

  Bijoux wasn’t above guessing a room number, but a sick feeling in her stomach wouldn’t have allowed her to rest easy at the pool any longer even if she had. The hotel room hadn’t been charged yet. Had she been shopping for something else lately? Well, of course. She was always shopping. Good God, had her parents really been serious about implementing a limit and phasing her out? Was this cold-turkey? What day was it? How old was she? She wasn’t thirty yet.

  Bijoux slowly removed her ATM card from her purse, her mouth parched and her skin breaking out into a cold sweat. She held the card out in front of her, cradling in her palm that ugly little orange-and-brown rectangle that didn’t match any of her wallets. And then she stood up and began the walk to the ATM.

  Her breathing became shallow, her thoughts racing. “Please work. Please work.”

  The ATM sat there against a wall, oddly plain in a place filled with machinery emblazoned with lights and colors. Bijoux approached quickly once she saw it, shooting little glances to each side to make sure no one was watching. It was rare that she had to resort to this, and each time, she thought with a sigh, it was a little like learning to ride a bicycle all over again.

  Bijoux looked at her ATM card and then almost defiantly slipped it into the machine. It requested her password and she typed it in. The account revealed a zero balance, which was strange. She must be looking in the wrong account. There must be another account. She pushed a few buttons but couldn’t seem to navigate to any other accounts. So she took the card out, put it back in, and typed in a different password. The card was rejected.

  Unwilling to accept that there wasn’t somehow more money somewhere on the card, she tried a series of different but plausible passwords for the same card. Her mother’s maiden name, the name of the first guy she’d ever slept with, her magic number, her secret number, her magic, secret number . . . and then the card just didn’t come back out.

  Bijoux frowned and pushed the clear button. Nothing happened. The machine was completely silent.

  Her pulse picked up again. She looked around, thankful there was no one in line behind her, and gave the machine a little kick. Just a little one. Nothing violent or too noticeable. Sort of like a nudge. A suggestion.

  The card wouldn’t come out.

  Bijoux began to sweat profusely at this point as she pressed every single button on the kiosk. The screen started glitching and blinking, but no card.

  “Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God.” If this was someone’s idea of a joke, it sure as hell wasn’t a funny one.

  Her towel slipped to the floor, and Bijoux stood there in the lobby of the casino in just her bikini and sunglasses, her fingers fixed around either side of the machine, just shaking the thing as if the world would end.

  This is what it’s going to be like to have no money. When you push the button, nothing comes back. No more good life. No more easy life. Everything was going to be hard. From here on out, things were going to be just too damn hard. “I need some money. Please,” she begged, bending over the ATM.

  “Tilt.”

  Bijoux stood straight up and turned around. Behind her stood a portly woman with brunette beehive hairdo about the same height again as the rest of her body, calmly sweeping the floor all the way up to where Bijoux was standing.

  “What did you say?” Bijoux asked.

  “Tilt. The machine. I don’t think it’s coming back, hon,” she said cheerfully in a voice that under more pleasant circumstances might have registered to her ear as a comforting Southern drawl.

  Bijoux took her by the shoulders. “I don’t think I can live like this.”

  The cleaning lady picked up Bijoux’s towel and handed it back to her with a commiserating look. “When the money done all run out, the money done all run out. This isn’t the real Roman Empire, honey. All this fancy stuff isn’t real. It’s just Caesar’s, Las Vegas. When you walk outside that door, you’re just outside. That’s all there is. Better get used to it.” She picked up her broom and swept away in the opposite direction.

  Bijoux leaned against the ATM and started to sniffle. A tear wound its way down her cheek; she picked up a discarded ATM receipt and pressed it against her skin in an effort to stanch the makeup rivulet eeking its way down her face.

  Down the hall at the entrance leading out to the pool area, the cocktail waitress peeked in from the outside, chewed nervously on her lower lip when she saw Bijoux standing there, and then disappeared again.

  Bijoux swore under her breath, looked around her, and finally went back out to her lounge chair by the pool, completely deflated. Ignoring the stares of the rich and beautiful basking on lounge chairs as she passed, she pulled her cell phone from her tote bag and dialed Marianne. No answer. She was probably still playing poker, which was a good thing, of course. . . . But dammit! I really need you, Mare. Where are you?

  She hung up and chewed on her fraying nail, hunched over and hiding her face from the passersby. Then she dialed Peter.

  He answered quickly. “ ’S up? I don’t really think we’re supposed to be using the phone in here,” he whispered.

  “Peter, thank God.” Bijoux’s heart was beating fast enough to qualify her for a completely different species.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look, I need a rescue,” Bijoux blurted out, absolutely mortified. “I’m at Caesar’s and I . . .”

  She could hear the sound of him jostling the phone and apparently moving through the crowd. Bless him.

  “What happened?”

  “I . . . I can’t pay my bill,” she said, but it came out only in a whisper.

  “What’s that?”

  “I can’t pay my bill,” she repeated.

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. He obviously didn’t understand. “Please come,” she said. “I’m at the pool.”

  “I’m getting a cab. I’ll be right there.”

  Bijoux hung up. She leaned back in the beautiful lounge chair by the side of a pristine blue pool and looked up at the Roman columns decorating the scene.

  “I can’t pay my bill,” she whispered again.

  Feeling nothing at all like a Roman goddess, Bijoux put her sunglasses on and let the tears stream down her face.

  She stared up at the tops of the columns and thought about how much she’d always liked Las Vegas. Each casino with its own personality. You walked into Paris and you were in a completely
different world. You walked into Hard Rock, completely different world. There were so many casinos, so many different worlds. And then just like the lady had said, you walked outside and you were just outside.

  “Bij?”

  Bijoux took her sunglasses off and Peter frowned. She must look worse than she’d thought.

  He sat down on the end of her lounge chair. “How can I help?”

  “Can you pay my bill?” she said, too embarrassed to make eye contact. “It’s not a big one.”

  “Sure.”

  “And then can you pretend this never happened?” She looked at him then.

  He pursed his lips and slowly nodded. She still didn’t think he understood. But he held out his hand and she put her hand in his and he gave it a comforting squeeze.

  “This is so embarrassing,” Bijoux said, wiping under her eyes with the fingertips of her free hand. “But you see my situation.”

  He nodded sympathetically, and Bijoux felt the need to explain. “I’m sure Marianne’s told you. About my situation, I mean. I’m going to lose all my money, so I’ve got to find a replacement source. What you see is what you get; I’m a common golddigger.”

  Peter leaned over the lounge chair and slipped her a private smile. “You may be a golddigger, Bij, but there’s nothing common about you.”

  Oh, my God. He does understand me. Something inside of her snapped. And she looked into those blue eyes and felt herself fall a little. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a long time,” she said in a whisper.

  Peter used his grip on her hand to help her up out of the lounge chair. “If we leave now, I bet I can slip back into the tournament, and Marianne will never notice I skipped out on her.”

  “I’ll head back down to meet you guys after I change. Marianne already knows I wasn’t going to watch all day,” Bijoux said. And while Peter went off to pay the bill, she collected her things and thought about cute, nice boys and wondered why the ones she fancied never had any money.

  Bijoux would have recognized Donny from a mile away based on just body language alone. He was leaning on the door to her hotel room in a kind of sulky way, like he’d been waiting for a while. He perked right up when he saw her, and smiled. With his hair too long in front, tousled and sloppy, uneven bits falling in his eyes, the whole package was just gorgeous and bad, and she was reminded why Marianne had a such a hard time letting him go.

  “Hey, Bij!” He wrapped her in an enormous hug and squeezed her tight.

  “Will you look what the cat flew in,” she teased. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I just saw my girlfriend on ESPN. Fifteen seconds of full frontal airtime is nothing to scoff at.”

  Bijoux narrowed her eyes. “You just said ‘your girlfriend.’ ”

  “My who? What?”

  “You called Marianne your girlfriend.”

  “No, I didn’t . . . did I?”

  “Are you here to make trouble?”

  “Is there trouble to be made?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Donny, I’m serious. This is not the time to get Marianne all riled up.”

  He cocked his head. “I know that guy’s here with you. Is there something going on you wanna tell me about?”

  “No! There’s nothing going on. We’re all just friends. And that’s exactly what I’m worried about. Don’t go escalating things where there’s nothing to be escalated. He’s just here to work on a story. Marianne’s a great story. You know that.”

  Donny held out his arms, palms up, the picture of innocence. “Look, I’m just here to support.”

  She gave him a dubious look.

  “Come on,” he drawled. “You had to know I would come. Poker. The World Series of Poker, to be precise. And Marianne playing in it, fer chrissakes. I mean just the thought of that all mixed up together makes me hot.”

  “Well, “I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see you. And really, I couldn’t be happier you’re here. I’ve had the most rotten day.”

  “What happened?”

  Bijoux waved the question off. She didn’t want to go into it.

  “Hmm. Well, how about you and I go out right after the tournament and have some fun?” Donny asked. “Maybe I can make your potential suitors jealous. You know how well we men respond to that.”

  “I don’t much feel like golddigging tonight,” Bijoux said, the Caesar’s disaster still too much on her mind to relax.

  “Okay, then let’s just go and watch the end of the tournament. I want to see Marianne in action.”

  “Sound great.”

  “Give me your room key.”

  “Oh! Fabulous.” She handed him her room key, her makeup, and some gum. He took it all in his hands, looking a little lost at the volume of it all, and then stuck it in various pockets. It was always nice to have a guy around who could substitute for a purse. “I’ll just drop this back in the room.”

  “Okay,” he said, picking up his suitcase.

  “Okay,” Bijoux said, opening the door and then letting it slam back in Donny’s face as he stepped forward.

  “Oh, my God! Are you okay? Donny, I’m so sorry!” She pulled him inside the suite and fussed and clucked and tried to get a look at his nose as he clutched it and moaned in pain.

  He broke loose and disappeared into the bathroom, from where he began swearing profusely while Bijoux used all of her human body strength to drag the suitcase from the hall into the suite.

  Donny came out of the bathroom and flopped down on Marianne’s bed. “Jesus.”

  “Everything still functional?” Bijoux asked.

  “To the best of my knowledge. After all, it’s only my nose. It could have been worse.”

  “Sorry, though . . . Wait a minute.”

  “What?” he said, his eyes narrowed.

  “You stepped forward. Did you think you were staying with us?”

  Donny gingerly poked his index finger along the bridge of his nose. “What did you think I wanted the room key for? Obviously!”

  “Obviously,” Bijoux said dryly.

  He got off the bed and moved to the full-length mirror, preening and reviewing his injured member from all possible angles.

  “So which one of us were you planning to sleep with?” Bijoux asked, tapping her foot on the ground.

  Donny gave up on the nose and flashed her his hundred-watt smile. “Every guy’s dream question.”

  His fingers rubbed the bottom of his chin as he looked between the two beds.

  It made Bijoux just want to roll her eyes. She knew what he must be thinking. If he insisted on bunking with Marianne, he looked too needy, the worst thing a guy could possibly do. And if he bunked with her, he stood no chance of getting anything. Worst-case scenario, if he got his own room, he couldn’t be sure that Marianne was staying in hers.

  He finally stuck his bags on Bijoux’s bed. “Just try not to knee me in the nuts while I’m sleeping. That’s all I ask.”

  “Are you joking?”

  He unzipped his suitcase and began removing clothes. “I need a favor, Bij. Just help me out.”

  Bijoux chewed on her lower lip. She would have let him stay either way, but . . . “I kind of need a favor, too. Can I borrow some money?”

  Donny stopped unpacking, midshirt, and stared at her. “You’ve run out of money?”

  She waved it off as inconsequential. “My cards aren’t working. It’s a pain in the ass. I’ll pay you back when we get home . . . You know I’m good for it.” Aren’t I?

  “Of course you are. No problem. It’s just not a set of words I think of as ever coming from your mouth. ‘Can I borrow some money.’ ” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and tossed it to the comforter in front of her. “Take whatever you need.”

  Bijoxu sighed and opened the wallet. She took out a hundred dollars in twenties, closed the wallet, then thought better and took another hundred, leaving a five and a couple of grimy ones. “This is either go
ing to be incredibly ugly, or the best damn Vegas weekend of my life.”

  “I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy,” Donny said, flashing a grin as he opened the drawers—it happened to be Marianne’s side of the bureau—and began jamming his clothes in. “You gonna change or what?”

  “Just give me a second.” Bijoux pulled a fresh outfit from her closet and headed into the bathroom. “You’re not really here to watch Marianne in the tournament, are you?” she asked, closing the bathroom door behind her.

  “I am so here for Marianne,” he shouted.

  Bijoux snorted.

  “Oh, and if I’m going to be staying with you girls, there’s one more thing!”

  “What?”

  “Can we stay away from that let’s-put-makeup-on-Donny-for-fun business?”

  “I’ll try,” Bijoux said with a laugh. “But anything can happen.”

  chapter twelve

  Marianne was staring at the chips still stacked in front of her on the table, calculating how much she had. Someone came on the loudspeaker. She wasn’t listening. She was a machine. She was feeling the adrenaline of . . . not losing pounding through her body. It was a good thing she didn’t have an addictive personality, because right about now she’d have been hooked on the drug.

  Yes, you must die.

  I’m a badass female and you must die. If I cannot pull a Tarantino and slice the stiletto heel of my boot through your gut, I will simply have to beat you at cards.

  She might not have looked it, with her hair tucked behind her ears, part askew, and her jacket discarded on the back of her chair, but Marianne was in the zone. She’d settled into the game, the toes of her boots pressing into the floor as she leaned forward, mesmerized as the dealer dealt the cards around the table once again.

  A king of spades and a jack of hearts. Not a terrible hand, but not automatically playable. She looked around and noted she was in a middle position, two off the button. At the very least it didn’t warrant a raise before the flop. She flicked her eyes over and took stock of Texas Trouble’s chip count. He was a reckless player. He cared too much about things like women sitting at his poker table. He needed to go down.