Card Sharks

by Liz Maverick

  The cabdriver took the twenty, smoothing it out in an infuriatingly nonchalant way. “The Strip is the long way.”

  Peter hopped in, and the cab took off with a lurch. Marianne squealed with laughter as Peter reached out and slammed the door shut and they merged into traffic.

  The lights of the Las Vegas Strip blurred into rainbows of color through the windows as Peter pressed Marianne down into the backseat and covered his mouth with hers.

  Hands everywhere they should and shouldn’t be, Peter with no shirt on pouring champagne from above into the lipstick-smeared mouth of a laughing Marianne. Champagne-wet skin, hot mouths . . . the damn ride ended much, much too soon.

  They tumbled out of the cab, Marianne and Peter tossing money over the front seat and falling on the sidewalk in hysterical laughter.

  Peter stood up first, his shirt and jacket crumpled in one hand. He tried to grab the empty champagne bottle but missed. It rolled over the curb and shattered on the street.

  “We’ll get some more,” he promised, helping her up with a little too much gusto. Nearly toppling over to the other side, Marianne finally found her balance.

  The wedding chapel stood before them, an enormous architectural confection of white paint and plastic floral decorations in pink, green, blue, and yellow. Just like the cakes from those crappy street-corner bakeries that smelled like chemicals, looked so pretty, and tasted so fake.

  Arm in arm they mounted the steps to the wedding chapel, pushed through the heavy glass doors, and headed up to the reception desk.

  “Ooh, look!” Marianne pointed to the Polaroid pictures of the day’s earlier wedded couples tacked to a bulletin board. “They have costumes. We have to get dressed up.”

  “I am dressed up.”

  “No, I want to wear something special. I want a costume.”

  “I don’t wear costumes,” Peter said.

  Marianne blinked, finding herself becoming irrationally upset.

  “But you’ll look great in a costume,” he said.

  Peter leaned over the desk, his elbow missing the edge and just barely avoiding smacking his face hard on the counter. “My fiancée . . .”

  Marianne giggled. Peter grinned, and Marianne had never been more sure in her life that spontaneity, adventure, and a total lack of planning were the way to go.

  He began again. “My fiancée would like whatever package you’ve got that has costumes in it.”

  “All of them come with the costume option.” The clerk pulled a chapel brochure from the clear acrylic holder on the desk and pointed to the choices A, B, and C. “We have Aloha Hawaii Elvis, Classic Elvis, and Pink Cadillac Deluxe Elvis. It’s not in the brochure yet, but we’ve just added a less expensive option, the Lisa Marie.”

  “Aloha Hawaii, please. And I want a large, frothy pink dress.”

  “That won’t match,” Peter said.

  Marianne frowned. “I don’t care. I want to get married in paradise wearing a large, frothy pink dress. If you have issues with that perhaps we should step through that side door for a moment and discuss it.” She pointed to a door. It said, RESTROOM—UNISEX. She blinked and moved her finger to the right. “I mean, that side door.” She pointed to a door that said, MARRIAGE COUNSELING—$15 W/ PREPURCHASED ELVIS PACKAGE.

  Peter shrugged and plunked down a credit card. “Indulge the lady with the Aloha, if you would, please.”

  The woman beamed. “Oh, honey, that’s not bad at all. She’ll look lovely.”

  The credit-card receipt printed out. She stuck it on the counter and followed it up with two plastic glasses, which she filled from an open bottle on her desk.

  Marianne and Peter took the glasses, clinked them, producing more of a dull plunk sound than a clink, and downed the champagne.

  “Will you be needing a ring?” the receptionist asked.

  Peter looked at Marianne in alarm. The receptionist placed a shrink-wrapped band of red on the counter.

  Marianne peered at the specimen. “Is that plastic?” Peter picked it up and stared at it, and the two of them started laughing.

  “Okay, you . . . that way. And you . . . that way. You’ll exit out the door from inside the dressing room when your name is called.”

  Marianne headed for the women’s dressing room, misjudging the distance between her palm and the door and barreling through to the other side.

  Inside, it was packed. There were at least three other brides and their attendants in various states of undress, and several racks of wedding dresses and other costumes that seemed to relate to the various package themes.

  “I’m beginning to get sober,” Marianne muttered to herself. In the back of her mind there were doubts. In the back of her mind where the alcohol had already leached away, she wasn’t quite having as much fun anymore. Bijoux should have been here, at her wedding. But that wasn’t the point of a spontaneous elopement.

  Stop it, Marianne. She was ruining it. Ruining it. Be that girl who knows how to think and act outside of the box. There are plenty of opportunities to sit in the box the rest of your life.

  “Leona Mae!” squawked the loudspeaker. An adorable redhead surrounded by five apparent bridesmaids squealed in delight and disappeared with her posse through the door.

  Marianne walked up to the dress rack next to a large girl trying to squeeze her body into a white tube dress. The girl’s friend was trying to help her with one hand while holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other.

  “Do you want me to hold that for you?” Marianne asked.

  “Thanks,” said the friend. She handed the bottle to Marianne, who immediately took a large swig. And then a second large swig. The friend got the rest of the girl’s massive torso into the top of the tube dress, then reached back for her Jack Daniel’s. Marianne somehow decided she didn’t want to let go. “I’ll hold it for you,” she insisted.

  The friend gave up on the bottle. “I’ll go get the flowers,” she said to the large girl, and disappeared out to the lobby after flashing a look of disgust in Marianne’s direction.

  Sloshing the whiskey in one hand, Marianne quickly palmed through the dress rack until she saw it. And suddenly all of those cares mounting in the back of her mind vanished. “This is it.” She put the whiskey down and took the dress off the rack.

  Quickly stripping, she stepped into the dress and pulled it up. It was almost too long. Well, really it was too long, but it allowed Marianne to keep her own shoes on. The bodice fit perfectly, which was all that mattered.

  “My dress is very large and pink,” Marianne said with great satisfaction.

  “Oh, that’s so pretty on you!” said the sausage queen. “I’m just going kind of traditional white. I wish I had your guts.”

  Marianne beamed. “That’s the nicest thing you could have said. Do you need help with your hair?”

  The girl nodded. “I want this to stay. I don’t want to keep having to fiddle with it.”

  Marianne looked down at the hairpiece that seemed to have twice as much veil as the girl’s dress had fabric. She picked it up and settled it in place. “Here?”

  “Perfect.”

  She secured it with bobby pins, then spun the girl around.

  “Crystal!” the loudspeaker squawked.

  “That’s me!” The girl put her hands on Marianne’s shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. “I’ve never been so happy in my life.”

  I’ve never been so . . . drunk.

  Marianne fluffed the dress around her and squeezed through the throng of women to the mirror to reapply her lip gloss.

  “Here,” said one of the girls, jamming a tiara onto Marianne’s head. If Marianne had been feeling any pain, she would have felt it then, but as it was she just looked at the sparkling crown with delight and stuck it to her hair with some abandoned bobby pins lying on the ground.

  “Marianne!” the loudspeaker squawked. Marianne jumped in surprise. “That’s me.”

  One of the girls turned form the mirror. “Good luc
k.” She took Marianne against her enormous bosom and gave her a hug. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks so much!” Marianne opened the door labeled ALOHA HAWAII and was greeted by a recorded trumpet flourish that had a skip in it.

  She’d stepped out into her wedding, rather like Alice had stepped into Wonderland.

  Peter stood there, swaying at the end of the wedding aisle in a highly detailed tropical Hawaiian set. There were silk flowers and vines everywhere. The landing where Peter was standing bridged a giant sandbox. She heard the sound of birds chirping and waves lapping the shore, smelled suntan lotion and plumeria. And, of course, there was an Elvis, in full regalia.

  He waved, indicating that she should begin her walk. She took a step forward and a kicky Elvis beach song started up.

  The ceremony itself was a blur. Marianne and Peter laughed and laughed as Elvis said those words—those words that were so often repeated to the point of cliché. She felt as if she were in a play, acting a part, desperate not to look over her shoulder and realize there was no audience.

  Somewhere in the middle of the overwrought hilarity, Peter elbowed her, and Elvis said, “Do you?” and Marianne said, “I do.”

  Elvis instructed Marianne and Peter to kiss. They kissed and then forgot it was a wedding and just switched back to make-out mode until Elvis cleared his throat and announced that it was time for his serenade.

  Marianne leaned against Peter as their Elvis impersonator headed into “Love Me Tender.” Peter took Marianne into his arms. They lurched about in the aisle.

  “This is so funny. I’ve been wanting to settle down,” Peter said, his voice slurring.

  “This is funny,” Marianne agreed. “ ’Cause I’ve been wanting to run off and do something crazy for a very long time.”

  Peter pulled away, his flushed drunken face and knitted eyebrows showing just how hard he was thinking. “Funny,” was all he said.

  “Funny,” Marianne agreed. She closed her eyes and focused on what it felt like to be in Peter’s arms as he rocked her in time with the music. Oh, how surprised Donny will be. Oh, how Donny will laugh! And how sorry he’ll be he let me go.

  Elvis cleared his throat again and announced that time was up and that she could return the dress to the rack after a final complimentary glass of champagne. Marianne didn’t want to take the dress off, or the tiara for that matter, because if she took the dress and the tiara off then reality would set in, and she somehow really, really did not want that to happen. With Peter’s hand in hers, and her fluffy pink skirt billowing up around her ankles, she waved off the desk clerk holding up the deposit slips, cried out, “Charge it!” and ran.

  Laughing hysterically, Peter and Marianne dashed outside to the taxi stand and dived into the first cab that opened its doors. She tripped on the center floor divider and twisted, falling lengthwise onto the backseat. Peter dived in on top of her, and the cabbie closed the door behind them.

  chapter twenty

  Marianne woke up like she’d just slept in on SAT day, sitting bolt upright in bed, her pulse racing, a kind of terror engulfing her brain as she clarified who she was, where she was, and what the hell she was doing there.

  Her head pounding, her mouth dry and her brain dizzy, she looked at the hotel alarm clock; dear God, she was supposed to play in a matter of hours.

  She might well have gone for the cheaper Classic Elvis package, because everything about this was classic: waking up in a hotel room in Vegas married to a guy she really didn’t even know. There was a reason Marianne had been taking the road more taken. It was because wild and adventurous were often just synonyms for stupid. Those other words just had better PR.

  The mystery element—the who, what, and where of it all—unraveled pretty quickly as she looked down at the man lying in bed next to her. So this was what it was like. It happened in movies and books all the time, but it wasn’t quite the same as having it happen to you. “Happen to you.” The phrasing in and of itself was telling. It wasn’t “we did this crazy thing”; it was “this thing happened to me,” like an illness or an accident.

  Of course, it was an accident. The whole thing was a train wreck. Donny was going to have a field day with this before laughing in her face. The thought of Donny made her stomach drop. Marianne put her hand to her heart, her head spinning.

  There was still, of course, the big question to attend to. Just how married was she? Marianne pulled up the covers and peeked under the sheets. Underwear, check. Bra, check. Stockings, heels . . . and that painful sensation in her scalp was a tiara. Nope. No way. She definitely hadn’t slept with him.

  Marianne put the covers down, took a deep breath, and looked over at Peter, who was lying on top of the covers. He still wore the tuxedo shirt, shoes, and technically his pants and underwear. It was the technicality of the pants and underwear that gave Marianne pause, for the whole mass of it had been shoved down to his thighs, leaving his ass completely exposed to the elements.

  Marianne stared at his nicely rounded buttocks with a sinking feeling. Then she oh-so-carefully rolled out of bed and tiptoed away, nearly undone by a wave of nausea. She hobbled into the bathroom and just made it before she threw up in the toilet.

  She cleaned herself up, wishing not for the first time that she were one of those superorganized people who went about their lives with a full complement of toothbrushes, Thomas guides, and Swiss army knives. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror made things even worse.

  Her tiara was sticking off her head at a forty-degree angle; her hair was like a matted, twisted cloud billowing out from around her head. Her makeup was smeared this way and that, with dark circles from the eyeliner and mascara forming hideous half-moons under her eyes. She had a translucent red stain circling her mouth, the way it looked when you’d kissed a guy for a prolonged period of time.

  What was I thinking? Oh, right. I wasn’t thinking. Marianne put her hands on the edge of the sink and leaned her head down, praying for the spinning to stop. Her mouth was gummy and unpleasant, her head ached, and her stomach was out of control. If she didn’t eat a greasy breakfast soon, she wasn’t going to be well enough to play later with all her wits about her.

  Thank god she hadn’t slept with him. They’d gotten randy in the backseat of the cab on the way back from the chapel, but there was no way she’d slept with him; she’d have been able to tell. She looked over at Peter. And given how much they’d had to drink, there was no way he’d have been able to get it up, anyway.

  The bottom line was that she needed to get out of here and back to her room without waking Peter up. She wasn’t sure what his reaction was going to be, but if hers was any indication, it wasn’t exactly going to be a full-blown celebration.

  She needed to get to her room. So she tiptoed back into the bedroom and found only a mangled pile of pink tulle. Looking around produced nothing else she recognized as her own, so she put the dress back on and reached for her purse, which was stuck under Peter’s thigh.

  She pulled at the strap and Peter stirred, turning over to lie flat on his back, that dangerous middle section completely exposed. Marianne winced and eased her purse slowly away. If there was one thing she knew, it was that she did not want to be in the room when Peter and his exposed winkie woke up.

  Backing slowly away toward the door, she slipped out and stepped into the hall. From there she moved quickly to the elevator, passing several members of the hotel staff (they looked at her as if they saw this kind of thing every day) and several vacationers (they looked at her as if she were the spawn of Satan).

  The important thing was to focus on recovery. And when she slipped back into her own room, it was all she could do not to sigh with relief to find it empty.

  Her situation was going to be ridiculous enough in anecdote without actually having her friends see her as she was, looking like cold leftovers.

  The TV had been left on. It droned on for a while as background noise while Marianne jumped in the shower and fixed hers
elf up.

  As she made her way gingerly around the room, assembling the things she’d need for the day, she focused in a little more.

  “. . . and the last member of our Dead Money Roundup. There are two women left in the tournament. One is poker champion Annie Duke; the other is novice tournament darling Marianne Hollingsworth. Miss Marianne, as we like to call her . . .”

  Marianne rolled her eyes and sat down heavily on the end of her untouched bed. “Tournament darling,” she muttered sarcastically. Then, “Jesus, I’m already jaded.”

  The TV ran a replay of the big hand from earlier in the week where she took down Johnny Chan by bluffing out on a weak pair of fours into a flop of ten/ten/two, and miraculously nailing a full house on the turn. “A bigger full house than Chan’s. Johnny had been slow-playing two/two, and, trying to trap her; but when a third ten came on the turn they both got all their chips into the middle, and Chan was out of the tournament.” Marianne watched herself play to the crowd hanging over the rails and cheering as if she were some kind of a rock star.

  Sure, she was some kind of a rock star . . . if that rock star was Courtney Love. Pale-faced and dark-circled, the real Marianne looked around the room and swallowed hard against a bout of nausea.

  “As we get ready for day five of the tournament—”

  Marianne turned off the television and stared squinty-eyed at the blurry alarm clock. She had a couple of hours before her call time. “Coffee,” she bleated out. “Coffee and grease.”

  She picked up her cell phone, noticing with some chagrin that nobody had called, and then put it in her pocket and headed down to the casino hotel coffee shop.

  She’d only just ordered when a half-consumed plate of ham and eggs plunked down across the table from her and Donny sat down.

  He didn’t say anything, just pulled the little bowl filled with individually packaged strawberry jams and butter spreads toward him and unwrapped a jam.

  Marianne looked up. He obviously thought it was business as usual. Make up. Break up. Not this time.