Card Sharks

by Liz Maverick

  He paused in the middle of spreading the jam on the last half piece of toast on his plate and said, “Hey.” Then he finished spreading, folded the toast into a double-size quarter toast and stuck the whole thing in his mouth.

  “Donny, I married him.”

  A horrible choking sound erupted from Donny’s mouth. He gestured for her water, and she slid it over to him.

  Oh, my God. He’s not going to laugh. Marianne looked down at her napkin, suddenly terrified.

  Donny made a few more choking sounds; then he took some more water and sputtered a bit. “You slept with him?”

  Marianne tried to look him in the eyes, but it was too upsetting, so she looked just past his right ear. “I said I married him.”

  “You slept with him,” he said in a horrified whisper, clearly unable to process straight.

  Marianne forced herself to look at him. He seemed stung. Devastated, even. “I married him,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “You slept with him . . . and you married him.” He pushed the ham and eggs away, which was unfortunately closer to Marianne, who was just now realizing that a greasy breakfast would not solve any of her problems today.

  She winced and looked up at Donny’s face and then winced again at the struck expression frozen there. “I didn’t sleep with him. I swear it. I just . . . married him.”

  He suddenly brightened up again. “You’re joking. Let’s see the ring.”

  Marianne dragged her purse off the chair next to her and pulled out the ring and some documents she didn’t really remember from the prior night. She put everything on the table between them.

  Donny looked at the plastic hologram thing and laughed. “This is just pathetic. If I were planning to pretend I got hitched, I would at least fake it with something decent.”

  Marianne couldn’t speak. She just pushed the documents closer to him across the table. Donny opened the brochure. “ ‘Dear Las Vegas Elvis Chapel. It is with deepest sincerity and gratitude that we write to thank your entire staff for making our fiftieth-anniversary vow renewal the greatest experience of our life. We want Elvis to know that my sister, Betty Ann (who was in Love Me Tender with the real Elvis), told us that your Elvis was really special and had the very same sweetness that the real Elvis had. We would recommend your chapel to anyone getting married. Thank you, Lewis and Tallulah from Wisconsin.’ ”

  Donny looked up from the brochure, the pained expression still stamped on his face.

  “Oh, come on, Donny. Don’t be like that. You’re supposed to laugh in my face.”

  “Which package did you get?” he asked, stone-faced.

  “What?”

  “Which package did you get? I want to know. Was it the Aloha Hawaii? The Classic Elvis? Or did you splurge and get the Pink Cadillac Deluxe?”

  “Stop it.”

  He stared at her.

  “It was an accident,” she bleated.

  Donny stood up so fast he upended his chair. “For God’s sake, Marianne. If you’re going to have that kind of accident, couldn’t you have accidentally married me?”

  She stared back at him, dumbfounded. “You don’t want to marry me. You’ve never wanted to marry me.”

  “I thought we would eventually come around. You told me I needed to get my act together and I’ve been getting my act together. And now you just go and do this! I thought we’d have this sort of Tracy-Hepburn, Bruce Willis–Holly Gennaro thing where eventually we’d come around. I thought you did too. I mean, I honestly thought that eventually we’d get over ourselves and get married.”

  That was so typical. Only after you broke up with a guy did he start waxing on about how he was just “this close” to asking you to marry him. If he wanted to marry you, he should have said so before it all came down to a really unromantic de facto ultimatum. How ridiculous that by the time you convinced yourself that he was so flawed you couldn’t possibly want him, that was when he’d finally give you an indication that he wanted to be with you for the rest of your life.

  “Holly Gennaro wasn’t even in Die Hard II. It didn’t come around,” Marianne said, starting to cry. It wasn’t fair. She loved Donny. She’d always love Donny. Unfortunately they didn’t . . . jell. They just didn’t jell.

  Donny rifled through the rest of the papers while Marianne just watched helplessly. It should have been funny. It should have been something to laugh about. But when he opened the cardboard pamphlet clearly designed and sold by the same people who did prom-night photos, Marianne didn’t feel like laughing. He looked at each one of the six Polaroids in turn, with Marianne in her enormous pink dress, enormous hair, and overdone fifties makeup in the arms of, being dipped by, clowning around with, kissing . . . Peter Graham. She felt like crying.

  Donny threw the photos down on the table and picked up the fallen chair.

  “Where are you going?” Marianne blurted.

  Donny wheeled around and looked at her with more contempt than she could ever remember seeing in his face. “To find Bijoux. I swear, Marianne. You think I’m dense.” Without another word, he walked away.

  Marianne leaned into the vinyl chair cushion and watched him weave his way through the throngs, his hands in his jeans pockets, shoulders hunched, head low.

  That was what was wrong with them. They had never been able to be real. Sure, she could tell him anything; she could say anything . . . even the most awkward thing, she could say it to Donny and he could say it back. But once you go along after so many years and establish just how deep you’re going to go, once you establish whether or not you’re going to share that stuff that’s buried in the way, way back of your head and your heart, you’re screwed if it’s not deep enough. She and Donny had learned to be honest with each other; they’d just never learned to be real.

  Because once you got used to the standards of a relationship, it took something monumental to shake it up. But the problem was that it was usually too monumental not to kill the relationship in the aftermath. Things like, “I cheated on you because you . . .”; “I can’t stay married to you because you . . .”; “I’ve never said anything before now, because you . . .” It was the because that was responsible for killing the relationship.

  Marianne put her face in her hands. His look. That wound completely exposed in his expression—that was the first time she’d ever seen the real. Oh, shit. It’s really too late.

  And it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Being real simply came too late for most people. You usually couldn’t save what had come before, what had been the catalyst for the lesson. You could only make sure that you didn’t let this same mistake happen in the next relationship. Oh, there would be mistakes. Other mistakes, new mistakes. But not this mistake. And this was the mistake that would sever the relationship between Marianne and Donny for good.

  They would never be the same. And now all that was left was for her to realize that she had had a good thing she didn’t even know she had. And she was one Elvis wedding chapel too late. It wasn’t just Marianne. They’d both done it. Done it to each other and to themselves. And he was one proposal too late. And what she was realizing sitting here, ready to throw up at the table, was that Donny had just realized it, too. That look. That look on his face. He knew what she knew. And they both knew it was over.

  chapter twenty-one

  Bijoux could not stop crying. Good old Donny held her while she wailed and snotted and cried all over his cute Vegas shirt. He looked like he wanted to cry, too.

  “Bij, I’m a guy. You’re going to have to explain it to me. I don’t understand why you’re so upset. Is it because Marianne’s married and you aren’t?”

  “No. Everything she wants falls into her lap without her even trying. She doesn’t even know how lucky she is. I’m really, really, really, really upset. I’m just really upset. You know? I’m really . . .” She looked around the room, her fists clenched, trying to put into words what she was feeling. “Really . . . upset. I can’t even explain how horrifyingly just complet
ely, totally, awesomely upset I am. I’m just so—”

  “Upset.”

  “Yes!” She scrunched up her face, not wanting to admit it. Not wanting to admit it, but this was Donny, and he was the person after Marianne whom she could say anything to, and in this case, he was the only one she could say anything to. But she couldn’t quite say this one thing. “I hope I don’t have that horrible feeling you sometimes get after you’ve revealed something very personal to somebody else and instead of feeling relieved, you feel like you’ve just exposed the fact that you’re kind of a loser, and what was said is just forever ‘out there,’ and what’s between you is never the same again.”

  Donny unfurled a length of toilet paper from the roll he’d set on the nightstand and pressed the wad gently against Bijoux’s face to soak up the tears.

  Bijoux sniffed and looked up at him. “I wish I loved you, Donny. Wouldn’t that be perfect? You’re such a pain in the ass, but every once in a while, you just show you know women.”

  “If I knew women, Marianne would still be with me.”

  Bijoux looked away, but Donny brought her back to face him with his hand on her chin. “Don’t be mad at her,” he said. “You guys have been friends forever. Get through whatever the hell this is.”

  “You’re mad at her.”

  He thought about that. “Okay, go ahead and be mad at her.” He frowned. “Funny. It’s not like she really did anything.”

  “I’m going to be honest with you. It’s like here we are, side by side. She’s a fucking tax accountant; I’m an heiress. Granted, an heiress who’s not going to be inheriting anything, but still, it’s a nice, juicy occupation. And if you take a guy and have him come up to us as we’re standing there side by side, who do you think they’re really going to be talking to? Who are they going to be looking at? She’s got this unbelievable charisma; she’s got it all. You know what, Donny?”

  “What?”

  “I’m hideously, horribly, grossly, unbelievably, totally jealous of my very best friend.” Bijoux rested her chin in her palm. “She’s so lucky.”

  He held her by the shoulder, at arm’s length, and locked eyes. “You think she’s lucky?”

  “Yes!” Bijoux said in that voice that meant, obviously.

  “She just married a guy she doesn’t even know. She’s on the verge of derailing her life from everything she’s worked on for the last decade.”

  Bijoux thought about that. “Including you.”

  “Including me. Granted, I completely fucked up my end of the bargain. I mean, we clearly would have gone on like we were forever . . . except for the part where I assumed we’d stop acting like idiots and admit we couldn’t live without each other.” He shrugged. “That’s just not the way it went.”

  “I just wish . . .”

  “What?” Donny asked.

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “Do I look like I find any of this even remotely funny?”

  “No.”

  “Well?”

  “I wish I’d been the one who accidentally married Peter Graham.”

  Donny looked terminally confused.

  “What a great mistake it would have been for me.”

  “I don’t understand you at all, Bij. He’s not what you’ve been looking for. Not at all. He’s kind of . . . kind of . . . not rich.”

  “That’s why it would have been a great mistake. Do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘I don’t really think it’s money you’re looking for.’ What do you think about that? Everybody knows it’s money I’m looking for. Everybody knows.”

  Donny sat back, slumping back against the pillow, and slowly nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You know what I think? I think that different people are charismatic to different people. Have you ever been sitting on a bus or in a coffee shop or whatever and just been drawn to someone? Not necessarily because they’ve got a rockin’ bod or big tits or whatever. Maybe it’s not even someone of the opposite gender. But there was just something about them, an energy that made you curious about them or wish the world were the kind of place where strangers really walked up to one another. You ever just see a person and say to yourself, ‘They’ve got that . . . thing.’ That thing. It’s a kind of chemistry, but you haven’t even talked to them. So it’s not really a chemistry; it’s just a thing.”

  “Yeah?” Bijoux said dubiously.

  “You’ve got it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’ve got it, too. That thing. For different people. Maybe for people who can’t quite bring themselves to walk up to you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You shine, kid. Sometimes it just might not feel like it because you’re always standing in somebody else’s shadow.” He stood up, rubbing his eyes. “Now. I’m going to run down to the business center and check my e-mail. I’ll be right back. You clean yourself up and we’ll go down there and represent. Everything is going to be fine. Okay?”

  Bijoux jumped up and gave Donny a monster hug. “Okay.”

  The moment she was alone in the room, Bijoux got out her purse and upended the whole thing, then took everything out of her wallet and stared at her credit cards. Well, who am I really, then? She looked in the mirror and suddenly had a violent urge to rip her extensions out of her head.

  She went to the closet, slammed the door open, and stared at the two sets of clothing. And instead of choosing from her own loud side, she rifled through Marianne’s things and picked out a charcoal-gray pencil skirt and the yellow cashmere sweater. She added a sexy white-and-gray lacy camisole and some low Sabrina heels, which were like walking in tennis shoes compared to the stilettos she was used to. Then she went into the bathroom and wiped some of her makeup off. When she was finished, there was a superstylish, sort of kittenish, fresh Bijoux staring back at her in the mirror.

  The image was like a relief; for the first time in a long time Bijoux felt comfortable with what she saw.

  She sat down to wait for Donny, but someone knocked on the door. She opened the door and found Peter on the other side and she felt like she’d just been slapped. “Marianne’s probably looking for you,” she blurted.

  “Can I come in?”

  She stepped away from the door and Peter came in and sat down on the end of the bed. With furrowed brow he stroked at the stubble on his chin, the picture of rumpled woefulness.

  Bijoux could have played nice. She could have comforted him. She could have done a lot of things, but she just folded her arms across her chest and waited. It would have been different if she actually thought it was love at first sight between him and Marianne, but she knew better than that.

  As if he could read her mind, Peter finally just sighed deeply, looked up at her and said, “I have no idea why I took it so far. I’m an idiot.”

  The old Bijoux would have just told him that everything would be okay. But Bijoux was tired of saying things she didn’t mean and pretending at things she didn’t feel. So, she leaned over, grabbed a pillow, and slammed it into the side of Peter’s body. “You are an idiot! You may be super-good-looking, but you’re just as messed up as the rest of us. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Peter defended himself from the blows and grabbed on to the free side of the pillow. “Bij . . .” he said in a calming sort of tone. The kind that just made Bijoux more hysterical. If he so much as told her ‘to relax’ she was going to lose it.

  “You need to relax.”

  “Oooh!” She wrenched the pillow away and slammed him in the side again. “That’s it! Out! I’m not this desperate!” Her index finger pointing straight up in the air, she marched to the door and opened it. “Out, I say! It’s not like you’re anybody’s white knight!”

  “Did you think I was?” he asked, obviously surprised.

  She bent her elbow to get more leverage so she could heave the pillow at his face, then suddenly lowered her arm. “Kind of,” she admitted. “I’m not exactly sure why.”

  “Close th
e door. Please. Just close the door and let’s talk.”

  Bijoux thought about it and decided that at least some sort of explanation would be nice. She let the door fall closed and came back and sat down next to him.

  He laughed softly and said, “So now you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Well, you’ve always had your suspicions. I’m a shit disturber. Like you said. I can’t help it. If I didn’t stir up trouble in other people I’d bore myself to death.”

  She glared at him. “You don’t get away with that, you know. At some point, you’re going to have to realize that you’re just as fake as I ever was.”

  “I don’t know why I took it so far. I mean, I like Marianne, but she and I don’t make any sense, not the way you and I make sense. I guess that it was opportunity. Everything seemed larger than life for a moment. I got caught up in the excitement.” He shrugged. “Sometimes you just want to feel like you’re living a bigger life than you really are. Obviously, I can’t become something I’m not just by doing one spontaneous thing in a night. The funny thing is that Marianne really is that kind of girl. She just did the spontaneous thing with the wrong guy.”

  Bijoux still didn’t find it funny and she knew Donny didn’t either. And probably what they both wanted to know was how far it went. “Well, let’s have it. Did you . . .”

  “No!’

  “Oh!” She wasn’t sure why she was surprised, but she was. It sort of went with the territory. Well, if they were going to have an attack of honesty, here, she might as well take advantage of it. “Did you want to?”

  He looked up at the ceiling with a frown. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that. Admittedly, I woke up with my pants around my knees, but I don’t know that it had much to do with anything other than an inability to remove my clothes for more comfortable sleeping while drunk off my ass with my shoes still on.” He looked her square in the eye. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  Bijoux studied her fingernails. It was all very interesting, of course, but it was that one bit stuck in the middle that had her attention. “How do you and I make sense?”