by Suzie Nelson
We just lied there on the roof for a while and watched the stars above us as we drew our bodies close together.
“Let me show you Orion’s belt,” Francois whispered and pointed at a constellation of stars in the night sky. I wasn’t really listening to what he was saying; I was too mesmerized by the husky sound of his voice. The air around us was cool but not cold, as this was the middle of summer and I felt like I could just lie there and listen to Francois forever while he talked about the stars.
I was now well on my way to getting enough money together for my mom’s operation and things were working out just fine. Perhaps Francois could repeat his little theater performance again at some more casinos and help create a distraction as I filled my pockets with Blackjack winnings. Francois did not need to know that he was doing slightly more than just having some fun with the Pit Bosses; God knows he hadn’t been a hundred percent honest with me either and I didn’t feel all that guilty to imagine Francois helping me along with my little card counting secret.
“I think this is going to be a fantastic summer,” I whispered in Francois’s ear. I was beyond intrigued by this mystery man and just knew instinctively that it had been Francois playing the guitar earlier that day…I was hoping to hear him play again; hopefully in my presence this time.
“The summer already is incredible, ma chérie, it already is,” he replied and kissed me softly on my neck one more time.
FRANCOIS
As we lied there on the roof a vague plan was beginning to form in my head. I wasn’t sure about the specifics yet, but I realized that it had been very helpful for me to see first-hand how one of the other casinos on the Strip, the Luxor, operated on ground level as Jenny played Blackjack at one of its tables while I watched from the bar. I thought that following Jenny around for a while as she did her card counting thing might just help me find out enough about the casinos competing with the Golden Nugget to beat them at their own game and prove to Vivienne once and for all that I was a worthy heir of the family fortune.
“I would really enjoy it if we could repeat tonight’s pleasures again in the future,” I said as I drew Jenny’s body close to mine.
“You mean you kind of enjoyed getting me all naked?” Jenny asked with a seductive smile.
“You are a true delight, ma chérie, but I’m not just talking about our lovemaking. It has been incredible to watch you at the Blackjack table and I would love to watch you play some more cards again…if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I would absolutely love that,” she replied and something about her enthusiasm suddenly made me wonder for just a second. She was taking the casinos for a ride and I wasn’t expecting her to be so open to the idea of a relative stranger watching her put the wool over the unsuspecting eyes of each dealer who had the misfortune of facing her at a Blackjack table. I decided to be slightly more careful with the brainy bombshell sitting next to me so innocently and sweetly on the rooftop of my Las Vegas casino.
“I think this could be the start of a great adventure for both of us,” I said carefully and kissed her softly.
“I really like the sound of that Francois, more than you will ever know,” she said and allowed me to kiss her delicious lips one more time.
JENNY
“Mom are you feeling okay!?”
I almost shouted down the mobile phone in my hand in desperation. My mother sounded like she was in a tremendous amount of pain and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. That was, perhaps, the worst part of it all as my mom had always put on a brave face despite all the challenges life had thrown at her and now that she was moaning openly over the phone. I felt like my heart was being ripped out as I listened to my mother’s voice at the other end of the line.
“I’m not feeling too great, my little angel,” my mom replied, “the headaches are getting worse every day now.”
For just a moment I considered packing my bags and taking the first flight out of godforsaken Las Vegas to go be with my mother in Los Angeles, but I quickly realized that this would do absolutely no good whatsoever. There was nothing I could do to make her feel any better…the only chance she had was to have the operation and I still needed to win approximately $120,000 to make it possible.
“Mommy, please just hang in there for another week or so,” I said through my tears, “I am working on something here and I will soon have enough money to pay for your operation,” I promised.
“Okay my angel, I will take it easy…just don’t go getting yourself in trouble on account of me, you hear?”
“You know me, mom, I’m always a good girl,” I replied and tried not to weep uncontrollably as I said goodbye to the only person in the world who’d always been there for me. I was not planning to let her down.
Fuck the casinos and fuck every person who owned a gambling institution just to prey on poor people’s dreams of a better life; I was going to make them all pay for their hideous sins! The thought struck me that justice demanded that any man who was low enough to make money from a casino should suffer just like my mother was suffering. One of the reasons I’d decided not to study law was the fact that the justice system seemed way too slow in meeting out justice…I had something much quicker in mind.
Francois and I were going out on the town again for another one of our team efforts and I found myself smiling through my tears as I sat on the edge of my bed crying. At least he was one little flame of hope in my life; even though he was not being totally honest with me about some things in his life. I felt like Francois was the only ally I had in my fight against the casinos and it made me feel like it wasn’t just me against the rest of the world.
“He’s probably just protecting his privacy,” I whispered to myself and realized that I was looking for excuses to trust Francois, instead of waiting for him to prove that he was trustworthy.
“One more week and then I’m out of here, Mr. French charmer…I hope you can show me a reason to trust you and perhaps even to…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the ‘L’ word, not even to myself. Love was way up there with world peace for me and I never even thought about the possibility of falling in love anymore.
So what if I was thinking about Francois all the time? It wasn’t as if I had much else to think about…I realized I was trying my best to justify and explain away the emotions that were rising to the surface every now and then to whisper in my mind, “You’re falling for him; falling in love with him.”
I fell back on my bed and took a deep breath. It seemed to me that everything was simply happening too fast and I needed to just slow down for a second. Although my card counting skills gave me an excellent chance to win every time I sat down at a Blackjack table it wasn’t a perfect science at all. If I put too much pressure on myself I might just lose everything I’d won so far and destroy any prospects of getting enough money together for my mother’s emergency operation.
I finally relaxed a little and drifted off to sleep. I had some puzzling dreams that made no sense at all and I must have rolled around in my sleep, as I woke up an hour later on the other side of the bed and found myself gripping my pillow tightly as if it was some kind of life jacket I needed to keep me from drowning.
“It’s all going to be okay,” I whispered softly, “Tonight I win at least another $60,000 and after that we’re just $60,000 away from survival, mommy.”
FRANCOIS
“Just slow down, you’re making absolutely no sense,” I used my most subdued and calming tone of voice as I listened to Peter Parkin going off at the other end of the line.
“Just remember you owe the other shareholders in the Golden Nugget a duty of care and there are ways of getting rid of you if you put our investment at risk!”
“I realize that, Peter, but I told you already, I took appropriate steps to safeguard the casino after I got the report from our private investigator.”
“Then why were you seen in the presence of the card counter and why was she allowed to win $44,000 at the Golden Nugget after you were warn
ed she was coming? Is that how you protected our interests? By taking the scamming bitch out for dinner after she’d taken us all for a $44,000 ride!?”
I realized I had no real defense against Peter’s attack and decided to mount my own counter-offensive. “Attack is the best defense,” Vivienne often said and I now decided to follow her advice.
“Before you go any further, there was something I wanted to ask you about Peter…the tax returns you signed off on for the last financial year,” I said and suddenly there was a deafening silence at the other end of the line.
“It seems to me that the taxes the Golden Nugget paid were almost $3 million less than the amount that was actually due to the Government…can you explain that?” Peter didn’t answer so I pressed on, “It would seem to me you should give that $3 million owed in back taxes a bit of thought instead of worrying about a small amount of money like $44,000.”
“Look I don’t want to get you all riled up for nothing, Francois, I just want you to run the casino in such a way that we all win,” Peter replied very carefully.
“Now you listen to me, Peter Parkin, if you ever speak to me again the way you did earlier I will submit the financial statements of the Golden Nugget for a tax audit myself and then you can pack a toothbrush and some ass grease for your 15 years stay at San Quentin State Prison, is that clear?”
“Yes it’s clear,” Peter replied in a quivering voice.
“And just so you know, I am doing my own surveillance of Ms. Jenny Blake so I want no further complaints about me being seen in her presence,” I added and put the phone down without any further pleasantries.
It had all been a total bluff, perfectly executed. I didn’t really know much about the taxes Peter had signed off on; I merely guessed that he was cheating the Government just like many of the other casinos on the Strip. My guess about the taxes had only been one part of my bluff, though. Even if Peter got difficult again in the future I would never submit the financials of the Golden Nugget for a tax audit as that would amount to absolute suicide. It would ruin the Golden Nugget and with it my chances of proving to Vivienne I was a good manager of large fortunes.
I knew that I had probably only bought myself a couple of days before Peter and the rest of the other shareholders would be coming at me again from a different angle. They probably had me under 24/7 surveillance now and would be informed of every single move I made, so I would have to be very careful.
“I really hope you are worth the gamble, Jenny Blake,” I thought to myself and discovered that I had a hard-on just from thinking about her.
“Guess that proves you are indeed worth it,” I smiled and started getting ready for another crazy night with the sexiest card counter on the Strip.
I found myself weighing in my mind the possibility of losing the family fortune because of my infatuation with Jenny and discovered that it was a risk I was willing to take. If I ever started loving money more than life itself I would rather go back to being a musician, I thought as I splashed on some Clive Christian 1872 after shave and drew my fingers through my unruly hair.
JENNY
I stood in front of the mirror and found myself wondering why everything always seemed to happen so fast when the pressure was at its highest. There I was with the added pressure of my mother’s illness which was now progressively getting worse, right at the same time when I was just starting to build up a good head of steam and momentum in my gambling efforts. To top it all off, I had also gotten involved, for the first time in 5 years, in a relationship that made me feel like a woman again.
Would it have been different if I had met Francois under different circumstances? Perhaps it would not have been the same high energy ride of passion and instant chemistry if we’d simply met at a bar somewhere; or, perhaps, it would have been even better. Who knows – all I had was the present and I was simply going to have to play along and wait for the dealer in the sky to deal me my next card in this crazy gambling dash for the finishing line while Francois cheered me on from the sideline.
I closed the hotel door behind me and made my way down to the front entrance. I took a deep breath of fresh air and looked up at the sky. It was getting darker, but there was still some sunlight left in the day. The strange twilight of the moment seemed to extend beyond the appearance of the azure Vegas skies; it also seemed a perfect metaphor for the position I found myself in. There was no turning back now and I was determined to push ahead and win the rest of the money my mother needed for her operation, come hell or high water. I also had one foot in the water of a passionate affair with Francois already and it seemed all of my bets and efforts with him were now caught in the twilight zone of no turning back.
“Are you ready?” Francois asked after kissing me on my lips and complimenting me on how beautiful I was.
I looked at Francois and smiled at his question. I knew he was only making small talk, but actually, my answer to his question was far more loaded than he could ever have imagined.
It would be easy to suggest that I was simply doing my best to get enough money together to save my mother, but the truth of it was that I was also still enjoying every second of my time at the Blackjack tables. Not only was I meeting out justice in a place where most people only ever lost their livelihood; I was also experiencing the adrenaline rush of being on the frontline of a confrontation between the gaming institutions of the world and those seeking their dreams and fortunes in games of chance where the dice were seriously loaded against them.
People like me were the catalyst that shifted the balance back in the favor of the ordinary people and I enjoyed every second of doing it. I hated what my dad had done to us as a family with his gambling, but I’d never hated him as a person. He got caught up in a world of fake belief and lost his way, not because he was a bad person, but because he was misled and deceived. I was determined to set the record straight and sometimes wished that my old man could have been there to see me put the hurt on the casinos by taking money from them. I really think he would have enjoyed it.
“Don’t ask me if I’m ready,” I said to Francois with a confident smile, “the real question is; are they ready for me?”
FRANCOIS
As I sat at the bar, watching Jenny struggling away at the Blackjack table while the Pit Boss kept a close eye on proceedings, it struck me that I’d been missing one very obvious fact which had been right there in front of me for the past two evenings. I’d been sitting all by myself, for the most part, at each of the bars in the various casinos that I’d accompanied Jenny to and in this very fact lay an obvious truth and hidden opportunity that neither I, nor the competing casino owners, had noticed.
The bar I was sitting at, just like the one I’d been sitting at the previous evening, had attracted very few guests and was little more than a part of the casino décor. But surely, I thought, gamblers would be more likely to gamble big and have a generally more spend-thrifty demeanor after a healthy couple of drinks, wouldn’t they? I made a mental note to get some extra waiters at the Golden Nugget and to instruct them to serve all of the guests with free alcohol to help business along.
I was feeling good about my general grip on the business of the Golden Nugget. I’d had a phone call with the private detective who’d been feeding me and the other shareholders information about Jenny Blake and had asked him to send all future intel to me directly and not to the other shareholders. He was reluctant at first, but after I’d offered to double his existing rate of payment he soon agreed that my suggestion was a wise one. This would prevent another psychotic phone call from Peter Parkin, or one of the other shareholders, about the fact that I was spending another evening or two in the company of Jenny Blake.
The conversation I’d had with Gary Tomlin, the private investigator who was doing the surveillance on Jenny Blake, had actually been most informative. He seemed a nice enough fellow who was simply doing his job to the best of his ability; trying to keep all of the shareholders informed of his progress. I asked him to
get some more personal information on Jenny’s family situation.
I wanted to know more about her personal history and asked to be informed of any important family related issues as I knew, from experience, that the greatest pressures in life almost always emanated from one’s family. I felt a little guilty for breaching Jenny’s privacy this way, but felt like this would be the best way of finding out what all of the driving forces behind her motives were and thought it might actually improve the prospects of us developing a lasting relationship.
I was already beyond the point of thinking about Jenny as just another fling. I’d never met a girl who excited me sexually the way she did whilst also intriguing my mind with all of her secretive ways and female attractions.