He Was Her Man

by Sarah Shankman

  What was it Harry had said? It’s not that I don’t love you, Sammy. This fling had nothing to do with age. Nothing to do with her being younger. And then he’d said that he needed the possibility of more commitment.

  And sometimes he needed to be in control.

  Well, screw him if he couldn’t take a joke. Being in the driver’s seat was the only way she could avoid being hurt. Didn’t he know that? That was what Samantha Adams did for a living. She controlled.

  Let go, let God, said a chorus of voices she’d heard in the program for the past dozen years.

  Well, she let go as much as she could—which wasn’t a whole lot. She loved free-lancing, because she called the shots. She lived alone. She controlled her emotions. She controlled her drinking.

  Oh, yes, she did that.

  Why, she could sit here at this bar and stare at that drink to her left, the one the handsome man who was sitting there had ordered, till the cows come home—and not give it a second thought.

  Well, sure, she’d noticed what it was. He’d ordered an extra-dry Bombay martini, three olives, straight up. It was gorgeous in one of those classic V-shaped glasses.

  She could smell the gin, that hint of juniper. Taste the salty olives. She closed her eyes. Feel the hit in the back of her throat.

  Ummmmmm. Didn’t she love that? The clear icy cold draught, that first kapow going down, then the lovely warmth spreading to the tips of her toes. That smooth silky release from all her cares and woes. Yes, indeedy, blackbird. Oblivion was right around the comer. As close as her raising one red-lacquered fingertip as the waitress passed. Pointing at the glass next door, then herself. Didn’t have to say a word to tell her, Hit me with one of those.

  Now the songstress was working “My Funny Valentine” right down to the nub. Which wasn’t making this solo outing any easier for a recovering drunk with a black-and-blue ego and a battered heart.

  “What can I get you, ma’am?”

  Sam looked up into the face of a young blond waitress. Another goddam dewy blonde, just like Harry’s, with the kind of flesh, you touch it, it springs right back.

  And the words were right there, on the tip of her tongue: Black Jack on the rocks with a side of water.

  “Check, please,” she said.

  Then she held onto the edge of the curved ebony and shut her eyes tight. She’d been joking with herself, of course. She didn’t really want a drink. So why was she trembling, head to toe?

  She was shaking because she knew that old devil Mr. Booze was always lurking around the corner. He always had been, he always would be. Oh, sure, months passed that she didn’t even get a whiff of him, his breath that at first smelled like perfume. Whispering promises, Oh, Lordy, hon, don’t you know how that drink would feel? Soooo good.

  She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. The lady in blue velvet was watching her, even as she sang. She gave Sam a slow wink. Was the lady a friend of Bill W’s, too, another recovering drunk? Or did she just know a woman in trouble when she saw one? A woman who played piano in public rooms for a living was bound to have seen everything once.

  Sam fiddled with her swizzle stick. She didn’t even smoke anymore, and what she’d give for a cigarette right now. But the nicotine had been even harder to kick than the booze.

  And Harry? How hard was it going to be to kick him?

  Enough. That night was history. She was going to her room. Lights out. But where the hell was her check? She stood. Where was that blonde?

  She searched the room, her gaze sweeping the tables around the dance floor, the bar, then up the curving stairway of gold that rose from the Palace’s lobby to the mezzanine above. At the top of the stairway stood a pretty redhead with a short boyish bob, who not only caught her attention, but wouldn’t let go.

  Now this was a woman who knew how to make an entrance, who paused for a count of 10 on the landing, slowly scanning. For whom? wondered Sam. Or was she just letting the room take her in: the black suede pumps, the simple black velvet dinner suit, the fitted jacket unbuttoned just enough to show her pearls, diamond solitaire ear studs. Sam particularly liked the little black sequined evening cap with the wisp of wide net that touched the tip of her nose.

  Mickey was fond of it, too. The cap was the kind of cute touch that the Professor had loved.

  Sam watched the woman’s trim ankles scissor down the stairs. Then with a slow sashay, but not too much, she crossed the room and headed toward a table for two just to Sam’s right that was emptying even now as she approached.

  The lady had probably had good parking karma, too. Sam, still waiting for that check, watched the redhead place her jet beaded evening bag on the empty chair and order a mineral water in a low pleasant Southern voice. She was polite to her waiter, who had eyes only for her, avoiding Sam’s salute.

  The lady had a pretty smile, too, which she bestowed on the gray-haired cigar-smoking sport who, in half a minute, moseyed his chair right over from his table to hers. He looked like a Texan, or a playlike Texan in an expensive Western-tailored suit and alligator cowboy boots.

  Sam eavesdropped, as any good reporter would—even a former reporter couldn’t resist the old habit—while the man, who introduced himself as Slim, talked of south Texas and goddam, beg your pardon ma’am, spring rains nearly flooding them out, the oil bidness, the godawful silly party downstairs in the ballroom his wife had dragged him to. Sam tipped her glass to that. He spoke of the salutary effects of single malt Scotch following a bath and massage, and wondered what a pretty lady, whose name it turned out was Mickey, might be doing by her lonesome in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

  Sam bristled. Was it against the law for a woman to go out in public alone? Lots of women did it, you know. Some by choice. Some by have to.

  But this Mickey wasn’t offended by the question at all. She smiled as she said, “I’m here to play a little cards.”

  “Oh, really?” Slim had a big rich laugh. He also had a diamond-studded Rolex that could blind you, diamond button covers on his Western shirt, and a gold cobra-shaped pinky ring with emerald eyes and diamond fangs. “What’s your game, you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Texas hold ’em,” said Mickey, then paused. “Among others.”

  That got a big laugh from Slim. Sam smiled. So Ms. Mickey played big-time hardball poker. She was beginning to think this lady was more than wise. Sam was curious, losing her impetus to pay up and move on, even as the waitress finally dropped her check on the bar. Fine, let her wait.

  Mickey added, “In my spare time I do card tricks.”

  Sam looked around the piano to see if anyone else appreciated the redhead’s lines and found herself staring straight into the eyes of a small, slight light-skinned black man two seats to her right around the curve of the piano. He was wearing a neat mustache, a navy double-breasted blazer, a high-collared white shirt, and a red foulard tie. She’d seen this man before. Where? When? A good while ago, it seemed. But there was no question in her mind that she had. She gave him a little nod. He nodded back, but gave no signal that she looked familiar to him.

  Then the singer launched into “Stormy Weather,” and Slim said to Mickey, “So, you came to clean our clocks.”

  The redhead took a sip of her mineral water and said, “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Want to give me a demonstration? I don’t mean a serious game. Just show me one of those tricks you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re much too clever.” Mickey smiled. She had very pretty little white teeth. “You look like a serious player. I wouldn’t want to insult your intelligence.”

  Slim didn’t say a word to that, just reached in his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill. He laid it on the table and leaned back in his chair.

  Sam turned again to glance at the black man in the navy blazer. His eyes flicked toward the redhead and the Texan, then back at Sam. He raised one eyebrow. Who the hell was he?

  “I see,” said Mickey. She slipped a brand-new de
ck of cards from her evening bag, handed it to Slim. “If that’s how you feel about it, I’d appreciate your doing us the honors, please, sir.”

  Sam thought, Slim, you have a hundred bucks lying on the table, you don’t even know the trick? I think you’re about to be fleeced, my man. Then she watched Slim catch Mickey’s gaze and hold it for a while like he was reading her mind, turning the pages slowly. Then he gave her a slow grin. “Nobody’s doing me any harm here tonight, are they, sugar baby?”

  Mickey handed the grin right back to him. “Nope,” she said. “Sugar Baby ain’t doing anybody no harm. Ain’t gonna take any of your money, either.” She pushed the hundred back toward Slim. Without missing a beat he pulled out its twin, pushed two hundred back at her.

  Sam wasn’t surprised. It was the kind of thing men did. And the kind of thing a clever woman would lead them to do. Mickey looked like a very clever woman. Sam looked back at the mustachioed black man. What did he think? He was still watching. He gave a small smile.

  Then Sam looked back at Mickey, so she didn’t see the man whom she couldn’t place glance over his shoulder and nod at a big silver-haired man who had paused before the elevators to fire a slender cigar with a heavy gold lighter. The big man returned the nod, message received, then disappeared.

  Back at the table Mickey was saying, “Oh, all right, if you insist. Now, here we go, are you ready? Yes? Then would you open that deck and shuffle, please, sir? Good. Why don’t you do that one more time? Now, just place it on the table.” Mickey didn’t touch the cards, which were backed with a scrolling Florentine design of red, blue, and gold. “Here’s how it goes. You and I’ll take turns. Slip a card off the top of the deck, turn it face up. The first one who turns over a picture card loses. Now, you don’t have to turn every card. You can put it aside, face down, if you feel like it might be a picture card, turn over the next one. Or the one after that. Skip as many as you want. Got it?”

  “The first picture card turned loses the bet? That’s all there is to it?” said Slim.

  “That’s it. Why don’t you go ahead?”

  “Ladies first.”

  “No, no, I insist.”

  Slim reached for the top card, and without hesitating a moment, flipped it. Three of diamonds.

  Mickey carefully lifted a card, just high enough that Sam could see she peeked. Slim had seen her, too, for Sam caught his little start of surprise. Mickey turned the card over. The ace of spades.

  Slim drew the 10 of clubs.

  Mickey peeked again. Sam turned to see if the mustachioed man had seen the cheat. He raised and lowered his eyelids like blinds. He’d seen, all right. Mickey turned the six of hearts.

  Slim hesitated on the next one, slid it aside. Next up was the eight of diamonds.

  “Good call, my man,” said Sam under her breath. Her natural inclination was to pull for the lady, but if the lady was a cheat.…

  The next card, Mickey peeked again, then slid the card over, face down. Then she picked another, peeked, and flipped the five of clubs.

  Slim reached over and turned the card she’d passed on. There it was. The jack of diamonds wearing a handsome face.

  “You lose!” Mickey crowed.

  Slim was stunned. “What do you mean, me?” His voice rose. “You cheated. You peeked every time. You saw that was a picture, and you passed on it.”

  “That’s right.” Mickey’s smile was a killer. “And you turned it over. You turned the first picture card. Sugar Baby wins. You lose.”

  Slim fell back in his seat. “Well, fuck me and the horse I rode in on.”

  A bell sounded in Sam’s head. Something about a horse. The key to who the black man was something about a horse.

  Slim was laughing now. He was halfway between astonishment and indignation. But he was still a gentleman, standing as Mickey stood, checked her watch, gathered the cards, slipped the two hundred dollars and the cards into her bag, and extended her hand. “Thanks so much for the drink, Slim. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, and I hate to win and run, but now if you’ll excuse me.”

  Sam had it. She whirled toward the black man, who grinned, and she caught a glimpse of a gold star embedded in one of his two front teeth. That cinched it. She was right, by God!

  He was Early Trulove, sure as shooting, an old jail-house buddy of Harry’s partner, Lavert. She’d never really met him, hadn’t gotten close enough to shake hands. It had been a year or so ago, she and Harry and Lavert had been out at the track in New Orleans, and Lavert had pointed out Early as he had walked a filly into the paddock. Early had called something to Lavert and grinned—and Sam had commented then on the flash of gold. Early’s lucky star, Lavert had said. Wards off the silver bullets. Sam had pressed him for details, and Lavert had said Early was working as a groom for Lavert’s former employer, Joey the Horse.

  She remembered the day and the man because of the filly Early had been walking. She even remembered the filly’s name, Lush Life. Lavert had said, with an insider’s wink, Bet her to win. They did, and then in the stretch she’d run herself to death. Died, they said, of a heart attack. But she broke a leg going down, and then kept foundering, struggling to rise again. It was a hideous sight, and Sam hadn’t been back to the track since.

  She was about to speak to Early, call him by name, when he dropped a 20 on the bar and melted away.

  That was it. Call it a night, Sammy. You’re running on your rims. She stood, slipped a bill in the crystal snifter for the singer, who gave her a big grin, then wove her way through the crowded tables across the room. She was heading out toward the elevators when she had an attack of good manners.

  Well, hell, it wouldn’t kill her to take the five minutes to run back downstairs to the ballroom, say good-night to Jinx and thank her for the party, then she could go snuggle into her jammies.

  Later, Sam thought that for many a Southern belle, the road to perdition has been paved with good manners.

  It’s that always smiling, saying yes and thank you, and no, I don’t mind one bit, honey, you just go ahead and do what you have to, that has landed many of them in the looney bin if not in jail.

  In this particular case, she could have been upstairs asleep, she could have been watching late night TV, she could have been eating a box of chocolate pecan fudge. Instead, she was standing there in shoes that pinched, listening to Jinx.

  “I don’t know how that Katie Couric does it. I’ll tell you, that morning I was on her Today Show with my crystal altars, I thought I was going to die. I could no more get up at that time every morning to interview celebrities than I could fly to the moon. I told her. I said, Katie, honey, I don’t know about you, but I need to get my beauty sleep.”

  Kitty said to Sam, “Did you have to go out to a pharmacy for those aspirin? We were about to send a rescue party.”

  “I got sidetracked.”

  Jinx took a deep breath and sailed off on another tack. “Don’t y’all just love Southern weddings? Aren’t they the best? I feel so sorry for Yankees and other foreigners, they don’t even begin to get into the spirit of the thing. You know how outrageous I am, and the second time, when I married Harlan, I had fourteen bridesmaids, all his sisters and girl cousins, and I had them all wear shocking pink and black from Valentino. Honey, that was even before New York women discovered black.

  “Actually what we did was this Southern wedding in Italy because that’s where Harlan’s friend, the Italian count, lived, the one he went into the electronics business with. We had a nineteenth-century coach and four horses with roses in their manes carry us from the church to his villa. I had all these little footmen in cute knee pants serving fried chicken wings and potato salad and deviled eggs to the Italians. I had to have forty deviled-egg plates sent from Neiman’s. You know you can’t get a decent deviled-egg plate north of the Mason-Dixon line, and certainly not in Italy. I mean, I could have done carpaccio and pasta primavera and veal tonnato, all that Italian thing, which would have been easier, but not
nearly as—Sam, are you listening to me?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You don’t look like you’re listening.”

  Now, that was the perfect opportunity for Sam to say, No, I’m not, Jinx. And what you’ve noticed with your extraordinary perspicacity are my eyes glazing over from sheer screaming-meemie B-O-R-E-D-O-M—except that wouldn’t be very polite, would it, and she had come back downstairs to be polite if it choked her.

  Right about then Loydell steamed back into the scene, her mouth a thin line, her blue eyes sparkling. “Loydell Watson reporting back,” she said with a smart little salute as if her daughter were a general.

  “Very funny, Mother. Now where is Speed?”

  The bridegroom wasn’t downstairs yet? He must have had an even bigger headache than Sam’s. Well, of course, he did, and she was standing right there, running her mouth.

  “Where is he, Mother? Is he sick? Did he have an asthma attack?”

  “I called up there, but nobody answered,” said Loydell. “So I went up there, to y’all’s room.”

  “And?” Jinx tapped a satin-clad foot. “What did he say, Mother?”

  “Nothing. He wasn’t in the room.”

  Jinx sighed heavily. “You are the most contrary old woman in the whole wide world and you are driving me NUTS! Now, I’ve got to leave my party and go see about him. Christ! I hope he’s not stuck in some elevator.”

  “Nope,” said Loydell. “He’s not. He’s gone.”

  Sam could feel a little bubble of spite rising in her breast. The fiancé had ditched Jinx. Jilted her at their engagement party. Split. Vamoosed. Oh, this was so sweet. And she was so glad she’d come downstairs to say good-night.

  Jinx’s face had gone white with an even lighter ring around her scarlet mouth. She said, “Gone? What do you mean gone? Gone where?”

  “Well, the note didn’t say anything about their destination.”

  Loydell, Sam thought, you’re enjoying this too much. Jinx is going to haul off and slap you in about half a second. Spit it out, lady, before it’s too late.