by Ubukata, Tow
She sounded almost as if she were talking to the wheel.
Then she touched the wheel. She spun the numbers for another battle, and released the ball. The wheel spun to the left, the ball to the right.
Balot picked up on the movements and grabbed her chips. She was ready to place her thousand-dollar chips down, and she thought to herself that this was something that she had decided on for herself. Oeufcoque had suggested they switch tables, and even Bell Wing had warned her to leave. Yet Balot had stayed—it was what she wanted and what she valued.
It was just like when she was back at Paradise, when she took on the giant pool and all its attendant risks in order to determine the whereabouts of Shell’s lost memories. Her choice.
Balot’s chips were placed on North West 13-1.
Straight bets, one thousand dollars on each.
Bell Wing looked at the ball as it spun around the circumference of the wheel, then closed her eyes. “My luck seems to have taken a turn for the sinister again,” she said, her voice detached. “No more bets,” she called out, her voice as clear and soft as ever.
The ball touched a pin, then fell to the right.
It hit the bowl that was spinning counterclockwise, slid over the dome, and was sucked in.
The atmosphere at the table was electric. The dealers could only stop and stare. They were like market stallholders helplessly standing by during a riot, watching their shops being looted bare by the angry crowds.
Bell Wing picked up the crystal. “One red,” she called.
The chips on the table seemed to dance around wildly before settling down in a single location: right in front of Balot. A total of thirty-four thousand dollars after deductions.
Bell Wing watched the pile of chips with silent eyes.
–Could you please spin the wheel clockwise this time, ma’am?
Balot spoke.
Bell Wing lifted her gaze from the mountain of chips to Balot’s face.
–I’ll try and win again.
Balot spoke without arrogance, without pride. Just matter of fact. One of the dealers turned to Bell Wing with a jolt when he heard this.
Bell Wing just stood up straight. “What’s your name?”
–Rune-Balot, ma’am.
“I’ll take note of it. I’m Bell Wing.”
Balot nodded.
“I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a granddaughter just like you. All my grandchildren are boys, you see.”
Balot was a little surprised at this sudden revelation. So, it seemed, were the other dealers at the table.
Bell Wing continued. “If you ever feel like spinning the wheel for yourself, come and see me. Whatever casino you like—just head for the best croupier there and say you want to become Bell Wing’s apprentice. With a little bit of luck you might find I’ll teach you everything I know.”
No doubt the dealers who were working the table with her had never heard such words from her before. They just stood there, slack-jawed, looking from Bell Wing’s face back to Balot’s.
–Thank you.
Balot answered, and Bell Wing’s eyes narrowed.
“Now, I’ll spin to the right.” Bell Wing waited for the previous round’s chips to be fully distributed, then touched the wheel with the opposite hand from before.
That was the cue for the table to quiet down again. Bell Wing’s fingertips spun the cylinder ever so softly. Clockwise, to the right. Balot watched, missing nothing.
Bell Wing did her job with a master craftsman’s pride. Like a prima donna taking to the stage.
And, in fact, this would be the last time Bell Wing would perform at this casino.
“I’m just a Continental croupier, born and raised. From one of those small towns where everyone worked either at the casino, the golf course, or the whiskey distillery.” Bell Wing was murmuring now. “And do you know what? I think I’d like to carry on plying my trade for some time to come. Maybe in a casino with a better atmosphere.”
Balot placed her chips as she listened to the words being spoken. All on one number. She felt no inclination to bet on any other number or add any more chips to the pile. The crowd around the table responded immediately to the ten thousand dollar bet she had placed. The number she had laid her bet on was inundated with various hues of chips, like ants to sugar.
“Rune-Balot,” Bell Wing called.
–Yes, ma’am.
“Keep on striving to ensure your luck turns to the right.”
–Yes, ma’am.
“Don’t fret too much about it. It’s just like striving toward womanhood.”
–What do I need to do?
“Be where you need to be, when you need to be there. Wear the clothes you need to wear, say the words you need to say, have the right hairstyle, the right jewelry. Womanhood and luck are essentially the same thing. The better you are at riding your own luck, the more of a woman you’ll become. Make your luck turn to the right.”
She spoke calmly, and by the end of her speech the ball was starting to slacken.
“No more bets.” Bell Wing’s voice echoed clearly.
The ball, moving to the left, hit a pin.
The blur of the wheel was starting to slow, and that which had been an indistinct mass now separated out into individual numbers.
The ball found its way home into the bowl, toward the pocket, its final destination. From counterclockwise to clockwise. Or so it seemed to Balot.
A roar went up at the table.
Bell Wing cut across the noise with the crystal in her hand.
“Two black.”
As she called out the result, she placed the dolly right next to the pile of accumulated chips; there wasn’t even space on the layout anymore. The whole table was cheering as if they had hit the jackpot on the slots and won one of the luxury cars. Chips clattered all around, but Bell Wing’s voice still cut clearly across the hubbub of the celebrating crowd.
“I couldn’t see it,” she said, looking at Balot. “Which way is it turning?”
Balot looked at the three-hundred-something-thousand-dollar payout in front of her and answered.
–If you’re talking about my luck, I think it’s turning to the right, ma’am.
Quietly, Bell Wing nodded. “Now, it’s time for you to go. This table’s dead to you now, and to me too, for that matter. You’ve just experienced the last game Bell Wing will ever run at this casino.” She looked straight at Balot as she said this, calm and collected to the end.
One of the other dealers stood behind Bell Wing, distributing the table’s winnings. The dealer that had just listened in on their conversation. Dealers from the other tables gathered around, and one of them took over at what had been, up until that moment, Bell Wing’s roulette table.
Bell Wing stood up straight and walked coolly away from the table.
02
–The woman paid out on your straight bets time after time. All she has to look forward to is a reprimand from the pit boss, followed by a formal inquiry, Oeufcoque said as Balot left the table, arms full of chips.
–Will she lose her job, do you think? Because of us?
–She could. Not that she seemed that bothered by it, though. In fact, I smelled a sort of liberated feeling coming from her. She’s probably used to this sort of situation.
–Used to it?
As soon as Balot heard the words she looked up to see if she could see Bell Wing. It wasn’t a very nice thing to be used to, surely. It was a sad thought.
Oeufcoque picked up on Balot’s feelings.
–Bell Wing is one of the best croupiers in the business. She’ll be all right. We can worry about her all we like, but it’s not going to help her one bit, and in any case she won’t want our sympathy… It seemed that Oeufcoque was speaking in order to try and comfort Balot, but then he suddenly changed tack.–In any case, the numbers that she spun were looking rightward, weren’t they? Oeufcoque spoke tentatively, as if he didn’t really understand the concepts that the two w
omen had been discussing.
–I think so.
–Well, it’s up to us to do our job now. She’s certainly done hers.
Finally Balot seemed convinced, and she nodded.
Just at that moment she felt someone approach her from behind. She spun around to find the Doctor grinning at her.
“Well, well, somebody’s made quite an impression!” the Doctor said, smiling broadly.
–I’m sorry.
“No, no.” The Doctor shook his head. Very politely. It seemed that the Doctor knew exactly just how many chips Balot had won. “It was about time we ramped things up a notch and got ready for the real fight anyway. Let’s get serious. Having said that—” the Doctor paused, indicating his surroundings with a subtle gesture—“I’m sure that quite a few of these people looking at you want to come up and congratulate you, maybe learn your secret. Probably best we make tracks.”
Balot realized that all eyes were on her. The dealers and the pit bosses, who looked at her warily, and the other punters, who mainly just seemed fascinated by her.
“They’re not people you particularly want to meet, trust me on this one,” the Doctor said, walking off toward reception. “Some of them will be professional gamblers who want to recruit you into their gang, and others will just be angling for secrets on making a quick buck. We need to play it cool.”
Balot followed after the Doctor silently. The chips were chinking inside the basket she held to her chest. Eyes all around the room were following the basket of chips—and Balot. They wanted both.
–I’m confident that I’d be able to win all we need at roulette, Balot said, as if to distract herself from all the unwanted attention.
–Even if millions were at stake, I’d still get it right.
“I’m sure you would, but that wouldn’t help us reach our goal one bit.” It was Oeufcoque who replied. Her partner was as sensitive as ever to her feelings. “The croupiers in charge aren’t idiots. They’d just change the wheel’s spin to make it impossible for even you to predict, or they might even use a special machine if they thought they needed to do so in order to bring you down.”
–But…
“In any case, we can’t get hold of the chips that we need from a roulette table, however many piles of chips we win. We’re not professionals out to win big from the casino. We have to remember that we’re here for a legitimate reason: Scramble 09.”
–Okay…
Balot felt the tension and worry dissipate from her body. She understood.
The one thing that Balot was never likely to get used to was other people seeing her as an object of convenience. She’d do everything she could to avoid this, close her eyes, shut away the world.
But what if even Oeufcoque and the Doctor saw her as a useful object?
When would they start treating her as one? The moment must come eventually, and she was so terrified of it that she wanted to disappear from the two forever.
Why was she suddenly thinking like this? Was it because she had just met an extraordinary woman in Bell Wing? The thoughts swirled around Balot’s mind. Balot was a long way off from having the sort of composure you needed to be able to walk away from a table, unperturbed that you had just been beaten, just as Bell Wing had done a minute ago.
She also lacked the sort of compassion that Oeufcoque had—if she’d been abused so roughly by her user, she doubted whether she could be so understanding as to come back and work in the hands of her erstwhile abuser.
She was thinking about all this at reception while she had her chips changed into more manageable denominations, when the Doctor said something to her out of the blue.
“So, it looks like you make that sort of face too.”
Balot had no idea what he was talking about. She looked up.
“I’m talking about your face when you were locked in your battle with the croupier back there.”
–What do you mean?
Balot’s face turned sour.
“You had a sharp, fearsome look about you. Almost as if you didn’t need us anymore. Now I know I made the right decision in bringing you here.” He passed Balot the basket full of ten-thousand-dollar chips, her stash.
While Balot was trying to work out what he meant, the Doctor took off toward the box bar. He peered this way and that, whistling at the more impressive games, every inch the hooked gambler. It was hard to tell whether it was an act anymore.
Balot trailed behind him, and they sat down in a semi-private box booth, shielded by black screens. One that you could sit in regardless of the games going on either side.
“What do you want to drink?” the Doctor asked. Balot pointed at the menu. The Doctor ordered for both of them using the microphone built into the table. When he finished ordering it was Balot’s turn to ask a question.
–What do you mean by a fearsome look?
“Hmm?”
–My face—when I was playing roulette.
“Uh. What’s the best way to put it…”
–You were looking at something that only you could see, interjected Oeufcoque through the microphone.
–I don’t understand.
–I think the Doctor’s getting a little bit concerned that as you start to realize your full potential, we’ll become increasingly redundant, until finally we’re out of a job.
The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, half in jest. As if to say That wouldn’t actually be so bad.
At that point a waitress came carrying a tray with two glasses. The Doctor tipped her generously and winked. Every bit the accomplished player. The waitress placed the tip into her cleavage and sauntered away, giving the Doctor a generous shake of her derriere as his reward.
Balot watched this scene play out—what else could she do?—and then replied with her honest reaction to Oeufcoque’s words.
–It’d be a terrible thing if you two disappeared from my life right now.
She wasn’t saying this to be nice or to suck up to them.
The Doctor picked up his glass and smiled. “Well, I should hope so. If we were dispensable, we’d be pretty useless as Scramble 09 Trustees. We’d be disposed of immediately, or at the very least thrown straight in the slammer.”
–So what did Oeufcoque mean just then by “redundant”?
“Well, you do have the right, you know. Whenever you like. The right to fire us and hire a different set of Trustees. All you have to do is head on over to the Broilerhouse and just say the word. You could even use some of your war chest that you’ve just won to hire our replacements.”
–Why would I want to do a thing like that?
“Don’t you want to?”
Balot’s shoulders sagged. Why were the Doctor and Oeufcoque being like this? It was completely different from earlier. She had no idea what was going on, how to read the situation. It was like the time she was suddenly told goodbye without any warning…
–Why?
“Well, from our point of view we’d rather you didn’t, of course. That’s why we appeal to our usefulness—we think we’re the best in the business, and we have to prove it to you.”
Balot nodded. It was what they were doing.
“You’re a Concerned Party in this case,” continued the Doctor.
Balot nodded again.
“You’ve hired us to fight an injustice committed against you and to bring the offenders to heel.”
She nodded a third time.
“And now you’ve taken it upon yourself to solve the case on your own.”
This time, Balot didn’t nod. She wondered whether this was all because she had just won so much at roulette. Had she angered the Doctor and Oeufcoque without even realizing it? As she thought this, she was overcome by a wave of desolation. All expression drained from her face, and she withdrew into her shell, staring at the Doctor from inside her husk.
–You’re starting to wake up to your own potential. That’s all the Doctor is trying to say, said Oeufcoque. The words jolted her out of her stupor, and she squee
zed both hands tightly.
–The Doctor didn’t see you in action back at the hideaway, with all your incredible marksmanship. This is the first time he’s seen you in your full glory. He feels a sense of responsibility for what you’ve become, explained Oeufcoque.
–Responsibility?
–Say if you were to start using your abilities for selfish reasons. The Doctor would be obligated to freeze your abilities, and he’d be taken off your case whether he liked it or not.
Balot’s hair stood on end. She felt cold all over. This was the first time that Oeufcoque had alluded to the incident in which she had abused him so—the first time she felt she was being properly admonished. Balot stared at her hands—at Oeufcoque.
But.
–Don’t worry. You’ll develop, and learn, Oeufcoque said, as if he were gently easing Balot’s guilty conscience by taking it upon himself.–You’ll discover and then master your abilities at a rate that will leave the Doctor and me trailing far behind you. There will be times when something is impossible for us but possible for you. The only thing we’re concerned about is that you don’t get burnt out along the way.
–Burnt out?
–We’re now moving into the final phase of our plan vis-a-vis this casino, said Oeufcoque, his voice stern.–All the Doctor and I can do is our best, to the limits of our abilities. Your job is to make it so that we can do what we couldn’t do without you.
“Don’t worry—it’ll be perfectly possible,” added the Doctor. Balot looked up from her hands. “Or rather, there will come a point when it will be possible for you to do it. The question is not if, but when. And, more importantly, how you’ll feel when the moment comes. Which way will your feet be pointing?”
–That’s what you mean by “burnt out”?
“Yes—that’s human psychology for you. What will you do once you have the proof we need to arrest Shell? If you’re too involved, too burnt out, you might feel reluctant to press the advantage, and that could ruin everything.”
Balot’s brows knitted again. Not that she felt bad in any way. She felt that she owed these two something. An apology for thinking that it was they who wanted to use her, perhaps. She realized that it was just her own guilty conscience that had been putting these sorts of thoughts in her mind.