by Ubukata, Tow
Ashley’s upcard, 3. Balot’s cards, K-6.
Balot hit. A 3.
–Stay.
Ashley showed his hole card: 2. Five. He drew another card: 8. And another: 6. Nineteen to nineteen. Ashley’s luck had shown itself again.
“Push.”
It was almost a whisper.
Balot left her bet as it was and called for the next hand.
Ashley’s upcard, a king. Balot’s cards, 8-9.
–Stay.
Ashley’s hole card, 2.Twelve. He drew another card and found a 5.
Another push. Worse still, if Balot had hit, she would have bust.
It was a critical back-and-forth match. And the next game was another tie. The chips in her pot remained unmoved. The center point pulled at by two opposing forces, motionless as the locus of their struggle.
Ashley had stopped talking. Balot was also silent. Only the game moved on. Dr. Easter and Bell Wing simply watched. The gallery was growing in number, one by one. Music played, passing through the rhythm of the cards before disappearing again.
The ties continued. Not just once or twice. Balot trudged through the dark desert. But this time there were morning stars twinkling in the sky. She could see them. They were fellow travelers, walking beside her. Cold tension and anxiety. Impatience and fatigue. Their footsteps in time as they marched in the same direction. The same direction as her. This wasn’t as foolish and simple as when she was worried about averting her eyes.
After a time, the twentieth hand passed in a tie, and with the twenty-first hand’s tie, the cards began to unravel, and with the twenty-second hand’s tie, like a wave cresting against the cliffside and shattering into pieces, an inevitability started to form.
Ashley placed his upcard for the twenty-third hand. A king.
Balot’s hand was filled with a 3-5.
Balot hit and received a 2. She hit again and the 4 came to her heavy. She steadied her breath, preparing herself for whatever was to come, and said,
–Hit.
She willed her eyes not to turn away. A 5. Nineteen. Stay.
Ashley turned over his hole card. It was an ace.
Ashley won. Balot’s chips were wiped from her pot.
Balot watched it happen. The empty space where her chips had been seemed to whisper to her. Now is the time. Your lost chips were your high ground. Now you must jump as it vanishes out from under you. You’re jumping from the high ground you’ve built up.
If you miss your landing, you’re dead by the very height you built.
Balot prayed for courage. It wasn’t that hard. If what she had gained was everything, and it was being tested, all she had to do was open her hand and show it.
She opened her left hand. She pulled out her first golden chip and placed it softly on the empty table. The crowd suddenly began to boil.
–Next hand.
Ashley nodded.
The cards came. His upcard, an ace. Balot’s cards, 7-7.
The red card appeared in the shoe.
Ashley removed the red card. Balot inhaled and exhaled. She touched her hand to the second gold chip. She could sense that its contents had been extracted.
She set the second chip on top of the first.
–Double down.
All sound vanished from the room.
It only took two chips to freeze the entire casino. Two million-dollar chips.
Amid the stinging silence, Ashley solemnly touched his hand to the card shoe.
The card came vividly, the burning red suit striking Balot’s gaze.
A 7.
A red 7.
This was a clear sign: this would be Balot and Ashley’s final round.
Two sevens and an even number of eights remained in the deck: a card order designed to prevent an instant victory for the player. The third seven only appeared due to the skill of the dealer and the judgment of the player, both of them exceptional. The three cards known as the “Glory Sevens” sat before Balot’s eyes. Between diamonds on the left and on the right pulsed the seven of hearts.
Their suits as red as blood. In truth, the three cards were blood. Not spilled blood, tragic and bereft of hope. But blood shed in spirit during their long battle.
To properly respond—to give her one-hundred-percent answer—was not only her own personal goal, it was merited.
–Even money.
Ashley gulped. His hand, prepared to reveal his hole card as soon as she stayed, trembled in midair.
It was the choice to throw away the blackjack payout. And the path to the minimum guaranteed winnings.
“You want to throw away a six-million-dollar payout? You know that’s a difference of four million dollars!”
Balot sat motionless.
The Doctor’s hands shook on the back of her chair.
Next to him, Bell Wing closed her eyes, then opened them again when the moment of silence had passed.
“I never thought you’d be able to throw away a chance of winning six million dollars. I miscalculated. I am utterly defeated. Now I’ve seen courage. I’ve seen humility. For the first time, I’ve seen somebody beat me completely.”
He slowly lowered his hovering hand to the table.
Suddenly, Balot’s vision clouded, and she could no longer see.
Tears filled her eyes. They wouldn’t stop. Their warmth flowed down her cheeks and, mixed with the thin layer of silver powder on her skin, fell to the table. As it all spilled, her only thought was, I did this. She had climbed the last step of the stairway to heaven and jumped into space. There she set foot on a new stairway—one entirely her own.
She was frightened. Her body shook. She summoned the courage to take one step forward.
Only later did she realize she had been crying endless tears. And from her trance, she spoke to her rival. How she had won. Why she had been able to win.
–I was trapped in a car when people came to save me. Like your brother, I too have died.
Ashley sighed.
“You’re like a mermaid.” He shrugged. “You remind me of the story of the fish who exchanged her voice for a pair of legs to walk on land. Even if she did end up dissolving into foam, she was a brave woman. Even though each step felt like a sword passing through her, she walked the land because she wanted to know the truth.”
He turned the hole card. Balot couldn’t see anything through her tears.
“I didn’t think this card would be defeated.”
–I can’t see it.
“It doesn’t matter. You won. A perfect victory.”
Two cards rose through the haze, symbolic of the man before her.
The ace and the jack of spades. The strongest blackjack—the one-eyed jack.
Chapter 11
CONNECTING ROD
01
Everyone waited patiently for Balot to finish wiping her face with the cloth.
Ashley didn’t even ask what she intended to do for the next game. Neither did he collect the cards in preparation for the shuffle. He just waited for her.
When Balot eventually finished wiping the tears from her face and looked up, there was Ashley, holding out the box. The box full of golden chips.
Those on the floor watched in stunned silence as Balot reached for the box and took a golden chip, one with the OctoberCorp emblem etched on its face. When Ashley said, And now please choose your other one, the whole crowd seemed about to faint. Balot checked for the last OctoberCorp emblem—the final piece of the puzzle—and once she’d located it, she gingerly took the chip into her care along with the other three.
“Perhaps you might be able to share with me—only if it suits you, that is—just what it is about these chips that you’re seeking?” Ashley said as he placed the box—now deprived of a third of its golden luster—back into place.
Balot casually slipped the chips into her glove—as if they were unimportant—and answered him.
–I made the trade too, I think. Like the mermaid with the sorceress. So that I would be able to wa
lk, in a manner of speaking.
“So that’s what you’re aiming for, is it? To be able to walk properly?”
–I think so.
Ashley nodded, greatly impressed. Or so it seemed, but then he frowned.
It wasn’t Balot’s fault, though—indeed, his sudden change of demeanor was nothing to do with her and everything to do with the barrage of words that were now assaulting his ears through his earpiece. Balot knew immediately who was haranguing him so—not so much from the voice, but from the words themselves.
If the vicious words of recrimination were anything to go by, this was indeed a cursed man, the man whose life was full of the emptiness of his own creation.
Balot watched Ashley as he winced and then cringed under the vicious barrage of recriminations and insults. Somehow she found it funny.
–The owner of the casino, perhaps?
“As you say, miss—very perceptive of you. Looks like we’ve not just entered a minefield but also stepped right on top of a charged mine to boot. I am sorry about this—I would have liked to present a more professional face to you…” With the last words, Ashley’s glance flickered toward Bell Wing.
“It’s a bit too late for that, Ashley. You’ve long since fallen for this girl,” Bell Wing pointed out, bringing him back down to earth. Ashley grinned good-naturedly. Balot thought she’d seen this smile once before somewhere.
He turned back to Balot with the same expression and continued. “I have one round left to win everything back from you and finish you off, apparently. Otherwise it’s the flamethrower.”
–Flamethrower?
“Pink slip. His dismissal papers,” Bell Wing explained. Ashley bowed to confirm this—just so.
“Looks like this is how it’s going to end for me, then. One more round is nowhere near enough time for me to find a way to beat you. It might be a different story if we had another ten rounds or so, of course, but by then I’d probably be rooting for you anyway; I’m sure I’d want you to win by the end, which would kind of defeat the whole object, wouldn’t it? Hmm, what to do…”
–Please call the owner of the casino here. I want to return these chips to him in person.
Balot felt the information on the third chip being sucked out from within her glove as she spoke. Ashley was rarely lost for words, but he was now. He turned to look at Bell Wing.
In turn, Bell Wing was no less surprised. The two dealers looked at each other in silence for a while, trying to work out what was behind this sudden turn of events and what it could mean.
When the silence was eventually broken it was in the form of a roaring laugh from Ashley.
“Man, you really got us, didn’t you. Are you saying that it was never your intention to try and break the bank here?” Ashley’s fine-whiskered face was now creased in laughter, as if he’d just been subjected to a barrage of the most hilarious comedy known to mankind.
Balot nodded, and Ashley looked up to the heavens. “In other words, you’ve already found what you’ve come for. A target that we never even knew about and still don’t know the details of… Incredible. Well, you know what? I may be here as the yojimbo, but my job is to protect the casino—I’m not a bodyguard. The owner will just have to fend for himself. And if you’re after him, miss, I can’t say I rate his chances too highly.”
Bell Wing was nodding too—she had finally understood it all.
Ashley looked back at Balot, then placed his massive hand over his equally massive chest. “I’ll be praying for you, miss, that your magic spell lasts as long as possible.” His tone of voice was now dignified and polite, in such contrast to his raucous laughter of a minute ago that Balot wondered whether she had dreamed that laughter.
–Thank you.
Ashley’s infectious grin emerged again, and he walked away from the table.
≡
Balot looked over in the direction Ashley was moving and snarced Oeufcoque softly.
–That dealer—he’s a lot like you, Oeufcoque, you know.
–You think so? In what way?
–In many ways. He just is, kind of. He has his strict side but also a gentle streak. And he’s a unique personality.
–Just your type, then.
–I guess so. Jealous, much?
Oeufcoque didn’t reply right away. He left a short pause—signifying that he was somewhat preoccupied with the delicate operation involving the million-dollar chips—before answering.
–I’m not aware of any such symptoms, no.
–That’s a shame. You’re allowed to be a little jealous, you know.
–Sorry about that.
Oeufcoque was apparently unaffected, and Balot felt a bit disappointed. But then more words floated abruptly up on her hand, as if Oeufcoque was spitting the words out in spite of himself.
–I was frightened back then when I was removed from your hands. I thought you might be throwing me away.
–But I want to use you, Oeufcoque. In exactly the way that you want me to.
She patted her gloves gently as if to reassure him that this was indeed the truth. She stroked him like a mother stroking her baby’s face to tell it that it was special, beloved, wanted.
It dawned on Bell Wing that Balot was up to something. “Are you speaking to someone, young lady?” Bell Wing was as sharp as ever.
Balot just nodded, truthfully.
–Yes. I’m speaking to someone who helps me out.
“Your guardian angel, no doubt.”
Balot smiled. Then she turned her eyes to the table. The deserted table.
She needed to compose herself, to prepare for the man who would soon be arriving here.
As if she too were inside the trunk of the car that had contained the corpse of Ashley’s brother.
This was a battle fought over the right—the privilege—of starting everything anew.
≡
“They’re coming,” Bell Wing whispered.
Ashley led the way, taking his characteristically large strides, flanked by two other men. One of them was the man Balot had been expecting all along. The other she didn’t recognize. Ashley’s demeanor wasn’t so much that of an employee escorting his bosses to a gaming table as that of a jailer leading condemned prisoners toward their place of execution.
Oeufcoque gave Balot the full briefing so that she was absolutely prepared for what was to come.
–It’s Cleanwill John October. One of the leading directors of OctoberCorp. He’s Shell’s direct supervisor, as it were, but he’s also the father of the woman Shell’s planning to marry.
The man that Oeufcoque was describing was also a giant. Not just big or fat. This was something else; his body was a mass of solid flesh. The stereotype of fat people was that they tend to have happy, jovial faces, but this certainly wasn’t the case here. The man wore a black sneer that seemed to look down on all the other people on the casino floor. His eyes oozed disgust at the fact that he even had to look at Balot. Balot, in turn, found his expression so repulsive that she struggled to think of a reason why she shouldn’t just shoot him dead right then and there as a service to all of humanity.
The moment they arrived, Ashley stood stock-still and did his best to blend into the background like one of the decorative plants—he knew his role was over.
The lump of meat from OctoberCorp glowered at Balot with pure disdain.
Suddenly, Balot picked up a million-dollar chip in her hand and tapped it lightly against the table, spinning it around casually as if it were a one-dollar coin. A coin that had the OctoberCorp emblem emblazoned on it.
This seemed to have the desired effect—if she couldn’t shoot the two men dead in their tracks, this was a damn good substitute, and their reactions were almost as satisfying.
Shell’s and John’s faces went blue simultaneously. They both seemed equally fit to burst, likely to spew forth torrents of bile and rage at any moment, but they both managed to keep it in, just about, nostrils flaring, and Balot wondered how much more it might take
before they spontaneously combusted.
Cleanwill John October’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke.
“Get the chips back from this girl. Fail and you’ll meet the same fate as the coin being spun round and round.”
Shell’s face went blank—he was like a hit man who had been ordered on a suicide mission—and he moved into the dealer’s position.
His Chameleon Sunglasses glinted muddy blue.
≡
Shell’s posture straightened the instant he took his position at the table. It was as if his whole body had transformed into a machine.
This man was now standing before Balot because he had to. He was prepared for the inevitable. He was ready.
Shell took off his rings. His seven rings, each one adorned with a Blue Diamond. Those repulsive little jewels made from the ashes of his mother and the six young girls he’d killed. Balot had been destined for ring number eight, but here she was now, watching with a blank face as the rings were placed on the table.
Back when Balot was with Shell, it used to be her job—one of her jobs—to look after those rings during the Shows. Now the rings just lay silently on the table, their jewels shining up at her like frozen tears.
Shell put away the cards that had been used for the previous match and took out a new set.
He started shuffling—a shuffle familiar to Balot, one that she remembered from long ago. She remembered that there was a time when she had found it beautiful, elegant. That was only a few months ago, but it seemed like many lifetimes past. Now Balot could see that Shell’s movements might have been smooth and flashy enough, ideal for impressing the punters, but there was very little substance to them—he was nowhere near as skilled with the cards as Ashley, for example.
Whirlpools of numbers swirled around at the base of Balot’s left arm as the pile of cards was prepared. Balot reached out for the transparent red marker and took it in her hands before Shell had the opportunity to offer it to her.
Balot’s eyes met Shell’s for the first time since that night in the AirCar.