by Loren, Celia
“Bryson. Vaughn. I knew you looked familiar!” The name appeared in her mind’s eye like something from a dream, and was attended by a flood of memory.
“I knew you knew I looked familiar,” Bryson said coolly. He leaned towards her, slipping what she could feel to be a fat hundred-dollar chip into her sweaty palm with a measure of coyness. “Listen, I just won five grand. So that’s yours to keep. Now I’ve got to run, but Romy—” and here he drew back and looked her full in the face, his blue eyes dizzying as they seemed to suck her in, “—how about you don’t forget about me again.” He winked once more, before making for the exit.
The other women had already begun to fan themselves like schoolgirls, but Romy watched Bryson’s retreat as far as her eyes could follow. She saw him peel off his sport coat and flex his powerful body just outside the casino lobby. She watched him don a pair of black aviator sunglasses, despite the morning hour. She watched him pop an unlit cigarette into his mouth and toss the coat over a shoulder, before striding away into the bright night.
CHAPTER TWO
He’d looked different in high school. No suits in his closet back then.
The Bryson Vaughn of Silver Spring Secondary had been something of a contradiction: a baseball star, a basketball forward, and a bad, bad kid. The kind of guy mothers warned their daughters about. The unsupportive legend went: “a kid like Bryson could turn a valedictorian into a teenage mom in ten minutes.” At least that’s what Romy’s foster mother had liked to say, as she sipped her teetotaler’s soda with lime through perpetually pursed lips.
Back then, he’d worn only leather jackets and grimy t-shirts when not in uniform. He’d yet to get his first ink, but was never without a bona fide diamond stud in his left earlobe. Plenty of cheerleaders had harbored secret crushes on the brutish Vaughn—his greasy hair always falling into his eyes in just such a dream-beau way—but he wasn’t what any lady with self respect would ever consider “boyfriend material.” She remembered that he used to take girls out to the abandoned quarry on the edge of the city. The girls he took out there would never give any juicy details about what went on at these “dates,” but after the fact, they did tend to smile smug little smiles to themselves—like members of an elite club.
Before Romy had really known what sex involved—she’d been two grades behind Bryson in school—she’d overheard a beautiful upperclassman girl make a befuddling remark of the swaggering Vaughn: “He was so well endowed, I almost couldn’t. But then...well...a lady shouldn’t say…”
When he wasn’t deflowering homecoming queens, Bryson got into fights with other boys. These dust-ups were often in the name of what had then seemed like vague concepts: honor, integrity, “a man’s good name.” Then again, this kind of behavior wasn’t so unusual when your whole family was a part of the no-good hustling motorcycle club, the Devil’s Aces. She remembered him on his own first bike—a fire-engine red Harley XR-1200 that used to get a lot of complaints from the Neighborhood Watch about its conspicuous lack of a muffler.
Romy’s recollection trailed here, because by the time she was really old enough to start paying attention to Bryson Vaughn, he’d all but drifted off the face of the earth. At the beginning of his senior year, he was kicked out of varsity basketball when a coach found a dime bag in his locker. A dishonorable discharge from the baseball team wasn’t far behind. Bryson rarely went to class, but when he did, he slept. Girls started spinning elaborate fictions about what he stayed up all night doing that made his daily life at Silver Spring such a torturous bore.
In two years of overlap at a tiny high school, Romy and Bryson had taken a single class together: Chemistry 101. They’d been lab-partnered for a single assignment on nucleotides. She’d worn her best dress to the library on that day when they were supposed to meet after school and work on their lab together. She’d prepared a dozen veiled, nerdy come-ons...but of course, Bryson Vaughn hadn’t shown up. She felt foolish that she’d even imagined wooing the school hottie via homework. He was Bryson Vaughn. He didn’t “show up” for chemistry labs.
And right around this incident, Romy met Kellan.
If Bryson was the bad boy, Kellan was the sensitive artist—he was rarely spotted after sophomore year without the company of a creaky electric guitar, which he played and sang along with in the courtyard during lunch. Kellan’s hands were always covered with ink stains, thanks to the doodles he fashioned through every single class. And where Bryson’s body was athletic and ripped, Kellan’s was slender and sinewy. He wore band t-shirts and skinny jeans as a rule. Lots of the hippie girls liked him. Oh yeah, he also wrote poetry.
Romy had kept to a tight-knit bunch of ambitious, dorky girlfriends while in high-school, and so Kellan was the natural object of a lot of her friends’ affection. He was a kind of blessing: in their corner of Reno, where a mere handful of women expected to finish college without winding up saddled to some bum working for the city, here was Kellan: a boy who thought about the world, had opinions, and loved art. Romy was drawn to him spiritually before sex even factored in. The pair started having weekly meet-ups in the courtyard during which he’d practice songs on his guitar and she’d talk to him about all the novels she was reading. Together they hatched wild plans to leave Reno. Then one day, Kellan brought in a song he’d written especially for her:
Don’t tell me you can’t feel it
with your body next to mine
wish I had you in my bedroom
wish you lived there all the time
He was no Shakespeare, but she wound up seeing the inside of that bedroom. Though all of her girlfriends stopped talking to her once the fling was “sealed.”
And for some reason, Romy Adelaide was the last person in school to connect the dots. Bryson was never around, for one. Kellan, in all of his sentimental reveries, never once mentioned having an older brother. Sure, the boys shared a last name, a hunky jaw line and certain goading expressions...but plenty of people were distantly related in Reno. It took two weeks of going steady and a brief meeting with his parents to learn the perfectly plain truth: Bryson and Kellan were brothers. Always had been.
The dalliance didn’t go much past a fumbling dash for third base in his attic bedroom and a few more artistic courtyard meet-ups—Romy grew preoccupied with school, while Kellan began to follow his brother’s academic example. By school’s end, Romy was a rueful egghead whose only dream was skipping town, while Kellan had followed Bryson all the way into the motorcycle club’s inner circle. She hadn’t seen the younger brother in years. She hadn’t seen either Vaughn boy, really, since graduation day.
“You know him?”
“My God—you know him?”
“Body that fine should have a nice driver.”
“Why didn’t you ask for his number?”
“Why didn’t he ask for your number?!”
“Trifling.”
“Men are scum.”
“But did you see his—”
Romy secured a moment to drift away from her “union break.” The other women would be content to talk about Bryson for the rest of the night. Truth was, Romy couldn’t stand to be the subject of their motherly pity and unsolicited advice. She didn’t need another mother—mothers, in her experience, were nothing but coincidental baggage. She far preferred to navigate romantic waters alone.
Though then again, why hadn’t Bryson asked for her number? What would be the point of his whole “remember me” act if he didn’t want to see her again? Romy felt a feeling she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for years: neglected. With a heavy heart, she began her binding trudge back to the pit. At least her shift was almost over.
Before she reached her table, Romy felt a hand on her shoulder. For an eighth of a second, she imagined it was Bryson—come back to kiss her, to carry her out of the casino onto some waiting Harley, a madcap adventure unspooling before them...but when she turned around, she saw only the rodent-y little face of the pit boss. Lou.
“Where you going, swe
etcheeks?”
“Back to work, Lou. I’m just off break.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ugh. Lou Valentine was among the creepier of Romy’s immediate employers. He ogled and pinched freely, and had uncanny skill when it came to trapping people in unpleasant conversations. He was also a round little man with a preposterous toupee and breath like the devil’s dog. “I’m taking you somewhere.”
“I’m not in the mood, sir,” Romy said. She began to pull away from him, but Lou merely tightened his grip on her forearm.
“And I’m not playing around. Seriously, Adelaide. Boss wants to see you. Follow me.”
Romy’s stomach tightened. The boss? She knew of no boss beyond Lou. She turned towards her co-workers, but the unofficial break party had broken up at the manager’s approach. She imagined that Paulette and Kali and Anisette were each furtively avoiding her gaze at their own tables, already aware of some horrible truth in her future. Was she getting fired? Had the mystery bosses been taking note of how tired she seemed on her feet lately? Helluva way to go, Romy thought to herself, while Lou scurried through the crowd before her. Meet dream guy. Don’t get asked out. Lose job. Sounds about right for my luck.
CHAPTER THREE
Lou lead her first to the bank of elevators in the casino lobby, which—as a function of the hotel—Romy had only used the one time. Once inside the car, he swiped a key card from his belt, unlocking a floor below the basement galley. The button had no marking number.
“May I ask what’s this regarding?” Romy tried, though she couldn’t quite keep the quaver from her voice. Her head was spinning. She was suddenly terrified: if she lost the casino job, she’d lose her space in the Masters program—her academic scholarship only covered half of her tuition. Without school, she’d probably have to abandon Vegas (and subsequently, the closest things to friends she had) for some cheaper city. News of her release would prevent her from getting another casino job, which would make her fit for very little else outside her unfinished field. She’d have to go back to Reno. She’d have to face the chilly horror of her foster parents, and all the bad memories she’d tried to leave behind in that town. These possibilities were ruinous. Life-ending. Romy looked at the floor and tried not to cry.
“Can’t tell you, kid,” Valentine sang, clearly relishing his secret knowledge. “Who doesn’t love a surprise?”
The elevator opened onto a part of the casino Romy had never seen before. They’d landed in a brightly lit atrium space, off which three long hallways forked in different directions. She felt in her belly a quick, guttural fear: she could get lost very easily in a place like this.
“I don’t have all day, buttercup,” Lou wheezed. He was already a ways down the central hallway. The only sound she could hear, even straining, was the squeak of her boss’ rubber soles on perfectly polished tile. She hewed closely to him, though she was sorely tempted to sneak a peek into the few rooms along the hallway with windowed doors. Working at a casino, one heard all kinds of stories about things that went on in secret basements—but were the rumors true?
After what felt like a good half a mile (Lou Valentine was gasping as he strode), he led Romy into a second elevator. This one all but blended into the wall, and Lou had to use both his keycard and a six-digit pass code to summon the car. It was a tight fit, and a creaking, lengthy ride. At last, the car doors opened right into a room. This place looked like no part of the casino she’d worked at for two years—or for that matter, any casino she’d ever seen. It was more like a rustic hunting lodge.
The ceiling was high, especially considering the fact that they were several floors below the earth. The room was paneled with a dark, lovely wood. Every few paces, there were old-timey portraits on the walls depicting historical figure-types, though Romy didn’t recognize any of the names. Candelabras lit the space—this was easily the dimmest room she’d ever seen in Vegas. There were wall shelves also, each carting casino memorabilia: antique decks of cards fanned out in glass cases, dusty stacks of chips. An old slot machine.
They were walking towards a long table, which rested on a bearskin rug. There were three people huddled at the far end, by the former bear’s feet: a thin, blonde woman perched on the tip of an armchair, a corpulent man in a velvet sporting jacket, and a muscular black man in sunglasses. Sunglasses at night...that reminded her of Bryson. He seemed so far away down here.
“Romy Adelaide,” pronounced the corpulent man. His voice was scratchy and crass; he sounded like a heavy smoker. “A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“Got her to ya just the way you asked, eh Lefty?” said Lou, practically falling onto a lush green velvet chaise. Through an almost imperceptible shift in the room’s atmosphere, Romy could tell the large man didn’t care for Lou either. That fact made her smile.
“Just look at you,” the man called Lefty said, addressing Romy once more. His eyes oozed over her skin, starting at the top of her head and working down. It was an almost sexual appraisal, but there was something even stranger about his gaze: she briefly felt like an object, or an animal at auction. The large man was looking at her the way you look at something you use, or buy. She bristled in her skin. Felt the same original wave of nausea and terror she’d felt when the first elevator had released them into the casino’s bowels.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here, my dear,” said the man again. The room was silent but for the resonating crackle of his voice. “And let me be the first to say: you aren’t fired.” That should have been a great comfort, but it wasn’t. Everything about this secret lair made Romy feel more and more like a Bond villainess. Or better yet, a hostage.
“My name is Edwin DiMartino, ‘Lefty’ for short. But maybe you already knew that.”
“No. I have no idea who you are.” She admitted boldly.
“Oh, smashing! Lou, you’ve brought me a firecracker!” Lefty DiMartino seemed delighted at this. He tilted forward in his chair and laughed a deep belly laugh, which the blonde at his right-hand echoed with a faint snort.
“Romy Adelaide, I know you because I know everything,” Mr. DiMartino said, inclining his head towards the far wall. Though she hadn’t noticed this coming in, a bank of HD TV monitors were flickering quietly above the door. Each displayed scenes from the different corners of the casino floor. Quickly, Romy confirmed Paulette’s suspicion about the innocuous spot in the ceiling: it was a security camera, all right.
“I own The Windsor,” Mr. DiMartino said proudly, “as well as seven other properties on the Sunset Strip. Though we’ve never met, I like to keep a close, close watch over all my employees. I know you’re something of a math whiz, for instance. I know you’re a veteran of the broken American orphanage system, and the estranged foster daughter of Carl and Joanne Dickman. I know they were cruel to you.”
She stared straight and furrowed her brow. “What are you getting at, sir?”
“Easy, easy. I just wanted you to realize how deep my interest in your well-being goes. I am pure of heart—” here, Mr. DiMartino placed a thick hand over his chest, “—and I want my workers to be pure of heart as well. Do you know what I mean?”
Lou Valentine tittered. “Look at her. 'Sposed to be a smart cookie, standing there all slack-jawed…”
DiMartino visibly bristled. “Mr. Valentine, please. Ms. Adelaide is my guest.” He made a small motion in the direction of the black man in sunglasses. “Perhaps you’d like to hold off your commentary. Unless you think my friend Titus here would enjoy your jokes? The two of you could maybe go somewhere private, laugh it over?”
Though he might have been kidding, once again Romy felt the air in the room constrict. Lou Valentine shut his mouth tight.
“As I was saying. What I know about you could—does—fill a dossier. But mostly, I know you’re the most capable female dealer on my blackjack tables. I know you’re well-liked. I know you’re intelligent. I know you're trusted. And I know you’re beautiful. I think all these things and m
ore would make you an excellent addition to a sort of secret project I’ve been running at the casino for years now. And where are my manners? Would you like a drink?”
The sun was coming up out on the Strip, and here she was in a secret casino room being propositioned by the head honcho. This was weird—but then again, what wasn’t weird about this town? Romy thought back to Bryson’s exit. He’d seemed so calm yet so brazen walking off the floor with a tidy five grand. All her life, she’d been wishing for moments like that—moments that felt free, that made the job of living look effortless. Without quite articulating a decision, Romy sunk into an armchair. “I’ll have a seven and seven, please.”
“Good. Great. I’m delighted. Now Ms. Adelaide, because you’re intelligent, I’ve no doubt you’re curious about the details. These are they:
My ‘VIP’ dealers work with the top of the line clients exclusively. These men—and some women—play strict, serious blackjack and poker in the club private quarters; rooms very much like these. They meet only on Saturday nights. If you agree to the position, this means you’ll only work on Saturday nights—leaving you a great deal more time to study for school.” Mr. DiMartino passed her the cocktail. “Because the position demands high levels of precision and discretion, the casino is prepared to contribute 20% of your new income to a 401K account. Your health insurance plan will be re-evaluated. We’ll match any and all contributions to retirement, any and all contributions to charity, and ditto to college funds. We consider non-indentured tuition assistance as well. You with me so far?”