A Common Loss

by Kirsten Tranter

  I stared at him. ‘Brian, how much money is that?’

  A waitress came by and placed two drinks in front of us, pinkish-orange things in martini glasses. ‘These aren’t ours,’ I said to her, and she nodded at the woman with the fur coat, who hadn’t seemed to look in our direction the whole time.

  Brian took a large gulp from his glass and smiled at her. ‘Thanks. Is this a cosmopolitan? I’ve always wanted to try one of these.’

  She smiled back at him. The two women next to her were deep in conversation, chain-smoking, one of them laughing softly and the other one sounding drunk and teary. I was horribly reminded of the one episode I’d seen of Sex and the City. The woman with the fur coat had symmetrical, perfect blonde ringlets just like the Sarah Jessica Parker character.

  Brian put half his chips on the board. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘the cash machines here let you take out anything you want. There’s no limit. I mean, I’d seen that before on the screen but I’d never actually tested it out.’

  ‘How much money is that?’ I repeated.

  ‘Try it, it’s great,’ he said, sipping at his pinkish drink.

  The ball rattled and fell. One of his numbers came up. The croupier pushed some more chips toward him, stern and officious in her fitted white shirt and black vest, hair pulled tightly back.

  Was this what I was babysitting him for, I wondered. To stop him making reckless bets? He had money, his family had money enough for an evening of excessive betting in Vegas; there seemed little point in trying to stop him. It was more benign than fighting. I tasted my drink and it was sweet, like alcoholic liquid Jell-O.

  Another of his numbers came up. His pile of chips grew. He had one small loss and then kept winning, and risking more, and winning.

  Brian had spent his whole life consciously rejecting his wealthy background, deflecting questions about where he’d grown up and gone to school, hiding his roots from people in the progressive circles in which he moved, dressing the part of the politically concerned bohemian hipster, complaining about privilege. But as he sat next to me at the table, risking untold sums of money with casual pleasure, he acted like someone you would recognize immediately as being both rich and comfortable with it. He wore it, even with his black eye and messy hair; in fact, they seemed to add to this aura he suddenly possessed of a rakish playboy aristocrat living hard for a few days on vacation. He rested an elbow in one hand, the other hand lightly holding his chin in a thoughtful pose.

  It wasn’t just the ease with which he handled the chips, the lack of concern he showed when he lost (although his winning streak was basically continuing); his whole demeanor seemed to shift into a poise I’d never really seen extended so far before in public. It was a lazy, unthinking arrogance that reminded me a little of Dylan. I’d seen something like it at college from time to time; he could switch it on when it was useful — occasionally when dealing with professors, administrators, librarians — and then the Brahmin in his accent would come out more clearly, the long English-sounding vowels I’d heard in his mother’s and father’s voices when they called for him on the phone. I couldn’t help thinking that this was some kind of real self I was witnessing, the preppy scion inside that he worked hard to repress constantly in daily life. It made me uneasy, although it was good to have a break from the pathetic, wounded attitude he’d been wearing.

  Before I knew it my glass was empty, and another one appeared in its place. I gathered that Brian had ordered this round. He kept playing; I drank and gave in to my thoughts, circling from what it had felt like to kiss Cynthia on the couch, to the terrible stab of guilt and fear when the phone rang, and back to her, the skin of her arms. Then I noticed Brian was talking with the croupier, and I heard her say ‘Full Bet’. The other women stopped talking and focused intently on the ball.

  Brian looked at me for a short second before his eyes returned to the wheel. There were only a few chips remaining in front of him; the rest were spread out across the board. His expression was oddly ecstatic and traumatized at once, high with the run of wins he’d just had, and clear with knowing that he was about to lose it all.

  I’d seen Dylan make a full bet a few times at roulette after he’d had a couple of losses in a row. He never won the bet and it was always the last one he placed for the night. He’d won a stunning amount of money with it once, a couple of thousand. I hadn’t been paying attention, but it looked to me as though Brian had just laid out a lot more than that.

  ‘Brian,’ I said. ‘How much did you just bet?’

  I thought there was no way he was listening, but he answered me right away, as the ball made its final round. ‘Forty thousand dollars.’

  The ball skipped and settled as the wheel slowed.

  ‘Eighteen,’ the croupier said, in a voice unlike her standard cool tone. ‘Congratulations, sir.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ said the woman with the ringlets. Her friends started cheering and saying. ‘Oh my God,’ over and over.

  Brian nodded and smiled at me. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re done.’

  I looked around, conscious that we were drawing attention from the other tables. The croupier had returned to her normal remote expression and started counting out chips into a box: Brian’s winnings. I’d never been that close to chips of such a high denomination: rows of little plastic circles each worth ten thousand dollars.

  Brian pushed a few fifty-dollar chips toward the three women and they thanked him. ‘Buy yourselves another round,’ he said, and grinned.

  More people joined the table: a couple of men in rumpled tuxedos, leftovers from a wedding party, and a lone bride, drink and cigarette in hand, veil showing a couple of burn holes. I thought of all the Vegas movies I’d ever seen and wondered if someone in a concealed room nearby was watching it all happen on a little monitor, alerting the proper authorities that some guy with a black eye had just won hundreds of thousands of dollars at roulette table number twelve or whatever it was. I think I expected a security guard to come and keep an eye on us.

  ‘What just happened?’ I asked Brian when he had his box in hand, filled with candy-striped little chips, and signaled that he wanted to leave.

  ‘I made a full bet,’ he said. ‘And the number came up, so I won. Highest odds are thirty-five to one, so … What did she say? There’s four hundred and thirty thousand in here. Roughly speaking. I told you that bird was a good omen.’

  His eyes were bright. I wondered whether this was the nervous breakdown I’d been watching out for, right here in front of me.

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ I said. ‘Jesus. Well, congratulations.’

  It made my head hurt just thinking about that much money in plastic-chip form. I thought of student loans immediately, of course, my own huge debt that I planned to carry until I retired; Brian’s winnings would wipe it out and still leave too much over to contemplate properly. I thought about a house, a brand-new car, the grand piano my mother fantasized about. The bourgeois turn of my predictable mind depressed me. I guessed at what the money would mean for Brian: a pathway to financing the career he wanted without having to rely on the family money he detested, the hated trust fund. I wondered whether he would do something showily philanthropic with it.

  ‘I think we should find somewhere to sit down,’ I said. ‘Do you want a drink? And please, not another one of those fucking pink things.’

  He laughed and clasped my arm with his good hand, the other holding on to the box of chips. It was a squarish, stiff cardboard box with a lid, black with a dull gold MGM lion on top.

  We sat at one of the sports bars with the flashing game screens embedded in the tabletops and Brian ordered us French champagne with his Brahmin voice on, and then I watched that version of him recede and the more familiar Brian resurface, preoccupied and obscurely conflicted. He ran his hand through his hair — the bandaged hand — and winced, and his hair looked untidy again in a way that wasn’t exactly rakish any more.

  When the drinks arrived he c
linked his glass against mine. ‘Cheers.’ The champagne tasted dry and smooth at the same time, all expensive effervescence.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like that,’ I said. ‘You never see anyone actually winning in Vegas, right? It’s so bizarre.’

  I was about to ask him how he’d picked number eighteen and then I remembered it was the date of Dylan’s death: January 18. Or maybe it was nothing to do with that. Brian was staring at the screen closest to us: a football game, someone being tackled, someone falling over.

  ‘So, are you going to make a movie?’ I asked him.

  He blinked and refocused. ‘What? Do you mean the film I’m working on right now? What are you asking?’

  ‘I meant with the money. What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘It would be useful for making a movie, that’s true.’ He nodded. ‘I’m not going to do that. Although that would be awesome. We could really do with those funds.’

  He lifted his glass, and in that motion, the practiced way he drank, there was a shadow of that wealthy, entitled self he’d just snapped out of. I started to think that it was probably there in some way or another all the time and I just wasn’t used to looking for it.

  ‘Ever since we saw that bird, I’ve been thinking about it.’ He looked at me. ‘Didn’t you think about it? I thought, what if it all went right and I could win enough, you know, for all of us?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m going to give it to Colin. If he’ll agree to fuck off out of our lives.’

  ‘All of it?’

  He nodded and patted the box on the table next to him. I ran through figures in my head as best I could.

  ‘Look, I owe it to Tallis,’ he said. ‘He played a role back then — he stuck by me even though he was pretty angry about the whole thing, the thing with Jodie.’

  I nodded. I didn’t want to dissuade him; at the same time it was hard to believe that he would be willing to give it all up.

  ‘Elliot, I know I screwed up badly with Jodie. I was drunk, I was confused, whatever. It should never have happened and I know it. And then Dylan really fucked her over. I’ve been carrying it around for a long time. I don’t know what I can do now to make it better or anything like that. But I can do this. It feels like a sign.’

  He was all purpose and sincerity. It was going to be a gesture that bought him some kind of absolution: a favor to all of us, a sacrifice that would make amends for his past transgressions. It seemed hardly fair to begrudge him that, but I did all the same. I didn’t want to argue with him about the idea of an omen; Brian’s desire to read his good fortune as a sign to assist his friends was in my interests, after all. And everything about this place was designed to encourage superstition, to forge belief in significance, in the very idea of luck, good and bad.

  I wasn’t a gambler. To me, it only pressed home the absolute randomness of the universe. But I probably was a romantic. I remembered my fingers moving between the freckles on Cynthia’s shoulders, arm, chest, and thought about the faraway stars. Constellations, patterns in the sky: what were they if not invented consolations in place of randomness that would otherwise be terrifying? My fingers tingled. I tried to push the memory away.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But will it be enough?’

  Brian’s voice was cold. ‘I think it will do for now. Maybe Tallis can kick in and make it an even five hundred. If he complains.’

  ‘We should call Tallis.’

  Brian paused. ‘You should call Cameron. See how he’s doing. Here.’ He pushed the box toward me. ‘You take it. I don’t want Cynthia to see it, I don’t want her to know about this.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to cash them?’

  ‘No. I want to give him the chips. It’s … I don’t know. It’s neater that way.’

  I agreed. A slow, fierce sense of elation began to rise at the idea that we might really have found a solution. It was a lot of money. And maybe Cameron had been right: it probably all came down to that. Or could be converted into that.

  I called Cameron’s phone but it rang out, and again when I tried a second time.

  ‘I’m ready for a walk now,’ Brian said. ‘Or some fresh air at least.’ I followed him toward the front doors. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve always wanted to do that.’ He grinned.

  ‘Should I put this away somewhere?’ I asked. The box felt as though it had been constructed of particularly heavy materials to give it extra weight, to make more sense of the value of the light objects it held.

  Brian shook his head. ‘Nah. Just hold on to it. We won’t go far. Just around the block.’

  ‘OK.’

  I carried it before me awkwardly, and then held it close with one arm. As we crossed to the New York, New York hotel the sky was dark with night on one side of the Strip and just breaking dawn on the other, the sun rising from behind the sleeping mountains. The sidewalk in front of us was bright with streetlamps and the casino lights. The poem came back to me again.

  ‘Did you say something?’ Brian asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘This just made me remember something.’

  ‘What did?’

  What could I say — blankness, emptiness, dawn on the street, the idea of guilt and absolution? ‘I don’t know.’

  He stifled a long yawn. We passed under the cathedral-like arches of the bridge, and walked by the compressed skyline, the collection of skyscrapers around the fountain, the miniaturized Statue of Liberty.

  ‘Did they take the Towers down?’ Brian asked. Their absence was conspicuous among all the other significant architectural icons.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they were here in the first place.’

  The dawn took its time to arrive as we made our way back, still just a faint brightening of the air under the artificial lights along the Strip. When we stood in front of the hotel elevators, waiting for one to open, Brian said, ‘You go up and talk to Tallis. I’m going to bed.’ He looked at me sleepily.

  One set of gilt doors opened and let us in, enclosed us in the mirrored space.

  I nodded. ‘OK. So I’ll see you at breakfast?’

  ‘Yep. I’ll see you then.’ He clasped my arm lightly and stepped out at his floor without looking back.

  I held the box tightly, feeling the effects of drinking all night, and so tired that I was worried I didn’t have the right level of control over my hands. I imagined the box falling and spilling the chips over the floor of the elevator or the long portrait-lined hall as I walked to my room followed by the eyes of all the black-and-white stars. I made it there without accident and set the box down on the desk. It looked as though it belonged in a safe, but only because I knew what was in there. If I hadn’t known, it wouldn’t have been a remarkable object. The black was too shiny; the gold was matte but still tacky somehow. And it contained hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  The curtains were open, showing the wide pink sky, the glowing mountains and their lavender shadows, the hushed-looking panorama of Hooters and the other buildings across the way. My room was strewn with clothes and books, the bed creased and inviting, the view partially obscured by the white reflection of sheets and pillows in the glass. I fought the urge to lie down and picked up the phone.

  ‘Tallis? Yes, sorry.’

  He complained, his voice thick with sleep.

  ‘No, he’s OK,’ I said when he asked about Brian. ‘I have some good news.’

  I told him about the money, the box of chips, Brian’s plan, aware that my voice was so worn and exhausted that it was incongruous with anything like good news. He expressed disbelief and wanted to make sure that I’d witnessed it, that I was correct about the amount of money involved.

  ‘I have it,’ I said. ‘It’s with me. We didn’t cash the chips.’ The collective plural. Brian’s actions became my own. ‘It’s all in a box.’ I almost started to laugh. ‘It’s a small box. It’s …’ I struggled to say somethin
g about the square, inelegant box, the light plasticity of the chips inside it. ‘Never mind. It’s all in there. Tallis, did you reach Cameron?’

  ‘Yeah, he called from the hospital a little while ago. I’m never going to get any sleep. He’s fine, it’s a quiet night there, apparently. Some kind male nurse is attending to him …’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m going to sleep now. My clock’s broken. Can you call me when it’s time to meet? OK. Thanks. Bye.’

  I dragged all the layers of curtains shut and lay down in the darkened room.

  I was wakened not by the phone ringing, as I’d expected, but by a knock at the door. The room was still dark; disoriented, I wondered for a moment whether I’d slept through the whole day and into the following night. But then I looked down and noticed a patch of brightness on the floor where the yellow morning sun came through the edge of the heavy drapes, dust swimming in the light.

  I opened the door to find Tallis there with Cameron and Brian. They filed in.

  ‘I thought it would be easier to collect you here,’ Tallis said, ‘rather than going downstairs. Have a shower. I’ll order some coffee. Are you hungry? Brian? Cameron? Yes? Where’s the menu?’

  Brian’s eye was, as I had predicted, worse this morning, a dark livid purple. Cameron’s face looked a lot less dramatic than I had expected: a faint bruise on the side of his jaw, a couple of pieces of stitching tape along the cut on his forehead, and a swollen lip. I couldn’t help thinking about Dylan’s face after the car accident, stitches in roughly the same place, although on the opposite side. In some strange way it seemed as though Cameron had adopted Dylan’s injuries, the injuries he’d caused, in the accident for which Dylan had taken responsibility. I remembered that superstitious feeling I’d had after the crash, the sense that we’d done something we would pay for later, and wondered if that debt had finally been settled.