Irina and I looked at each other and almost started laughing. We were getting to that point where we could read each other’s expressions and set each other off. I pulled out a chair for her, but she shook her head and said, “I’ll just watch from behind you.”
The dealer looked bored enough to shoot himself. He was a frat-boy sort with short blond hair. His uniform had a red bow tie, which I bet he hated. He dealt the hole cards, not even looking at me, although his eyes did run over Irina.
I kept an eye on the other players, already looking for tells. The Mafia guy had at least two thousand in chips, maybe more. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t even blink, let alone twitch or do anything helpful. The old man had barely any chips left, and he was so trashed, I didn’t think he’d last much longer. He kept cracking ice cubes in his mouth and grinning when people gave him grossed-out looks. The women were staring at the table next to us, probably because a George Clooney look-alike was kicking back behind a monster pile of chips. They were down to one small stack, anyway, so they weren’t serious contenders.
Then there was the awake-for-two-days guy. Dude was a picture of the Bad Side of Gambling. He was strung out, scruffy faced, and red-eyed. He needed his mom to give him a bath and put him to bed before he burned up the family fortune, but I had a feeling he’d be up for another three days if he had his way. And his stack of chips said he just might make it.
So it was me versus Mafia Guy and Awake Guy.
Awake Guy posted the small blind, the women (they were gambling together) posted the big blind, and the dealer went to work. I got two jacks, spades and diamonds, and my blood caught fire. Irina smiled, and I shot her a warning glance.
At the flop, Mafia Guy raised us a bill, and the two women folded. Awake Guy glared at Mafia Guy with scary red eyes and shoved a stack of chips in the pot. I could have laughed out loud, because with a jack of hearts, I had a four-of-a-kind on the way, and a good chance of winning that pot.
I raised at the turn, and the old man folded, so it was just Mafia Guy, Awake Guy, and me. Irina was barely breathing. There’s something so tight about the last few rounds of a good poker game; it’s like chugging a Red Bull. Mafia Guy raised us two hundred; then the last jack showed up on Fifth Street, and Irina’s fingers clenched my arm. I almost said, Ow! but something like that can be a tell, so I just looked at her. She seriously could have been Awake Guy’s sister, stress shooting out of her in wires.
I raised, too. Awake Guy looked as if he wanted to strangle all of us, but he kept up. I started feeling nice and calm, hitting my stride—oh yeah, they were both going down—and I could do this for hours.
Time for the showdown. I set down my four of a kind. Mafia Guy sighed and put down a flush. Then Awake Guy giggled and threw down a straight flush!
The old drunk man jerked up in his seat and started to laugh.
I stared at the cards. Bastard had been playing us. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen for such a rookie trick. I bet he put soap in his eyes, spilled something on himself, and messed up his hair on purpose.
Well, that was just the first round. Oh, it was on, now.
Awake Guy smiled at me and opened his arms as if he might hug the chips the dealer was raking toward him. I straightened up, got hot. The dealer ran the shuffling machine, and I stared at Awake Guy, daring him to come out of the stocks racing this next round.
Irina pulled on my arm. “Let’s go!” she hissed.
“We just got started,” I said.
“No, I want to go. Now,” she said, way too loud.
Mafia Guy, Awake Guy, and the women stared at us in a lazy, curious way. My face burned. Nothing like being told what to do by your woman in front of a crowd.
“Please,” Irina whispered. Her eyes were wide. It hurt to do it, but I scooped up my chips, pushed one toward the dealer, and walked.
As soon as we got away from the table, Irina said, “Thank you.”
“Why’d you do that?” I demanded. “That was just the first round.”
“Let’s get out of here, and I’ll explain.” A cocktail waitress in a shiny gold dress sliced between us, balancing a loaded tray above her head.
“Well, I’ll follow you, since you’re in charge,” I said when we came back together. Irina rolled her eyes, but she turned and pulled me past a row of gold elevators. At the end of the hall was the front lobby with fat red couches and potted trees everywhere.
Irina looked at an empty couch with her eyebrows up. I said, “Fine,” and sat down. Stay with a woman awhile, and she starts trying to control you. It happens every time.
I tipped my head back and watched the people swarming by outside on the Strip. Irina sat next to me, but she left some space between us; I’m sure she knew I was pissed. I could still hear the slots in the background.
“I hated that,” said Irina.
“I didn’t,” I said coldly. “That was a good round.”
“How can you say it was a good round? You lost four hundred dollars in fifteen minutes!”
“So what? It was exciting.”
“It’s exciting to lose money?”
I rolled my eyes. “It was tense. There were a lot of good hands.”
“That’s why I hated it.” Irina made a face. “It’s like sports—all your biggest emotions, for what? Some cards? Or a football game? Those feelings should be for war. I wanted to kill that guy. I seriously couldn’t handle sitting next to him one second longer.”
So that was it. I poked her leg. “You’re too competitive. That’s the problem. You can’t stand to lose anything, even a couple dollars.”
“Four hundred is not ‘a couple,’” said Irina. “I just read this book by Chekhov, and he said gambling mocks the sweat of honest workers. I think he’s right.”
I pulled her into my shoulder. “Come on, you salty woman. Calm down. We won’t gamble anymore, since you can’t handle it.”
Irina leaned into me. Her hand found mine. We sat there for a while, watching the people march, stagger, and wander by outside on the Strip, and the lights flash, and the cars stop and go, with people hanging out the tops and sides, soaking up the crazy air.
Irina said in a low voice, “Gabe, you know how you said nobody would give us this time; we had to take it?”
I looked down at her. “Yeah?”
“It’s going too fast. I said I’d be home Saturday. We should … I’m scared we’ll waste it.”
“What do you mean?”
She put her chin on my shoulder. “I mean, it’s too easy to get sucked into this place. You could start gambling and wake up a hundred years later, like in that one fairy tale. I don’t want to get distracted. I want to get in your head. Like really get to know you.”
“You missed your chance this morning,” I said softly. I looked into her eyes and realized she was really into me. I could feel it pouring out of her.
She sighed.
“You’re going to conservatory, anyway,” I said. “Who cares how well you know me?”
“I do. And anyway, maybe I’m not going to conservatory. Maybe I don’t want to play for an orchestra.”
I frowned as the words sank in.
“I’ve been thinking, what if I went to a regular college? What if I make the violin something I do for fun? I want it to be fun again.” She paused. “I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not the only one going away. You’re going to college. But we have right now. And who knows …” She trailed off, looking shy.
College. I was a piece of junk for letting her believe I was going somewhere with my life. She’d find out the truth soon, and we’d be done, but at least I could show her a good time for now.
I brushed her hair out of the way and kissed her forehead. “Okay, we won’t waste time. We’ve been sitting too long. We’re in Vegas.” I stood and grabbed her hand, steered her out the brass doors and onto the sidewalk. The air was thin and cool.
Irina tipped her head back like she was drinking in the sky. “It feels good out here.”
We walked over. Classical music was playing, and the water jumped on every high note. A guy dressed like a pirate walked by, showing off his tanned pecs and eighties rock-star hair. He winked at Irina.
She giggled and hid her face in my shoulder. We leaned against the rope, holding hands and watching the water roaring and flying.
Irina said, “Gabe, why are we here?”
I glanced at her. “We don’t have to watch this. I just thought you would like it.”
“No, I mean, why are we in Vegas? I’ve been thinking about what you said about your mom and that guy, and I feel like … I don’t know. I feel like you’re not telling me everything. Did something seriously bad happen?” She squinted at me. She was good at letting the silence build until I had to say something.
A giant jet of water finished the show, and the crowd clapped.
I shrugged. The words were stuck in my mouth. I wanted so badly to tell her about failing school, because she’d have to find out eventually.
“No,” I said. I changed the subject. “So did you hear back from your parents?” She’d used my phone enough times to e-mail them.
Irina stared into the pool. “Well, they e-mailed eight times, last time I checked. One of them was like three pages. Good thing my dad ruined my phone, so he can’t look up your number.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to mess up our time. Anyway, I don’t care. I told them I’ll be home Saturday.” She tugged my hand. “Come on. Let’s go. I want to see everything there is to see in this entire place.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
After wandering through casinos for hours, I was feeling kind of dizzy, like I needed a break from the lights and noise. We had played a few arcade games, almost got in a fight with some jerks who were saying pervy things to Irina, and got kicked out of Cleopatra’s Barge for PDA.
Now we were outside again, and the Strip was in full swing, screaming with party energy. I should have felt good, but I kept thinking how this was all going to end. Irina had gotten in my head with the talk about not wasting time. I wanted to memorize her, memorize every second, because life doesn’t give do-overs. Sometimes people are only there for a little while, and you have to soak them up while you can.
“Let’s go this way. I want to see what Vegas is like away from the Strip.” We’d just hit a stoplight, and Irina pointed north up Flamingo Road.
“I think it’s wannabe Strip,” I said, but I turned. The casinos were all starting to look the same, and I kind of liked the idea of just going until we hit the “real” Vegas, whatever that was. We passed the Rio Hotel, a bunch of fast-food joints, a car lot, and a few warehouses. The businesses were getting farther apart, and I started to wonder why we thought this was a good idea.
“What’s that place?” Irina pointed to a lit building set back from the road. It was a big log house with a gravel path through a cactus garden, and metal lanterns lighting the doorway.
“Charleston Saloon,” I said, reading the wooden sign over the door.
“Do you want to check it out? I’m seriously going to faint from hunger.” Irina pressed a hand over her flat stomach and gave me a pathetic look.
“Sure.” I scanned the parking lot. It was about half-full of mostly newer cars, plus a handful of high-end rides, like a Jag and a Benz. We headed up the gravel path and through the big swinging door.
Inside, the place was pretty cool: a horseshoe bar, those metal lanterns with holes in them, and Indian rugs on the walls. The smell of food hit me in a wave, and I suddenly realized how starving I was, and thirsty, too.
The hostess was a curvy chick with long black hair, wearing a little white dress and killer heels. It seemed like girls had to be hot to find work in this town. “There’s a wait for a table, but I can seat you at the bar,” she told us. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” we said at the same time.
She looked closer at Irina. “You’re both twenty-one?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m sure the bartender will card us, anyway.”
She waved us in. “Seat yourselves.”
We grabbed seats at the bar, nice padded leather stools, and opened our menus. The bartender, a Mexican guy, set waters in front of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Irina check him out. He was a good-looking dude: shiny black hair combed back, strong build, and that crafty Latin look, like he knew exactly what to say to women—which I’m sure he did. He was tall, too. I looked back at Irina, but she was staring past his shoulder now.
“I bet he’d go out with you if you asked,” I whispered in her ear.
She shoved me.
“I’ll need to see IDs,” the bartender said. We showed him our cards. He took a look and handed them back. “What can I get you to drink?”
I’d had enough the night before to last me about a week. “O’Doul’s, please,” I said. It was what my mom drank when she was trying not to drink. Irina ordered lemonade, and before the bartender could walk away, I waved the plastic happy-hour menu and said, “Can we get one of everything?”
“Sure.” He went to the island and brought back a bowl of chips and some salsa. “Sounds like you’re hungry. This’ll get you started.”
We started inhaling chips and got into one of those conversations where we replayed everything we’d seen that night, talked trash, and tried to figure out what we really thought about Vegas. I ate with my left hand so I could hold hands with Irina under the bar.
Finally the food showed up: wings, nachos, cheese fries, mozzarella sticks, and these nasty fried oysters that we never should’ve ordered, except we were too hungry to know better. Eating made me less shaky, but underneath, there was still the feeling that the clock was ticking. It was Friday night, and tomorrow Irina would be back in her normal life, and I would be … fucked.
The bar was starting to fill up, and a pack of people took the line of seats next to Irina, talking to each other in some hacking language. They sounded like the bad guys in a lot of movies, and I was pretty sure they were Russian.
“It’s your homeboys,” I whispered to Irina.
She was smiling. She said something to the girl sitting next to her, and the girl squealed and said something back. Pretty soon everybody was yacking in Russian. For about a minute it was sexy to hear Irina talking in another language; then I got bored. But I decided it was good she was taken care of because I had to think about some things, like deciding what the hell I was going to do next.
I would buy Irina a plane ticket back to Seattle; that much I knew. But then what? After the ticket, I’d be down to about three grand, which could last me a little while if I was careful, but then again, I wasn’t that good at being careful.
I needed money. A place to live. A plan.
Maybe I’d just keep driving and see as much of the country as I could until my cash burned out, and then I’d get a job wherever I landed. I’d have to stick to the coasts; I didn’t want to wind up in some one-pump town.
I watched the bartender doing his rounds. He never hurried, but somehow nobody had to signal him; he was right there whenever a drink was empty. It started to look like magic after a while. I wondered how he kept his shirt so white even though he lived around Coke and cherries. And he was sweeping up official cash: fives and tens and even twenties.
That was the great thing about Vegas. Normal people like card dealers, valets, and waiters could tap into the money coming into the city. The tourists were the heart that pumped money through the body, and yeah, the big cash was for the big boys, but the money flowed to the fingers and toes, too, the working parts.
I watched two women flirting with the bartender, tipping him a twenty, and I imagined me back there, chatting with people, sweeping up cash, fixing drinks.
Why not? Girls thought
I looked good. And I’d like to talk with different people all day, give them a little happy-juice when they needed it, listen to their problems or their good news.
Next time the bartender swung around to see if we needed anything, I asked for another O’Doul’s and said, “Bartending must be a sweet job, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s got a lot of benefits.” He glanced down the bar.
I thought he was talking about the women, so I said, “No doubt. All the hotties are hitting on you.”
He laughed in a nice way. “Maybe so. But I got enough women to handle already, you wouldn’t believe.”
“Yeah, it seems like women need a fine card to get into this city or something.”
He turned and grabbed something off the register a few feet behind him. “No, man, this is what I’m talking about.” He showed me a picture in a plastic frame, of him and this Mexican woman and—whoa—five little girls! His face was almost crowded out of the picture from a baby he was holding, and the other ones were squeezed between his shoulders, grinning at the camera. His wife was wearing a pink shirt, and she had a big smile. She looked nice.
“You got a beautiful family,” I said.
“Thank you.” He took the picture and put it back on the register carefully. If I ever had a family, I hoped I would be like that with their picture.
“So, how long have you been bartending?” I asked.
“Ten years, since I got married and we moved out here. Great money, and you don’t have to take work home. It’s a good way to support a family. But you’re probably not thinking about that yet.” He glanced at Irina, who was still chatting with her new friends.
“I don’t know. Maybe I am,” I heard myself say.
His eyebrows went up. “Well, it’s a good job. But you have to know how to handle drunks, how to stop fights. And you have to make great drinks. But you also have to know when to cut people off.”
“Huh,” I said. “So where does somebody learn how to bartend?”
He scanned the bar again, checking if anybody needed him. “Depends what kind of bartending you want to do. There’s the show-off stuff in nightclubs, juggling bottles. For that you go to Flair School. But if you decide you want to do real bartending, go to Crescent School, then find a job somewhere local, not the Strip.”
Betting Blind (Betting Blind #1) Page 17