I'll Take Manhattan

by Judith Krantz

  August, no matter how hot, is the season for Monte Carlo, the month of balls and fireworks, of ballet and of a gathering together of a particular—and often peculiar—assortment of royalty-groupie rich from all over who never miss that once-a-year visit to Monaco. August is the one thirty-one-day bonus period during which those tax exiles from ninety-nine countries whose lawyers and accountants command them to become residents of Monaco, can rent their expensive dwellings and make enough to pay for their upkeep during the other eleven months; the one month during which the harbor yacht moorings are at a premium, the one month in which the myth of Monte Carlo is annually reborn.

  Maxi felt intoxicatingly reborn herself. In anticipation of her trip she had assembled a new wardrobe that filled seven suitcases, a wardrobe from which all black was banished; she had armed herself with an enormous letter of credit to a local bank and just that afternoon she had changed so many dollars into francs that her evening bag bulged.

  A certain Beekman Place high-stakes poker game, which took place nightly in New York, had occasionally enlivened her sumptuous early widowhood, but Maxi had always had a yen to visit a real casino that would in no way resemble Las Vegas. Gambling, she thought, was a little like shopping … you couldn’t really do it right as part of a couple. Call it what you will—a question of skill, a matter of luck, or even just picking numbers—all gambling boiled down to choice, and choice was not a collaborative or a cooperative pursuit, arrived at with someone looking over your shoulder and making suggestions. It would be good for her, Maxi thought virtuously, to have a fling. Widowhood was so constricting. She deserved a fling, and obviously everyone in the crowd that pressed toward the entrance to the Casino felt equally festive.

  The first large rooms of the ornate building were disappointing; filled with casually clad tourists playing slot machines, the high, painted ceilings seeming to look down in grief on such ignoble goings-on. But once past the stern men who guarded the entrance to the private rooms, Maxi discovered that the legend of the Casino of Monte Carlo still existed, as uncompromisingly authentic, as firmly locked into history as if it were a four-masted sailing ship that had somehow sailed out of the past. An Edwardian glamour, voluptuous and unashamed, showered down in gilded splendor; a sweeping waltztime drowned out the mad jazz tempo of the first rooms, a pink glow replaced the popping lights of the slot machines. Low-voiced, purposeful, well-dressed people moved here and there in the air that was charged with an almost unbearable excitement, the thrill that can only be imprinted on a space devoted to gaming, wagering, playing, betting, in short, gambling. No one was immune to its spell, least of all Maxi Amberville.

  Curbing her quick New Yorker’s pace, Maxi moved into the Casino with felicitous poise, with the self-assurance that can never be feigned, of a beautiful woman who is perfectly at ease without an escort. She wore a long, strapless, chiffon dress that was one shade lighter than the green of her eyes and diaphanous to the point of cruelty. Her black hair, which she wore pulled back severely from her face in New York, had been allowed to fall freely over her shoulders. She had transformed her double strand of pearls into one long rope that hung down over her bare white back, she’d thrust a spray of tiny white orchids between her breasts. Nothing about her suggested widowhood … nor maidenhood. She looked as fastidiously haughty as she felt; a fine feline female out on the town.

  It was too early in the evening for baccarat or chemin de fer she decided. She’d try roulette just to warm up and orient herself. She’d never played it but it looked like a silly, easy kids’ game in which no skill was involved.

  Maxi went to the cashier and bought chips for ten thousand dollars, receiving a hundred big black chips in exchange, each worth five hundred francs. She couldn’t do much damage with that little lot, Maxi thought, as she slid into a chair at the nearest roulette table. She decided to play her age and asked the croupier to put ten chips on twenty-three black. The wheel spun, finally stopped and Maxi was a thousand dollars poorer. Perhaps her next birthday? The twenty-four black yielded nothing. Nevertheless, she thought, if it had come up, she would have made thirty-five thousand dollars since all the numbers paid off at thirty-five to one. Where was the beginner’s luck to which she was entitled? On the other hand, roulette was not normally considered an investment, she reminded herself as she pondered her next choice. The man next to her spoke to the croupier.

  “Ten on zero,” he said in an accent that Maxi couldn’t identify. She glanced at him curiously. He was slumped on one elbow as if only that bone was holding him up and he wore the most miserably threadbare dinner jacket that she had ever seen. His dark hair needed cutting, his hollow cheeks needed shaving, and his eyes needed opening, for his lids were so low and his black lashes so long that it seemed impossible that he could see. He looked like a scarecrow, a bored yet oddly elegant scarecrow who had been left out in the fields until the birds had picked him almost to pieces. She drew slightly away. Obviously this was the sort of riffraff to whom a foolhardy fling at roulette was the final episode in a sordid history of debauchery. Surely there was something decadent about his finely cut profile? Yet he had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen, with immaculate nails. A professional cardsharp? Probably not, for what self-respecting professional could dream of looking so down at the heels, so pathetically scruffy?

  Maxi absently lost seventy more chips as she continued to take inventory of the man who had only given her the briefest of glances. Somewhere in his thirties, she decided, and probably Irish, for who but the Irish combined such white skin and such black hair? If his eyes were blue that would be final proof, but they were still hooded. He lost his ten five-hundred-franc chips and lazily put the equivalent of another thousand dollars on the zero again. His expression didn’t change and he seemed to take no interest in the rollicking dance of the ball as the wheel turned, first quickly, then gradually slowing to a stop. Maxi lost again as she noted, fascinated, that the man wore ancient tennis shoes and baggy white socks, and that his dinner jacket was worn over a white T-shirt over which he’d looped the necessary tie as casually as if it were a piece of string. It probably was a piece of string, and frayed string at that.

  Maxi realized that she had only ten chips left. She beckoned to the attendant who hovered by the table and gave him the money to buy another fifty chips. Her neighbor looked up at the sound of her voice.

  “Ten for me, please,” he said casually, without offering money. Obviously he was hoping for credit from the Casino, Maxi realized.

  “Sorry, sir,” the attendant said, refusing his request.

  “No more?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “Not my night.” He offered the comment in infinite expressionlessness.

  “No, sir,” the attendant agreed, going to get Maxi her chips.

  So he was Irish, she thought. There was no disguising the classic deep blue of his eyes during the brief exchange. An Irish wharf rat, probably off the crew of one of the yachts in the harbor, who’d come to the Casino in a borrowed dinner jacket and lost his last franc or dime or farthing or whatever he’d had when he came in. Still there wasn’t an Irish lilt to his voice but some other accent—English but not British, whatever that meant she thought confusedly.

  He reached into his socks and pulled out five black chips from each one with the kind of supremely indifferent look that Maxi knew must mean that he had been saving this stash for just this moment. She felt sorry for the feckless creature, she realized. There was something gallant and touching in the way he refused to show his absolute desperation. He was obviously at the end of the line. Who knew what fate awaited him after he’d lost his last chips? He’d probably borrowed the money he had been playing with. Or even stolen it. Yet he’d put all ten big chips on the zero again, not even holding back a single one to give himself a chance to play one more time. She held her breath as the wheel slowed, as the little ball finally dropped to rest. On the zero. Maxi clapped both hands loudly in delight. Thirty-fi
ve thousand dollars—that should keep him from shooting himself. She smiled at him in congratulation and saw, to her disbelief, that his eyelids were not even raised. Should she nudge him? Hadn’t he seen?

  There was a rustle of interest as the croupier took the next bets but the man next to Maxi never moved. Finally, the croupier said, “Still on zero, sir?”

  “Yep.”

  He was going to let the money ride, Maxi realized in horror. The odds that the zero would come up twice in a row were beyond reckoning. Was he mad, drunk, doped, or didn’t he understand the game?

  Maxi forgot to bet as she fought not to say something and when the croupier barked “Rien ne va plus” she realized that it was too late to give advice. She sighed and waited for the inevitable as the wheel spun, as the ball hopped and skipped, as the wheel slowed and the ball fell. On the zero. A gasp rose from the crowd that stood around the table. The scarecrow had won thirty-five times one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs. Even Maxi’s rusty multiplication table told her that it was over a million American dollars. Considerably over. This should make him open his eyes, this should make him look a little less hopeless, she thought, turning toward him and meeting his glance for a second. Was that a smile on his lips? Was that a raising of his lids? Was there a flush of color in his cheeks? No. Absolutely not. He was still slumped on one elbow, he hadn’t reached for his chips, he didn’t look any less removed or detached than when the attendant had refused him credit. Clearly a mental case.

  “Take those chips off the board,” she commanded him in a low voice.

  “Why?” he asked mildly.

  “Because otherwise you’ll lose the lot, you damn fool. Don’t argue. It’s the chance of a lifetime,” Maxi hissed at him furiously.

  “And play it safe?” he asked, almost sounding faintly amused.

  Action at the table had been stopped as the croupier waited for a casino official to permit him to accept the bet. The official arrived, looked at the scarecrow with an indefinable expression and reluctantly nodded at the croupier to go ahead. As a big, buzzing crowd immediately gathered around the table, Maxi, in her agitation, again forgot to bet. The man was clearly insane. Criminally insane. The law of averages hadn’t been suspended for his sake and there was no possibility that the ball would come back to zero a third time. The Casino knew that as well as she did or they would never have allowed the game to continue. How many men had really been given a chance to break the bank at Monte Carlo? The croupier busied himself with the other players and only when they had all placed their bets did he look again at the scarecrow.

  “Will you stay on the zero, sir?”

  “Why not?” he asked with a hint of a yawn.

  Maxi watched in outrage as the croupier began to set the wheel in motion. There wasn’t a sound from the crowd. The croupier’s lips opened to say the words “Rien ne va plus,” and in that split second Maxi catapulted herself wildly onto the pile of chips on the zero. She scooped them all off the table, scattering them around the man at her side before the bet could be finalized and the chips lost forever.

  A roar of scandalized disbelief rose from the crowd. Her breach of casino etiquette was so unthinkable that their attention was switched from the wheel to Maxi. Indignantly she glared at the watchers. Barbarians, she fumed to herself, just waiting to see someone thrown to the lions. Well this isn’t going to be your day, you bastards, even if I do look silly. She stared down the jabbering mob in righteous certainty until she realized that the scarecrow was still watching the wheel, not touching a single one of the chips that she had saved for him. Cold sweat covered her in a flash. She had just remembered something else about the law of averages. Each spin of the wheel was a fresh start, as if it had never spun before. Oh no, she prayed, no, please. In the sudden utter silence of the Casino only the wheel could be heard. Maxi closed her eyes. A wild incredulous sound came from the bystanders. Zero. Again. Maxi sat frozen, waiting to die. She deserved it. Murder was too good for her. A hand reached out and closed on her upper arm. He was going to break it. Yes, bone by bone, every bone in her body. He had every right. She wouldn’t defend herself.

  “Nobody will ever call you a cheap date,” the scarecrow commented mildly as he rose from his seat, lifting her with him, leaving the chips Maxi had swept off the table to be gathered up by an attendant.

  Maxi opened her eyes and burst into tears. She was going to live. He was even more insane than she had realized but not criminally insane.

  “I don’t like to see a woman cry,” he remarked kindly.

  Maxi stopped immediately. She didn’t dare not to. He gave her a surprisingly clean handkerchief and helped her blow her nose and dry her eyes.

  “It’s only money,” he said, smiling for the first time.

  “Only money! Over forty million dollars?”

  He shrugged. “I’d inevitably have lost it back to the house another day. You don’t imagine that they’d have let me bet if they didn’t know that for sure, did you? You’re not working for the house by any chance? No, I didn’t think so. But they do owe you a free drink. Come on, sit down here and I’ll order. Champagne?”

  “Something much stronger,” Maxi begged.

  “Good girl. Tequila then, Buffalo Grass tequila.” He motioned to a waiter. “My usual, Jean-Jacques, and one for the lady. A double.”

  “Bad luck, Monsieur Brady,” the waiter said sympathetically.

  The scarecrow looked closely at Maxi. “Not necessarily, Jean-Jacques, not necessarily.” He turned to Maxi. “Drink up and I’ll take you home.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” she protested.

  “Might as well. After all, I own you now. Forty million dollars worth anyway.”

  “Oh.”

  “You do agree?” he asked politely.

  “Yes. Of course. It’s only … fair.” And Maxi thought, there could be worse fates. Far far worse. But she’d absolutely have to do something about his clothes.

  Dennis Brady was the first remittance man that Australia had sent back to the old country. A century earlier his ancestor, Black Dan Brady, emigrated to Australia from Dublin and struck it rich when he discovered an enormous silver deposit at Wasted Valley in the New South Wales Outback. In the decades that followed, the Wasted Valley Proprietary Company found vast amounts of iron ore, coal and manganese. By 1972, in addition to the mine operations, its assets included huge steel mills and oil ventures which accounted for three percent of Australia’s gross domestic product, and a cash flow of close to a billion dollars a year. Its chief liability was its rebellious chief stockholder and orphaned only heir to the Brady fortune, Bad Dennis Brady, who was bored, bored, bored with Melbourne; bored, bored, bored with being the richest man in Australia; bored, bored, bored with discussions about drilling for oil off the coast of China, finding copper in Chile, or mining gold in South Africa. Dennis Brady had not the slightest interest in extracting another ounce or gram or droplet of anything whatsoever out of this planet. On the other hand he dearly loved a wager. But gambling is not permitted in Australia and the closest casino in Tasmania had lost so much money to him that they had barred him from play forever.

  They couldn’t call him a black sheep, he told the board of directors meeting of Wasted Valley that he had convened, because a black sheep doesn’t pay his debts, nor could they call him a wastrel because he often ended up winning, and, over the long haul, was almost even, although he knew perfectly well that the odds would always be with the house, but no one could call him an asset to the company either. And there was no need to take a vote on that, gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. He’d tried, God knows he’d tried, for twenty-nine miserable years, to be a credit to the Brady dynasty but it just wasn’t going to work out. Too bloody boring by half. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he cleared out, went back to wherever it was that Bradys had come from in the first place and left them to get on with the family business? All those in favor say aye—no never mind the formalities�
�he’d just remembered that he owned more than enough stock to cast the deciding vote. Could he buy anyone a farewell drink?

  “What happened next?” Maxi asked, fascinated with his story.

  “They said it was too early in the day for a drink but they rather thought I had the right idea and they all shook hands. Good chaps. They’re undoubtedly still drilling and smelting and forging away and looking for new companies to buy. They’re as industrious as a bunch of giant Santa’s helpers … motivated, businesslike, patriotic, good to their mothers—useful but all so terribly tedious.”

  “Did you go back to Ireland?”

  “Good Lord, no. Never cared for racing or breeding the beasts—I’m allergic to horses and I can’t endure rain. Came straight here and bought this lovely yacht and I’ve been here ever since. It’s not quite the biggest one in the port but it’s nothing to be ashamed of and it’s the happiest ship in the harbor.”

  “But what do you do, Dennis?”

  “Do? Well … I just … live, you know? A little here, another bit there. Water ski, drink a little, drink a lot, listen to music, sail, fly my helicopter—sometimes we even take the ship out for a day or two. It’s a full life. Occasionally I’m so busy I don’t even get to the Casino before midnight. I’ve put myself on a strict credit limit there … it might get boring otherwise.”