Card Sharks (15 page)

“In his defense, he's not really just an ex. He's one of our oldest friends.”

“But he
is
Marianne's ex.”

“Yes, he is. But try to think of him as an . . . an . . . an overly concerned brotherlike figure.”

“Right.” He chuckled, but as Bijoux watched his face she thought she detected a faint whiff of jealousy. Bijoux did her best to hide her disappointment that he cared so very much about what Donny was or wasn't to Marianne.

“You like her.”

“What is this, high school?”

Bijoux shrugged. “Just a simple observation.” Maybe she was just projecting.

“Of course I like her. She's talented, she's hot, she's smart, she's . . .”

Maybe she wasn't just projecting.

Peter stopped flattering Marianne and focused in on Bijoux to the point that it made her nervous.

“Let's talk about you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it's interesting. What's your story, Bijoux?”

“You know what I'm up to. I'm a gold digger,” she said glumly. “But I'm starting to reconsider my position.” She looked around at the people posing and posturing in the bar alongside her, surprised to find Peter staring intently at her when she glanced back. “What?”

“You're pretty honest.”

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

The server came with the drinks. Bijoux sat back and let Peter open a tab. “You know, Marianne and I are very different,” Bijoux blurted out. “Marianne's a doer, you see. And there's much more to her than meets the eye.”

Peter cocked his head.

“People always think I'm the wacky sidekick, but that's not how it is.”

Peter stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “No, it's not, is it?”

“It's always Marianne at the center, true. But I don't mind. I don't. She just has more natural charisma than I do. But the people at the center have got to have someone around them for it to really be the center.” Bijoux considered the bar mix, but decided to pass to avoid pretzel breath. “I guess she's the center of the universe
and
the wacky sidekick. I wonder where that leaves me?”

Peter laughed. “You've got a good heart, Bijoux.”

“Don't tell anyone. I've got reputation as a mercenary to protect.”

“I don't really think it's money you're looking for.”

Being with Peter was making her nervous. She felt so self-conscious, so fluttery. Breaking eye contact, she begged a cigarette off the guy sitting next to her at the bar just to give herself something to do.

“Bijoux.”

She froze in midair, the cigarette still unlit in her mouth, the match flame flickering. Peter leaned over and blew out the flame. They just looked at each other for a moment. Bijoux could count on one hand the number of really deep moments she'd had in her life with men, and so this one didn't escape her notice at all.

He reached out slowly, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and crushed it in the ashtray. “You don't want that,” he said quietly. Their eyes froze, and to Bijoux's horror she felt a bolt of whatever Marianne must have felt when she looked in Peter's eyes. Thank God he was just an underpaid journalist with no prospects of ever becoming extremely wealthy, because there was no way Bijoux was ever going head-to-head with Marianne for a man. “What do you want, Peter?”

He looked a little surprised but didn't shoot back a pat
answer or get around the question with some witty phrase meant to conceal or disguise.

“And don't give me the man answer.”

He laughed. “What's the man answer?”

“The kind of answer that doesn't involve any analysis. Give me the answer you'd give me if you'd thought about the question for quite a while.”

He took a long sip and then set the drink down on the drink protector, taking the time to realign the condensation ring. “I can tell you what I don't want. I don't ever want to feel stagnant.”

Bijoux smiled at the
don't
of it.

“It's one of the reasons I like the idea of being a journalist. Never the same story. Always someone new to meet, somewhere new to go, something new to experience. I want to feel as though there's always the possibility of something completely different around the corner.” He smiled. “There's your non–man answer.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly.
You picked the right girl. Marianne's the spontaneous one. The one up for adventure. The one who will always seem fresh and exciting and new.
“Why do I get the feeling that there's going to be an incendiary
L.A. Times
article about girls gone wild playing poker in Vegas, accompanied by crazy pictures of Marianne and I.”

“I'll let you see the pictures first,” he said with a wink.

Bijoux stared at him for a moment in disbelief and then burst out laughing. “You shit disturber!” she yelled out, and began pummeling him in the arm.

Suddenly nervous, she stopped pummeling him. He caught her by the arm and she was sure, absolutely sure he was going to try to kiss her, which she wasn't sure how she would handle, but maybe he wasn't about to kiss her and it was all in her imagination and . . . and—he didn't.

Might as well eat the bar mix, then. Pretzel breath obviously wasn't going to be an issue tonight.

T
aking her seat and arranging her things yet again, Marianne noticed that she'd gotten stuck immediately to the left of the button and would be the opening small blind for the day.

She looked up at the leader board, noting that her chip count still didn't compare to the amounts accumulated by the top players. In spite of her couple of big wins the prior day, she was going to have to play hard and smart to catch up.

She wasn't so low that she'd need to start stressing immediately and get involved in a bunch of major confrontations unless she really, really wanted to. But she also needed to be careful that she didn't play too conservatively and lose by virtue of a slow chip bleed to extinction. The chip leaders at the table would try to push her around, and the trick was to avoid their maneuvers. Because all they were thinking was that eight million dollars got closer every day.

Find the zone, Marianne. Find the zone.

The first hand of the day came around, and a kind of electricity sizzled in the air.
Everyone
was trying to find the zone. Everyone was digging in to make it to the next day.

Marianne looked at her cards. Pocket rockets—ace/ace. A good omen. Conservative play was one thing, but this wasn't the moment to hold back. When the betting came around she raised three times the big blind, hoping to get as many chips as possible into the pot or take the whole thing before the flop. At the other end of the table, one of the old pros stared at her for a few moments—during which Marianne kept her expression carefully blank—and then went all-in.

Marianne froze. She'd committed a ton of money to the pot. To match his all-in would deplete her stash even further. He had to have something good, not just something good enough to make this risky a play. She called and everyone else mucked their cards. Yes! Perfect.

The two of them flipped their cards over.

It was Marianne's two aces versus a pair of kings. If the flop pulled a king, she was in deep trouble.

The dealer burned and turned. Nine of clubs, two of diamonds . . . king of hearts. Marianne sat stone-still as the dealer flipped the turn card. Ace.
Holy crap.
Marianne's opponent stood up, shifting his weight from leg to leg.

One card away . . . the dealer flipped the river card. A queen.

Her opponent cussed loud enough for the entire room to hear and smashed his fist down on the table. He brought his hands up to his head, elbows akimbo, and just kept on swearing a blue streak.

Marianne held out her hand for a condolence shake, but he didn't even see it. He left the tournament red-faced and screaming, most likely forcing the ESPN folks to find their bleeper button.

She released a slow breath and raked in the chips. Just like that, she was one of the bullies now. She had her mojo back, and she wasn't going to let it get away from her this time.

Day two was going very, very well already. Marianne had
logged the number of hostile stares encountered on the way to the bathroom at five, the number of men staring at her cleavage at any given time during game play also at five, and the number of times her opponents made it obvious that they assumed she was a total moron at fifteen.

They couldn't have been more wrong and Marianne suddenly felt more relaxed than ever. Today was going to be a good day. A very good day. And tonight, Bijoux would get that night out she'd been waiting for.

There was no such thing as a “regular” nightclub in Las Vegas. The prototype simply didn't exist. Marianne, Peter, Donny and Bijoux sat at a table at what was, at the current hour, merely a restaurant, but which would segue into a nightclub that would, in turn, morph into some sort of performance.

The houselights went out, and the place flickered with strobe lasers as individual ceiling tiles slid away and a team of dancers was lowered into the club on harnesses.

The electronic ocean sounds gave way to a thumping dance track as the harnesses lowered all the way to the ground and dancers stepped away from the rigging and took up residence along the midlevel catwalks above the two bars and on risers above the dance floor.

The hostess leaned over and said something into Peter's ear.

“What did she say?” Marianne asked.

“It's three hundred dollars to keep the table, including a bottle of liquor and mixers all around,” he shouted back over the growing din.

“Should we do it?” Marianne asked, clapping her hands and looking at the others.

“Absolutely,” Donny said. He took out his wallet. “It's cheap if we all split it.”

Bijoux bit her lower lip and shrugged. “I left my credit
cards upstairs. How about we forget the table and just dance?”

Peter grabbed her around the waist and dipped her in a most masterful manner. “Then tonight,” he said with exaggerated drama, “tonight, we dance!”

Donny's eyebrow flew up. He turned to Marianne and held out his palm. She put hers in his and he yanked on her arm, twirling her in until he had her in a somewhat tangled embrace. “Let's do it.” They hit the dance floor, already crowded with brides-to-be, their posses, and the single men who hoped to reap the benefits.

The
whump-whump
ing of the music seemed to psych Marianne right up. If she was tired from playing poker all day, she certainly wasn't showing it.

Within a few moments Donny had managed to generate a circle with himself as the hub and a circle of bridesmaids around him. He gestured for the rest of them to join the circle.

“Can I get a robot?” he shouted, preening for the crowd. Everyone went wild as he proceeded to answer his own question. He pointed to Peter, getting into the Chuck Berry chicken position and grooving to the music. “I said, can I get a robot?” he challenged.

Bijoux looked at Marianne in horror, who was bobbing up and down and clapping next to her in the circle. “Oh, my God. It's a dance-off.”

“A testosterone-a-thon!” Marianne shouted back happily.

“I'm opposed to public humiliation!”

“You have to loosen up! Besides, you're not the one about to be humili—” She broke off in midsentence, squealing as Peter Chuck Berry–chickened into the center of the circle, saw Donny's robot, and raised him an old-school Running Man. Bijoux and Marianne jumped up and down, hooting and hollering and clapping and laughing. . . .

“This is all your fault, you know,” Bijoux said. “They're battling for supremacy in the great war for your love.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Getting there.”

“This isn't about me.”

“It's always about you,” Bijoux said with a smile, bumping her hip against Marianne's.

“Yeah, yeah, let's see some of that!” Donny called out to the girls. The circle broke as everyone started hip-checking one another.

Both Donny and Peter came toward them, Peter cock-blocking Donny at the last minute to grab Marianne's hand and pull her into tango position. The two of them tangoed off across the dance floor.

Donny looked a little stunned for a second, then recovered and took Bijoux into his arms as a techno remix of Sinatra's “My Way” kicked in. “What's up with that, Bij?”

“With what?”

“I thought he was with you?”

“He's not with anybody.”

Donny's eyebrow arched.

“Don't be jealous. You do it to each other.”

“I'm not jealous.
You
don't be jealous.”

She watched Peter and Marianne whooping it up on the other side of the dance floor. Marianne really did seem to have all the luck. Not that Bijoux begrudged her. A poker player needed luck.

Perhaps it was more that Marianne had fewer requirements than she did. Not that her standards were lower or anything. Just that without the constraints of things like becoming insanely wealthy, Marianne had more options.

Of course, the fact of the matter was that even without a monetary requirement factored in, there just weren't a lot of extraordinary relationships to be found.

There were plenty of perfectly nice guys out there. There were plenty of ordinary lives out there to be lived, the kind that people all over the country were living. There were plenty of completely acceptable futures to sign up for. That was why Bijoux and Marianne weren't desperate—because they could have picked any number of completely respectable, eminently acceptable guys and settled down by now.

Of course, give it five years and Bijoux might be feeling a little bit more desperate. She looked at Peter, thinking she should really go out tonight and see who was out there. Well, maybe he could be her wingman. Guys liked women who already had guys. The pigs. Adorable pigs, but pigs nonetheless.

“I think I'm going to go hit the craps table, actually.”

“Alone?”

Bijoux shrugged. “I'll be fine.”

“Okay, but before you go . . . I think I'm going to have to see a . . . Roger Rabbit!”

Bijoux burst out into laughter as Donny performed for her. Over his shoulder she could see Marianne craning her neck to watch him, too.

The dance beat
whump-whump
ed some more and the waitress came by and stuck a drink in her hand that Peter had ordered for her, and she drank and danced like a trashy vixen while watching Donny cheer up Bijoux on the dance floor.

He was doing a good job, plying her with liquor and doing a little dirty-dancing of his own, but with his own personal style, which involved a lot of posturing and goofing off. And as Marianne watched, Donny managed to put a smile back on Bijoux's face.

Marianne took a swig of vodka and let it burn her almost as much as the streak of jealousy going through her body. Peter put his arms around her waist, grinding her from behind and nuzzling
her neck. She couldn't begrudge Bijoux a thing. Not a thing. But for Marianne, seeing her ex-boyfriend from the outside—what he'd look like if he were with another woman that he really cared about, what he'd look like with her very best friend, for God's sake—well, it just made a girl have to reassess her priorities.

Marianne downed the rest of her vodka and turned around in the circle of Peter's arms to reassess her priorities by way of grinding her body into his, face-to-face. Part of her focused on the fact that she was actually really enjoying the high of all of this. The tournament, the drinks, a sexy new guy looking at her like Peter was looking at her right now. You had to move on sometime. Bijoux was right. She couldn't do whatever it was she'd been doing with Donny forever.

“How's your story coming?” she asked.

“Not bad at all.”

“Are you going to watch the tournament tomorrow or wander around a little?”

“I plan to watch some. Take some pictures. Get some interviews, if I can. I still need to interview you officially when you've got the time and energy.”

“So ask me some questions.”

“Now?”

“Sure. Ask me anything,” she said.

“What thrills you the most?”

She chuckled. “At the poker table, I assume?”

He bent his head in acquiescence. “I know Bijoux's a craps fan, but I've heard that true poker players tend not to mix other games in much.”

“I like to play all sorts of games.”

“Roulette? Craps?”

Marianne cocked her head. “Oh, yeah. I like to put my money on the come as much as the next girl.”

They both burst out laughing.

Marianne nodded and looked around for Donny and Bijoux. She'd last seen Donny in some kind of nightclub-dancer sandwich, but she couldn't find him on the dance floor anymore. She didn't want to think about what he might be up to. “Hey, Marianne.” Peter leaned forward, putting his mouth so close to hers she thought he might kiss her right here on the dance floor. Instead he just said, “If you play your cards right, I could be your very own seven-card stud.”

“You are so flirting with me!”

“Is that a problem?”

Marianne looked at him coyly. “Not yet.” She dropped her forehead down on his chest and let it rest there, suddenly aware of just how exhausted she was and completely sure that she didn't have the energy to flirt back anymore tonight. “Wow. I'm so tired. . . .

Peter picked her head back up as if he'd read her mind. “Let's get you upstairs. You've got an important game tomorrow.”

Peter reached the elevator banks first and tapped the up arrow. It arrived almost immediately and the two of them stepped into the car completely alone. They stared silently at the massive columns of numbers representing the route up to their suites. Peter looked up at the security camera. Marianne followed his gaze. They looked at each other and laughed.

Peter reached out and slammed his palm into the stop button, then took Marianne in his arms. He dipped her low, his arm supporting her back, and then leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers.

It was all meant to be a bit of a joke; that was how it started out—overly dramatic and just one of those things people did in casino elevators in Vegas.