Double Blind (8 page)

“No, you wanted something embarrassing to poke at me with. Tough luck, Slick. You’ll have to invent that yourself.” He pointed down the street. “There—see that shitload of lights ahead? That’s where we’re going: to the Golden Nugget.”

At first Ethan had no idea how he was supposed to distinguish between one “shitload of lights” and another, but then he saw the glittering, golden galaxy of lights at the very end of their path. Of course, it was difficult to distinguish it from all the
other
garish displays.

Ethan shook his head. “This place is just insane. The
energy
you must waste.”

“Yeah, we’re real low on yurts around here.” Randy gestured to the panorama of decadence around them, of lights and shops and people, half of them drunk, all of them laughing and talking and soaking in the dizzy madness that was the city. “Isn’t it gorgeous? I love to go up in the Stratosphere tower just to look down on it all. So much sin wrapped up in so much pretty.”

“Hedonism,” Ethan corrected him.

Randy patted his arm but didn’t look at him, just kept scanning the street and the people. “It’s cute how you contradict everything I say, and it’s nice foreplay, but be careful how you don your monk cowl. You’ll only feel foolish later when you inevitably cut loose. Because you will, Slick. And it is going to be fucking glorious.”

Ethan opened his mouth to argue, to demand to know how Randy presumed to think he knew what Ethan would or wouldn’t do, but he found he didn’t have the energy for it, and he deflated. “All right, I’ll admit I don’t really care about the environment, and no, I’m not a monk. But I still don’t like it.”

Randy nodded and went back to watching the street traffic. “Because you’re jealous of the people who can cut loose when you can’t. I know. But you can, Slick. It’s practically bursting out of you, if you’d let it.”

“Do you head-shrink all your friends?” Ethan asked, bristling again. “Or is that how you lost them all?”

“Most of my friends aren’t as beautifully bottled as you are,” Randy said. “They also don’t bet their last dollar on black like some dogged idiot. You’ve captured my attention.”

“You keep bringing that up.” Ethan glared down at him. “Would you like to explain why it’s so stupid to bet on black?”

“God, there’s a loaded question. But hey, we’ve got a few blocks. Why not.”

Randy drew a breath, and then he launched into what could only be described as a lecture.

“The thing is, roulette sucks. There’s no way to beat it. You never, no matter what you do, have the best of it. In fact, that bit we did with your ring was the first time I’ve ever had an advantage on the wheel in my life. And I only played it at all because I didn’t give a shit about the outcome, because I won no matter what.”

“But if it had landed odd, you wouldn’t have gotten the ring,” Ethan pointed out.

“I wouldn’t have gotten it if it had landed on green, either,” Randy said. “But I didn’t want the ring, Slick. I wanted you.”

Ethan knew he wasn’t hearing the three words the way Randy meant them, but they still unraveled his edges a little. Which, come to think of it, had probably been the real reason Randy had said them. He sighed. “For the bet, yes. But that doesn’t explain why I was stupid to bet on black.”

“You were stupid to play roulette,” Randy said. “It’s the same screwy thinking that brought you to the table that had you doggedly insisting it would eventually come around to you.”

“The law of averages—” Ethan began, but he stopped when Randy laughed and shook his head.

“Don’t, Slick. Don’t quote that shit to me. You’re smarter than the idiots who come to Vegas because of the fucking law of averages.” When Ethan started to argue again, Randy cut him off with a shake of his head and sighed. “Look. This is the thing you need to get, right now, and you need to tattoo it on the inside of your wrists. The law of averages is a fancy phrase that sounds like math but actually translates to ‘wishful thinking’. I will buy that there is such a thing as karma, but do not talk to me about the fucking law of averages. It is
not
the case that if you let a scenario play out over a period of time that it will work itself out. It is
not
the case that if you spin a wheel full of red and black, it is obliged by a sense of nicety to be balanced or to rotate politely between one pole and the other. And don’t bring up coin tosses. Don’t bring up anything.
It is not scientific,
Slick
.
A roulette wheel is
random
. It is designed—and regularly, rigorously tested—to be
random
. It can be red all fucking night. It can be red once in an hour full of black. It can hit the same number six times in a row. It can do anything, because it’s
random
. It doesn’t even do what it wants, because it doesn’t fucking care. It’s a goddamned wheel. It doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t care that some guy was a complete asshole to you, or that you just won big at craps, or that the universe really owes you. It’s a wheel, and a ball lands in it. You can’t guess where. You can’t guess the color or the type of number. Well—you can
guess
. But you can’t know. You can’t even get into probability. You
can’t
, Slick.”

“Why are you yelling at me?” Ethan asked, feeling awkward because they’d stopped walking and people were staring at them.

“Because you’re better than that!” Randy shot back. “I watched you, and it drove me nuts. You thought, ‘It’s due for black’. It’s not due. It’s never due anything. And what you were really thinking, Ethan, is that it
owed you.
You humanized that wheel. You made it the guy who should have treated you better, and you made it the world that should have wrapped you up in it. You decided that this was the moment it would do you right, and you rationalized that it was fair to ask for that, because all you wanted was five bucks. Just once. You wanted just five bucks, and you just wanted one win. You wanted to feel heard. You wanted someone to notice, but you knew they wouldn’t, so you asked black to give you a little loving. And it hurt like hell when even black let you down. For five bucks.”

It was getting very, very hard for Ethan to breathe. “Stop talking,” he managed to whisper.

Randy stopped shouting, but he didn’t stop talking. “I ride you, Slick, because you’re smarter than that, like I said. Don’t fucking go to roulette, where you can’t get the best of it.”

“Where am I supposed to go then?” Ethan ground out, more raw than he wanted to be. He grabbed for the nearest verbal weapon he could find and added a sneer to sharpen it. “You?”

But Randy just grinned. “No. You go to poker, baby.”

It wasn’t right, the way the world melted when Randy looked at him like that. “I don’t know how to play poker.”

Randy laughed, and the sound made Ethan’s insides hum. “By the end of the night, Mr. Ellison, you won’t be able to say that anymore.” He tucked Ethan’s hand back into his and nodded across the street where the Golden Nugget stood waiting. “Get your notebook ready, because school is in session.”

“So what,”
Randy asked, as he led Ethan onto the Golden Nugget’s casino floor, “do you know about poker already? Don’t tell me nothing. You haven’t lived under a rock. Just tell me how you’d describe it to someone from the moon.”

“I—” Ethan trailed off before he even started, too busy taking in the glitter and glory around him. Randy was right: this was beautiful. The scene before him was built on greed and gambling and sin, but it was the most beautiful sin he’d ever seen. The casino was elegant, to start. It made him feel as if he were a king and this was his palace. Everything was posh and opulent, and every employee was slim and beautiful and smiling at him, as if they were happy only because Ethan had finally arrived. Lights flashed, people shouted and laughed over the rattle and hum of slot machines that all but drowned out the soft music playing overhead.

Randy took Ethan’s chin in his hand and turned his face toward his own. “Poker,” he prompted. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s a game,” Ethan began, hesitating because he felt silly. “You bet on it.”

“On what?” Randy prompted.

“On… the cards. On your—” Ethan tried to think of the word. “Hands? The hands of cards. What you’re dealt. And I swear, that’s all I know. Something about a full house and a straight and a flush and pairs. And I think aces are good.”

“Never anything wrong with an ace,” Randy agreed. “That’s what you’ve got? That’s the poker you know?”

“That’s what I’ve got.” Ethan readied himself for the ridicule.

It didn’t come. Randy just nodded, accepting the facts, then led Ethan into the rows of slots. He stopped at a brightly smiling blond girl for change before taking them in deeper, back to a far wall, where he sat Ethan down on a stool beneath a row of slots under a sign which read VIDEO POKER. But Randy didn’t put any money in. Instead, he sat down on a chair beside Ethan, turned to face him, and started in on another lecture.

“Okay,” Randy said, “this is what poker is. Poker is capturing the pot. To play the game, you make a bet, and you try to win your money back plus the money of everyone else playing. You don’t even need cards to play it. Go back to the River with Scully—”

“What river?” Ethan interrupted, confused already.

“The Ace on the River. The bar, where we made the kiss bet. That’s the name of it, but everybody just calls it the River. It doesn’t matter what the bar is called. We’re talking about poker. You remember how Scully kept raising his bet? He was playing poker, but he was frustrated because he didn’t have anybody else playing with him. Imagine the same game, and there was somebody else there betting just as hard in your favor, not mine. Each of them thinks they have the best of it, that they know the outcome and that they’re right. So they keep betting. Now imagine that you and I are two cards, and each time the players bet, they’re tossing money between us, money they can’t get back unless they win the pot by being the one who is right or the one still standing when the game is over. They keep raising, higher and higher, and eventually they call, which means they stop and they see who’s right and who’s wrong—do you kiss me, or not—or one of them
folds
, which means it doesn’t matter whether or not you were ever going to kiss me: whoever gave up lost.”

“But why would they do that?” Ethan asked, a little flustered by all this talk of kissing. “Why would they fold?”

“Because they can’t afford to put any more money in the pot, most likely, or because the other bettor manages to convince them that their hand isn’t as strong as their opponent’s. If it comes to a showdown, whoever wins is the one who guessed right. Except they don’t just guess like roulette. They use reason, and some math, and a shitload of people reading.”

Ethan was beginning to get this, he thought. Maybe. “Scully was betting on you because he knows you, because he thinks there’s no way I won’t give in and kiss you—because guys usually do?” He felt like he was losing it toward the end.

Randy smiled, a little. “Between you and me, Slick, my reputation is a little grander than my reality. But I’d appreciate it if you kept that on the down-low. Now, you bring up an interesting point: Scully was betting on me, but he was an idiot as usual because he didn’t consider you. He acted like a guy with pocket aces and another on the board. He ignored the fact that there was a clear shot at a flush, which would beat him flat.”

“You’ve lost me now,” Ethan said.

“Scully was only considering what he knew about me. If I were his hand of cards, he would be looking at two aces and thinking, ‘Nobody can beat this’. But there are a lot of things that can beat a pair of aces. There are a lot of things that can beat three aces. I might be aces, but you might be a flush, or a straight.” Ethan’s mouth quirked in a smile, and Randy rolled his eyes. “A ‘straight’, wise guy, is a run of five numbers. 2-3-4-5-6. 9-10-jack-queen-king. A ‘flush’ is a set of five cards of the same suit in any order.”