“I’m going to double up.”
All my good luck has begun to flow together—I’ve met an admirer and won a bundle—which probably means it’s time that I cashed out. The odds are a funny thing. When they run with me, especially after they haven’t for a while, I can feel like I’m finally getting what I’m worth and that chance has nothing to do with it. It’s justice. The universe is paying up at last. Moralists like my mother and big sister would view this as a dangerous delusion, but I’m part pagan—I believe in breakthroughs, in bursts of astrological beneficence. Things rise and fall, but at times they rise and rise.
“After we got off the plane today,” says Alex, “I asked myself why I didn’t say I knew you. It’s a character weakness. I like to hide and watch. In Texas you came off as pretty cocky, so maybe I was hoping you’d screw up.”
“It sounds like you had it out for me.”
“Not really. It’s just hard to admit that this stranger who gave some talk that struck me as sort of corny at the time and intellectually below my level actually set me straight and helped me grow.”
“You’re laying it on pretty thick. Fort Worth, you said?”
“You didn’t gaze out on the audience and notice me?”
“I keep my face in my notes when I speak publicly. I’d rather not see the assassin’s muzzle flash.”
“Assassin?”
“I wasn’t frank with you today. My main occupation is Career Transitions. You’re smart, so you can interpret. Terminations.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was a field. How much have you won? Can we stop now?”
“One more spin.”
“You’re pretty into this, aren’t you?”
Should I not be? To prove I can walk away, I slide my chips—all of them—onto red. And red it is. Alex follows me to the cashier’s cage, where the casino turns plastic into paper so later it can be turned back into plastic. The clerk counts out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, still stiff from the mint. We’re rich. Where now? The bar.
The drinkers, instead of looking at one another, stare down at the video poker monitors whose screens form the resting place for their drinks and coasters. Their eyeglasses flicker as their cards are played. The band plays “Radar Love,” stroking its guitars with all the passion of jailbirds shoveling gravel while wearing leg-irons.
“That was incredible,” Alex says. “It practically seemed illegal, what you did there.”
She’s off balance now. That was the point of my big bet, which would have been just as effective had I lost. We’re not in control, my sweet. It’s all a hunch.
“So how precisely did I help you grow?”
“You convinced me to go into business for myself. Plus, you sort of set me on a path. I had a strange childhood, not traumatic, exactly, but hurtful, uncertain. My father had two families. We knew this. He drove a truck. It happens sometimes. When he was gone, my mother fooled around, spent time in the bars. The arrangement worked for both of them. The problem was me. They had four lives between them, and I was always switching back and forth. A few times my dad even took me to Missouri, where his other kids lived. Their mother was a secretary, so they had more money than I did, and they were Catholic. I had to learn to blend, to mold myself.”
“Sounds like it. What a mess.”
“I pulled it off, though. I split myself into quarters. I adapted. Then suddenly I’m eighteen and on my own and my special talent isn’t relevant. I’m expected to be consistent, and I’m just not.”
“Someone usurped my identity,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“Usurped. It means ‘steal.’ ”
“I went to college.”
“My question is: if they charge things to my credit card, who gets the miles? I’ll bet they go to waste.”
“I was telling you something. I hadn’t finished yet.”
“I made an association. Go ahead.”
Alex pushes away her beer. “I’m angry now.”
“I thought I was amplifying a point you’d made.”
“Listen, can we get going? Flight at six.”
I’m reluctant to leave the noise and bustle. The casino holds out so many possibilities—my sister might even walk by, you never know—but in Alex’s room the script has fewer endings. Because if it’s true that she admires me, she won’t once we’re through. Or is that her plan? To get me undressed and close our stature gap. I don’t see much profit in this rendezvous. This Alex is full of schemes, as she’s admitted, but I’m happy here, with my winnings in cash, for once.
I let her lead me. Her room is smaller than mine, one price point down, and though she’s only been in it a few hours, she’s turned it into an atmospheric grotto. She’s draped a violet scarf over the desk lamp and set a pair of candles on the bureau, which she lights with wooden matches. Twin flames jump up. A stuffed velour unicorn, worn bare with hugs, lies on the bed beside an open book, and on top of the blanket she’s spread a mohair throw. To do this to a hotel room would never occur to me—I take them as they come, the way God made them.
“There’s a tape in my little player on the sill. Turn it on if you want. I need to wash my hands.”
I do as I’m told and out spills a mystic trickle of formless music—piano, bells, and strings—that sounds like it was recorded underwater. The scene is set for a seance, a tarot reading, and as always when I’m expected to relax, my shoulders seize. I’m not so sure I’m up to this.
