'You like to gamble?' Dex asks, examining his dice while still walking.
'No,' I say. Surprise, surprise. Rachel playing it safe. 'Do you?'
'Yeah,' he says. 'I like craps. My lucky number is six-a four and a two. You have a lucky roll?'
'No… Well, I like double sixes,' I answer, trying to mask my feelings of desperation. Desperate women are not attractive. Desperate women lose.
'Why double sixes?'
'I don't know,' I say. I don't feel like explaining that it stems from playing backgammon with my father when I was little. I'd chant for double sixes and whenever I rolled them he'd call me Boxcar Willy. I still don't know who Boxcar Willy is, but I loved it when he called me that.
'Want me to roll you some double sixes?'
'Yeah,' I say, pointing down at the filthy sidewalk, humoring him. 'Go ahead.'
We stop on the corner of Seventieth and Third. A bus lurches past us, and a woman with a baby nearly runs her stroller into Dex. He seems to ignore everyone and everything around him, shaking the dice with both hands, an expression of intense concentration on his face. If I saw him exactly like this, but in Atlantic City wearing polyester and a gold chain, I would wonder if he had his house and life savings on the line.
'What are we betting?' I ask.
'Betting? We're on the same team, baby,' he says in a Queens accent, and then blows hard on his dice, his smooth cheeks puffing out like a little boy blowing the candles out on his birthday cake.
'Roll me double sixes right now.'
'And if I do?'
I think to myself, You roll double sixes, we end up together. No wedding with Darcy. But instead I say, 'It will mean good luck for us.'
'All righty then. Double sixes coming right up for ya.' He licks his lips and shakes his dice more vigorously.
The sun shines in my eyes as he tosses the dice in the air, catches them easily, and then dramatically lowers his arm toward the ground as if he's about to roll a bowling ball. He opens his hand, fingers splayed, as the cubes clatter to the concrete right at the busy Manhattan intersection.
One red die lands on six immediately. My heart skips with the thought,
What iff We are crouched over the landed die and its spinning twin, rotating on its axis for what seems like forever. If you tried to make a die go that long, you couldn't do it. But there it is, turning on its corner, a blur of gold dots and red background. And then it slows, slows, slows, and lands neatly beside the first one. Two rows of three dots on the second die.
Double sixes.
Boxcar Willy.
Holy shit, I think… No wedding with Darcy!… He wanted to talk about 'no matter what happens' as if someone were steering from up above; well, here you go. Here you have it. Double sixes. Our fate.
I look up from the dice at Dex, debating whether to tell him what the roll had really been for. He looks at me with his mouth slightly open. Our eyes return to the dice as if maybe we got it wrong.
What are the chances?
Urn, that would be precisely one in thirty-six. Just under three percent.
So we aren't talking one-in-a-million odds. But those statistics are misleading when removed from our context. We have reached the end of a pivotal, meaningful weekend together. Right as we are minutes from parting ways (for the day? forever?), Dexter buys the dice on a whim, plays with them instead of putting them in the bag with his stuffed dinosaur, and adopts his boyish gambling persona. I play along, even though I'm in no mood for games. Then I decide, albeit silently, the terms of the roll. And he rolls double sixes! As if to say, we are foolproof, baby.
I look at his ninety-eight-cent (plus tax) dice with the reverence you would have for a crystal ball in a richly upholstered room with the world's greatest fortune-teller, wrinkled by the Persian sun, who has just told you how it was, how it is, and how it is going to be. Even Dex, who doesn't know what he just sealed for us, is impressed, telling me that he needs to take me to Atlantic City, Vegas, that we'd make a hell of a team.
Exactly.
He smiles at me and says, 'There's your good luck, baby.'
I say nothing, just pick up the dice and wedge them into the front pocket of my shorts.
'You stealing my dice?'
Our dice.
'I need them,' I say.
We return to my apartment, where he collects his things and says good-bye.
'Thanks for an awesome weekend,' he says, his face now mirroring mine. He is sad too.
'Yeah. It was great. Thank you.' I strike the pose of a confident girl.
He bites his lower lip. 'I better head back. As much as I don't want to.'
'Yeah. You better go.'
'I'll call you soon. Whenever I can. As soon as I can.'
'Okay.' I nod.
'Okay. Bye.'
After one final kiss, he is gone.
I sit on my sofa, clutching my dice. They are a comfort-the roll is almost as good as a talk. Maybe better. We didn't have a talk because it is all so obvious. We are in love and meant to be together, and the dice confirmed everything. I place them reverently in his empty cinnamon Altoids container, nestled in the white paper liner with the sixes still facing up. I touch the rows of dots, like reverse Braille. They tell me that we will be together. It is our destiny. All of me believes it. I close the lid of the tin and push it against the base of my vase filled with lilies that are still clinging on. The dice, the tin, the lilies-I have created a shrine to our love.
I glance around my prim, orderly studio, perfectly neat except for my unmade bed. The sheets have molded against the mattress, revealing a vague outline of our bodies. I want to be there again, to feel closer to him. I slip off my sandals and walk over to the bed, sliding under the covers, which are chilled from the air conditioner. I get up, close my blinds, and hit the remote control on my stereo. Billie Holiday croons. I get back in bed, wriggle down toward the bottom of it, hooking my feet over the end of the mattress. I let my senses fill with Dex. See his face, feel him next to me.
I wonder if he is home yet or still stuck in crosstown traffic. Will he kiss Darcy hello? Will her lips feel strange and unfamiliar after kissing mine all weekend? Will she sense that something is wrong, unable to put her finger on exactly what has changed, never considering for a second that her maid of honor and a pair of dice might have something to do with the faraway look in her fiance's eyes?
Chapter 15
Hillary arrives at work the next day, shortly before eleven, wearing wrinkled pants and scuffed black sandals. Her toenail polish is badly chipped, making her big toe resemble a squat candy cane. I laugh and shake my head as she hunkers down in her usual chair in my office.
'What's so funny?'
'Your wardrobe. They're going to fire you.'
Our firm recently changed its dress code, from suits to business casual so long as there is no client interaction. But I'm pretty sure that Hillary's ensemble is not what the managing partner had in mind when his memo referenced 'appropriate business casual.'
She shrugs. 'I wish they would fire me… Okay. So tell me about the weekend. Spare no details.'
I smile.
'That good?'
I tell her we had an awesome time. I tell her about going to Balthazar and Atlantic Grill and our walk in the park and how nice it was to have so much time with Dex. I am hoping that if I talk enough, I will be able to avoid
