Barefoot: A Novel

bothered to look up. A young guy with brown hair and dark green eyes. Preppy-looking. A kid who, much to Vicki’s dismay, looked like the hundreds of guys she met at the bars uptown.

He was wearing a Dartmouth Lacrosse sweatshirt. Her first thought was, If someone as standard-issue as you found this place, it can’t be that hot. But the other men were older, with the definite air that they knew what they were doing.

“You in the next hand?” Dartmouth Sweatshirt said.

She set the hundred out on the table. “I guess.”

The other men licked their chops. They wanted her money.

She won the hand with three queens. The men pushed the pile of cash her way, chuckling. “Betty won.”

“My name is Vicki,” she said.

She played again and won with a ful house. Castor brought her a martini. Vicki took an exultant sip, then thought, This is where I get off. Two more women joined the game and Vicki stood up.

“Oh, no,” one of the older men said. He was the hardest-looking and the loudest-laughing, the leader. “You sit your pretty bucket back down and let us win our money back.” She obeyed and won the third hand with a flush.

Then it was her turn to deal. Her hands shook as she shuffled. She thought of Crazy Eights with Brenda and shuffled with a waterfal . The men chuckled some more. Betty. She folded the next two hands, then won a hand. She ate half a corned-beef sandwich and had another martini. It was three o’clock in the morning and she had never felt more awake. In four hours, she would have to go to work, but she didn’t care. Dartmouth Sweatshirt was smoking a Cohiba. Do you want one? he asked. Sure, why not? She lost another hand then got up to join Castor at the bar. The band was stil playing. Who were these people? Music and writing students, Castor said. Young Wal Street, young production designers, young Madison Avenue, young Seventh Avenue.

“It’s who wil be running New York ten years from now.”

Vicki didn’t belong there. She would never run New York; she couldn’t even make a decision about law school. And yet she walked out of the building at five o’clock in the morning with twelve hundred dol ars. Dartmouth Sweatshirt offered to walk her home; Castor was headed uptown to 120th Street, so Vicki had no choice but to agree. The streets were deserted and intimidating, and she had so much cash.

“You played wel tonight,” Dartmouth Sweatshirt said.

“Beginner’s luck.”

“Coming next week?”

“Maybe. Do you go every week?”

“Every week. I like it. It’s different.”

“Yes.” Vicki looked at the guy. Out of the speakeasy, he seemed tal er and more confident. He was very cute. Vicki sighed. The last thing she needed in her life was another guy. But she was grateful for the walk home. So many men were like Castor. Sorry, going uptown.

“What’s your name?” Vicki asked.

“Ted Stowe.”

Vicki went to the poker game the fol owing Tuesday and the Tuesday after that. She didn’t tel anyone else about it. She had two thousand dol ars in cash in her sock drawer and Wednesdays at work she spent her lunch hour napping in the ladies’ room. But Vicki craved the poker game. Castor gave it up at the end of October. He was on to other things, but not Vicki. She learned to tip Doolie from her winnings before she left, and she learned never to use the bathroom because there were always people in there—people who couldn’t have cared less about poker and the pure high of gambling—doing drugs.

Al Vicki had wanted in the world was her martini, her half a sandwich, her Cohiba, her hand of cards, the John Coltrane, and the green, glowing color of money. This, she thought, is what it must feel like to be a man.

Ted was there every week, despite the fact that he was an awful card player. Some nights he didn’t win a single hand.

“You suck, Stowe,” the leader said. Vicki had learned that the hard-looking man with the Bridge and Tunnel accent was Ted’s boss on the trading floor at Smith Barney. Ken Roxby, his name was.

Ted was always good-natured, always even-tempered, even after losing five hundred dol ars in half an hour, even at four o’clock in the morning, even drunk.

“I’l get you guys back at golf,” he said.

One week, to her utter dismay, Vicki had a stomach virus and missed the poker game. Wednesday morning, her phone rang. Ted Stowe. “I won three hands last night.”

“You did not.”

“I made money,” he said. “For the first time ever.”

“And I missed it,” Vicki said.

“And I missed you,” he said.

Neither of them said anything for a second. Ted cleared his throat. “Hey, I was wondering if . . .”

“I don’t think so.”

“You haven’t even let me ask.”

“I don’t want to date anyone in the poker game,” she said. “I real y, real y like it and I want it to stay just the way it is.”