“After last night, it was the least I could do.”
She led him inside. The condo smelled of fresh coffee and burned toast. She offered to make him scrambled eggs, and they went into the kitchen. He sat at the breakfast table and placed the bag between his feet. As she fixed breakfast, he found himself staring at her furniture and kitchen appliances. All of it was old and beat-up. Every compulsive gambler he’d ever known lived like this. He tried not to think about it.
“Hope you don’t mind them runny,” she said, ladling the eggs onto a plate.
“Not at all. Got any Tabasco sauce?”
“Sure. I think it’s pretty old, though.”
She found the Tabasco in a cupboard and sat down. Years of eating crummy diner food had gotten him addicted to Tabasco, and he sprinkled it on his eggs. With his foot, he pushed the bag across the linoleum floor so it touched her chair.
“This for me?”
He nodded. “It’s
She made a face, then picked the bag up from the floor. She opened it and let out a shriek. The bag fell from her hands, its contents spilling onto the floor.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Lucy grabbed his arm. “It’s my twenty-five thousand dollars, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
He nodded and kept eating. It was actually the money Chance Newman had paid him two days ago for demonstrating Deadlock. He’d decided that it wasn’t a coincidence that Chance had paid him the same amount that had been stolen from the safe in Lucy’s hotel room.
“You got it back from them, didn’t you?” she asked.
Another nod. The eggs were terrible. He kept shoveling them into his mouth, wanting her to do all the talking.
“I’m not going to ask you how,” she said, her face glowing. She picked up the stacks of bills from the floor and held them tightly against her bosom. “Do you know what this means, Tony? Do you know what this means to me?”
She kissed him, then jumped to her feet, kicked off her flip-flops, and danced around the kitchen like a ballerina, pausing to do an occasional pirouette, the stacks of money slipping from her grasp. He put his fork down and smiled.
“It means you can get your life in order,” he said.
She stopped in the middle of a spin. “What’s that?”
“It’s what you said to me on the balcony. The money was going to help you get your life in order.”
“Is that what I said?”
“Yes. Now you can.”
She laughed. The sound was harsh as it escaped her lips. “It means that my luck’s changed, that’s what it means. It means that Lucy Price is back.”
The eggs were doing a number on his stomach. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and stood up. The moment of truth was at hand, and he could feel his legs shake.
“I want to talk to you about something,” he said.
Lucy picked up the money from the floor and put it into the bag. Done, she rose.
“What’s that?”
“I want you to do something for me.”
A dreamy look spread across her face. “Whatever you want,” she said.
“I want you to enter into a Gamblers Anonymous program and start going to meetings. They hold them every night. You’ve got to address this problem.”
It was as if he’d slapped her across the face. Lucy stepped back until she was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking at him like he was the most horrible person alive.
“What problem? What are you saying?”
“Your gambling problem, the one you can’t control.”
“Who said I have a problem?”
“I did.”
“What makes you the expert? You’re not a shrink.”
“I’ve worked in casinos most of my life. I can recognize a gambling problem when I see one.”
“I’m down on my luck. So are a lot of people.”
“You need help,” he said.
“Don’t fucking lecture me,” she said angrily.
“That’s what I want.”
“No. Go to hell.”
“Please. For me.”
Her face had gone red, and she shook her head violently. The Lucy he knew was gone. This was Lucy the gambler. From his jacket, he removed the Valentine’s Day card he’d found in his suite and propped it beside his plate of food. Then he looked at her.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
“Are you going to take the money back?”
“It’s yours,” he said.
She crossed the kitchen while staring suspiciously at him. Then she snatched up the bag with the ferocity of a mother pulling her child from a rushing stream. He waited, always the optimist when it came to things of the heart.
“Good-bye,” she said.
39
The sound of someone banging on her front door awakened Mabel from the deepest of sleeps. She lifted her head off her pillow and found a dead phone lying on her chest. Beside it was a pad of paper and the things a desperate casino boss had asked her to write down last night. Had she gone to sleep while the casino boss was talking to her? She honestly didn’t remember.
Climbing out of bed, Mabel threw on a bathrobe and walked barefoot down the cold hardwood floors of her house. “Hold your horses,” she called loudly, and ducked into the bathroom.
A minute later, she cracked open the front door. Yolanda stood on the stoop, dressed like she was going on a trip. In her hand was a suitcase. Mabel threw the door open and said, “Did your water break?”
Yolanda shook her head. “No, but it’s time. Can you drive me?”
“Are you dilating?” Mabel said, backing down the drive five minutes later.
“No, everything’s normal.”
“Then how—”
“I just know,” Yolanda said.
Just about everybody in Florida went to church on Sunday, and the traffic out of Palm Harbor was miserable. Mabel drove the speed limit, taking Route 19 to State Road 60 then heading east over the causeway to the mainland.
“But how do you know?” Mabel asked.
Yolanda drank from a bottled water. “My mother told me I would have a dream. She said a truck would come to my house. A man would open the back, and the truck would be filled with apples. She said I would smell the apples in my dream. If the apples were green, it was a boy. Red, a girl.”
“And you had this dream last night?”
Yolanda raised her eyebrows and smiled. She could do that, and tell you exactly what she was thinking. Mabel grabbed her hand and squeezed it excitedly.
