Such a timid assertion, and she even emphasized the word “maybe.” But I felt the room darken.
“Damn it,” Victor said, and got up from his seat. He sounded as if he’d been driving and had come upon a dead horse lying across the road. It was sad, and there was no going around it.
Following Victor’s cue, the other men stood up as well.
“You can’t get away with this kind of bullshit,” Danny growled. “Victor, she can’t.”
“No, she can’t,” Ian said. “It’s really fucked up.” He shifted from foot to foot. They were all in motion now, wringing their hands, rubbing their arms. It was as if the anxious, angry energy of these men, forced to remain dormant while they’d watched the TV screen, now demanded release.
“She’s gonna forfeit her chips, obviously.” Victor faced me. “Damn it, why would you come here and do that? Huh? What kind of—”
“Forfeit her chips?” Danny looked around at the other men. “Victor, there’s a fortune at stake here. You gotta do something. I mean, this is your home.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Jason said, “we’re gonna let people know about her. Let people know she’s a cheat.”
“Wrong.” Victor raised his voice for the first time. He stared down the other players. “Now I want you all to listen to me. I’m running for office. Do you understand what that means? It means this game doesn’t exist. The Midnight Riders? Doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah, yeah, your sterling reputation,” Ian said. “But Vic.” He gestured all around him. “Danny’s right. This is your home. It reflects on you. You let her get away with this, that’s your reputation, too.”
“No one’s getting away with anything.” Victor took a breath. “I’m only saying let’s all calm down a second.”
“Fuck you, Victor.”
“Danny, come on—”
“No, really. You invite a cheat to your table and then you act like it’s no big deal. If you kick her out, then she’s no worse off than she’d be if she’d lost. What, are you involved in this somehow?”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “I think you want to watch what you say.”
Russell, still holding on to my arm, stood up straighter.
When Danny spoke again, his voice was more measured. “She tried to cheat in a very high-stakes game, Vic. That ain’t right. It’s so far from right.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end a split second before I realized Victor had just referred to me as it.
“I want you to make it right,” Danny said.
“She forfeits her buy-in,” Victor said. “The rest of us split it up—a nice little payday—and we reschedule the game for another night.”
“Says the guy who’s down,” Ian said. “I’m up. I have a good chance to win the thing.”
“Or we can go back to playing if you want,” Victor said. “We divide her stake and keep playing.”
Danny was shaking his head. “The whole fucking night’s ruined. Make it right.”
Victor rubbed his temples and faced me. “Why’d you have to do that? Why’d you have to go and cheat and ruin the whole night?”
I wanted Ellen to say something, but she was being quiet. So quiet. I didn’t know what to do or say, yet I knew I had to mount my own defense. “I already told you,” I said. “I didn’t—”
“Oh, shut up,” Danny said.
I pretended to ignore him. “I’m gonna go,” I said to Victor.
It couldn’t hurt to try leaving again—but Russell wasn’t lightening his grip, and Danny, who evidently didn’t like being ignored, got right up in my face and barked out: “Bitch, you’ll stay here.”
“She’ll forfeit her buy-in.” Finally, Ellen was speaking up. “Won’t you, Nora? She will. We drove here together, but I swear I’ll take her out of your neighborhood and drop her off and never talk to her again. I’m so sorry, guys. I hate how this makes me look. I don’t know much about Nora. I thought I knew her, but obviously I was wrong.”
“Both of you get out of here,” Jason said.
“Sure,” Ellen said. “We’ll get our coats and go. I don’t know her well, but I know that a quarter million dollars can’t come easily. Forfeiting the buy-in is gonna hurt her, probably forever. I get the sense she’s not as wealthy as she says she is, and for all we know she could’ve borrowed her stake, and whoever loaned her the money is gonna come knocking when she can’t repay. So forfeiting the buy-in isn’t nothing. It’s probably real bad for her.” Unless it was my imagination, the temperature in the room warmed a degree. Ellen had found her voice, and it was a soothing one. I hoped it was persuasive. “So we’re gonna go now,” she said. “I’m gonna need to cash out, but we’ll leave Nora’s money, and that’s the end of it. Okay?”
At first no one replied, as if everyone were waiting for someone else.
“Okay?” she said again.
Oh, Ellen, I thought.
You were doing so well. But when a door opens for you, you walk through it. You don’t double-check whether it’s really a door.
“Hold on a minute,” Victor said. “Just wait a minute while I think.”
I would have made a move for the exit, and maybe the other men would have let me go, but Russell was a trained dog waiting for his master’s command to release. We were all frozen, just like on the TV screen. Everything was motionless and mute everywhere on the whole planet.
“Oh, fuck it,” Danny said, shattering the stillness. “I’ll do it myself. No one’s gonna steal my hard-earned money.”
Then he was on me.
A large man, he yanked me away from Russell and over to the bar. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he was muttering. “Try to take my money.” Adrenaline and rage fueled him as he shoved me against the bar. “Hold her here!” he shouted, and Russell, after a quick glance at Victor, obeyed this other master. He held
