brother. His father was the closest thing Brett had ever had to the real deal, with Vanetta there to keep him walking the straight and narrow. “Fine,” he said, “just give me the latest.”
Dan sighed. “No news is good news, right? Dad’s good, his golf game still sucks, and Vanetta is riding herd on a bunch of college students who have shacked up in her place looking to make their college tuition at the casinos this summer.”
Brett laughed. “Well, they picked the right place to stay then. If they win anything, she’ll be the one to see that it actually goes for classes and books.” Vanetta was pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping him focused on the prize. Which was not a shiny diamond-studded bracelet. No, he owed a good chunk of his degrees to her riding herd on him to keep his studying up to par and learn to say no every once in a while to the promoters and marketers. Born and raised in Vegas, she’d seen it all in her seventy some years. Her boarders were all her babies, regardless of age, background, length of stay, or reason for coming to the gambling capital. If those students staying there now thought they’d come to Sin City for something other than college tuition, they didn’t stand a chance with Vanetta holding court. Might be the best education of their lives. “And the Omaha buy-in?” There was another silence and Brett snorted. “That good, huh? Dammit.”
“It was down over thirty percent from last year when you competed.”
“Who are they marketing? Who’s the new poster boy?”
“You mean whose soul are they sucking from?”
Brett didn’t rise to the bait. By not bailing out sooner, he’d essentially allowed them to do the sucking, while he quietly or not so quietly really, went about making a shit ton of money. So, he could hardly complain about that now, could he? “What about that Irish kid, Iain Summerfield?”
“You mean the kid with only two measly championships wrapped around his wrist? He’s like, what, twelve?”
“He’s twenty-five.”
“And you had, what, like nine of them by then? Now you could cover both arms with them, Brett. It’s going to take a very long time, if ever, before they stumble across anyone who is the dream machine you were. And are.” He paused. “No…urges?”
“Other than to mess up your prettier-than-average face right about now? No.”
“Good.”
“You that worried about me?”
“It was a surprise when you walked away like you did, you know that.”
“You’d been telling me to for years.”
“And you’d been ignoring me. And I sure as hell didn’t expect you to walk all the way to freaking Vermont. So sue me if I’m making sure you’re okay now that you’ve had some time away. What are your plans?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Me. Dad. Vanetta. Folks who care. There are a few that exist who want you back for reasons other than making dime off your pretty face and freakish ability to get good cards. Don’t forget that.”
“Trust me, I haven’t. It’s why I stopped. I needed to think.”
“If you’re waiting for them to latch on to somebody else who can do what you do, then you might as well set up camp in Vermont. I doubt they’ll come hounding you there.” He paused, then said, “But if you’re thinking you might want to come back to the place that is also your home, you know they’ll hound you for a while. Given what you’ve done for them, they’d be stupid not to try. But it’ll settle down; at some point, it has to.”
“Or they’ll burn your house down.”
“Goddammit, Brett, we told you, me, Dad, even Vanetta. We’re not buying that bullshit. Shit happens, sometimes bad shit. Believe in bad karma after so many years of good, whatever. But even the most desperate manager, promoter, or casino owner wouldn’t reach to that extreme.”
“Your naivete is both touching and amusing, but also dangerous. Wait,” he said, before Dan could launch into a refrain of the argument they’d had far too many times, never with a new result. “I know that world; you don’t. You think I’m living in a fifties’ movie and I know it’s still very real. It’s all beside the point. It’s more about what I want, what I’m willing to risk, and how much shit I’m willing to put up with if what I want is to still live in Vegas.”
There was a much longer silence this time, then, “You think you really might not want that?”
“I don’t honestly know,” Brett said, never more utterly truthful.
“You have some other place in mind where you think you should be?”
“Again-”
“Like Vermont, where the mountains apparently aren’t snowy and a guy can get laid regularly?”
“Because you’re pissed off and worried about me, I’m not going to beat your face in when I see you, but… tread carefully there, my friend.”
“So…it is like that.”
“It’s like…I don’t know. But I know enough to realize that it’s like something I’ve never encountered before.”
“Okay,” Dan said, this time sounding more sincere…and considering.
“And don’t even think about putting Vanetta on my ass. She knows I worry and you know I worry and I don’t need her worrying about me.”
Dan snorted. “Right. Like saying that will make it so. You know she worries about you day and night. Until you come home-”
“I might not, Dan,” he said. It was the first time he’d let himself say it, even think it, really. And it wasn’t as scary and weird as he thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of…exhilarating. In a way that nothing in his life had been up to that point, maybe other than the day they’d handed him those diplomas…or in the early days of winning at cards. But there was another really high-stakes game he might want in on…the kind where you risked something other than your bank balance.
“You don’t mean that,” Dan said, sounding far more subdued, maybe even a little hurt. “This is your town, your people, your family.”
“Sometimes people grow up and move away from their families.”
“Brett-”
“Dan…it’s not about you. Or your dad, or Vanetta.”
“I know that. We all do know that. We just…we can’t imagine you anywhere else.”
“I think that’s been my problem all along. It’s why I got stuck for so many years, doing what I never expected to be doing, not for that long. I really couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else.”
“And what, working for my dad, or with me-”
“Was good for my soul, and saved it. Regularly, Dan. You know that. Your dad was the closest thing I ever had to a real male role model. You’re my brother. And, in her own way, I guess Vanetta is like my crazy old grandmother. You are my family, always will be. At least I would hope so. But maybe in order to figure out what I’m supposed to do, or what I really want to do, the thing that will truly satisfy me, fulfill me…I need to not be there. Where routines and patterns and ruts-no offense, you know better-aren’t there to pull me back into that sense of complacency. Because it doesn’t feel complacent any longer. It feels suffocating. Not the people, the work. And I need…I need more than people.”
“I wish it was different,” Dan said quietly. “I don’t like it, and I wish there was more for you here, but…” They both took a break, and a breath. Dan spoke first. “So…it’s Vermont, huh?”
“For now. I need to stop running. I need time. To allow myself to just be, to think, to figure out what works. Or what might work. But, right now, what works isn’t being in Vegas. That much I do know.”
“Okay,” Dan said. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he sounded, well, resigned to it. Which was a start.
“I still need you to keep an eye out, just…don’t let your guard down. Okay?”
“Sure. But I swear to you, nothing’s happening. I really think it was all just a freak bad streak.”
“All the same-”
“Right, got it. I will. Has anyone been in touch? Anyone hounding after you?”
“No.”
“Good. Then maybe, at least, while you’re sitting there contemplating your navel, you can let that part go. We’re all fine here. We miss you, but mostly we just want you to figure out what comes next. Consider what is, not what might be. Okay? Promise me that much.”
