“It’s such a fun game,” she said, uttering a totally uncharacteristic girlish giggle. “I wish my fiance hadn’t gone over to the Sports Book.”
Elliott watched her check the new card over her other ten, and scratch again.
Standing pat, Carleen waved her hand negligently over the hands.
The rest of them went through their paces, and when they had all finished the round, the dealer flipped over her hole card. Another six. Now she was showing a total of twelve and she had to hit again.
The dealer turned over a four this time. Sixteen. The rules required her to hit again, so she flipped herself one more card.
A third six. She’d busted. “Too bad we’re not playing poker,” said Third Base from Boise. “You’da wiped us out.”
Starting with Elliott, the dealer went around the table turning over the hole cards. When she turned up his hole card, she looked surprised. “You got someone watching out for you,” Boise said as they all stared at the three cards adding up to twenty. “You hit on a soft eighteen.”
“I had a good feeling,” Elliott said. The dealer turned over Carleen’s two hole cards and they all had a look. She had taken another card on hard seventeens on both hands. Both those plays were also dead wrong against the dealer’s original twelve, according to basic blackjack-playing strategy.
But she had won. She had pulled threes on each of her hands, winning both. The dealer pushed over their stacks of chips and the pit boss came over to check out the table and spread some glowers around.
Between the two of them, Elliott and Carleen had just won almost ten thousand dollars on a single bet. The pit boss, a short thin man in a dark suit, moved in to stand next to Elliott, hanging in close enough so that Elliott could smell the cigars on his breath. Then the boss motioned to the dealer to shuffle up, wheeled, and walked rapidly back to the podium in the pit where the phone was.
Elliott gathered up his chips, passing a couple over to the dealer as a tip. “I’m out,” he said with a smile that hurt his chapped lips, it stretched them so wide. He felt eyes chasing him as he cashed in and hurried out the door.
Carleen followed him. Sitting on a bench alongside the driveway, leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed, he was waiting for his car.
“So, Wakefield. What’s up? You following me?”
“You don’t want to be seen talking to me here.”
“You’re the one who sat down by me.”
“I mean because of the cameras.”
“Screw them,” she said, “any damage is done. I should have jumped up and left when you sat down.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Maybe I foolishly imagined you would have more sense than to sit down beside me. Or come to Tahoe at all.” She took off her useless glasses and tucked them into a shirt pocket. “You spot two security men who were following me when I left?”
“Why didn’t your fiance from the Sports Book take care of them? I’m sure he’s a muscle-bound freak, just the way you like them.”
She laughed. “Why, are you jealous at the thought?”
“Yeah, sure. I hate imaginary rivals. Is he from Korea, too?” They had a running disagreement about Carleen’s disguises. She liked them conspicuous, like the nasty tricolored hair she wore tonight sticking up like a kid’s paper crown, thinking that she was less likely to get made if she went bold. And she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She chatted up the dealers, compounding lies until nobody could keep track of the latest story.
“Why’d you bet so big? If you hadn’t put up such a massive bet, we could have made the same money in three or four hands without anybody noticing. We could still be playing.”
“You bet twice what I did.”
“Well, hey, I had to, didn’t I, after you spoiled any chance for anonymity. She was going to shuffle up for sure after you bet. The pit boss made us so fast after that.”
“Ah, but it was kind of fun, wasn’t it, Carleen? Like old times. So what was all that about flying to Korea?”
“I don’t know. I just felt like saying it. God, it’s cold tonight. Wakefield, really, are you nuts? What are you doing here? Are you here with Silke and…”
“I’m alone.”
“She stayed on the East Coast after graduation, didn’t she?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know.” Best not to feed her gossip about Silke.
“Don’t know? Yeah, right. She still with Raj?”
“Challenge question.” Dr. Braun used to come up with these quizzes on a regular basis. She would recognize the allusion. “Is the square root of two still one point four one two and change?”
“I thought so. So what else?”
“I wait for my car.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Not until we talk.” She looked away, toward a white-haired man in an aloha shirt who was climbing into a limo, but Elliott still felt the force of her nervousness and interest pouring over him like sticky goo. He looked at her, at her streaky hair and the triple piercings in her ears and the discontented expression, and thought, She keeps coming back to gamble just like me.
“I went back to Seattle after graduation,” he said.
“Still living with your father, I bet.”
“And?”
“Is he still driving you into mad ambition?”
“Not at all. He’s infirm. He needs me.” Elliott was well aware that he was minimizing his father’s influence, but then, what did you say about your father to a girl who must hate you at times and who knows things you wished she didn’t know?
“I guess he probably does. You can’t just dump your family the way you can dump a lover. You’re locked up into playing along with their psycho needs for life, aren’t you?” She untucked the silk blouse she had been wearing and slouched down on the bench. “Hey, Elliott. Forget I said that. You know I’m not talking about your father.”
She had her own family problems, a brother with troubles of his own. But Elliott didn’t want to ask about her problems right now.
“So where are you working, Elliott?”
“Here, tonight.”
“You were supposed to become a professor, but you still make your living counting cards at blackjack?”
“It pays the rent,” Elliott said.
“How does your father like that?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“I never took you for the outlaw type,” Carleen said. “I’m still in good old Boston. I’m making big bucks.” She shifted a little and he felt her small breast brush his arm.
Pathetic, the fact that they were two hungry twenty-somethings in desperate need of human contact, the fact that he didn’t like her but wanted to kiss her. He sat on the bench, unable to decide what to do. She seemed to want to stay with him, though he wasn’t sure, she was so nervous, looking around like casino security might come outside for them.
“You are actually alone, aren’t you?” he said.
She wet her lips and said “Yes,” but Elliott thought maybe she was lying. Then-she was willing to walk out on her date?
But-now that he was calmer-he didn’t want Carleen to join his lonely party. He was reacting to her just as he always had. She put his teeth on edge.
“I never thought I’d see you here,” she said. “Not after the robbery and all. I thought you and Silke and Raj decided-”
“They don’t know I’m here. I’m doing some checking.”
“I was curious, since I was coming here for the gambling. I checked the
“Yes. And the case that got filed afterward. By the husband. Why do you care? You weren’t even there. You quit taking trips with us months before.”
“Oh, I care, Wakefield. If you all got in trouble, do you think I wouldn’t have been dragged in? MIT would have found a way to expel all of us. It would have been very public, and I wouldn’t have gotten a good job. And if it comes out now, how we paid our tuition, all that, it will still cause me trouble.”
“Relax, Carleen, you weren’t a witness. You’ve graduated. The publicity might not hurt you at all.”
“I thought you all agreed to stay out of it! It’s too dangerous!” She looked really upset. Carleen always had an opinion on everything.
“It’s bothering me that they still can’t find the shooter,” Elliott said.
“No. You can’t be that stupid,” Carleen said. “You can’t be thinking of going to the police after all this time!”
He retreated into himself and said nothing. It was none of her business, but she knew all about it. The only way he knew how to deal with her incessant questioning was to be silent. Unfortunately, that made Carleen furious every time.
It had been bad luck, running into her. All thought of picking her up, getting laid-okay, that had been in his mind-fled. Where the hell was his car?
“Well?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Yeah, calm down.” She put her hand on his arm, but that wasn’t working either, he could feel the crackle of her edgy energy even better that way. She licked her lips again.
“So,” she said.
Elliott thought she was pissed off but still hoping. She really did want to go with him. He’d never understood Carleen, and he really didn’t have the energy to start now. He was weary of her. “So.”
“Still obsessed with predicting the primes?” Carleen said. “Still addicted to dreams of greatness? Got anywhere yet?”
“Got to go. Places.” The Neon or Echo, or whatever the little blue car was, had rolled up. Finally! A chunky, red-faced valet got out and gave Elliott his keys.
Elliott handed him a few bucks.
“I could use a ride back to my hotel,” Carleen said behind him.
“Sorry. In a rush. I’m going straight to the airport in Reno.” He opened the car door and climbed inside.
For a minute she didn’t move, absorbing the insult. Then she got up and stood by his open door and said, “That wasn’t a pass, that was just me needing a ride somewhere.”
“Next time,” he said. He tried to pull the door closed, but she held on to it, eyes flashing.
“Silke would never have dumped Raj for you. The way you mooned around after her was disgusting, a real turn-off. I don’t care how brilliant you think you are. You suck.”
“I need to go, Carleen.” He pulled again. She jerked the door back so that it was open. The valet, arms crossed, watched, wearing a slight smile.
“I have a boyfriend now, several boyfriends, and maybe this will surprise you, Robot, but I don’t give a shit about you anymore.”
He disliked the nickname. He hadn’t heard it in so long, he had almost forgotten it.
“I wasn’t hitting on you,” she repeated. “Is that clear? Is it?”
