Out of Aces (10 page)

“What?
What?
” I howled with laughter. “No way! That was amazing! I can’t believe you even did t
hat!”

Berto looked pleased. But all he said was “We going to eat or w
hat?”

“Yeah.” I wiped tears out of my eyes. “Let’s get Christmas din
ner.”

CHAPTER TEN

M
erry Christmas, baby.” Irina’s voice was soft and excited. “I’ve been thinking about you all
day.”

“Merry Christmas.” I rolled over and raked my fingers through my pile of cash. “What are you wearing right
now?”

“Ummm . . . a Rudolph sweater with light-up eyes. What about
you?”

“Hundred dolla bills, baby,” I said in a silky v
oice.

She giggled. “I’m sure they look good on
you.”

“They do.” I wished I could tell her that there really were hundred dollar bills all over my bed, but then I’d have to explain my adventure at Boulder Station, and I wasn’t sure Irina was ready for that. “Only ten days .
 . .”

“And five hours,” she fini
shed.

“I can’t wait to take you clubbing,” I told her. “I wish you could be here for New Year’s. It’s going to be off the h
ook.”

“You don’t have to w
ork?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m working at the biggest party in town. If you were here, I’d put you at the best seat in my bar and take care of you. And after I got off, we’d go to an after-pa
rty.”

“That’d be c
ool.”

“What are you doing on New Year’s? Do you have plans yet?” There was a silence. I frowned and started scraping the bills into a pile. “He
llo?”

“I’m going to the opera.” There was a strange sound in her voice, and I got a bad fee
ling.

“With
who?”

“I don’t want you to be
mad.”

“Why would I be mad?” But even as I asked, I was realizing what she meant. “No way. You’re going with Mi
cah.”

“There’ll be other people there,
too.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I didn’t want to fight with her a
gain.

“My dad got this box at the opera for me on New Year’s and he said I could invite my friends and Micah was there and I couldn’t exactly not invite him,” Irina said in one rushed sent
ence.

Now it was my turn to go quiet for a second. “So Micah was hanging out with your
dad?”

“It wasn’t only Micah! It was a bunch of us studying at my house. Can’t you just be happy that I’m making friends? Why don’t you trust me?” She sounded as if she was about to cry. Irina never c
ried.

“Sorry,” I managed to say. “I do trust you. So your dad got you a box for New Yea
r’s?”

She sniffed. “Yeah, for
Carmen
. It’s my favorite op
era.”

I stared at the brown nasty carpet covered with my pathetic handfuls of money and felt like a complete idiot. A grand had me excited—and that was probably what just one of Micah’s suits cost. I’d never break into the universe he and Irina lived in, no matter how many poker games I
won.

“Gabe? Are you th
ere?”

“Yeah.” I had to stop myself from saying more. If I blew up, I’d lose points—which was the same as Micah gaining them. “Who else is go
ing?”

“A couple of other people from UW.” Irina sounded relieved. “This new tenor is sing
ing.”

“Listen, I have to go.” I was too upset to keep talking right then. I knew I’d say something I’d re
gret.

“Baby, please don’t be mad about t
his.”

“Okay. I’ll call you la
ter.”

“I can’t wait
to see you,” Irina said. “January fourth.” She sounded as if she was forcing herself to be chee
rful.

As I clicked off, an idea burst in my brain like a firecracker.
Forget January fourth. How about December thirty-first?
What if I surprised her, like she surprised
me?

I may have been stupid in a lot of ways, but I knew better than to leave my girlfriend to hang out on New Year’s with a quarterback, drinking champagne, listening to her favorite music at the stroke of midn
ight.

Nick’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead when I told him on Thursday that I needed some days off. “You’re kidding me. You want to leave me hanging on the biggest night of the y
ear?”

I took a breath. “I’ll work doubles tonight through Sunday, and if you let me take off the thirty-first and the first, I’ll work another month straight. I’ll do whatever you want. This guy is after my woman, and . . .” I stopped midsentence. You don’t show your belly to people like
Nick.

But actually, he looked a little less angry. He ran his hand through his hair. “When you get to be my age, you’ll stop getting so wound up about women. So, you said you’ll take doubles tonight through Sunday? And when you’re back, no days off for a month? I’m going to hold you to t
hat.”

I no
dded.

“Fine. We have support staff coming in, any
way.”

“Thank you! I’ll make up for this, I sw
ear.”

Nick held up a hand. “Okay, okay.” He walked
away.

That night I worked like a bartender robot on speed. Dirties stayed dirty one second or less. Glasses got stacked still hot from the washer. Drinks—forget it. I was flying. While my body was going a hundred miles an hour, my brain was in Seattle, walking into the opera box, seeing the surprised smile on Irina’s
face.

When I finished my shift, I was still wound up. I wanted to fast-forward to the moment I’d see Irina. I didn’t think I’d feel calm again until then. I pushed out the door and waved good-bye to April, who was counting down her regi
ster.

“Hang on a second,” she said, snapping a rubber band around a stack of twen
ties.

I stood in the wind, stretching to loosen up my muscles. Bartending works the crap out of wrists, forearms, back, and feet. By the end of a shift, I usually felt like I’d boxed a few rounds. A glow was starting in the sky to the east, more a suggestion of light than the real t
hing.

There was a click behind me and April came out of her cage, pulling on a long white coat. “You want to go for a drink?” she asked. “Frank and Liz and Kari and I are going to the Crown and Anchor.” Frank was security, and the other two were waitre
sses.

I shrugged. “Sure.” I usually didn’t hang out after work with the others—I’d never understood burning up all your tips after a shift—but I was way too wound up to sleep. “Where is
it?”

“On Trop. It’s close. You can come in my car, if you want, and I’ll drop you back here when we’re done.” April pointed to a sweet silver
Benz.

For half a second, my heart sped up. She wasn’t hitting on me, was she? I didn’t think she was. And I wasn’t doing anything wrong—not if we were allowed to have “friends.” But I had this feeling that if Irina saw me getting in a Benz with Marilyn Monroe, she might not appreciate
it.

“Are you coming?” April asked impatie
ntly.

I mentally stuck out my tongue at Irina. “Okay,” I said, and followed April to her car. We climbed in and I sank into the silk-smooth black leather. Benz doesn’t mess around with qua
lity.

April looked into the rearview and began to pull little black pins from her hair and drop them into the cup holder. “Don’t freak out,” she said mischievously, reaching behind her neck—and she lifted off her
hair!

I did freak out a little. I mean, she looked completely different without the platinum c
urls.

April laughed, patting the short, straight, light brown stuff that was apparently her real hair. “Did you not realize that was a
wig?”

“Ahhh . . .” I
said.

“You probably think this is real, too.” She grabbed a Kleenex from her glove box and wiped off her beauty
mark.

“No, I figured that was fake.” I couldn’t stop staring. She looked like a totally different person. Less elegant, more hip. Still hot, though. Maybe even hotter this way. Her face seemed cleaner and younger without the blond hair. I wondered what she’d look like without the black eyeliner and red lips
tick.

“Stop staring.” April started her car and we pulled out of the lot. It was such a smooth ride, I couldn’t even feel the road. I snuck a few glances at the new April, but she frowned and said,
“Stop!”
so I rolled down the window and watched the 5:00 a.m. crew instead: homeless people, tired partiers straggling home, and the occasional tourist who had just woken up from a Rip Van Winkle spell and realized he’d been gambling for a hundred y
ears.

“Told you it was close,” said April, as she swung into a gravel lot in front of a dirty white building. At the door, a big British flag rolled in the wind. We parked and headed inside. It was surprisingly crowded for five in the morning. I’d gotten pretty good at telling locals from tourists, and this spot seemed pure locals, mostly bar staff who’d just gotten off work, like us. We each got a pint of Guinness and settled down on a couple of stools to wait for the others. I had the strangest feeling that I was on the wrong side of the bar. The bartender, a ponytailed girl with a filthy apron, mixed up a drink and I kept mentally critiquing her.
Less grenadine. Don’t shake so
hard.

“I still can’t believe you have brown hair,” I said, with a sideways glance at A
pril.

She touched it self-consciously. “Do you think it’s u
gly?”

“What? No! Actually, I like it better,” I said. “It’s more real. How’d you get into being Marilyn, any
way?”

“It was my ex-husband’s idea.” April wiped some foam off her Guinness and wrinkled her nose. “He was great at coming up with ways for me to make money while he sat around and did noth
ing.”

“He sounds like a real prize.” I looked at her curiously. “How’d you hook up with a guy like t
hat?”

“It’s a long st
ory.”

I shrugged. “We have t
ime.”

“Here’s the short version. Idiot girl falls in love with a loser and gets married at eighteen. He cheats on her and she finally leaves him. The
end.”

“You got married at
eight
een
?”

“Shut your jaw,” she said irritably. “I said it was a mist
ake.”

“How old are you
now?”

“Almost twenty-two.” She slurped her Guin
ness.

“That was the really short version,” I said. “Give me a little longer version.” I was enjoying myself. April reminded me of my friend Missy back in Seattle: tough and ho
nest.

She rolled her eyes a little. “All right. The longer version. We grew up in Bakersfield.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know it’s a pit. We got married right out of high school, and we were doing property management for this shady apartment complex. Then our friend Tom went to Vegas and started parking cars at Harrah’s, and he was always bragging about how you can make cash in Vegas by opening your pockets and just letting it fall in. So we moved here. But Bobby couldn’t get work. I was so dumb, I actually believed he was trying.” She went quiet for a moment. “Anyway, we were out of cash, so I started dancing. It was easy money. But I hated it. So many perve
rts.”

“Dancing?” I echoed stup
idly.

“Don’t be a jerk,” she said with a sharp
look.

It slowly dawned on me what she meant. “I’m not! I mean, that’s cool. A lot of girls do it.” I sipped on my Guinness and tried to act as if I had these kinds of conversations all the
time.

“Anyway, Bobby wanted me to keep working, but I couldn’t. I kept calling in sick. Then I punched this one guy who was . . . doing something inappropriate, and they fired me. So Bobby said maybe I should try being a Marilyn impersonator, since everyone was always telling me I looked like her.” She laced her fingers around her glass. “I went to a talent agency, and they signed me up. I did gigs, like at hotel parties, where I’d walk around and take pictures with people. But then Nick came looking for somebody regular, and I took
it.”