Card Sharks (6 page)

“And they're already married,” Bijoux said bitterly. “Pass the bag.”

Marianne handed her the grocery bag, and Bijoux began to remove an assortment of items, which she arranged on the table in front of them. “Look what I bought,” she said, holding up a transparent, frosting-smeared box. “2-Bite Cupcakes. Aren't they adorable? Just look at that frosting-to-cake ratio.”

Marianne opened the top and looked down. “They look good. If we split the box and eat them all tonight, do you think
it would equal a piece of cake for each of us? Or more than a piece of cake?”

“If I'd planned to eat enough to equal a piece of cake, I would have bought cake.”

“So what you're telling me is that these are supposed to be diet-serving cupcakes?” Marianne wiggled one of the tiny cupcakes free and held it up to the light for inspection. She stuck the whole thing in her mouth, effectively renaming the morsel to 1-Bite Cupcake. With her mouth completely full she managed to say, “I think I could eat six and just about approximate a piece of cake.”

Bijoux looked at her, sighed, and lined six cupcakes up in front of herself.

“So why
do
we need men? We've managed to create these lives where we don't actually need them. We've got sperm banks and Rabbit Pearls and good jobs with lots of money.” Marianne looked over at Bijoux, who'd just harrumphed after the word
money.
“Work with me here. What is it that compels us to couple up? I mean, straight or gay is irrelevant. Everybody's coupling up. Why? And what makes it so annoying to be uncoupled in coupled circumstances? And why don't couples like to have uncoupleds around? If it were only in our heads, we'd have a lot more dinner invitations. But it's in everybody's heads.”

“Noah took two of each animal.”

There was a long pause. “That's it?” Marianne asked.

“That's about as much of an explanation as you're ever going to get.”

“There are some animals who don't couple up. And there are some animals who don't couple up the way Noah thought they would.”

“And we're not either of those kind of animals,” Bijoux said with the voice of finality.

“No,” Marianne said, taking another 2-Bite in one bite. “We're not.”

They turned back to the television, where Molly was sewing a really hideous pink prom dress that the audience was supposed to think was cool and creative but which was actually super disappointing and ugly. Bijoux rummaged through the supplies and pulled out a Twinkies twin-pack. She took one for herself and passed the other one over. “Marianne?”

“Hmm?”

“What are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“About our futures.”

Marianne hoisted an eyebrow. “I'm doing fine, thank you. And as for you, my suggestion has always been to convince your parents to set up a foundation with you as the head for dispensing your fortune for good works, a task for which you will be admirably compensated.”

Bijoux stared down at the remaining Twinkie stub in her hand. “We're not fine.” She pushed the stub in her mouth and licked the cream off her fingers, the end result being that the cream filling ended up everywhere. With her mouth still full, she said something along the lines of, “I'm not fine, you're not fine, and if we don't do something about it soon, I fear that it will all creep up on us.”

She was so, so serious that Marianne didn't have the heart to tease anymore. “What will, sweetie?”

Bijoux's arms flailed out to indicate the entirety of the Friday-night experience. “This! Terminal
this
-ness. Can you say ‘crisis'?”

Marianne just looked at her. “Our problems aren't interesting enough to be a crisis.”

Bijoux nodded sagely. “Which means we are facing down a disaster on a scale so massive, so all-encompassing, I fear we may never escape,” she said very clearly, very calmly, very
seriously. “We are on the verge, my friend, of never-ending blah. And what's more, we are cresting thirty as we stand on the precipice of this blah-ness.”

“I see.”

“What we've got here is an epidemic of catastrophic proportions.” Bijoux was on a roll now. She'd hit some kind of a wall. “Look at this. I mean, just
look
at this!” She swung the remote control toward the television, overexaggerating her movements to indicate just how desperate their situation was. “It's Friday f-ing night, and the only thing on is Molly Ringwald, Spanish-language programming, and poker. This is my idea of hell.”

Marianne tucked her feet under the one scrap of cashmere blanket that wasn't swathed around Bijoux. “We could . . . go out or something. No, forget I said that. That's obviously not working. All of the eligible men in Los Angeles—which isn't a whole lot to begin with, I might add—all of the eligible men in Los Angeles are staying inside playing poker or watching it on TV!”

“There is one thing we haven't tried,” Bijoux said. “We haven't tried meeting the boys at their own game. We haven't tried going out and playing poker.”

Marianne stared at her friend. “I'm not exactly sure how to process that statement. Is this because you went to that casino benefit?”

“Sort of. Peter and I were talking about it. He says there are tons of rich, eligible men out there playing poker together.”

Marianne narrowed her eyes. “He said that?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“He might have been joking.”

“If that's the case, it's probably just as well. I'm not certain we want to be dating gamblers anyway,” Marianne said, popping open a bag of Skittles.

“Some of those guys make millions.”

“The professionals.”

Bijoux cocked her head. “Then maybe we should go to Vegas and get ourselves some professionals. The thought has crossed my mind.”

“Peter put this into your head?” Marianne asked, grabbing the remote and turning back to
Pretty in Pink
.

Bijoux shrugged, distracted by the show and clearly disinterested in Peter. “You're more his type than me,” she said. “Oh, my God. This is where she has to walk into the dance by herself. God, that's just torture.”

Marianne's eyes didn't leave the screen, and her hand maintained a rhythm as it steadily transferred Skittles to mouth in a never-ending stream of not really even conscious chewing. “What does he look like?”

“I don't know. He's sort of a male version of you.”

“I bore me.”

“I don't mean personality-wise.”

Marianne's hand stilled midway to her mouth. “I'm not quite certain how to take that.”

“What I'm saying is that he might appeal to you aesthetically. But I'm not sure about temperamentally.”

“Oh.” Marianne's hand still didn't move as she thought that over. And then slowly the Skittles treadmill started up again. “I'm not interested,” she said a moment later.

Bijoux rolled her eyes and turned back to the screen. “This is it! Oh, poor Duckie.”

“You're hurting my arm,” Marianne said. “But you're so right. Poor Duckie. Thank God he gets to dance with that other popular chick at the very end.”

She and Bijoux watched the look on Duckie's face as Andie went off with boring old Andrew McCarthy and the theme music kicked in.

Both girls took a deep breath and exhaled. “It never gets old,” Marianne said.

“No, it never gets old,” Bijoux said, clutching her chest.

Marianne muted the TV as the credits began to roll. “Okay, so Peter's out. But whatever happened with that one guy? What was his name?”

Bijoux looked at Marianne, a crinkle of puzzlement over her nose. “What
was
his name?”

“You know, the one who was about to make a billion dollars. You hung with him for, like, a couple of months and then completely stopped talking about him.”

“Yeah. Well . . .” Bijoux sighed. “I broke up with him. I decided that ‘about to' wasn't worth waiting around for. I mean, if the guy I'm dating is technically poor at the time the relationship begins, there had better be some mitigating factors to tide me over while waiting for the payoff. But it was becoming totally stale. Finger there. Tongue here. ‘Ooh-ooh, baby.' Yeah. Phew. Done. George falls asleep. Bijoux stares up at the ceiling, suddenly realizing she forgot to clean the spilled ground coffee out of the grout like she'd planned. . . .”

“You mean forgot to ask the maid to clean the spilled ground coffee out of the grout.”

“Yeah. And besides, I could tolerate less and less of him every time we slept together. The mole on his back I told you about? I got to the point where I just so desperately wanted to pluck the hair out, I was having trouble sleeping at night for thinking about it. I don't know. Maybe we should try harder. Try some of the same things we've already tried, but . . . I don't know . . . put more heart into it.”

Marianne grimaced. “I couldn't possibly. It's horrible.”

“What about speed-dating?” Bijoux asked. “It's low time commitment.”

“Too public. Too obvious. Too desperate.”

“Online dating?”

“I'm not trying that again. Nobody can spell.” Marianne sniffed with disdain. “I refuse to waste my time going to coffee with men who don't have the energy to punctuate or to capitalize ‘I.' If they can't be bothered to form a complete sentence, I can't be bothered to meet them.”

“How about going to a matchmaker?”

“A coworker of mine did that. She paid a thousand dollars for the privilege of meeting a cowl-neck-sweater-wearing man named Saul with a comb-over who was very in touch with his feelings. Do I need to add that it didn't take? I don't think I do.”

“Maybe the pet thing?” Bijoux asked tentatively. “I don't think we've fully explored that possibility.”

“Oh, my God! Are you joking? You said you almost got arrested.”

“I was just
worried
about being arrested. But sometimes men find a criminal streak attractive.”

“Sometimes they don't,” Marianne said dryly.

“Well, it's not like walking a cat is illegal. I didn't expect it to be so hot out, and as we've just established, we'd tried everything else. I like to be able to say I left no stone unturned.”

After a pause, Marianne said, “Maybe we
should
go to Vegas and try to meet some professionals. Except we don't even know how to play.”

“Why don't we ask Donny?”

“Because Donny is playing poker with the boys!”

“If there are boys there, then let's ask Donny if we can join in. I was already talking to Peter about it. He wants to write a story about poker. And I told him that Donny has a regular game and that maybe we could all have a little poker party.”

“I don't see that Donny's going to be excited about opening up his secret men's society to a couple of girl pals. You know
how boys are about that sort of thing. The vibe is never the same with women around. That's what he's always telling me.”

“No, you're missing the point. The point
is
that it's a guy thing.”

“Well, I'm not going to ask him. I'm not asking Donny to invite me to a poker game so I can get help for his replacement. That's just wrong.”

“Fine. I'll ask him. I mean, come on, Marianne. It's just one game. He'll think it sounds fun. Besides, what's the worst thing that can happen? You slay the men and take their money.”

Marianne sat bolt upright. “What did you just say?”

“Um . . . he'll think it sounds fun?”

“No, the other thing.”

“Slay the men and take their money?”

“Yes.” Marianne looked at her with wide eyes. “Now that's a motto I can get behind. You know what I like about you, Bijoux?” she said.

“What?”

“I can eat an entire box of cupcakes and wash it back with a handful of Skittles, and then top it off with Twinkies and mai tais without feeling the least bit self-conscious in front of you.”

“I'm so glad,” Bijoux said.

“Me too.” Marianne looked over at her friend and smiled. “Now pass me that bag of potato chips, will ya?”

D
onny's place generally looked like it was being bombed on a regular basis. He lived in Brentwood in a minuscule apartment just below Sunset Boulevard. It had white Pergo flooring and slightly curved edges, which gave it a totally eighties feel. He'd taken that theme and run with it, probably because going full-throttle eighties meant that he could decorate with all of the stuff he'd never gotten around to throwing away and calling it retro. Nagel posters tilted slightly off axis hung on the walls. The furniture was all pre–Pottery Barn nineties. It was the sort of place where a suspect from
Miami Vice
might have lived.

He'd obviously cleaned the apartment for the occasion, because the various surfaces were cleared, and towering stacks of papers were piled on the floor up against the walls. From what Marianne had told her, with his new salary Donny would probably be moving to something much nicer, though.

Donny was the kind of guy who could talk his way into just about any kind of job, with or without relevant experience. He just had the gift of networking and a massive sense of self-confidence, two things that never failed to appeal to job
interviewers. So now he'd gone and probably landed a huge raise to go with his promotion. Marianne hadn't talked that much about it, but Bijoux knew that Donny's recent success was both a sore spot and a source of pride for her.

Even as Marianne introduced Peter to Donny, Bijoux could see the proprietary nature of her friend's body language. She still loved him. No question.

“Donny, this is Peter Graham,” Marianne was saying. “He's an old friend of Bijoux's. Peter, Donny. He's . . . an even older friend.”

The two men shook hands and swapped pleasantries, clearly sizing each other up. Bijoux took the opportunity to glance at the other men in the living room as she detoured into the kitchen with the sack of beer they'd brought.

Donny followed behind. “Here, let me take that,” he said, lifting the heavy sack out of her arms.

“You're such a gentleman.”

“I try.” He put it down on the ground in front of the refrigerator and started unloading the bottles. “So you dating this guy?” he asked, gesturing over his shoulder toward where Peter was chatting with Marianne and the other guys around the poker table.

“Oh, he's just a family friend.”

“He's not your date?” Donny asked, clearly caught by surprise.

“Nope. Just a friend.”

“No money,” Donny said with an understanding nod.

Being with Donny was so easy. He understood Bijoux's plight and she didn't feel the urge to cringe when they talked about her impending financial disaster and what she planned to do to solve it.

He suddenly turned and looked behind him. “Is he making a play for Marianne?”

Bijoux looked over her shoulder. “Everyone makes a play for Marianne. You know that. Poor thing is cursed with natural charisma,” she said dryly.

They both watched Marianne who'd already drifted across the room, drawing the other men to her like a magnet.

Bijoux chewed on her lower lip and watched.
You're going to have to turn it on, Bijoux. Turn it on. It's why you're here.
She might be the one wearing a bright-turquoise-and-white-polka-dot silk miniskirt and a silver-and-turquoise tank top. She might be the one with piles of blond hair and loud makeup, but when Marianne was in the room, Bijoux always felt like her shadow.

Marianne had two calibrations: “on” and “really on.” Bijoux's own calibrations read, “I know you” and “I don't know you—panic!” That was just the way she was. So this whole business about going to play cards with strange men as a construct to meet them and divine their eligibility was really quite preposterous and merely reminded Bijoux just how desperate she really was.

She wasn't stupid. It wasn't as if she had nothing to say. She'd read the latest books, watched bad television, picked up
People
magazine instead of
Forbes
in the dentist's office. She knew how to flirt, how to work a room . . . but it didn't come naturally. She could fake it, no doubt. She could make people think she knew exactly what she was doing, that she had all the confidence in the world, but the reality was that she was going to sit down at that poker table and smile like she meant it and try to meet someone nice (and rich) while feeling just about as uncomfortable in her own skin as a person could feel.

Donny finished unloading the beer and kept the last one for himself, popping the top using just his hand and the counter in that way boys did that always gave Bijoux a bit of a thrill. He continued to watch Marianne through the opening under the
cabinets that went straight through to the living room, the look on his face careening from neutral to negative.

“You okay?” Bijoux asked.

He came to with a start, as if he'd been far, far away, and put his beer down. “I'm brilliant,” he said, grabbing both sides of Bijoux's head and planting a loud, obnoxious kiss on the top. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Same old, same old.”

“You'll figure it out,” he said. “Now get out there and have some fun.”

Bijoux moved into the living room, where everyone was assembling around an ugly black-lacquer table that just screamed,
I am a bachelor.

Marianne, Peter, and Donny she obviously knew. And of the five remaining men, two were a couple of Donny's old pals she'd met before; two were guys of reasonable (if not inspiring) wealth whom she'd already flirted with before under other social circumstances and had established absolutely zero chemistry with; and the other was . . . well, physically out of the question.

At least there was nothing to be nervous about. Bijoux checked her watch and sighed. It had seemed like a reasonable experiment at the time of conception, she supposed. But now she was stuck playing cards with a bunch of guys who clearly would have no influence on the solution to her financial and romantic predicament.

She took a seat and looked at Marianne across the table. Marianne and Peter sat side by side, and to Bijoux's sudden horror Marianne released a giggle and slapped Peter playfully on the hand.

Bijoux looked over at Donny, who sat at the head of the table, his eyes narrowed and fixated on the very same scene.

“Okay, so everyone has a drink? Oh, no. Wait. We're missing
a beer down there,” he said loudly. He got up, picked up a bottle of beer from the cooler on the floor at his left, and loudly slammed it down on the table between Marianne and Peter.

The beer did its job, and the two of them separated. Donny hoisted his glass. “To . . . us. Drink up!”

Much clinking and toasting ensued.

“Well . . . let's just deal the cards and begin.” Donny sat down and shuffled a deck of cards with an excess of flourish. He dealt two cards to each player and carefully tapped the remainder of the deck against the table. Bijoux looked at her cards. A ten of spades and a three of diamonds. She wasn't exactly sure what they were playing or what she was supposed to do next, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to tell her that this was not a good hand.

She looked over her cards at Marianne, who stared back at her with furrowed brow. “So now what?” Marianne asked Donny.

“So now we show our cards. . . . Right, just lay them faceup on the table. . . . Okay, uh-huh, I see. . . .”

Bijoux put her cards faceup along with everybody else. Marianne had only an eight and a three. So depending on what game they were playing, that probably meant that Bijoux was . . . safe. Or whatever.

“What are we playing?” Marianne asked, as if she were reading Bijoux's mind.

Donny didn't answer. None of the guys did. He just looked over all of the cards around the table, then leaned back in his chair and unveiled a slow killer smile. “Well, Marianne, that's you. You've got the worst hand. So you're going to have to take something off.”

Bijoux whipped her head around and looked at Donny, then looked over at Marianne.

There was a palpable silence. Finally Marianne said the only thing she could say: “Um, what?”

“Worst hand strips,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a helpless gesture, then folding his arms over his chest.

Bijoux and Marianne looked at each other once more and then looked around the table at the men. They all wore . . . expectant looks on their faces. Even Peter.

Marianne narrowed her eyes at Donny. “You imbecile,” she muttered.

“What did
I
do? You said you wanted to play poker with the boys.”

She leaned over the table. “This isn't real poker. We might as well flip a coin!”

“ 'S okay with me,” Donny said. “It would be faster.”

Bijoux suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She tried to remember exactly what she'd discussed with Donny when she'd called him up and suggested the poker game in the first place.

“Bijoux, we need to use the ladies' room,” Marianne snapped, standing up.

Bijoux didn't need any persuading. She got up, and the two of them headed into the bathroom and locked themselves into the cramped space. “Oh, my Lord,” Bijoux said as the locker-room stench hit her olfactories. She reached down and grabbed the matchbox sitting on the sink. She lit a match, let it burn for a second, then blew it out and waved the smoke around in the air.

“Good God, watch your foot,” Marianne said.

Bijoux looked down and recoiled in horror as she tried to shake the item off her spiked heel. “Is that what I think it is? Get it off!”

Marianne used the toe of her own shoe to nudge the jockstrap off Bijoux's shoe, then grabbed Bijoux's shoulders. “Focus! We've been set up. Do you realize that?”

“I . . . I,” was all Bijoux could say.

“What exactly did Donny say to you when you asked him if we could play?”

“Well, I just said I had this friend who was interested in finding a poker game and that you and I wanted to come play too, just once, and if that was okay with him, we'd really like to. . . . He immediately said it was a great idea and that it would be lots of fun.”

“Immediately?” Marianne asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, I thought, ‘Well, that was easy.' And I guess it was too easy.”

“That scoundrel. He had strip poker on his mind from the very first second, I'll bet. We've . . .” Marianne picked her hand up from where it had been resting on the towel rack and looked at her palm. Her lip curled as she wiped her hand off on the toilet paper roll. “We've totally been had. . . . And how do these men live like this?”

“So what do you want to do?” Bijoux asked.

“What do I want to do? Do you realize that if we stay, as we stand here, we're about ten minutes away from being two socks and some underwear short of appearing stark naked in front of a bunch of wholly undeserving men?”

Bijoux immediately started giggling. She should have known. She'd absolutely walked into Donny's trap. Marianne was right.

“Why are you laughing?” Marianne asked with a frown. “Answer me two things. One, would you date any of them, and two, do you want to get naked in front of all of them right now?”

Bijoux giggled some more, snorting through her nose a bit. “No . . . and . . . no.”

“Then stop laughing. This is serious.”

Bijoux stopped laughing. “It's serious?”

“We've got to tell them we'll only play real poker and we'll
only play for money. Winner takes the money; losers take something off.”

That might sound good to Marianne, but Bijoux was not a naturally skilled game player. “I'll end up naked. I'm not good at games. I mean, I play . . . I just don't tend to win. In this case, that's a problem.”

“I'll watch out for you,” Marianne said. “We'll kind of tag-team it. I'll play with you in mind. If I see you're heading for trouble, I'll make a play in your favor.”

Bijoux nodded. “That might work . . . but you can't guarantee it. And seriously, Mare, I don't want to strip for these boys. I really don't.”

“I promise you. I'm good at cards. It's all math, probabilities. That's my thing. If I swear to you that you will not end up naked in front of these boys, will you stay in?”

Bijoux looked at her friend. Marianne was good. And it would be such a sweet victory. “Only if we split the combined profits.”

“Deal,” Marianne said. She stuck out her hand. Bijoux took it and said, “Let's get in there and rob those horny bastards blind.” They shook on it. Marianne pushed open the bathroom door and the girls returned to their seats, innocent smiles all around.

“So where were we?” Marianne asked. “Oh, I lost. I have to take something off.” She removed her shoe, dangling it by its silvery strap off her pinkie finger before tossing it over her shoulder. The boys hooted and hollered. Marianne looked over at Bijoux and smiled.

Donny picked up the deck and dealt out two fresh cards to each person. When he stopped, Marianne leaned over and picked up the deck. “Don't put that away. We'll be playing with five cards, stud. With betting. Let's get those wallets out and some money on the table.”