And the truth was, if he didn’t come home with $400,000 for Bennie, Taylor was a dead man.
Bennie had people here. Or Bennie’s people had people, someone had people and they’d be watching him. They already were. On the plane, maybe the bored guy with the crossword puzzle book, maybe the middle-aged lady who actually ate the lunch. Maybe the eight-year-old who kicked his seatback all the way across the country. That would be like Bennie, to send someone to kick his ass. Make sure he didn’t turn and run. Slip out as soon as he checked in, fly off to L.A., Honolulu, Sulawesi, Pago Pago. He didn’t really care because he wasn’t going anywhere. No. He’d taken every cent he had with him and he was going to play it all. Dead man playing. Maybe they’d make a movie.
Did it matter where he played? He couldn’t decide. That was funny. Couldn’t decide whether to flip a coin, or to decide. Time was, Taylor my man, when you were decisive. A man with a plan. He heard himself say that as he cruised the rented car (this time a tan Cavalier, and what more was there to say?) down the new strip that wasn’t the Strip. He heard himself say it but had he said it out loud? He couldn’t decide.
Time was. A plan, a wife, a split-level ranch. A job, a future, and a gambling habit. Now, stripped down, cleaned away, trimmed and cut back. Nothing left but the habit. That was the wrong word but Taylor let it slide. Did other men have eating habits? Breathing habits? But okay. Why argue? Time was (that same time, and overall it was a good time, he’d never say it wasn’t) when he’d argued with Lily. At first sometimes, later often, by the end always. Even arguing, he loved her. But she didn’t love him. She loved some other man, some man who was Taylor but didn’t care how the dice rolled, or the cards fell, or what horse crossed the line. Finally she’d left to go find him. That man.
After that the job seemed extraneous (it was boring anyway, cross-eyed boring, long dull days and no rush at all). The house was a millstone and the future was a deck of cards. Nothing wrong with any of it. Taylor had enjoyed it, yes, that was the truth. And he’d been into Bennie before, made the strike, gotten out. Hell, Bennie wouldn’t have let him get in this deep this time, if he hadn’t been over his head lots of other times.
“Fuck you, Taylor,” he’d heard Bennie say, more than once, as Taylor paid off a loan in full, the vig, everything. “I was looking forward to breaking your legs.”
Well, since Bennie got his rush from that (Bennie never gambled, except on people like Taylor, and his odds were always good because he was the one who set them, take it or leave it and everyone took it), he was probably bubbling over right now. Quivering at the thought of his people, his people out here, sauntering up to Taylor. Late tonight, early tomorrow, whenever it was he played his last few bucks. One standing in front, one standing behind. The short drive to the airport, the long flight home. Or would Bennie come out here, while the people waited with Taylor in some too-cold hotel room? Would they all play cards while they waited? That was funny. No, it wasn’t. Yes. It was.
The Trop, Taylor suddenly decided, cutting the wheel, sliding left through the intersection in a screaming of horns. Oh, come on, he said (out loud, this time he was sure), aren’t your hearts beating faster? You stomped on the brakes, got that charge up your spine, come on, it was good. You know it was.
He flipped his keys to the valet parking kid, lifted his overnight bag out of the trunk. Like he was going to sleep. Like he’d even take a room. But they don’t let you on planes anymore without luggage. Not like the old days when you could come out here with nothing but your wallet. He had, once or twice: come out and played all weekend. (Yes, he hated it here. But when your luck was bad, say at Atlantic City, you had to change something.) Coke to keep him up and sharp, scotch to keep him steady, played all weekend and flew home on the Sunday redeye, off the plane, do another line and straight to the office. That was when he still had the job. When he still thought it was his fault he and Vegas didn’t get along, thought he should keep trying. Yes, the Tropicana: makeover after makeover, but still the old Vegas. Like an old girl getting her cheeks tightened, her lips plumped, her wrinkles Botoxed until she looked like a horror movie version of her same old self. Taylor had a soft spot for girls like that, and one for the Trop.
Inside. Instantly, lights blinking, bells ringing, turquoise and neon, and goddamn, goddamn if his heart wasn’t racing. His cheeks were flushed, he could feel it, the backs of his hands tingled. Like high school, like walking the endless but too-short corridor to where the clump of giggling girls pretended to ignore your approach, all of them wondering what you were wondering: Did you have the balls to ask Amy Gold if she wanted to go to the dance on Saturday night? Nobody knowing whether you’d do it until you stopped in front of her, gave her that hey-by-the-way-and-I-really-don’t-give-a-shit smile and out came the words and everyone heard them.
Yeah, okay, so he didn’t like Vegas but it made his heart race. Amy Gold turned out to be not such a prize, either. Nothing like Lily, nothing like her slow smile that could slow his heart to match it, make him feel like he’d suddenly dropped anchor in a cove on a fog-bound coast. Like everything else was gone, everything, only silence to hear and gray velvet to see and a soft long rocking the only thing to feel. Like it was all decided, no outcomes, decisions, scores, high hands, rolls of the dice or spins of the wheel left, nothing to choose, hope, hedge, yell, cheer, pray to Jesus or curse the devil for. Lily the only thing ever able to make him hate the rush, because it burned off the fog, shattered the silence and churned up the sea.
And Lily was gone and he was in Vegas and Bennie was back in New York, with people out here, counting the hours.
He found the cashier’s cage, took the whole $50,000, everything he had, and changed it all. Saved two twenties in case he wanted a sandwich, a steak. Drinks were still free, and he wasn’t going to be here long enough to want anything else.
Quarter slots by the door, fifty cents and five dollars as you went deeper. He went deeper. Past all that. Found the craps tables. It’s what he’d decided.
He’d thought about poker. There had to be a high-stakes game; he could find it. But hell. What were you saying when you did that? That you could control it. Not the desire, the need, the adrenaline jones: no one thought that. (Well, yes they did, if they still knew how to lie to themselves. But not Taylor.) But control the outcome. If you were smart and cagey, concentrated and focused, you could win Bennie’s money back; if you did, it was because you were good, if you didn’t you’d screwed up. But you know? That was bull.
Or maybe it wasn’t bull. But it wasn’t the point. Not now.
Control.
Oh, sure.
Taylor had been out of control since junior high, when he started taking the other kids’ action on the football team, on the girls’ track team, on whether Mr. Grady would wear the pink tie the third day running. He didn’t remember what it was like to be in control. He knew what it was like to think you were, but he was past that now.
But maybe not quite. Really past that, ready to throw it all in the laps of the gods, you played roulette. Roulette had no odds. On an honest wheel (the Trop’s was straight) any number, either color was as likely to come up. People played this and they hedged that but really, it was silly.
Dice, though, dice had odds. Some numbers came up more than others. He liked that. It was the right game right now.
Because, if his number didn’t come up, his number was up.
Walking toward the table, Taylor laughed.
They made room for him. People always made room for Taylor at the tables, at the wheel, at the big-money window. They were lovers, amateurs, vacationers. They could tell he was different: an initiate, a priest. Dedicated from a young age to the faith. They got a thrill playing beside him, went home and told the story: “There was this guy …”
Sometimes, especially lately, smack on the peak of the rush, a dark smothering thickness would descend on Taylor. Like an ocean tide covering the glittering beach, and suddenly nothing was clear, nothi
ng was shiny, it was hard to hear and hard to breathe. That tide was partly this, knowing how he was seen and discussed, part of other people’s entertainment, one of the fascinating phenomena of their days, marveled at and soon forgotten. It was other things, too, and partly this. He’d enjoyed it, once. He’d enjoyed all this, once.
Taylor settled his chips, settled himself. A hand was in progress, a stony Chinese grandma throwing with thick, arthritic fingers. The point was eight, lucky for the Chinese. Taylor held off, soaking in the flurry of chips and calls, felt his heart speed up more, his skin start to sizzle. He liked this part, the part just before: it was like swimming, he was always a guy to walk in slowly, not plunging underwater until he was up to his chest, until his long deep breaths disturbed the surface as his chest rose and fell. Then, suddenly, he’d dive through. Then the cold shock and the sudden silent, swirling green world where you wanted to stay forever. But you couldn’t breathe. (And when you came up, took a breath and went back down, it was good but it wasn’t the same, it was never the same.)
She was hot, the Chinese grandma, and when she finally hit the point the table erupted in hooting and laughing. Lots of people had made lots of money: a friendly-faced bald guy, an intense black woman, a young sweaty guy with glasses (which of them was Bennie’s?). The grandma too, but her face didn’t change. She just dumped her chips in a bucket and carried them off.
The dice moved to the player two to Taylor’s right. As she reached her hand to choose her dice from the stickman’s six, Taylor looked at her (up to now it had been the table, always the table, the numbers, the chips). A woman, his age, black hair, black dress, bare arms. Small silver earrings, red lipstick, and otherwise as God had made her. She caught Taylor watching her, met his eyes, didn’t smile, but knew him, as he knew her, as members of a tribe or a cult or a team know each other. As though they’d given the secret handshake and the password, flashed the signet ring. The crowd, he noticed, made way for her too.
Taylor bet the pass line, five thousand, starting small, wading in. She rolled, the black-haired woman, his teammate, the other one like him. Supple, small wrist, nails shaped and polished but no color, no distraction. Her focus on the tumbling cubes as burning as his (but how burning was his, he wondered in the endless second before they came to rest, if he noticed hers?). And it was seven.
Okay, good beginning, Taylor thought, piling the chips and letting them ride. She threw again, turned up six. The dealer marked the point, called it out, the little ritual. Everyone had his own, the players, the amateurs, even the casino, the rituals what it’s about, the rush and the rituals. Taylor stayed with the pass line, doubled behind it, placed the eight, the nine. The woman threw and she was hot. She kept throwing, Taylor kept winning. He let his chips ride, he watched them pile up. What the hell: He bet the horn, and damn, she hit for him. Then back to basics (he thought about a hard eight, but that was stupid, and it was too early to get stupid). He stayed with his placed bets, racked his chips.
Taylor was making money.
Bennie’s money. Okay, Bennie’s money.
Taylor kept with the pass line, stacking the chips the dealer passed him (never one of those players too superstitious to sort his chips, and now no superstition for him at all, because that was just another way to pretend to control) and nodded to the woman, his benefactress. She flashed a look around as people took care of business. Taylor let his winnings ride until he reached the table limit, then racked what was beyond it. A few more throws and she hit her six and her streak was over.
And Taylor was way up.
The dice moved to the sweaty guy with glasses. Lucky as the woman had been for Taylor, she’d been bad for him. He was way down, and reached for the dice grimly, if you want something done right do it yourself. Oh, Taylor thought, oh; and he bet the don’t-come. The come out roll was ten. Lay odds, Taylor told himself. Behind the don’t-come? This was something Taylor never did. Just one of his rituals, bad luck, not for everyone but for him. He did it. Two throws later the guy turned up seven. Groans everywhere, except from Taylor. He’d made ninety thousand dollars.
As he racked it he spotted them. Bennie’s people. Two men he didn’t know, polo shirts and khakis. Feeding coins into the slots, not enough to hoodwink the Trop’s security people but enough to signal their intention: we’re just watching, we won’t make trouble. Inside.
Okay, Taylor thought, you’re here to watch? Watch.
The sweaty guy sent Taylor an envious, burning glare, as though the money Taylor had just made was his. Sorry, Charlie, thought Taylor, It’s Bennie’s, Taylor feeling that tug as the adrenaline tried to push a grin through the marble mask. The guy slunk away, shoulders hunched.
The dice were Taylor’s now. Well all right! From the six he took the two closest to him, never did it that way before, always looked for the lucky ones but he did it that way now. He felt them, shook them, their sharp little edges meeting his skin, leaned over the rail and threw them. His point came up four. Oh shit, that was hard, but so what? Throw, and throw, and throw, taking the odds, up at the limit, and throw again. Oh yes, now it was happening. Prickles rose on the back of his neck, he felt like his skin was tightening. Oh yes. Sounds grew sharper, lights got brighter. The bald guy whispered to the woman beside him while they placed their tiny bets, their fifty bucks, what they’d budgeted themselves, what they could afford to lose (Taylor could afford to lose nothing, absolutely nothing) and they watched Taylor.
Another throw, another, and then he said, “Hard eight,” in a calm, stone voice, a voice of ice, as though the fifty thousand he was putting on it was nothing to him, was not the sum total of what he’d come out here with, the sum total of who he’d been when he’d come to this table (though he was someone else now, because fifty thousand wasn’t much of a dent in his pile). He shook and threw and came up two fours, his hard eight, his high odds, his score.
He almost laughed, almost cracked his marble mask. The woman beside him smiled a tiny smile. At his right shoulder he felt a presence, a man in a suit, a floor boss, summoned by a dealer with a button or a nod or whatever they used at the Trop. The dealer gave the stickman six new dice. The stickman rolled them out, pushed them to Taylor to make his choice. This time he took the ones farthest away.
Three more throws and he hit his point, raked in his chips. People laughed, thanked him; he’d done well for some. And for himself, oh yes, oh yes.
Hours, many more hours it went on like that. Sometimes it was other people, sometimes it was the woman like him or it was him, sprinkling the dice like confetti over the green felt, bouncing them off the rails, everyone drawing breaths, holding them, puffing them out. The dealers passed chips out and repossessed them, piles of red chips and black ones, green and purple, orange and gray, rising and falling around the table like some lunatic living bar chart. The boxman, the stickman and the dealers rotated out, replaced by others. The floor boss stayed And the whole thing was in slow motion and fast-forward simultaneously, around Taylor everything whirling and dinging, in front of him everything sweeping and clicking, and also everything crystal clear and completely under control.
Control. No such fucking thing, Taylor thought, his stomach knotting, his heart pounding, his face the familiar thrilling struggle between the mask and the mile-wide grin. No such fucking thing, and pass those dice to me, baby, send them over here. He held them in his hand, shook them, felt the edges, put a big pile on the pass line (oh, he was up, he hadn’t counted lately but he was way up, and so was the woman beside him, they’d been lucky for each other, it sometimes worked that way) and as he threw he was clobbered by it, that smothering gray wave.
It broke over him, a tsunami, the kind caused by trouble on the ocean floor, no storm, no atmospheric disturbance, something deeper, more fundamental. He’d seen a film once, a wave like this, not even tall, a few feet but totally unstoppable, covering a Japanese island, one shore to the other, slowly, on a clear fine day. He thought of that film whenever this hap
pened, all those people on the sand, people who’d been warned but hadn’t left because they didn’t believe it could happen like this. Taylor believed. Here, now, it wasn’t day and it wasn’t fine—it was night and Christ, it was the Trop—but this wave covered Taylor just the same. The lights were still blinking, but through sludgy water, the bells dinged but far away, as if over the sea. Taylor, weighed down, couldn’t move, struggled to breathe.
He closed his eyes.
And heard a whoop, and opened them.
The dice had settled. He’d thrown a seven. He’d hit again.
The tsunami drained away and was gone. Lights and sounds were clear again, but not with the microscopic clarity of the rush. He could breathe, but his heart wasn’t pounding, his skin had no tingle. His face was neither marble nor fireworks, just his face, stubble, weary eyes, the sour-sweet taste of scotch.
And though he hadn’t counted for a long time now, he gave the pile in front of him a practiced glance and knew he’d made Bennie’s money back.
Taylor was tired, tired.
If the dice weren’t his he’d have walked away right then, racked and cashed out and left the neon and the goddamn blinking lights behind, oh yes, he was ready, but you can’t do that, you can’t do that. He bet the pass line, but not high, didn’t lay odds. The come out roll made five the point, and he hit it in four throws. That was it. He was done.
Taylor had colored up by now, long since really, his early multi-colored pile of chips mostly gray, sprinkled with orange. He racked them. The woman beside him racked hers, too, and they headed together to the cashier’s cage. The floor boss walked with them. People made way for them.
“Jack Taylor,” he said to the woman as they walked. Not, You’re lucky for me, or, you’re my lucky charm, not a pick-up line, just his name, he felt she deserved that.
“Angel Dale.”
“Angel?”
She gave him a dark look, daring him. You’re my angel, you look like an angel, you throw like an angel, he was sure she’d heard it all, all so idiotic, and not so long ago he might have said it himself, he hoped he wouldn’t have but he wasn’t sure.