*
Feeling like a bad actor, Tom wore a fake moustache and dark glasses into the Normandie. He spent twenty minutes just wandering about, looking for familiar faces, before changing up a hundred dollars and sitting down. It represented one tenth of all the cash he had left in the world, and he wished he hadn’t paid his rent when he’d last won big for Ness.
He wouldn’t have had this much if Lucia hadn’t paid for the hotel room. She’d done it with a credit card and a fierce glance that had kept his mouth shut. Used to playing with more money – and recently money that didn’t belong to him – Tom raised too fast and too high and the hundred dollars lasted all of thirty minutes, despite a couple of small wins.
He changed another hundred and played more conservatively. Three hours later he came away six hundred and fifty in profit.
His phone rang in the parking lot and Ness’s name was on the display. He stared at it until she rang off, then flinched when the tone told him he had a new message.
‘Tom? It’s Ness. Please call me. We need to talk.’ She sounded tentative – a little fearful. He almost bought it. Almost felt concerned. But he didn’t call her.
He walked to the Best Western where Lucia had been looking forward to seeing him. He knew that because when he knocked she opened the door and kissed him, then ripped off his moustache and kissed him again.
‘Ow,’ he said, grinning and closing the door behind him.
‘You won.’
‘I won.’
‘How much?’
‘Six fifty.’
‘Woohoo! I earned too!’ She walked over to the nightstand and picked up a fan of tens, smiling and waving it at him. ‘Eighty bucks!’
He tried to smile but felt his face stiffen with hurt. ‘Good,’ was all he could manage.
Realization dawned in her eyes and she lashed out, slapping him hard in the face.
‘Fuck you!’ she said, and followed up with a flurry of blows and ten-dollar bills. He grabbed her flailing wrists and held her against the bathroom door. She writhed in fury, trying to knee him in the balls. He was too tall for her to connect there, and he twisted his hips protectively, but he winced as she gave him a dead leg, and angrily pushed his full body length against hers to keep her from getting any leverage.
This close, he could feel her breasts against his ribs, her angry breath on his throat as she hissed, ‘I won it playing pool!’
Tom didn’t care. He was suddenly so hard he could barely breathe, and the feeling of her struggling against him made him groan and press himself into her belly. He dipped his head to kiss her; she dodged his mouth.
‘Please don’t,’ she whispered, and he drew back to see tears in her eyes.
He released her immediately. She turned and slid into the bathroom.
‘Lucia?’ He heard the door lock.
She didn’t come out, even when he said he was sorry. Even when he said he needed to use the toilet.
He ended up pissing out of the window and crawling into bed alone.
He woke around five a.m. to find the bathroom door unlocked and Lucia asleep in the tub. At some time during the night she’d tugged the top cover off him and taken a pillow. He knelt beside her and stroked her hair until her eyes opened warily.
‘You’ll get cold in there,’ he said.
She didn’t answer, but let him help her out of the bath and put her into the bed where she fell asleep again almost instantly. He wanted to hold her – if only to let her know he could be trusted just to do that – but felt awkward about getting in beside her, and didn’t quite trust himself.
Instead he showered, dressed, put his moustache back on, and drove her little car back to the Normandie, where he put down a hundred bucks and won four hundred and seventy-five before breakfast.
He took bagels and coffee back to the room. Lucia was awake and worried by his absence. They ate in virtual silence.
Afterwards he sat beside her on the bed, not knowing where to start, or even what he wanted to say to her. Just staring at the wall and then at his feet, and then at the wall again.
‘I want you to know something,’ she said quietly.
He looked at her, waiting for her to go on. She bit her lip, working up to it.
‘What I did with you. That first time? It’s the only time I’ve ever done that.’
‘Then why did you do it with me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Lucia … Last night when I … y’know … I wasn’t assuming anything like that.’
She seemed unsure of his meaning.
‘I just wanted … I didn’t mean to treat you like a whore. I’m sorry if I made you feel like one.’
The two of them sat and looked at the wall for a while. Then he took her hand and was grateful when she didn’t pull away.
*
At the Bicycle Club, it was only by lucky chance that he saw the Weasel before the Weasel saw him. The man was coming out of the john, straightening his tie. He had to stop and look down to step around a little cordon marking the place where a waitress had dropped a tray of Chinese food.
