Aces Up, Page 6

  “I don’t,” I lie, mostly because I’m still slightly scared of him and want him to go away.

  “It looks like your car won’t start,” he says.

  “That’s not true,” I say. “My car’s fine.”

  “Then why aren’t you going anywhere?”

  “I was just sitting here for a minute, waiting for my … uh, my head to clear before I got on the road.” I give him my most charming smile.

  He looks doubtful. “Waiting for your head to clear?”

  “Yes,” I say haughtily. “My job is very stressful.”

  “Then you should come work for us,” he says.

  “No thank you,” I say. I stare straight ahead.

  Cole waits for a minute, then walks away, disappearing into the rows of cars. Phew. That was a close one. I mean, he’s obviously crazy. Then again, aren’t all gamblers? They’re always trying to pay off their gambling debts by cooking up some kind of crazy scheme. And most of them are one step away from losing everything. I read all about gambling addictions last night while I was clicking around the Internet, Googling “Aces Up.”

  I pull my cell phone out of my bag and think that it might really be time to call the police. I mean, knocking on my window like that? That’s pretty creepy. But again, what would I tell them? A guy happened to be walking through the parking garage and offered to help me start my car? This whole thing is too weird.

  Then I see a black Ford pickup truck pulling up behind me in the rearview mirror, and when I turn around, Cole is stepping out of it. Okay, deep breath. What was it they taught us in that self-defense unit in gym class? Go for the eyes? Or was it the throat?

  Cole taps on the window again. “Pop the hood,” he says. His voice is muffled through the glass, and I crack the window slightly so I can hear him. “I’m going to give you a jump start.”

  Oh. Well. My phone vibrates in my hand before I can decide what to do, and my mom’s cell number pops up on the caller ID. Damn. I consider sending it to voice mail, but if I don’t answer, she’s liable to do something crazy, like drive to Stamford and turn up at the Rusty Nail looking for me.

  “Hello?” I say into the phone.

  “Hi, honey,” she says brightly. “Just wanted to make sure you were on your way home from work before I hit the hay!” Oh, God.

  “Yup,” I say. “Just on my way home from work.” I do my best to match her happy tone.

  Cole walks around to the front of my car and taps on the hood. “Open up!” he says. “And pop the trunk, too, so I can get the jumper cables.”

  “Who’s that?” my mom demands. “What is he saying?”

  “Oh, that’s just a guy I work with,” I say. Which isn’t exactly a lie. Cole spends a lot of time at the casino, and I work at the casino, so we do kind of work together. I fumble around until I find the latch that releases the hood, and then hit it.

  “What’s he doing?” my mom wants to know.

  “Um, he’s just … he’s trying to get this one cabinet open, the one that has the condiments.” I hold the phone away from my mouth and say, “Oh, yes, Bob, good, I was wondering where that ketchup went.”

  My mom’s not stupid, so she says, “I don’t believe you.” And then she says, “Put him on the phone.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. “He can’t talk to you,” I say. “He’s busy working. Which is what I should be doing right now, so that I don’t lose my job.”

  “I thought you said you were on your way home,” she says.

  “Well, I didn’t mean literally,” I say. “Like, I’m not actually driving, I’m just about to get on the road.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Cole asks, coming back over to my window. “I’m going to try to jump it, so I need your jumper cables.”

  “Are you having car trouble?” my mom shrieks. And then she says, “I’m coming down there!”

  “Mom, no!” I say. “That’s just … I mean, my friend Bob is here, and he’s helping me.”

  Cole raises his eyebrows at me. “Aren’t you, Bob?” I say pointedly.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says into the phone. “Bob’s helping right out.”

  “Let me talk to him,” my mom says again.

  “No,” I say. “Mom, look, it’s fine, I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

  “Okay,” she finally says, relenting. “But if you’re not home in twenty minutes …”

  “I will be,” I say, and hang up before she can say anything else.

  Cole’s got the hood open now, and he’s standing by the side of the car, looking at me through the windshield with a very amused look on his face. “Your mom?” he asks.

  “That,” I say, “is none of your business.” I keep my phone in my hand, just in case. “Look,” I say, “thanks for your help, but I’ve got it from here.”

  “Do you have jumper cables?” he asks, ignoring me.

  “No,” I say.

  He looks at me incredulously. “You don’t have jumper cables?”

  “No,” I say, challenging. “Do you?”

  “I’m not the one driving a car that’s two steps away from the junkyard.” Gasp. What a jerk. “Do you at least have Triple A?” he asks. I consider lying, but then I realize if I don’t let Cole help me, I might just be stranded here.

  “No,” I say miserably, and wait for him to make another dig about how horrible my car is.

  But Cole just walks to the front of the car and lowers the hood. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and then takes a slow drag, the smoke drifting lazily toward the ceiling. He reaches back into his pocket and pulls out his cell. He dials a number and says, “Hi, I’m having a little car trouble, and I need a jump.” He pauses, then looks at me. “It’s a—”

  “A 1997 Corolla,” I tell him.

  He finishes the call and snaps his phone shut.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “No problem.” There’s an uncomfortable silence. I sigh and finally get out of the car, then stand awkwardly by the driver’s side door.

  “So, you can probably go now,” I say. “I’m fine here, honestly. I don’t mind waiting.”

  “I have to stay until they get here,” he says. “Because I’m the one that has the Triple A card.” He blows a long plume of smoke up to the ceiling, then hoists himself onto the hood of my car.

  “Feel free,” I say, trying to make him feel bad about sitting on my car without asking me if it’s okay. But he just grins. I sigh again, then sit down on the hood next to him and try to console myself with the fact that if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it last night when he had me alone in his hotel room. Not to mention there are cameras all over this place, including the parking garage, so it’d be pretty dumb of him to try anything.

  “It’s going to be two hours before they get here,” he says.

  “Two hours?” Where the hell are they coming from? Saudi Arabia?

  He shrugs. “I guess they’re busy.”

  The door to the parking garage opens, and a bunch of girls come out of the elevator, giggling. They look like they’re half drunk, and they’re falling all over each other.

  “Hey, Cole,” one of them says as she walks by.

  Cole gives her a long look, his eyes moving up her body. “Hey, Marissa,” he says. For a second she looks like she’s going to say something else, but then she keeps going. I inexplicably feel jealous.

  “Who was that?” I ask.

  “Just a friend,” he says lightly. Then he winks at me.

  “You know …,” I say, jumping off the hood and facing him. I cross my arms and look at him. “You’re kind of an ass.”

  He pretends to be shocked and then hurt. He puts his hand to his heart over his leather jacket. His fingers are dirty from trying to look under the hood of my car. “I am?” he asks.

  “You can’t,” I say, “just go around following people out to their cars.” Seriously. What is wrong with him?

  “I thought I was helping you,” he says. �
�And I didn’t follow you. This is a public parking lot.”

  I consider mentioning that it’s totally piggish to be scamming on girls who are wandering through the parking lot in scandalous body-baring clothing, but I don’t. I check my cell phone for the time: 10:23. Which means we’ve only been waiting for about seven minutes. A hundred and thirteen more to go. Sigh.

  There’s no way I’m going to be meeting up with Chris Harmon now, so I text him and ask him to meet me before school on Monday. Actually, I command him. I tell him I’ll meet him at his locker before the first bell. I hope Cole thinks I’m texting my boyfriend, some super-big guy who plays college football and is coming down here to take care of him and make sure he doesn’t mess with me anymore. Then I text Robyn and tell her that my car won’t start and I’m waiting for Triple A with a guy I work with, and ask her to please take care of Mom. She texts back, “No problem,” with a smiley face. Thank God for sisters.

  Cole reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a deck of cards. He starts shuffling them, his hands moving back and forth. He’s wearing a silver ring on his thumb, and the overhead lights bounce off it as his hands move expertly through the deck.

  He sees me watching him, so I become haughty. “If you’re trying to seduce me into your card-playing world, it’s not going to work.”

  He doesn’t answer, just holds the cigarette out to me and offers me a drag. “No thanks,” I say. Is he crazy? Doesn’t he know smoking is disgusting and causes all sorts of horrible diseases, not to mention it makes you smell all smoky and gives you yellow teeth? Of course, Cole doesn’t have yellow teeth. He has very white teeth. But not too white, not in an “I whiten my teeth” kind of way. I hate that. And the smoke on him doesn’t smell gross. It smells kind of … dark, if that makes any sense. Dangerous. But almost in a good way.

  Cole takes another slow drag off his cigarette. “I’m not trying to seduce you into anything,” he says. And then he looks right at me. “Card playing or otherwise.”

  “Funny,” I say. I roll my eyes because I can’t really think of a good retort. I feel cold, so I go to my trunk and pull out a sweatshirt. Cole is dealing the cards now, putting five piles of two cards in a circle on the hood.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Playing poker,” he says.

  “With yourself?”

  “Practice,” he says. “To run different combinations in my head, and see if I can win or not.” He looks at me. “It’s math,” he says. I watch as his hands move the cards around, flipping them over, shoving them back into the deck, dealing them faceup on the car.

  “Do you want me to teach you how to play?” he asks, not looking up.

  “What makes you think I don’t know how to play?” Talk about being cocky. Then I remember that I told him last night that I didn’t. So I quickly add, “I could have just said that to throw you off track.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ve watched it on TV before.” This isn’t exactly true. I mean, I have watched poker on TV a few times, when it happened to be on in the background, or when Leonardo somehow took control of our remote and wouldn’t give it back. I know what beats what and the types of hands (two of a kind, flush, et cetera). I have no idea how the actual game works.

  But Cole just raises his eyebrows at me, ignores what I just said, and then explains the game to me. Here’s how it works:

  Each person at the table is dealt two cards. A round of betting ensues, in which each person can either fold their hand or stay in the pot by putting in chips. After everyone has a chance to bet or fold, the dealer places three cards faceup in the middle of the table. These three cards are called the flop, and they’re community cards; everyone can use them. So, for example, if you have a two in your hand, and another two comes on the table, you’ll have two twos. Based on these new cards, everyone still in the game either bets, checks, or folds. The dealer places another community card faceup in the middle of the table. This one is called the turn. Another round of betting ensues, and then the last community card, called the river, comes up. Everyone who’s still in the hand bets or folds, and then whoever has the best five-card hand using any combination of the five on the table and the two in their hand wins.

  “Okay,” Cole says when he’s finished giving me the overview. He jumps off the car. Then he reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a money clip. He peels five hundred-dollar bills off the top and holds them out to me. “Here,” he says.

  I look at him incredulously. “What’s that for?”

  “Take it and play,” he says. “We have a couple of hours.”

  “In there?” I ask. Now I know he really is crazy. The guys at the poker tables are scary. They drink and they yell and they stay there for hours and sometimes they look like they want to kill somebody. They’re obviously very unstable, betting thousands of dollars at the drop of a hat. There’s no way I’m going in there and actually playing. Especially when I’ve never even done it before.

  “Best way to learn how to play,” he says, “is to just get in there and do it.” He raises his eyebrows again, challenging me.

  “What’s the catch?” I ask, suspicious.

  “No catch,” he says. “Whatever you win at the end of the night, you get to keep.” I hesitate. I could really use the money. Especially since God knows what’s wrong with my car and what it’s going to cost to fix it. But I’ll have no clue what I’m doing, and the whole thing is completely and totally shady. Still, it’s not like I’d be using my own money. And it might be better than standing out here with Cole for two hours. “It’s also a good way to figure out if you have what it takes,” Cole says. “If you’re really going to be as good as we think you are.”

  Well, that settles it. I snatch the hundred-dollar bills out of his hand and start walking toward the elevator, Cole following behind me.

  ? ? ? ?

  I try to stall by stopping in the bathroom, and then I try to stall even more by buying a bottled water from one of the stands near the shops.

  But Cole is insistent that I’m going to play, and when we get into the casino, he whispers, “Don’t play anything higher than three-six,” and then disappears. Like, literally disappears. Before I can even ask him what that means! Which is so totally not cool. I mean, shouldn’t there be some kind of training program or something? Where he sits with me and mentors me for at least the first hand? They would never just leave you on your own the first day at a real job.

  I head over to the cashier and hand her the five hundred dollars, my hands shaking. “Just some one-dollar chips, please,” I say. “And, um, I guess some fives.” I have no idea if this is right, but I figure you can’t go wrong with one-dollar chips. They’re like one-dollar bills. Good everywhere.

  The cashier, an older woman with bushy black hair, whose name tag says “Flo,” takes my money wordlessly, counts it out into piles, and then slides a huge rack of chips over to me. I pick it up and make my way through the tables over to the sign-in desk, where you go to get assigned to a poker table.

  “Oh, hello,” I say nonchalantly to the pit boss who’s running the desk. I wait for him to look up and say something like “Wow, aren’t you a waitress here?” But he doesn’t even recognize me. Or at least, if he does, he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s used to it. Employees of the Collosio are allowed to play bingo and poker here only, so maybe it’s not, like, an unusual enough occurrence to remark on.

  “Can I help you?” he asks, sounding bored. Wow. I might have to bring this up to Adrienne. The customer service around this place is totally lacking.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’d like to get into a three-six game, please.” I try to sound confident, like I do this all the time. “Um, but just out of curiosity,” I say, “what is a three-six game, exactly?”

  “It has to do with the stakes,” the pit boss says. “You can only bet three dollars after the deal and the flop, and then six dollars after the turn and river.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, right,” I say. That makes total sense. “I just forgot for a second, haha.”

  The guy looks over his wire-rimmed glasses at me, and for a second, I worry that he’s going to ask to see my ID. And he does. “Can I see your ID, please?” he asks.

  “Uh, sure.” I reach into my purse and pull my fake license out of my wallet. The guy studies it for a minute, then hands it back to me. “You can sit at table forty-seven,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Uh, there’s no wait? Because, really, I’m not in a hurry or anything, I don’t have to—”

  “Table forty-seven,” he repeats, more forcefully this time. Alrighty, then. I gather up my chips and make my way through the tables to number forty-seven.

  The table isn’t full; there are only about four or five guys sitting there, so I just pick a seat and plop myself down. I’m not used to carrying a big rack of chips, and I sit down a little too hard (the seats are low), and the chips go spilling onto the table. Whoops.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say, picking them up and putting them back into my rack. “Guess I’m not used to this, hahaha!” I pick up some chips that fell onto the floor, and when I pop back up, a guy wearing a flannel shirt at the end of the table gives me a grin. Actually, I think I know that guy. He looks very familiar.

  Ohmigod. He was here last night when I dropped that tray of drinks! He was totally pissed! He said now he was going to reek of alcohol, and his wife didn’t like him to be drinking on work nights, so then I said couldn’t he just be honest with her and say that a waitress dropped some drinks, and then he said obviously I didn’t know his wife, so then I said no, I didn’t, but—

  “Big blind,” the dealer says, looking at me. Um, what? I stare blankly, having no clue what he’s talking about. “Three dollars,” the dealer says, sighing.

  “Oh, right,” I say, and give a laugh like I can’t believe I forgot. I throw three dollar chips into the middle of the table. I figure out quickly that the blinds are forced bets, money that you have to put into the pot to keep it going. Kind of like an ante, only you don’t have to put it in every time. They rotate, depending on where the button is.