seen about all of this place that there is to see. It’s about as wicked as a bingo game in the basement of McFadden’s parish church.
Hay-zus is off base on this one. There’s nobody in this room who looks like a mobster; my fellow gamblers look like they all belong to the Kiwanis. And/or the Bible Study Group.
I will buy Penny a drink, and try to show her the wisdom of driving back to Philadelphia now, rather than in the morning. We can get back by one, maybe a little sooner.
When the croupier had removed his five chips from 00, Matt pushed what was left of his stack onto 00.
“I don’t think this is my night,” Matt said to the croupier.
“You never can tell,” the croupier said.
00 came up.
“And we have a winner,” the croupier said.
“There must be some sort of mistake,” Penny said. “Clearly, God doesn’t want him to win.”
“God must have changed His mind,” the croupier said. “Would you like some quarters, sir? That’s going to be a lot of nickles.”
“I think I’d rather cash out. I’m too shocked to play anymore.”
A pit boss appeared, saw what happened, and nodded his approval. The croupier wrote something on a slip of paper, handed it to the pit boss, who signed it and handed it back. The croupier handed Matt the slip of paper. On it was written $2035.
“Thank you,” Matt said. “Where’s the cashier?”
The croupier inclined his head, and Matt followed his eyes and saw a barred window near the entrance door. At the last moment, he remembered that winning gentlemen gamblers tip the croupier. He took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the croupier.
“Is this what’s known as quitting when you’re ahead?” Penny asked.
“You got it.”
He took the chit to the cashier, exchanged it for a nice thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, put them in his inside jacket pocket, and then led Penny out of the casino and toward the bar.
“Are we going to the bar?” Penny asked.
“I thought we’d have a drink to celebrate.”
“We have a bottle of champagne in the room,” Penny said.
We have to go to the room anyway to get her bag. And there will be no one in the room, as there would be at the bar, to eavesdrop on our conversation, and wonder why a healthy-appearing young man was trying to talk a good-looking healthy blonde out of spending the night in a hotel.
“I forgot,” Matt said as he nudged her toward the elevator.
While they had been downstairs, the bed had been turned down. There was a piece of chocolate precisely in the center of each of the pillows.
“Open the champagne,” Penny said as she went into the bathroom. “See if it’s still cold.”
It was still cold. Whoever had turned down the bed had also refilled the cooler with ice. As he wrestled with the cork, he could hear the toilet flush and then water running.
The cork popped and he poured champagne into the glasses. He sipped his.
Nice. He looked at the label. California champagne, a brand he’d never heard of.
Methode Champagnois, whatever the hell that means. What did you expect, Moet et Chandon?
He heard, or at least sensed, the bathroom door opening, and turned with Penny’s glass extended.
She had—Jesus, how did she do that so quickly?—taken off her clothes and changed into a negligee—or peignoir, whatever a pale blue, lacy, nearly transparent garment of seduction was called— and brushed her hair so that it hung straight down to her shoulders.
The light in the bathroom was still on, which served to illuminate the thin material of her negligee from the rear. She was, for all visual purposes, quite naked.
“Jesus, Penny!”
“I figured, what the hell? Matt knows all my secrets. What have I got to lose?”
She came into the bedroom, took the champagne glass from him, and walked to the draped window.
“I guess it didn’t work, huh?” she said after a moment.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
I can’t see through her nightgown anymore. Jesus, that made my heart jump!
He saw her raise and drain her champagne glass, and then she turned.
“Go and wait in the other room,” she said, her voice flat and bitter. “I’ll get dressed, and we can go.”
She walked toward him.
“Go on, Matt. Get out of here.”
Tears were running down her cheeks.
He put his hand to her face.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t pity me, you sonofabitch!”
“It would be stupid, Penny.”
“Life is stupid, you jackass. It’s a bitch, and then you die.”