Chapter Thirty-Three
Marshall
I landed in Vegas at around eleven on Saturday morning and arrived at the Venetian about an hour later. I wandered the floor feeling lost and overwhelmed among the thousands of other players scrambling to put in their bids for the ten million dollars. I almost wished I had a friend or a brother to accompany me because I felt badly out of place amid the red patterned carpets, wood paneling, and cut-glass chandeliers. It was too much for an old country boy from Texas.
Because the tournament was being televised live, there were film crews and reporters everywhere. While we waited for the opening matches to begin, they kept themselves busy by interviewing random people and asking them the same set of questions: where were they from? What had brought them to Vegas? What did they hope to accomplish? Every contestant, without fail, said they wanted to win the ten million dollars. It made for pretty boring television.
I acquired my key at the front desk and rode the elevator to the fifth floor to a gray and white room built with Baroque excess. Feeling tired and worn out after my trip, I laid down for about an hour but was unable to fall asleep. I wished Lori was here next to me. I wished I hadn’t fallen asleep during the movie last night, but I had been so tired, and the movie dragged on and on. But I didn’t especially mind the subtitles or the fact that nothing had happened for the first hour because I was with her.
After I had napped for a bit, I unpacked my suitcase and texted her to let her know that I had arrived safely. She texted back within a few minutes:
Okay!! Call me as soon as you get a chance. Sending you all the love
I read the message over twice before returning the phone to my shirt pocket. I had meant what I said the other night about feeling like I had lucked into something good when I met her. We were different in so many ways, but she was kind and enthusiastic, and that made up for a lot.
Still feeling dazed and a bit lost, I returned downstairs to scope out the various restaurants. For someone who had grown up thinking of The Olive Garden as fine dining, I approached the thought of eating here with a feeling of apprehension. There was a Sushisambi that served Asian and seafood, a “gastropub” that offered bone marrow and foie gras, and a pizzeria offering hand-tossed pizzas in the New York style. (I was reminded irresistibly of Lori’s preference for “real” pizza).
I ended up ordering rice rolls and a glass of boba at the Hong Kong café. As hungry as I was after traveling across the country, I barely tasted my food and finished it with embarrassing speed. While I waited for my check, I stared gloomily down into my bowl, wishing I had savored it for a bit longer so that I could feel like I had gotten my money’s worth.
The first round began at one-fifteen. Much of the afternoon passed by in a blur of dealt hands and barely remembered faces. I remembered Sean saying once how it felt to be up onstage playing guitar in a pub, how his surroundings seemed to fall away as he lost himself in the music. That’s how it was now; instinct took over, and I began dispatching opponents with ruthless efficiency. So absorbed did I become in the game that for an hour or two I was almost able to forget about Lori and the longing that throbbed, dully and persistently, in the back of my brain like a physical ache.
The third and final round of the day presented the most difficult challenge. Two spaces to my left sat a young man in a camo vest and a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers t-shirt. He was mostly bald except for two patches of red fuzz-like hair on either side of his head, and his reddish eyebrows arched prominently over two beady and inscrutable eyes. Unlike some of the other players, Nick had no “tells,” and his face was a complete blank. I watched him quietly from behind my hand with a sense of growing frustration.
I must not have been concealing my feelings very well, for his eyes met mine for a moment, and he smirked at me. His face shone with amusement and something like malice. Then he laid down his cards: nine, ten, jack, king, and queen of spades, a straight flush.
Not being as skilled at hiding my true feelings, I glowed with relief as I laid my own cards down: a nine, ten, jack, king, and queen of diamonds. After some brief backstage negotiations, a tie-breaking round was ruled out, and it was determined that we would both proceed to the next round.
When I returned to my room that night after dinner at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, I saw Lori had called me and left a voicemail. I called her back, and she answered on the first ring.
“Hey, you!” she exclaimed. “I heard a rumor that you’re moving ahead to the finals.”
“Did you watch?”
“I did. We had the store TV turned to the match all day. Everyone here got really into it. One customer tried to change the channel, and the rest of us shouted him down.”
“I can’t imagine it would be that interesting to watch,” I said.
“It was, though. It probably helped that we all know you, and even the customers who had never met you personally knew you as my boyfriend. So they all got really invested in the outcome. There might have been some yelling.”
I told her about Nick and how he had unsettled me. “I don’t know what it is, but something about him made my skin crawl. I think maybe his eyebrows, which seemed to move independently of his body like giant caterpillars. I tried not to let him rattle me, but I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“No, you really didn’t,” chirped Lori. “I could tell, and I was just watching it on TV.”
“Well, anyway, I’m probably going to sit in front of a mirror for a couple hours tonight and practice my poker face.”
“You want to do it over Skype?” she asked brightly. “You’d have insta-feedback.”
“No, because we’d probably just end up making faces into the camera and laughing. You know how it is when we’re together: not a lot gets accomplished, but we have a good time doing it.”
“Well, okay.” There was a tone of mild disappointment in her voice. “Just know that when you get home on Monday, I’ll be giving you the biggest prize of all.”
“Even if I don’t win the tournament?”
“Shhhh. At the very least you have to beat Eyebrow Guy and his caterpillar army. We’re all counting on you.”
We talked for a few more minutes before she let me go for the night. By that point, I was exhausted and needed sleep, and although I wanted to keep talking, she insisted that I rest. “I’d feel awfully guilty if you lost in the finals because you were too tired. Besides, after tomorrow, you may never have to work again, and then you can sleep as much as you want.
“Thanks, babe,” I said. “See you soon.”
“I’ll be watching. Good night.”
She hung up. I placed the phone on the nightstand next to the amber-tinted lamp, wishing we could have talked longer and that she had been here with me. It was strange: she had entered the relationship with reluctance, and I had been expecting only a fling, but it hadn’t taken us long to evolve past that. By this point, it was hard for me to go more than a few days without her. And she addressed me like someone she had known half her life.
But if I could just keep my wits about me until tomorrow night, I’d win that money for her. I knew she wasn’t expecting it and wouldn’t ask for a dime of it, but I wanted to give it to her. After that, we could move wherever we wanted, and we’d never have to worry about money again.