AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then what?”
“You have to promise not to run.”
This intrigued me, and so I waited.
“Yevgeny,” he answered.
“You’re Russian?”
“No. I’m American. My parents and my sister and I emigrated here from Volgograd in 1996. I was a teenager.”
“Yevgeny, you said?”
He nodded. “But whatever Russian DNA I have in me is harmless. I don’t poison people with radioactive tea, I don’t condone attacking sovereign nations, I hate Putin as much as you do. I grew up in Brooklyn, for God’s sake. In Brighton Beach. I know more about Coney Island than I do Saint Basil’s.”
“I insulted you. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all. Now, I know you’re not British, despite the…accent.”
“Affectation,” I admitted. “It helps me stay in character. And, let’s face it, if I were Jasmine or Belle at Disney World, you can bet I would be in character when I was out and about among the guests.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Vermont.”
“Well, I can’t wait until tomorrow night to witness the full transformation. I’ll get to watch you talk to whales and then we’ll have that drink?”
I looked him over once more, appraising him. No wedding band. I liked what I saw. “Why wait until tomorrow night? I know every pub—”
“Pub? Really?”
“Really,” I said, laying on the British accent like jam on a scone, “and almost every bartender in this casino. Pick your pub and let’s have that drink now.”
* * *
But first there was Artie Morley.
I rarely saw Artie at the casino, though obviously he was there often. But I had my room and my cabana, and mostly I commuted between those two venues and the theater.
As Gene and I were walking among the protractor-shaped tables where people were playing blackjack—lots of locals tonight, it seemed to me, plenty of T-shirts and sweatpants—I spotted him. He was with two men in dark suits; he himself was in a charcoal suit with gray pinstripes. I was deciding whether to detour over to express my condolences, but he spotted me and beelined across the carpet, leaving the two other men near the corner of the casino where they’d been chatting. I embraced him and told him how sorry I was about Richie, noting for the first time how deep the bags were under his eyes and how his hair had begun to gray. Was all this new? Had his brother’s death aged him overnight? I introduced him to Gene and he nodded politely, but he had come to see me and his focus was on me.
“Are you around tomorrow?” he asked.
“I am.” I rarely went anywhere.
“I have a window between two fifteen and two forty-five. Would you come by my office?”
“Of course,” I said, and I felt a spasm of anxiety. He’d never summoned me to his office. I had a tendency to catastrophize, and ideas began bouncing around in my head like pinballs: The BP wasn’t going to renew my contract. Someone from the royal family was suing the casino. Artie didn’t want Nigel in the show. I was losing my room or, yes, my cabana. Most of this was the sort of bad news that Eddie Cantone, the entertainment director, would have delivered, but still I began to imagine the worst.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, instantly regretting the way I was making this about me when it was his brother who had just killed himself.
“As far as the Diana show? Absolutely. You know as well as anyone, it’s sold out forever. This has nothing to do with the act,” he told me, gently squeezing my arm to reassure me that all was well—at least in that regard.
“Okay,” I said, but I heard a hitch in my voice.
“So, two fifteen?”
“I’ll be there,” I agreed, and then Artie shook Gene’s hand, thanked me for my condolences, and returned to the men with whom he had been speaking.
