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“Not for you, not for me, not for Futurium.”
She nodded, feigning reassurance, though she knew she was whistling past the graveyard. The whole idea they were even having this conversation was a bad sign. She wanted to believe that the era when the strip was run by crime families was long past, but what really did she know? What did she understand about how organized crime divided and conquered a territory? She didn’t think she would have brought Marisa into this world—Las Vegas and its casinos—if she had thought she was endangering her. But how often in the past had she looked the other way, submerging her better judgment as if she were holding an inflatable toy underwater until, finally, the pressure got too much, and it breached the surface like a whale? She knew the answer. And she knew the silky allure of crypto (and the jackpot it represented), and the chance to start again.
“Frankie?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?” They’d never used that word: love.
He looked so deeply back at her that she thought she could see herself in his eyes. “My God, I do. Yes.”
“And Marisa?”
“Like my own kids.”
Few men in her life had told her they loved her. She’d said it herself to very few men.
“If I said I wanted out—I wanted to go back to Vermont—what would you say?”
“I’d say you were overreacting, but I’d book us all a flight east.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. But Betsy? You have nothing to be scared of. I’ve been dealing with Russian oligarchs for years. We got this.”
“We…the Mastaba?”
“We—you and me.”
She lay back down and once more nuzzled close to him, bringing her knees to her chest. Suddenly she was in the fetal position. Every reckless and wild thing she had done in the past, she realized, was but a warmup before the workout.
Oh, my God, I never wanted to get out of the swimming pools. I liked the pool at the apartment where we were living, but I loved the one that Frankie had.
I went on Zillow and looked at how much he’d paid for that place.
And I thought of his alimony and child support.
I did the math in my head. Either that dude was raking it in or he had insane debt.
Anyway, Las Vegas was Venus. Humans weren’t meant to live there.
So, I lived in the pools.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Crissy
Late that night, I walked aimlessly through the casino. I saw two beautiful young women with cigarettes, and recalled how, when my bulimia was at its worst, a friend had suggested I start smoking. She was confident that any excess weight—and all weight was excess if you were a twenty-three-year-old woman in New York City trying to succeed as an actress back then—would melt like hoarfrost, but body image and the exigencies of my career weren’t really the problem.
Much to my surprise, I was missing Yevgeny. I honestly wasn’t sure whether the fellow was in my life, or just represented two nights in the past. We’d texted, but he was still in Dubai, and I had no idea if or when I would see him again. When we’d tried to find a date on our calendars to next get together, we’d failed.
I was still watching the women, feeling wistful for my new Russian American friend, when my phone rang. The number was blocked, but I knew who it was.
I knew.
For whom the bell tolls—and all that rot.
I answered it.
