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“How’d you feel about doing something you’ll definitely be ashamed of?”
She glanced over at the women scurrying around her like bees in a hive. Kiki appeared to ponder the question, chewing pensively on her lip.
“I don’t think anyone would miss me for a few minutes,” she said at last. “But just a few minutes, okay?”
“I swear.”
“Let’s hear your proposition.”
“I’ll take you there.”
I reached out to grab her hand, but she nodded to her coworkers. Right, we’re still at work. It kept slipping my mind like water through a sieve. Maybe it was because I rarely did any actual work here. In point of fact, I’d come in more times in the past week than I had over the course of years, and I would continue to for the foreseeable future.
“Follow me,” I said with obvious reluctance, wishing I could just take her palm into mine and feel our skin meld as I walked through the casino floor.
Instead, Kiki obliged as best she could, falling in line with my step as we moved from a craps table and off the main floor.
“Where are we going?” she said from behind me.
It was a well-timed question.
I stopped with a flourish in front of a velvet curtain.
“High-stakes poker,” I said with a grin.
“Tate.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “You know I can’t afford that.”
“Come on, I’ll stake you. It’ll be fun.”
Kiki pulled her lips to the side, suspicious. “Are you just trying to give me money?”
Frankly, that was pretty perceptive for a girl who hadn’t known me more than a week or so.
I replied, “No offense, Kiki, but I don’t think you’re gonna win a round here. Guys — and girls — at this level are usually pretty avid poker players. In fact, I reckon I’ll lose quite a bit of money. Except, of course, it goes right back into my own pocket, so I break even.”
Her eyes scanned my face, still trying to decide whether or not this was a good idea.
“We’ll have a great time, I promise,” I murmured. “I just wanna take your mind off things. If you win any money, you can keep it, but again, no offense… I doubt that’ll happen.”
At last, she relented, saying with a little grin, “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Awesome.”
I pulled back the velvet curtain and led her into the high-stakes room.
High-stakes rooms are decorated with a certain clientele in mind. Generally, the actual big boy poker players in Vegas don’t come to rooms like this — the other players are good, but not great, usually just rich guys with a hobby, if you know what I mean. Or, rather, the really excellent players will come occasionally to rip some money off these fellows. But as far as I know, the best games happen at four in the morning out of someone’s mansion.
So, with those kind of men as the target, the room was gilded to the teeth, absolutely covered in fake gold shit — crown moldings, armchair fixtures, even the many-tiered chandeliers. It was too faux opulent for me, but the guys seemed well enough at home.
To wit — the group assembled in this room was exactly what I would’ve reckoned it to be — a couple of foreign businessmen, a prince of somewhere, a former star whose last movie was shot in the nineties, but she was clinging to the lifestyle any way she could, a few escorts — I recognized them by face, they floated around Dazzlers all the time — and maybe a loaded idiot on a bender.
“Where should we sit?” Kiki asked, looping her arm through mine.
I could feel her trembling a little bit.
“Are you nervous?” I questioned in a low voice, leading her to a nearby table and pulling out her seat.
She slid in and nodded to the people at the table, a collection of anonymous-looking folks you couldn’t pick out of a normal crowd but who in this room, surrounded by befitting luxury, you sensed to be rich as hell.
“No,” she lied as I took my position next to her.
“Don’t be anxious,” I whispered into her ear as I scooted my chair a few inches closer to hers. “You’ll be great.”
The dealer, a buxom blonde woman, nodded to me. “Hello, sir. Pleasure to see you here.”
“Does she know you?” Kiki murmured, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Everybody knows me.”
Without words — as the professionals do it — the dealer allotted the cards across the table.
I used one hand to lift the cards up and see what I’d been dealt, and slipped the other hand onto Kiki’s creamy thigh.
She looked at me with wide eyes, as if to say, What the hell do you think you’re doing? But I merely shrugged and nodded to her cards.
“Focus on your hand,” I said with a sly tone.
She grumbled but did so, squinting her eyes in concentration — perhaps so as not to focus on my fingers, which were migrating up her leg.
