by Holly Rayner
No. I didn’t hire Becky for her looks. I hired her for her competence. She does good work, and she wears whatever she wants to as long as it’s professional. So, no, that charge doesn’t hold up, either.
As I take a seat at the bar, I realize that Dani’s words have hit a sore spot. I’ve worked hard to be where I am. I’m good at my job. How dare she compare me to those weasels in polyester who pawn cheap products off on the unsuspecting?
This is what I get for allowing myself to be distracted by a girl in a casino. Meeting people in these places never works out. I should have gone with my gut and forgotten about her after that initial sighting, not sat down beside her when I spotted her again. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen.
My favorite bartender, Maggie, is behind the bar today. She’s a steely-haired woman of about fifty, and I like her because she doesn’t put up with any nonsense. She cuts rowdy customers off without batting an eye, and she likes me because I tip well and never start any trouble.
As soon as I sit down, she has a glass of my favorite scotch on a napkin in front of me. “Hard day?” she asks.
I glance down the bar. It’s deserted. “What’s up with this place?”
“They’re doing two-dollar Mai Tais across the street.” She shrugs. “It’ll wrap up in a couple of hours and they’ll all come flooding back over here. Like it makes a difference where you get sauced.”
“Says the woman pouring the drinks.”
“They don’t appreciate the quality of the liquor. Not like you do. Philistines.”
“You’re a gem, Maggie, you know that?”
She chuckles as she wipes down the spotless bar. “So, what happened? You lose big out there or something? You look like someone just stole all your Halloween candy.”
“Nah, no losses. I haven’t really even been playing that much tonight, to be honest with you.”
“Work troubles?”
“No, everything’s fine.”
“Ah.” She nods knowingly. “Women troubles, then.”
“What?” How does she always know what’s going on in my head? I swear, the woman is telepathic. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say, stalling for time.
“A bad date, then?”
I sigh, resigned to giving the game away. “Something like that, yeah.”
She pulls the stool in front of her cash register over to where I’m sitting and plops down, facing me across the counter. “Tell Auntie Maggie all about it.”
“You’re much too young to be my aunt, you know.”
“Hush, boy.”
I sigh. “I met this woman tonight. And, I mean, I know trying to meet women on casino floors is crazy, and I never do it. But tonight…what can I say? I thought we’d have a fun night together. It’s been a while since I just relaxed and had fun.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Maggie agrees. “So, tell me about the girl.”
“She was called Dani. She was absolutely gorgeous. Tall, blond hair, those blue eyes that look like they have lights behind them—”
“A California girl.”
“A quintessential California girl. And she’s here with a bachelorette party, but after I saw her in the hotel lobby, I found her again, at the roulette table. She’d split up from them, so I decided to talk to her.”
I relate the story of my encounter with Dani, how we hit it off and seemed to have chemistry and I took her into the platinum game room, how she won the auto show tickets and got offended when I tried to buy them, calling me every name in the book before storming off.
Maggie is watching me sympathetically, shaking her head as I speak.
“You poor, poor man,” she says finally. “How long has it been since you met a girl who didn’t throw herself at you?”
I open my mouth to protest, but the words stick in my throat. I never thought about it that way, but Maggie is right. I never have trouble with women. They’re usually very willing recipients of my pursuit—so willing, in fact, they usually turn the tables on me, responding so enthusiastically that I almost feel like I need to fend them off. It’s rare to find a woman who talks to me like a human, with whom I have as much chemistry as I felt with Dani. As I replay our time together in my mind, I realize that I actually was hoping to bring her back to my apartment for a cocktail and some time to ourselves. With all the women I’ve met who are so eager for something to happen between us, why is it that the only woman I’ve felt a sincere interest in for so long rejected me so soundly? It doesn’t seem fair.
“You don’t see how you put her off?” Maggie asks. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Men never do seem to recognize this stuff when it’s happening.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you telling me I’m sexist, too?”
“No, honey, not really.” She grabs the scotch bottle and pours a little more into my glass. “Not in a malicious way. I know you like women; I know you respect women. But imagine what it must be like for this girl. She sounds like she really loves cars. She must have been excited to win tickets to that auto show. And the first thing someone says to her is that he’d be willing to buy them off her, because she couldn’t possibly be interested in cars herself.”
“So, I was wrong about her interest in cars. So what?”
“So, she’s probably spent her whole life having men assume that she doesn’t know anything about cars. And you said she works at a body shop, right? So, she’s actually an expert on the subject. Imagine if every time you told someone you were a successful businessman, they acted like that was shocking. You’d get tired of it pretty quick.”
“Maybe. But I told her it wasn’t really because she was a woman, it was because, I mean, she doesn’t look like a mechanic—”
“If anything, that’s worse,” Maggie says, cutting me off. “It makes her feel like she has to choose between looking nice and being good at what she does, see? She’s a whole person. Some days, she’s hardworking and greasy, and other days, she likes to get fancy and go out with her friends. Just like you, she probably has a lot of different sides to her. Besides, telling a girl she’s too pretty to work with her hands makes it seem like she couldn’t possibly enjoy her work, and the only reason she’s doing it is because she has to. That devalues her.”
I shake my head. “This is all very complicated, Maggie.”
“Tell me about it. You need more scotch?”
“Yeah.” I drain my glass and pass it back to her. “I guess I’m as guilty of making assumptions as she is, then, really. I can’t really blame her for thinking I’m a sexist used-car salesman.”
“Said that, did she?” Maggie laughs throatily. “I like her already.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh, twirling my drink in my hand so the ice cubes clatter against the sides of the glass. “She was really something, Maggie. She said what she was thinking. You know, I tried to give her a poker chip when I was introducing myself at the roulette table, and she turned me right down. Said she didn’t want my money.”
“I’ve always told you that you should stop giving women chips,” Maggie chuckles. She takes down a tray of glasses and begins polishing them with a rag.
“But you know everyone who comes through here does it,” I protest. “It’s…I don’t know. It’s part of the casino culture.”
“Yeah, a sexist part.”
“You’re kidding. That’s sexist, too?”
“Giving pretty women money for no reason? Yeah, I’d say so.”
It sounds worse when she says it like that.
“Well,” I rally, “she wasn’t having any of it, so that’s something. Shoved the thing right back at me and got annoyed with me for even trying to give it to her.”
“And this was when you first sat down?” Maggie asks. “How did you end up spending more time together after such an inauspicious beginning?”
“I apologized. She forgave me.”
“She sounds like a peach.”
“Like a tabasco peach. Sweet, but full of fire.”
<
br /> “Tabasco peach, huh? That sounds…interesting.” Maggie raises an eyebrow.
“Well, maybe the metaphor doesn’t hold up.” I drain my drink and signal for more. She refills me. “I just wish I could see her again! Sure, we argued on our first date—if you can even call it that—but some of the best couples I know fight constantly. My Uncle Adalberto and Aunt Marina are always at each other’s throats, but that’s just the way they show affection. That’s kind of how it felt with Dani. Even when we were giving each other a hard time, it felt…passionate, somehow.”
Maggie is eyeing me carefully. “I thought you said you didn’t want to date this girl.”
“I’m not saying I want to date her. It just feels like things are unfinished between us. I wanted something—I don’t know—more.”
“You wanted to take her to bed.”
“God, Maggie.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“You are hopelessly crude, though.”
“And since when has that ever bothered you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She’s…different.”
“Different from what?”
“Different from other women I’ve been interested in. Or maybe she’s not different, but something is different. I feel…I don’t know when I’ve been so attracted to someone.”
“Not since Ilsa?”
My ex-wife. She was beautiful, of course—dark hair, ivory skin, delicate facial features that drew the attention of everyone in every room she entered. She knew how to dress, too, in fashionable gowns that made women hiss behind their hands with jealousy. But she was cold. She was often angry at me, but instead of yelling at me and storming off, she was haughty. She wouldn’t speak to me for days at a time, leaving me wondering what the hell I had done to earn her wrath.
“No,” I tell Maggie. “It wasn’t like this with Ilsa.”
“So, are you going to see her again?”
“How can I? I don’t know where to find her.”
“She’s probably staying in this hotel,” Maggie points out. “Just come around tomorrow. It’s only Friday, and if she’s here for a bachelorette thing, she’ll probably be staying all weekend. You can look for her again and apologize for your behavior today.”
“It might take more than that,” I say. “I’m not sure she was that interested in me. I need to think of something that will really impress her.”
Maggie frowns. “Don’t you go all over the top, now. Don’t make a spectacle of that poor girl and embarrass her. And, for God’s sake, don’t flaunt your money, will you? Nobody likes that.”
“I don’t flaunt my money,” I say.
I know the kind of man she’s talking about. There are plenty of them around here. They find a pretty girl and take her shopping, take her to a casino and stake her a thousand bucks, and buy all her drinks. At the end of the night, she’s supposed to be so boozed-up and grateful that she’ll sleep with him.
That isn’t my game and it never will be.
“Behave yourself,” Maggie says.
“You worry too much, Maggie. Thanks for this.”
Feeling much better now that I have a plan of action, I finish my drink, drop some bills on the table, and head for the exit.
Chapter 6
Dani
Liz shakes us all awake much too early the next morning. The rising sun is angled in so sharply through the cracks around the heavy curtains that it feels like I’m being stabbed in the eyes.
I pull my pillow over my face and try to go back to sleep. Beside me, I can hear Melanie moaning as her hangover makes itself evident. I wonder momentarily how Liz can be so alert before remembering that she went to bed before any of us and, as a consequence, probably switched to drinking water early in the evening. I bet she isn’t hungover at all.
“Breakfast buffet ends in one hour,” Liz says briskly, sounding like she’s alerting us to a business meeting. “Come on, you all need some food if you’re going to get back on your feet by tonight. After breakfast, we can check out that oxygen bar a block from here. That’ll clear your heads.”
Rhonda grumbles something I can’t make out, just as something soft lands on my stomach. I snake my arm out from under my blanket and feel around the edges of the mystery item. It’s a pair of jean shorts. A moment later, a shirt falls onto my now-exposed arm.
“Get dressed,” Liz says. “I’ve already been down there to scope it out. Waffles, pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, all the good stuff. Let’s go.”
“Bacon?” Sandy says with interest.
“Good bacon. The real crispy stuff,” Liz confirms. “And there’s grapefruit juice and orange juice and coffee—”
“We could have mimosas,” Molly mumbles. I peek out from under my pillow and see that she’s still buried in bedding.
Liz sounds annoyed. “No mimosas. You all need to get fully sober before you start drinking again, otherwise you’ll make yourselves sick.”
“C’mon, Liz,” Rhonda says. “It’s Sandy’s bachelorette weekend. Cut loose a little, will you?”
“Get up and come to breakfast,” Liz counters.
Slowly, and with much grumbling, the five of us roll out of bed and find our way into various articles of clothing. When everyone is looking the absolute bare minimum amount of put together, we grab our room keys and make our way down to the lobby, where breakfast has been laid out on a long buffet table.
I blink a few times to make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me. What lies before us is, without a doubt, the finest breakfast spread I’ve ever seen in my life. When Liz said breakfast, I had pictured the modest continental breakfasts available in most mid-range hotels—a small refrigerator with individual yogurts and hard-boiled eggs, little boxes of cereal and a milk dispenser. A toaster and slices of white bread with butter and jelly. Even when she mentioned waffles and pancakes, I didn’t take her seriously. It was a trick, I figured, a strategy to get us out of bed and down to the lobby. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The buffet table is covered with a white tablecloth and a row of food warmers have been laid out. As I watch, a man in an apron emerges from behind a swinging door and replaces an empty tray of sausages with a fresh one. Down at the far end of the table, I can see tall flutes of various juices and fruit and yogurt parfaits. All around us, hotel guests have taken seats at round tables covered with white tablecloths.
Liz is already moving toward an empty table. I follow, unable to quite take my eyes off the food, and it looks as though the others are having similar issues—Rhonda is literally steering Sandy, holding onto her elbow to ensure she doesn’t trip over anything.
We set our things on the table, claiming it for ourselves, and return to the buffet line. I grab a plate and load it up with waffles, strawberries, and bacon. I drop that off at my table and go back to the omelet station for a spinach and pepper-jack cheese combo, and while I’m waiting for that to be made, I grab a parfait and a mimosa from the end of the table.
I respect Liz’s wisdom in telling us to wait before starting to drink again, but I also happen to agree with Rhonda’s perspective. Besides, when am I going to come to Vegas again?
By the time I return to the table, the others are already there, tucking in with vigor. I see that I’m not the only one to have taken a drink—the twins each have mimosas, and Rhonda has ordered a Bloody Mary. Sandy, on the other hand, is being force-fed water by Liz.
“Will you let her have some fun?” Rhonda laughs. “Here, Sandy, you want some of my drink?”
“I don’t want her getting so drunk she can’t remember any of it, that’s all,” Liz says.
“She won’t,” Rhonda assures her. “We’ll share the drink, okay? That way, neither of us gets too drunk.”
“Hey, Dani,” Molly says, sprinkling liberal amounts of salt over her scrambled eggs. “Where’d you disappear to last night? We couldn’t find you for ages. We were starting to get worried.”
“I was…” I hesitate. I’m not sure how much
of my adventures from last night I want to share with them. “I found a contest for tickets to a car show,” I say finally. That’s going to become public knowledge, anyway, because there’s no way I won’t be posting pictures from the event all over social media when I go. “I entered it and won.”
“Cool.” Rhonda looks impressed. “How many tickets? Can we all go?”
“It’s not this weekend. And it’s only two tickets. And you hate cars, anyway.”
“I don’t hate cars,” Rhonda protests. “I love my car.”
“Yeah, because it has a backup camera and adjustable cup holders.” I roll my eyes.
“She wouldn’t take you, anyway,” Melanie says, a hint of wickedness in her voice. “She’s taking the Italian.”
“The Italian? What Italian?” everyone clamors.
“He’s not Italian. He’s Portuguese,” I say, glaring at Melanie. “And I’m not taking him to the car show. I just met him last night.”
“Portuguese! Even better!” Rhonda says, clasping her hands and batting her eyes at me in a cartoonish, over-the-top way. “Just what you needed on this trip, Dani. It’s like we conjured him out of the ether by talking about how badly you needed to get laid.”
“We were talking about how badly I needed a boyfriend,” I sputter. “Not that I even do need that. But we certainly weren’t talking about my needing to get laid, for God’s sake. Besides, if you can conjure things from the ether, why don’t you produce the winning roulette numbers for today?”
“Don’t need to when we’ve got you.” Rhonda grins. “You couldn’t miss last night, could you? First, you score big at the table, and then you score big with a guy!” She turns to Melanie. “Was he hot?”
“So hot,” Melanie says. “An absolute dream. Dark hair, bronze skin, big muscles…”
“And a winning personality?” comes a voice from behind.
I whirl around. It’s Luciano, as if conjured by our very conversation.
