by Martin Clark
Sa’ad hoisted his glass again. “It’s not unlike your line of work, Reverend. A dash of faith and you’re betting on something you can’t see.”
“So I don’t take a card?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t want any more,” Joel said to Li.
“You have to make signal,” she told him. “Like this.” She showed him what he needed to do.
“Okay,” Joel said, waving his hand palm down over his cards. “I’m not sure I understand, but I’m sticking with thirteen.”
No one else took a card—they all shook their heads and made hand gestures and Julie said, “I don’t think so.” Li appeared to know what they were going to do and passed by them, quickly arriving at her own cards. She showed her hole card, an eight. An eight to go with her six.
Joel looked at the dealer, then at Sa’ad and Edmund. “I thought it was supposed to be a ten.”
“Relax, Joel,” Sa’ad said. “We’re right on schedule.”
“I should’ve taken another card,” Joel griped.
“You do smart thing,” Li said. She pulled the next card from the shoe, dragged it concealed across the table, peeked at its corner and then glanced at Joel. She shook her head, sighed and made a clicking sound. “Sorry,” she said. “I hate it for you.” She stood the card on its bottom edge and let it tumble forward. A jack, the jack of clubs. “Too many. Dealer bust.” She started to laugh and everyone at the table laughed with her.
“So . . . oh, wow.” It took Joel a moment to recover. “So I win, right? I win fifty bucks.”
“Yeah,” Sa’ad said, still chuckling.
“I figured I was cooked.” Joel looked at Li. “That was pretty darn cruel. You scared me to death.”
“Welcome to Las Vegas,” she said. “We play rookie trick on you.”
“By the way, Joel, would you like to go back and take a card?” Sa’ad asked.
“Pardon?”
“Add the numbers. Had you taken a card, you would have gotten that jack and pissed away your bet. You would’ve lost. Under the Sa’ad X. Sa’ad plan, she took the bust card, and we all win.”
“You were right. Thanks.” Joel rounded up his chips and clutched them inside a sweaty fist. “Where do I exchange these?”
“You’re not stopping now, are you?” Rachel asked. “You’re just getting the hang of it.”
“Finish this shoe,” Edmund urged. “Stay with us till she shuffles.” His withered finger was especially apparent among the chips and cards.
“I don’t have the nerve for it, and I’m a hundred bucks to the good. My position isn’t likely to get any better.” He was standing as he spoke.
“So why don’t you mosey around and visit some more places—Caesar’s is next door—then meet us for the next stop?” Edmund said.
“The next stop?”
“The Crazy Horse,” Edmund said. “We’ll catch a limo in an hour or so.”
“And the Crazy Horse would be what? A Native American tribute with trick riders and medicine men?” Joel contorted his expression, pretended to be dumbfounded.
“Actually,” Sa’ad said, “you’re not too far off the mark.”
“Well, I don’t have any interest in more nightlife. I’ve had my taste of decadence.” He opened his hand and inspected his winnings. “And the minister in me makes me want to warn you folks that a topless club isn’t such a great idea.”
“You’re probably right.” Edmund seemed contrite. “But it’s a hard habit to break.”
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll all go ride the roller coaster at New York, New York,” Sa’ad said. “Do something different and wholesome.” His tone was so diluted that Joel couldn’t tell if he was sincere or simply being acerbic.
“Okay. So . . . so I guess I won’t see you before I leave, huh?”
“I guess that’s the case,” Edmund said. “And we’ll handle everything else for now, so don’t worry about the details. Everything will come to you.”
“Sure.”
“It was great seein’ you,” Edmund remarked. Li had finished dealing and was waiting for him to play his cards. “Have a safe trip home.” He shook Joel’s hand and returned to his gambling, then slurped his whiskey and good-naturedly commanded Li to throw him a ten. “Tell you what, Joel,” he suddenly said. “In your honor I’m gonna put half my winnings in the plate next Sunday at Roanoke Baptist. How ’bout that?”
“I know it will be appreciated,” Joel answered.
“We miss havin’ you in the pulpit. It’s not the same, you know—not by a long shot.”
“Good night, Sa’ad.” Joel touched his forehead with his index and middle fingers, presented the lawyer a faux salute. “Thanks for everything. Oh—thank you both for dinner. I enjoyed it. And ladies, good night to you as well. It was a pleasure meeting you. I wish you continued success at the table.”
“I’ll walk with you to swap your chips,” Rachel volunteered. “Show you where to go so you don’t get lost.”
“Ah—there you have it, Preacher King. The chance to spurn another temptation. You must be close to getting out of the red by now.” Sa’ad didn’t look away from his cards as he spoke. He was fidgeting with one of his cuffs, extending a band of white shirt from beneath the sleeve of his jacket.
Joel stiffened. He was standing next to Edmund, waiting to squeeze through the small space between the seats. “I was out of the red, Sa’ad, the first time I asked to be forgiven. That’s the way it works.”
Sa’ad gave Li a hand signal—he scratched the felt with two fingers— and she dealt him a seven. “That’s good to know, Joel, good to know. I thought maybe there was a sliding scale, whereby some fuckups would carry a bigger penalty than others.” He stared at Joel and fingered a tower of black chips. “I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. I’m hardly the theologian that you are, so I don’t understand all the bylaws and fine print.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joel answered. “Ruffling my feathers, that is.” He sensed that someone was behind him, then felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Is this seat taken?”
“No, I’m leaving.” Joel took a step away from the table. “It’s all yours.”
“Thanks, pal,” the newcomer said. He gave Joel a courteous smile and slid past him into the chair. His suit was even nicer than it had appeared from a distance, and the gold border around his tooth was bright enough to catch the false light raining from the ceiling.
Rachel showed Joel to the cage, and he exchanged his chips for cash. He’d never been concerned about money before, had for all his preacher years lived in this queer ether where finances were at best a means to an end and more often than not a sinful distraction. The charm of the pulpit was having very little but wanting for absolutely nothing. The church provided him with a home, health-care insurance and a satisfactory salary, and there were gifts and donations and summer vegetables and pound cakes and potluck suppers galore. The lady at the cage gave him two hundred-dollar bills, and he stared at them and reflected on how easy it had been for him to lecture his congregation about giving when it was damn impossible for some of them and painless for him.
Joel agreed to have a cup of coffee with Rachel at one of the casino bars after she mentioned she had something important to ask him and virtually begged him to spend a few more minutes in the Mirage. She ordered a bottled beer, and Joel asked for decaf with cream and sugar. Rachel’s appearance had begun to turn slatternly—her hair was falling into her face, her skirt had a dark stain near the hem, and her makeup had worn thin in spots around her nose and cheeks. When she turned her profile to Joel, the makeup gaps caused her skin to appear patchy and mottled. Still, she was a pretty girl, probably thirty or so, with perfect teeth and a good shape.
“What did you want to ask me?” Joel said as the bartender was serving them their order.
“Huh?” Rachel was impaired, swaying a bit on her bar stool, but she wasn’t drunk or sloppy. “A little tipsy” was the term used in Baptist circles.
&n
bsp; “You wanted to speak with me about something important?” Joel assumed his minister’s voice, concerned and compassionate yet studiously removed. In the past he’d usually known what was coming—garden-variety failings such as petty theft or a child who was “fooling with dope”—and he’d start the conversation with a confident blend of understanding and separation.
“Yes. Yeah, okay.” The bartender had emptied part of her beer into a glass, and she added some more. She poured straight from the bottle into the glass, and a swollen rush of foam overflowed onto the bar. “Rats,” she said, patting at the accident with a paper napkin.
“You wanted to talk?”
She looked up from what she was doing. “Are you really a preacher, Joel? Or is that just a gag between you guys?”
Joel considered his answer. “I’m an ordained Baptist minister. I pastored a church in Virginia for many years.”
“Huh. So you really are.” She fiddled with several loose strands of hair. “I figured you worked with Edmund in the meat business.”
“So now you know.” A cocktail waitress left the bar with a tray of drinks and longneck beers, brushing Joel’s arm when she breezed by. “Was that your important question?”
“Well, sorta. That’s part of it. I’m, well, I’m trying to get more spiritual, you see.” She swallowed some of her beer. The napkin on the bar had soaked through and changed consistency, become a saturated lump. “I’m taking a yoga class at UNLV, and I was thinking about maybe signing up for tae kwon do—it’s a whole lot more than just fighting and flexibility. It’s deeper than that. A lot of it is about getting your mind and soul in harmony.”
“I guess that’s a start.”
“There’s just so much shit out there when it comes to religion, it’s hard to know which one to pick. I mean, how could anyone ever . . . ever choose? How do you decide which is best for you?”
“It sometimes takes a lot of seeking. But I don’t think yoga and kung fu—or whatever it is—are really serious options.”
“What do you believe in, Joel?” Rachel asked. “You seem really centered and together, the way you have so much discipline.”
Joel had his finger through the cup handle, ready to lift his coffee. Rachel’s compliment caught him off guard, and he left the cup on its saucer. “I’m hardly the person you think. Far from it, in fact. But for what it’s worth, I believe in the God of the Old Testament and the literal truth of the Four Gospels. That’s the quick version.”
“The Bible, right?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” He sipped his coffee.
“I was raised a Presbyterian, went to Sunday school and church dinners and wore my granny’s brown bath towel on my head for the Christmas play, did the whole thing pretty much, but it was so incredibly boring when I got older. I mean it was awful to sit in there for an hour every Sunday. And everybody was so uptight.” Rachel stared into space for several seconds, as if conjuring up her time in church years ago.
“ ‘The frozen chosen,’ we Baptists like to call them. I can promise you that Baptists are more demonstrative.” A coffee rivulet had wandered down the side of Joel’s cup.
“So what should I do?”
“Well, may I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“And I hope you won’t be offended.” He leaned toward Rachel and lowered his voice.
“Ask away.”
“How should I put this? I wonder, I guess, how you ended up here tonight. What’s your, uh, relationship with Edmund and Sa’ad?”
“You mean am I a hooker?” she said without dampening her tone.
“Yeah. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s what I’m getting at.”
“Why are you asking? What makes you think so?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you meet a broken-down wreck like me and turn giddy at the prospect of spending time together.”
Rachel frowned. “Oh no. You’re a handsome man. And you carry yourself like you are somebody. I could tell that right away about you. You’re trim and tall and I love your eyes and your dark hair. Why would you say such a harsh thing about yourself?”
“So, are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked.
“A prostitute.”
“No, I’m not.”
Joel tried to assess her reaction. “Of course, if Edmund was setting this up, you wouldn’t tell me anyway, would you?”
“True. Yeah.” She wound a length of hair around her index finger. “You mind if I order another beer?”
“If you like.”
“I’m not a hooker,” she said. “I work at a clothing store. And part-time as a waitress at the Monte Carlo.”
“I see.”
“To tell you the truth, Lilly works for an escort service. Sometimes she invites me along.” She was sailing now, talkative and a little juiced from the champagne and beer, the words tripping out one on top of the other.
“So Lilly’s a prostitute?”
“Kind of, I suppose. She doesn’t sleep with all of her dates. Sometimes they just want to hang out with her.” She scanned the room, searching for the bartender. “If she thinks it’ll be a good time, she gives me a call. But I don’t sleep with people for money. Well, okay, once I did, one time, about two months ago. This icky little Japanese geek.” She waved at the man behind the bar, and he started toward her. “Is that something you could, you know, bless me for?”
“Bless you?”
The bartender arrived, and Rachel asked for another beer. Joel wondered if she expected him to pay, wondered if that’s why she’d checked with him before ordering.
“Can’t you do that? You’re a preacher, right? Isn’t that what you do?”
“You mean forgive you?”
“That’s it. Exactly. I’m sorry—I’ve been drinking. That’s probably bad, too, askin’ you to help when I’m close to hammered.”
“You can ask for yourself. You don’t need my intervention. Ask the Lord, and you’ll be fine. I’ll certainly say a prayer for you, though. I’d be honored to.”
“I wish you would. That’d be so sweet.” Rachel seemed touched. She blinked several times and bit her lip, then the sentiment appeared to pass and she was composed again. “I’m just bouncing around out here,” she said. “I wanted to dance in the shows, but I’m not good enough. Half the time I’m just going through the motions.” She shrugged, swallowed two gulps of beer.
“I suspect you have a great deal of talent and promise. Read your Bible again. Stop by a church. Try prayer—ask the Lord what He would have you do.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She reached out and rested her hand flat against Joel’s knee. She left it there, and he wasn’t sure what to think. He twisted away toward the bar, toward his coffee, and she folded her hands in her lap.
“It was a pleasure meeting you. I’m going to catch a cab to my hotel.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’m flattered, but no. Thanks just the same.”
“What’s the best part of preaching, Joel?” she asked abruptly.
“The best part?”
“Yeah.” She crossed her legs.
“Leading people to Christ.”
“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s all?”
“That’s more than enough.”
“I mean for you, what do you get into—like golf or collectin’ butterflies or sports or traveling or reading. Or the bad stuff—sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Understand what I’m askin’? You can’t only be your job.”
“Honestly, Rachel, nothing wicked really interests me. I’m blessed like that in a sense; I don’t have any desire to chase women or use drugs or stay out all night carousing.”
“That’s hard to believe,” she said.
“Although I have to confess that earlier tonight I wished for a little temptation, just to snap me out of the doldrums.”
“Huh.” The bartender arrived with a second beer and Rachel paid him for it, took several dolla
rs out of a small purse. She didn’t seem to expect Joel to satisfy the tab. “But there has to be something you like doing, an event or, I don’t know, a moment you enjoy outside of bein’ a preacher all the time.”
Joel thought about her question. “Once a month, our church has a breakfast to raise money for our various ministries. The doors open at six, and folks are there at five to prepare the meal. I used to get to the fellowship hall about five-thirty, and my friend William Turner would fix a tenderloin plate for me—a nice piece of meat, gravy, fried apples, toast and an egg. I’d sit by myself in the kitchen with my food, and all around me my church— these fine men and women—were toiling and cooking and on the cusp of this remarkable feat. It was like being on the brink of pure goodness.” He stopped talking. A man at a roulette table won his bet and hollered, “Hell, yeah!” Joel looked at Rachel. “I miss that so much,” he said wistfully.
“Wow,” Rachel said. “I can tell it really got to you.” She made a quirky noise, part sough and part grunt. “So how come you don’t go anymore? For the tenderloin breakfast with your church buddies?”
Joel suddenly felt like the worst kind of fraud. “Ah, well, you see, I’m not at the church now. I’m not the pastor there. In fact, I had to leave.”
“Had to leave?”
“Yes.”
“How come?”
“It’s a convoluted story, and one I don’t relish recounting.” He forced a rueful smile. “Suffice it to say . . .” He paused, watched an old woman in a motorized wheelchair feeding coins into a slot machine. “Suffice it to say I had a problem with a temptation that doesn’t even tempt me. How about that?”
“What?” Rachel scrunched her face, and the casino light hit a spot without makeup. “I’m not following you. What temptation are you talking about?” She struggled to stay perched on her bar stool.
“I guess you could say I suffered from Saint Augustine’s curse.”
Rachel scrambled off her seat so quickly that Joel thought she was going to chase after someone in the casino, thought she’d just spotted an old friend or seen Edmund and Sa’ad leaving her behind. She staggered for an instant when she first stood, then clapped her hands. “Damn. I know about him. I wrote a paper about him for my religion class at the community college. He got his maid pregnant.” She looked at Joel, and her eyes cleared for a moment. “I always wondered how he could be a saint with an illegitimate baby on his record.”
