Texas Hold'em

by Wild Cards Trust

  Entirely too many for Robin’s taste, it seemed. No matter his thoughts on the subject.

  The steak smelled divine, looked better. Fragrant juices oozed, and the grill-seared fat crackled as Jerry Jeff cut in.

  “Are you sure you don’t want nothin’ steak-like?”

  “I’m sure,” Robin lied, and sipped the cheapest glass of wine on the menu. “It’s been a long, long day.” True. “And I don’t think a steak would do me any good.” Manifestly, disgustingly, obscenely false, so false his stomach wanted to climb his spinal column to throttle his brain. But he gnawed his $20 chicken Caesar salad, and did his best not to eye Jerry Jeff’s rib eye ($55), and to contain his appetite for mashed potatoes ($18), grilled asparagus ($16), and sautéed wild mushrooms ($don’t ask).

  “It’s just that I’m feelin’ right uncharitable, you treatin’ me like this and then eatin’ so much less. If it’s about money—”

  “No, no, no,” yes yes. “Not about money at all, we’re doing fine. Just like I said. No appetite. Been a bit worn out recently.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Jerry Jeff raised his glass of wine ($16) and touched the lip of Robin’s ($7). The crystal rang. “To rest and recovery, once this whole bit is done for you. Glad those young’uns took to the barbecue, though. I figure it’s not like anything they ever tasted before.”

  “You can get a lot of things in New York,” Robin said. “But they did seem to like it.” Jerry Jeff had ordered the barbecue—the cooks and clerk recognized him, cheered, snapped selfies—and he paid, too, waving off Robin’s protests that the school would reimburse him, that he’d feel much more comfortable if Jerry Jeff wouldn’t—

  But Jerry Jeff did. He dropped a hundred on the counter, keep the change. The kids inhaled the barbecue; Ghost went back for thirds. Even Antonia seemed to like it, though her expression as she ate was one of grudging acceptance, rather than anything Robin would describe as “pleasure.”

  (There had to be something wrong. At school, she was intense, driven, quiet, but never this bad. Could she have trouble at home? Her mom was a paralegal, her dad the junior partner in a flower shop, they came to every teacher’s meeting and were the kind of in love that made some people uncomfortable to be around—if family was the root of her problem, it must have been sudden. More likely something had come between her and the other kids. But there were four chaperones, not counting Jan, and none of them had seen anything.…)

  Jerry Jeff, he realized, was talking, and had been for a while. “I’m so sorry. I was a million miles away.”

  “Shucks, it ain’t nothing you need trouble yourself with. I was just, in my old rambling sort of way, working round to asking you for, you know, what your day was like, tellin’ me a little about your life like it is now. I don’t mind all this jee-jawing over what we’ve done that’s past, the teevee shows and tricks, and I’ll spin a yarn as easy as the next cowpoke, but I want to hear about the secret life of Robin Ruttiger.”

  His eyes were small black sharp points, and Robin told himself later that he hadn’t shifted in his chair, hadn’t played with his fork or touched his temples or looked up and to the right. “There’s not much to tell, Jerry Jeff. Really there’s not.” A dirty apartment, a bad salary, a job I love except when I’m sucking at it, like I feel I am now. “I’m sure your life is a lot more exciting: career, kids, fame, fortune, and glory. You were all about that back on the show. You wanted to be Wild Bill of the new millennium, and now you are. What’s Taylor Swift like in person? Any new movies in the pipe?”

  Jerry Jeff leaned back in his chair. His hat brim dipped across his eyes. Mustaches twitched. They only looked prehensile—Jerry Jeff’s card didn’t turn that way. He stabbed a piece of steak, passed it between his thin lips, and chewed.

  Great idea, Robin. Deflect every attempt your friend’s making to express interest, throw his questions back in his face, and when all else fails dive into the kind of crap Entertainment Weekly interview questions the pop culture reporters spear him with whenever a new album drops.

  “Actually,” Robin said, knowing as he spoke that this was a bad idea, but not having a good idea to hand, “there is this one thing going on right now that might interest you.”

  Jerry Jeff’s eyes emerged from the shelter of his hat.

  Robin had started making this mistake—he might as well finish it.

  “I’m hunting a ghost.”

  Bubbles and the Band Trip

  Part 7

  WHEN MICHELLE, WALLY, SHARON, and the Mob returned to the Gunter full of barbecue, there was a buzz in the air. Over by the elevators stood the Modesto Melody Makers in a circle, most of them crying. Some of the kids from the other bands were scattered around the lobby, whispering to one another.

  LoriAnne immediately rushed over to Michelle and the Mob and said breathlessly, “Mindy-Lou Gutiérrez is missing!”

  The Mob started peppering her with questions all at once.

  “Oh, this is something bad, you betcha!” Wally exclaimed. Sharon whistled in agreement. The kids all looked stricken.

  Dr. Smith came over to join them. She took Michelle by the arm and dragged her away from the group. “Mindy-Lou Gutiérrez has gone missing!” she said. “It’s horrible. We’ve never lost a student before!”

  “I heard. When was the last time anyone saw her?”

  Dr. Smith ran her hand through her hair nervously then tugged at the bottom of her gray suit jacket. “This afternoon, at her set. Some of the other girls said they saw her talking to a boy afterwards. An older boy, not one of the band members. Jillian said he was one of the bartenders from the mixer.”

  Michelle groaned inwardly. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew where this was going. “Who saw her last?”

  “Bacho. He’s the bass player for the Lubbock band. Is there any way you can help find her? Maybe contact the Committee? With all their powers…”

  Michelle put her hands on her hips. She was thinner than normal today, having decided that walking around with bubbling weight might seem like she was spoiling for a fight. Which, in all fairness, she was. But defusing the Purity Baptist Church situation by looking less threatening seemed like a good idea. It also allowed her to wear her Levi’s and a nice sea-green cashmere T-shirt that matched her eyes. She had her long, platinum-colored hair in a fishtail braid.

  “This really isn’t a Committee kind of thing,” Michelle replied. “The United Nations doesn’t usually deal with missing persons. Let me talk to Bacho. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Dr. Smith went to fetch Bacho and led him back to Michelle. The boy had long dark hair and a sand-colored complexion. He seemed very poised for his age.

  “Hey, there.” Michelle held out her hand. He took it and gave it a quick shake. His hand was dry and warm. “I’m Michelle.”

  “I’m Bacho. And I know who you are. We all do.”

  “I heard you were the last person to see Mindy-Lou.”

  “Yeah. We were about to go on for our set, and the Modesto kids were coming off. She was talking with that bartender.”

  “The pretty boy?”

  “Yeah, guess so. He was chatting her up and she seemed to like it. I remembered him from the mixer. He seemed a little dumb. How complicated is a three-drink order when two of them are Cokes?”

  Billy Rainbow, Michelle thought. “Thanks, Bacho, that was a big help.”

  “It’s cool,” he replied. “Mindy-Lou is a great musician. And, well, I hope nothing serious has happened to her.”

  “Me too.” After he had gone, Michelle turned back to Dr. Smith. “Sounds like she ran off with that bartender. She’s probably infatuated with him, but he’s definitely too old for her. Kids can be so dumb sometimes. I swear, they’re walking hormones.”

  “Should we call the police?” Dr. Smith asked. “Her bandmates are worried sick, and her parents have been calling.…”

  “She hasn’t been gone long enough for the police to get involved,” Michelle said. “Her parents
could hire someone, though. A skip tracer or private detective should be able to find them quickly.”

  Dr. Smith looked relieved. “I’ll tell them.”

  When Michelle got off the elevator, she could hear the Mob playing. But they weren’t playing jazz. They were doing a cover of “Gimme Shelter.” Marissa and Adesina were on vocals. The music was also loud. Like call-the-cops loud.

  The music was coming from the girls’ room. She knocked on the door. Nothing. She knocked again, louder this time. “Don’t make me bubble my way through this door!” she said as she pounded on the door.

  The music stopped abruptly. There was frantic whispering, and then Marissa opened the door. The band was spread out. Some were sitting on the beds, some stood leaning against the wall. Adesina and Asti sat on their amps.

  “Ms. Pond,” Marissa said. “We, er…”

  “Hi, Mom,” Adesina said with only a hint of guilt. “What’s up? I mean, what’s going on with the whole stink bomb thing?”

  Michelle narrowed her eyes. She put her hands on her hips. “You do know you could get into all sorts of trouble for playing that loud in here. Right?”

  Asti, Sean, and Antonia got hangdog expressions on their faces. The rest of the band seemed equally chagrined.

  “We just thought, since we were in here,” Adesina began. “And nothing was going on…”

  Michelle glared at her daughter. This new incarnation of Adesina was embracing stupid teenage shit at an alarming rate.

  “Where’s Rusty and Robin?” Michelle asked. Not only were the kids being morons, but now her other chaperones were AWOL.

  “Wally told us not to leave our rooms. He took Ghost to get ice cream. And Mr. Ruttiger said he was going downstairs to meet up with Mr. Longwood. He also told us not to leave our rooms. And Miss Beecher told us to stay here, and she went to look for you.”

  Michelle cocked her head to one side. “And why are you all in one room?”

  “Well, technically, we haven’t left our rooms, we’ve just consolidated,” Peter said. Then he looked mortified.

  “I think you should all get to your own rooms and stay there. No consolidation!”

  The Secret Life of Rubberband

  Part 6

  “I’M NOT PAYING MORE for the extra help,” Jan said when Robin arrived at the Gunter with Jerry Jeff in tow. Or, more to the point, when Jerry Jeff arrived with Robin in tow. Having opened his mouth in the first place, Robin spent the rest of dinner and dessert—ricotta cheesecake with graham cracker crumble crust ($13)—trying to convince Jerry Jeff that no, he really did not want to join in Jan’s madcap, destructive, and definitely illegal hunt for the ghost (or, depending on your theological position, demon) of the Gunter Hotel. Jerry Jeff couldn’t afford to get his name mixed up in a lawsuit. Jerry Jeff was a public figure, and Robin would so much rather not end up in a paparazzi photo captioned Ex-Star Goes Ghost Hunting.

  Jerry Jeff’s response was to grin more. And the grin just got wider after Robin paid the check (all of Jan’s first half in advance, plus fifty he had to borrow from Jerry Jeff, with promises of repayment when they reached the hotel), and led the way. By the time they found Jan, Jerry Jeff could have given the ghost (or demon) a run for its grin money, in breadth at least if not in malice.

  “I ain’t in this for compensation.” He took Jan’s hand and, without pause or warning, bent low and kissed the knuckles of her glove. She glared at him over her glasses. “Robin described the general outline of your predicament—y’all can find the varmint, and grab it, but you need to hold it once you have. You need a rope hand.”

  The blue lights of Jan’s eyes vanished and returned as she blinked. “I never thought about it that way.”

  Jerry Jeff patted the rope at his belt. “Old Delilah’s never yet let anything slip her loop, not so long as I hold her end.”

  Jan turned from Jerry Jeff to Robin, to Jerry Jeff, to Robin again. Robin hadn’t seen Jan this flummoxed since someone suggested to her that the Franz Ferdinand assassination had been the work of an isolated anarchist cell, rather than a conspiracy between the Freemasons and the Bavarian illuminati.

  “Whatever,” she said once she solved the halting problem. “Follow me.”

  She led them through the lobby. The smell of chlorine grew fiercer as they neared the pool. “The ghost hasn’t manifested for the last four hours—but I felt a buzz twenty minutes back, when I texted you. When the buzz started, it was faint, and everywhere, but it’s been concentrating over time, shifting around, trying to avoid me: I’d chase the concentration to one part of the hotel, but it would disperse and re-form somewhere else. So I just read the news”—she raised her folded National Enquirer—“and let it gather, which it’s been doing, in the pool. If we’re lucky, we might be able to catch it in the act of—”

  Robin heard a spectral snicker, followed by a boy’s scream.

  He ran. The others followed seconds later.

  Robin slammed through the door into the pool, and saw Asti dangling by the ghost’s grip on his ankle over the deep end. The ghost rode the crest of a wave circling the pool, in contravention of all laws of physics anyone had ever explained to Robin, while swimmers scrambled for the sides.

  The ghost saw Robin and Jan, and cackled so hard it bent double.

  Then it threw Asti at them.

  Asti screamed, tumbling heels over head through the air. If no one caught him, he’d break against the wall.

  Robin thrust his hands out as far as they’d go, clutching light fixtures, and spread his chest wide and flat. His shirt and pants tore. His skin strained.

  Asti hit Robin hard, and Robin’s chest folded around him like a blanket. Robin gasped and gagged for air. The stomach he no longer had did a backflip. But Asti was safe. Robin let the light fixtures go and snapped back into a tangled heap on the floor around the kid, waiting for his body to sort itself out, too weak to move.

  The few swimmers remaining had emptied the pool. The ghost gamboled atop its standing wave, and thrust out one spindly three-fingered hand. A whip of water cut across the pool deck, scattering lawn chairs and purses. It howled with joy, and lashed the deck once more.

  Jan stepped over the stretched tangle of Robin’s arms, removed her glove, and stuck her electrified hand in the pool.

  A sharp pop cut through cries and laughter. Swimming pool lightbulbs burst. The ghost juddered like a lightning-struck cartoon character, sharp teeth gnashing around its long red tongue. Its scream shivered the jelly beneath Robin’s skin, a sound so high-pitched and furious it was barely sound at all.

  Jan slumped.

  The ghost, shaking, leapt free of the wave, and bounced off a wall. It landed on a running student, sprawling her flat, then jumped from her onto a tall boy’s shoulders, pulling his hair. He screamed, slipped, and the ghost sprang free as he fell—

  Only for a golden loop to settle around its shoulders and pull tight.

  Jerry Jeff whooped. The ghost hit the ground hard, arms bound to its sides. It twisted and spit. Clawed feet found purchase on tile, and it forced itself upright. Jerry Jeff tugged the lasso, but the ghost crouched low and began to run. Jerry Jeff slipped on wet tiles, and the ghost, bound, pulled him into and across the pool, sputtering, hollering, but still holding fast to the lasso.

  Robin, by this point, had recovered. Clothes hung from him like ribbons, but he wore elastic underwear in case of just such an emergency. Asti lay groaning on the tile, but fine. Robin staggered over to Jan. “Are you—”

  “I’m okay! Go after that thing!”

  The ghost burst into the gym, dragging a sprawled, soaked Jerry Jeff behind it. Robin followed, just in time to duck a thrown dumbbell as he ran through the door. The ghost kicked more weights his way; he dodged one, but the next bounced off his chest, and he fell over.

  As Robin found his feet, screams and motion drew his eye to the corner of the gym: a red-haired boy, upright, adjusting his shirt, glancing around in confusion as if he had no clue how
he’d arrived in this weight room, surely not in the company of a red-faced blond nat, who was, for her part, trying very hard to look as if she were not hitching up her bra. At least they’re not mine, Robin thought. He made a mental note to check in with some of the other chaperones about appropriate behavior on school trips, after he hunted down this ghost.

  The ghost darted between the bars of a squat rack, dragging the rope through a narrow gap in the metal. Jerry Jeff, dragged like a water-skier, swept his feet around to brace himself against the rack. The lasso went taut and the ghost snapped short, snarling. The squat rack scraped against the floor. Jerry Jeff tugged back, and the ghost flailed.

  Robin ran toward it. “Give it more slack, Jerry Jeff!”

  “I do and it’ll just scramble away!”

  “Trust me!”

  “Gol-durn varmint!” Robin wasn’t sure whether Jerry Jeff was talking to him or to the ghost, but he let out more rope—and before the ghost could take advantage, Robin stretched his arms to loop the slack around the ghost’s ankles. The ghost landed on its side, hard, and fought to its feet again, but Robin pushed it over and rolled it back toward the squat rack, wrapping layer after layer of rope around the spectral form until only its wicked broad mouth was free.

  Then, because Robin was worried about the fangs, he stuffed some rope in the mouth, too. The ghost kicked and hissed; they squeezed it through the squat rack, while Jerry Jeff held tight to his end of the lasso to keep the ghost bound.

  They had taken care of everything when Jan burst through the door and rolled to her feet, forefinger pointed before her like a gun, blue light sparking about her nail. “Take cover!”

  Dripping, spark-scorched, smoking, they limped upstairs to Jan’s niece’s room. The ghost writhed between them, wrapped in Jerry Jeff’s lasso and Robin’s arms. Jan knocked; no answer. Jan knocked more; whispers from beyond the door.

  When Jan started kicking, the door opened to reveal a teenager in curlers and unicorn pajamas. Before the girl could say anything, Jan brushed past. “Vicky! We’ve caught your ghost.”