Nassau, 1983
GAMBLING, MILES REFLECTED, was like surfing and sex. It completely wiped out everything else. That was its charm.
He and Billy had become more and more besotted with gambling lately. They had had a few lucky nights, left the Paradise Beach Hotel riding high with several hundred dollars in their pockets, and felt they couldn’t go wrong.
They could.
Within the space of a week they owed, between them, nearly a thousand dollars. Desperate, they had gone to the manager, begged for time to pay.
‘You boys have been coming here long enough to know better. I want that marker paid back in forty-eight hours.’
‘We will.’
‘Will your dad give you any money?’ asked Miles as they walked disconsolately over the bridge towards the Old Town.
‘Nope. I wouldn’t dare ask him in any case. I’m in enough trouble as it is. What about your grandma?’
‘Not a chance. She doesn’t have any.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You could sell your watch.’
‘I could. But I’m not going to.’
‘You might have to.’
‘Billy, I’m not going to. I told you.’
‘Miles, you don’t seem to understand. We’re up against it. This is real life, not a rehearsal. We could be in dead trouble. And I mean dead.’
‘Oh, don’t be melodramatic.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake Miles, grow up.’
Miles looked at his friend sharply. His face was drawn and pale in the harsh light of the street lamps.
‘You’re really worried aren’t you?’
‘Well of course I damn well am. You should be too.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realize.’
Miles sold his watch.
It made just enough to pay off their debt and leave them a hundred dollars to take to the roulette table.
They put fifty dollars on the twenty-one black. Just for the hell of it. The wheel spun. Twenty-two.
‘Nearly,’ said Billy. ‘Let’s try again. Twenty-five dollars.’
The wheel spun again. Endlessly. Twenty-two again.
‘OK,’ said Miles. ‘Third time lucky. Twenty-five dollars on twenty-two black.’
The wheel spun. Time froze. Miles stood, motionless, concentrating totally. He could not have told anyone even his own name. Go on, you fucker, stop. Twenty-two. Twenty-two. Twenty-two.
The wheel stopped. Twenty-two black.
‘Jesus,’ said Billy. ‘We did it. What’s that?’
‘Odds are twenty to one,’ said Miles, ‘that’s five hundrd dollars.’
‘Great,’ said Billy, ‘you got half your watch back. Let’s go.’
‘No,’ said Miles. ‘Not yet. Let’s stay a bit.’
‘Miles,’ said Billy; ‘don’t. You can’t go on winning.’
‘Why not? We went on losing. I’ll be careful.’
A blonde in a black dress opposite, all hair and eyes and breasts, heard him and laughed.
‘I’ll pace you. What are you betting?’
‘A hundred dollars.’
‘Wow. On what?’
‘Twenty-two black.’
‘You just got that.’
‘I know.’
‘All right.’
She pushed a pile of chips on to the twenty-two black. The wheel spun. Billy looked away.
‘Hey,’ he heard the girl’s voice, gritty, delighted. ‘You did it. Twenty-two black. I won two thousand dollars.’
‘Yeah,’ said Miles. ‘We both did.’
He felt tense, high, heady. Just like sex.
‘Yeah. Again.’
Hauling the will together. Could you? Again? Pushing yourself. You could. Feeling the power, the thudding heart, the pounding, soaring blood. Just like sex.
‘What this time?’
‘The same.’
‘Can’t be.’
‘It will.’
It wasn’t. Miles lost five hundred dollars. Billy pulled at his arm. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
The girl looked at him, winked at Miles.
‘Him or me?’
Miles looked at her and smiled his wonderful, radiant, self-mocking smile. ‘Him. Come on, Billy. I’m with you.’
She looked amused. ‘OK. He wins. Will you be here tomorrow?’
‘I guess so.’
The next night Miles won five hundred dollars and the next five thousand. The girl was there. She was sexually aroused by the game. So was Miles. Billy stood back from the tables, horribly afraid. Afterwards he went home alone, and Miles took the girl down to the beach and made love to her three, four times, reliving the tension, the fear, the spins on the wheel, the absolute will to win, the heady power of the numbers.
The next night, he lost three thousand dollars. The girl left him sitting at the table. The next night he won ten thousand. The girl took him back to her hotel. He still didn’t even know her name.
And the next night he lost five thousand dollars, and the next five thousand, and finally he was left with a marker for four thousand to pay back in a week.
He walked home alone, shakily sobered. He woke Billy up. Billy gave him coffee, counsel, comfort. But he didn’t have four thousand dollars.
‘Jesus,’ Billy said. ‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about the girl? She had money.’
‘She was a shill – a gambling whore. She had no money. It came from her pimp. He’s in at the casino.’
‘Ah. Didn’t you realize that?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Miles, you’re mad.’
‘I know.’
‘They’ll get very nasty.’
‘I know.’
‘Is there anyone with that kind of money? Who’d give it to you?’
‘I don’t think so. No. Oh, I don’t know.’
‘What about the old guy who put you through college?’
‘I couldn’t ask him. I’d rather get beaten up.’
‘You’ll get worse than beaten up,’ said Billy with conviction.
‘Oh. Well anyway, I still would. I could ask my uncle, but I don’t think there’s anything left. Or – yeah, that’s it. The house.’
‘What house?’
‘The one in Malibu.’
‘It’s your grandmother’s.’
‘I know. But it ought to be mine. I could borrow against it.’
‘Do you have the deeds?’
‘No, but they must be in the house somewhere.’
‘Miles, you really are something,’ said Billy, in tones of great admiration.
Next day, when Mrs Kelly was taking her afternoon nap on the veranda, Miles let himself silently into her room. She slept soundly these days; she was old and weary, and she had several glasses of madeira with her lunch.
In a box under her bed, he found what he wanted: the deeds of the house. Wrinkled documents, in a tatty envelope. He took them out and looked at them, and smiled; then he went straight down to the bank.
‘These are not in your name, Mr Wilburn.’
‘I know. They’re my grandmother’s.’
‘I can’t let you have any money on these without her signature. We need a transfer deed in the first place. Making the property over to you. Signed by you both, with witnesses. And even then I have to draw up a Legal Charge.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a document saying you’ve borrowed the money, and which we hold until it’s repaid. I have to put a time limit on that of course. Perfectly simple; no problem in any of this. But like I say, first we need your grandmother’s signature on the transfer deed – witnessed.’
‘But she’s – well she’s very old. She’s almost senile.’
‘Doesn’t alter matters.’
‘What would?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Uh-huh. Well thanks anyway. I’ll be back.’
‘Granny Kelly, would you sign this for me?’
‘What’s that, Miles?’
‘Oh, just a form, saying I’m over twenty-one. I’ve applied for a job at the casino.’
‘The casino! What kind of a job is that?’
‘Better than no job. You’ve been trying to get me to work for years. You’ve finally succeeded. You should be pleased. Please sign it. Oh, and we have to get Little Ed and Larissa to witness it.’
‘Miles, this is just ridiculous. Just for a job. Are you sure this is right?’
‘Granny, the world’s changed a bit lately. You don’t realize.’
‘Maybe not. Oh, all right. Providing you go check on those hens and collect the eggs. I don’t trust Little Ed one bit. I know he’s taking them.’
‘You can’t trust anyone these days, Granny.’
‘Right, young man, here you are. A draft for four thousand dollars. To be repaid in three years. OK?’ The bank manager was avuncular, smiling. ‘That’s a lot of money. Don’t you go off with that to the casino now.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
He paid the debt, stayed away from the casino, stayed away from the women in the hotels. He concentrated on his job on the tennis courts. But he was unhappy, lonely. Billy’s father had finally put his foot down, and was sending him off to work in a bank in Washington.
Billy seemed quite happy about it. ‘I could quite do with a bit of respectability. Don’t you ever want it?’
‘Want what?’
‘Well, you know, kind of normality. A job. Salary. A regular life.’
‘Billy! Do you?’
‘Yeah.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Yeah, suddenly I do. I really don’t mind being shipped off to Washington. I’m looking forward to it. Except I’ll miss you.’
‘Billy,’ said Miles, smiling at his friend, ‘you’re out to lunch.’
But when Billy had gone, he did wonder if a regular life might not have its charms.
He felt lonely, suddenly abandoned. Granny Kelly was increasingly senile and confused. Half the time she didn’t seem to know where she was. She would ask him if he’d been down to the beach, or tell him she’d like a drive up to the Hills. He humoured her gently, because he loved her, but it didn’t help him any. For the first time for years he mourned his mother. He was almost afraid; he had no one in the world to turn to. Marcia Galbraith was as senile as his grandmother, more so if anything. Of course there was his uncle, but Bill Wilburn never contacted them again after the drugs case. Well, he hadn’t liked him much anyway.
He felt he would even have welcomed Hugo Dashwood, that he would meet him more than halfway. Funny, the old guy had so completely dropped out of his life. It showed he hadn’t really cared, that he actually was a twenty-two carat, one hundred per cent creep. Odd that it hurt a bit, suddenly. That Dashwood had so absolutely lost interest in him. Creep he might be, but he was someone Miles could claim as at least a bit of his own, of his past. It might even, possibly, be worth contacting him. Not because he wanted to see him exactly, just to feel there was somebody somewhere in the world who he had some kind of a claim on.
Only he couldn’t because he didn’t have the faintest idea where he might be.
In Marcia Galbraith’s desk was a small bundle of letters all addressed to her friend, Dorothy Kelly. She took care that Dorothy never saw her letters; you never knew, someone might try to tempt her back to California, or Ohio, and away from Nassau and Marcia. And besides, she needed looking after, now that her mind was going, and she and Little Ed and Larissa were all so devoted to her, protecting her from reality. She didn’t want to be bothered with things like letters.
Among the bundle were two from Father Kennedy in Los Angeles, and one forwarded (via Los Angeles) from Hugo Dashwood in New York.