“Foolish,” I said.
Cully put the jacket gently down on his desk. Then he sat down and rocked back on his chair. “You know, I thought you were crazy for turning down his twenty grand. And I was really pissed off when you talked me out of taking mine. But it was maybe the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. I would have gambled it away, and then I would have felt like shit. But you know, after Jordan killed himself and I didn’t take that money, I got some pride. I don’t know how to explain it. But I felt I didn’t betray him. And you didn’t. And Diane didn’t. We were all strangers, and only the three of us cared something about Jordan. Not enough, I guess. Or it didn’t mean that much to him. But finally it meant something to me. Didn’t you feel that way?”
“No,” I said. “I just didn’t want his fucking money. I knew he was going to knock himself off.”
That startled Cully. “Bullshit you did. Merlyn the Magician. Fuck you.”
“Not consciously,” I said. “But way down underneath. I wasn’t surprised when you told me. Remember?”
“Yeah,” Cully said. “You didn’t even give a shit.”
I passed that one. “How about Diane?”
“She took it real hard,” Cully said. “She was in love with Jordan. You know I fucked her the day of the funeral. Weirdest fuck I ever had. She was crazy wild and crying and fucking. Scared the shit out of me.”
He sighed. “She spent the next couple of months getting drunk and crying on my shoulder. And then she met this square semi-millionaire, and now she’s a straight lady in Minnesota someplace.”
“So what are you going to do with the jacket?” I asked him.
Suddenly Cully was grinning. “I’m going to give it to Gronevelt. Come on, I want you to meet him anyway.” He got up out of his chair and grabbed the jacket and went out of the office. I followed him. We went down the corridor to another suite of offices. The secretary buzzed us in to Gronevelt’s huge private office.
Gronevelt rose from his chair. He looked older than I remembered him. He must be in his late seventies, I thought. He was immaculately dressed. His white hair made him look like a movie star in some character part. Cully introduced us.
Gronevelt shook my hand and then said quietly, “I read your book. Keep it up. You’ll be a big man someday. It’s very good.”
I was surprised. Gronevelt went way back in the gambling business, he had been a very bad guy at one time and he was still a feared man in Vegas. For some reason I never thought he was a man who read books. Another cliche shot.
I knew that Saturdays and Sundays were busy times for men like Gronevelt and Cully who ran big Vegas hotels like the Xanadu. They had customer friends from all over the United States who flew in for weekends of gambling and who had to be entertained in many diverse ways. So I thought I would just say hello to Gronevelt and beat it.
But Cully threw the bright red and blue Vegas Winner sports jacket on Gronevelt’s huge desk and said, “This is the last one. Merlyn finally gave it up.”
I noticed that Cully was grinning. The favorite nephew teasing the grouchy uncle he knew how to handle. And I noticed that Gronevelt played his role. The uncle who kidded around with his nephew who was the most trouble but in the long run the most talented and the most reliable. The nephew who would inherit.
Gronevelt rang the buzzer for his secretary, and when she came in, he said to her, “Bring me a big pair of scissors.” I wondered where the hell a secretary for the president of the Xanadu Hotel would get a big pair of scissors at 6 P.M. on a Saturday night. She was back with them in two minutes flat. Gronevelt took the scissors and started cutting my Vegas Winner sports jacket. He looked at my deadpan and said, “You don’t know how much I hated you three guys when you used to walk through my casino wearing these fucking jackets. Especially that night when Jordan won all the money.”
I watched him turn my jacket into a huge pile of jagged pieces on his desk, and then I realized he was waiting for me to answer him. “You really don’t mind winners, do you?” I said.
“It had nothing to do with winning money,” Gronevelt said. “It was so goddamn pathetic. Cully here wearing that jacket and a degenerate gambler in his heart. He still is and always will be. He’s in remission.”
Cully made a gesture of protest, said, “I’m a businessman,” but Gronevelt waved him off, and Cully fell silent, watching the cut patches of material on the desk.
“I can live with luck,” Gronevelt said. “But skill and cunning I can’t abide.”
Gronevelt was working on the cheap fake silk lining of the coat, scissoring it into tiny strips, but it was just to keep his hands busy while he was talking. He spoke directly to me.
“And you, Merlyn, you’re one of the worst fucking gamblers I have ever seen and I’ve been in the business over fifty years. You’re worse than a degenerate gambler. You’re a romantic gambler. You think you’re one of those characters like that Ferber novel where she has the asshole gambler for a hero. You gamble like an idiot. Sometimes you go with percentages, sometimes you go with hunches, another time you go with a system, then you switch to stabbing in thin air, or you’re zigging and zagging. Listen, you’re one of the few people in this world I would tell to give up gambling completely.” And then he put down his scissors and gave me a genuinely friendly smile. “But what the hell, it suits you.”
I was really a little hurt, and he had seen it. I thought myself a clever gambler, mixing logic with magic. Gronevelt seemed to read my mind. “Merlyn,” he said. “I like that name. It sort of suits you. From what I’ve read he wasn’t that great a magician, and neither are you.” He picked up the scissors and started cutting again. “But then why the hell did you pick that fight with that punk hit man?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t really pick a fight. But you know how it is. I was feeling lousy about leaving my family. Everything was going bad. I was just looking to take it out on somebody.”
“You picked the wrong guy,” Gronevelt said. “Cully saved your ass. With a little help from me.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I offered him the job, but he doesn’t want it,” Cully said.
That surprised me. Obviously Cully had talked it over with
Gronevelt before he offered me the job. And then suddenly I realized that Cully would have to tell Gronevelt all about me. And how the hotel would cover me if the Feds came looking.
“After I read your book, I thought we could use you as a PR man,” Gronevelt said. “A good writer like you.”
I didn’t want to tell him that they were two absolutely different things. “My wife wouldn’t leave New York, she has her family there,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
Gronevelt nodded. “The way you gamble maybe it’s better not living in Vegas. The next time you come into town let’s all have dinner together.” We took that for our dismissal and left.
Cully had a dinner date with some high rollers from California that he couldn’t break, so I was on my own. He had left a reservation for me for the hotel dinner show that night, so I went. It was the usual Vegas stuff with almost nude chorus girls, dancing acts, a star singer and some vaudeville turns. The only thing that impressed me was a trained bear act.
A beautiful woman came out on the stage with six huge bears, and she made them do all kinds of tricks. After each bear completed a trick, the woman kissed the bear on the mouth and the bear would immediately shamble back into his position at the end of the line. The bears were so furry they looked as completely asexual as toys. But why had the woman made the kiss one of her command signals? Bears didn’t kiss as far as I knew. And then I realized the kiss was for the audience, some sort of thrust at the onlookers. And then I wondered if the woman had done so consciously, as a mark of her contempt, a subtle insult. I had always hated the circus and refused to take my kids to see it. And so I never really liked animal acts. But this one fascinated me enough to watch it through to the end. Maybe one of the bears would pull a surprise.