Ashley shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “If someone asks you for help, kill him. If someone responds to your call for help, he’s also fair game. Act like you are going to help, or that you need help, and then take. Take his money, take everything. In the world of gambling, that’s common sense.”
As he completed the shuffle, he looked at Balot with eyes that seemed almost kind.
“Here, you can’t trust anyone. You can’t even trust yourself. You understand, don’t you? And if you want proof, who do you think is going to save you here?”
Suddenly, within Balot, an unfamiliar enmity sprouted to life. With no outlet for that new feeling, the girl remained motionless as the cards were stacked on the table.
“Here, we can lawfully steal from others. I have to wonder why you’ve come so blithely to such a place as this.”
Finished with the shuffle, Ashley tidied up the stack of cards, then stood with his hands folded together.
He towered before her, all traces of a smile wiped from his stern countenance.
“Has your throat always been like that? Or did somebody take your voice from you? When you’d been hitchhiking, perhaps?”
The instant his words pierced Balot’s ears, her entire body became a ball of enmity.
He knows something, doesn’t he? How I was killed. Why I was killed. How I was disposed of, like a thing forbidden happiness and free will.
Her hair stood on end. Her body blazed. The enmity spread like a poison through her body down to every strand of hair. It welled up deep inside her, relentless.
–Balot, calm yourself. You don’t know what he’s planning. Don’t be careless.
Oeufcoque already knew what she was moments away from doing.
–Please, believe me.
–I believe you.
Balot clenched her fists so that Ashley could clearly see them. Hard. So Oeufcoque would feel it. And with all her heart, she said,
–So please, believe in me.
Oeufcoque was silent.
–He’s testing me.
In that moment, Balot felt everything become crystal clear. The meaning behind Ashley’s questions, why she had chosen this game, and the source of her impatience.
–He’s testing you?
–Yes. He’s testing to see if I’m playing the game.
Ashley smiled and said, “Is this hard for you? Would you like to move to a different table? Or do you just want to leave and climb back into your motel bed? Take a limousine like the one you came in? Too bad. You’ve come this far. You can’t go back now. Understand?”
Balot slowly opened her fists.
–I understand.
As she spoke, she pushed Oeufcoque into her right glove.
Oeufcoque didn’t even have time to say anything. She moved her hands behind her neck and undid the hook connecting her two gloves. The cloth gently slipped from the base of her neck. With her right hand, she gently slid off her left glove.
Just like her clients used to demand. So she could be seen.
Her skin, like a boiled egg with the shell peeled off, was laid bare. She removed her right glove and neatly laid them onto the table. She crossed her naked arms, resting them on top of her gloves.
Her bare skin keenly sensed the table. It was cold against her flesh.
To the girl, it was the feeling of her cool, sharpened heart, resolved either to live or to die.
Balot leveled her cold stare at the dealer.
–Do I look that easy to kill?
Ashley Harvest didn’t respond. He only gave one slow nod. Not in answer to her question, but as if seeing her face for the first time.
04
“It looks like I have a formidable opponent.”
Ashley watched Balot as she stacked her chips with her bare hands.
With her bare right hand. Her left arm was atop her gloves, which she had spread flat like a tablecloth. The fingers of her left hand were soothingly caressing the gloves.
“If we performed a full search of your body, we might not find anything. There may not be anything there. But that’s fine. You took off your gloves of your own volition. Neither the casino nor I forced you to. We’re clear on that, right?”
Like a gunslinger in an old pulp Western confirming the rules before the duel, Balot nodded, holding her eyes steady on his face.
“I say you’re a formidable opponent because you don’t run and you don’t hide.”
Ashley’s hand flicked at the card shoe.
The cards came. The dealer’s upcard, an ace. Balot had a 7-6.
Balot thought to hit, and the numbers on her gloves agreed.
She got a 2. Again the gloves said to hit, and she had no objection.
She hit. Another 2 card came, and she stayed. Ashley’s hole card was a 6, making seventeen. A push. The cards were wiped, and beneath Balot’s arm, her true count updated. Even when cast aside, Oeufcoque wasn’t the type to neglect his duties—not as long as his duties coincided with his own wishes.
The cards came. Ashley’s upcard, a queen. Balot had a J-3.
Balot hit and added a 4 to her hand. This was a crucial moment. Within the relentless flow of the game, Balot’s senses clung to her cards like the cover on a book.
She hit again and got a 3. Twenty. Stay.
Ashley revealed his hole card, a 4. With the queen, fourteen.
He drew a 2 and then a 5. Twenty-one.
Like a hound points its nose, Balot directed her senses at Ashley’s rough hands as they moved the cards and chips from play. Even after her somewhat reckless hit, she still lost by a thin margin. But something had changed. She sensed the slightest of movement in the iron wall that was Ashley.
As Balot stacked her chips with her right hand, she snarced Oeufcoque with her left.
–Oeufcoque, can you hear me?
–Oh, I guess I can still receive transmissions from you.
An unusually sarcastic reply from Oeufcoque. That was how much of an effect being pulled from Balot’s arm had had on him. As the cards came, Balot grinned with amusement as she stroked the gloves and snarced.
–I have a favor to ask of you. Okay?
The right glove—the one she’d pushed Oeufcoque into—was directly under the shadow of her left arm.
–If it’s something I can do.
–It’s something only you can do.
She wasn’t saying it just to mollify him—it was the truth. With her right hand, she signaled a hit.
Oeufcoque’s reply was earnest.
–What should I do?
As she looked at her new card, she considered it.
What should we do? She had only a vague idea.
–I want to add my senses to the numerical display.
Ashley’s upcard was a king, and Balot had an 8-5-2. Oeufcoque’s statistical analysis suggested a stay. But something tugged at the girl’s senses.
–I want to know something besides the numbers. I want you to add it in.
–Besides true count? You don’t mean withholding certain cards from the calculations?
–No, I think that’s too narrow.
Balot hit and drew a 5. Then she stayed.
Ashley flipped his hole card. A 6. With the king, sixteen.
He drew and slapped down a 4. Twenty.
“We have a push.”
As the dealer collected the cards, Balot thought she sensed a slight change in his expression. Perhaps a momentary thought toward vigilance after her last hit turned his twenty-one into a tie.