At any rate, if Glenna Cole was among the few females present, she was wearing a hell of a disguise. Outside of the waitresses, these were women in their forties, wives, divorcees, maybe a mistress or two. Too much make-up. Expensive, ugly pants suits. A hell of a disguise.
The men were dressed more casually, country club casual, sports shirts, knit slacks, occasionally a sport coat, seldom a tie. This included the house dealers, who, unlike the waitresses, wore no specific uniform.
The house dealer at the draw poker table was a guy in his early twenties with short black hair, glasses, and a worried expression. He was the weakest dealer in the room, easy, and I started winning off him right away. Most of the dealers were making cheerful, if terse, conversation with the patrons, but this kid was tightlipped, bordering on sullen.
I was up a hundred and a half after less than an hour, and a guy across from me at the table (there were five of us in) was up maybe two hundred. He was a fat guy in a striped shirt with a string tie that had a little calf’s head choker; whether or not he’d dressed to suit the decor, or was just an asshole, I can’t say. I’d guess the latter.
We were up to aces or better to open, second time around. The ante was five bucks, so there was a hundred seventy-five bucks in the pot before any betting started. I opened with aces, betting ten bucks. Everybody stayed. I drew three cards, picked up another ace. Everybody drew three except the fat guy, who drew to either a four-card flush or four-card straight; whichever it was, he didn’t make it, and folded before the second round of betting could begin.
I threw another ten in and everybody dropped but the dealer. He raised me twenty-five, which was the limit. I raised him another twenty-five, and he swallowed, and called.
“Bullets,” I said, and showed him the aces, two red ones and a spade.
He swallowed again, and his cards tumbled out of his fingers and I caught a glimpse of a king, and he raked the cards back in.
“Three kings, huh,” I said. “A rough one.”
“I just had two,” the kid said defensively.
“Why the hell did you stay in, then? I had to have aces to open.” I didn’t mention that he’d raised me: why rub it in?
“I didn’t think you had them,” he said, and shuffled.
So he was calling me a liar. Big fucking deal. But I found myself wondering, back in the back of my head someplace, why a house dealer would be playing so stupid, and why a guy working for the house would be carrying desperation around in his watery eyes.’
Then again, my eyes were watery, too, and I wasn’t desperate. I was just reacting to the layer of smoke created by all the gamblers in the room whose penchant for games of chance extended to lung cancer roulette.
I stayed a few more hands, not wanting to leave the table at a point where doing so might cause a scene, and came away with three hundred and eighty-some bucks, and that didn’t include what I spent on the four or five Cokes I drank while at the table.
In spite of which, I was still thirsty, and I went over to the bar area, which was the least busy part of the room, except for the trio of waitresses hustling back and forth with trays of booze for the members at the gaming tables.
In fact, when I crawled up on a padded stool at the bar, I was alone. Except for the bartender, or rather barmaid, whose shapely back was to me at the moment, though I didn’t have much doubt the front would be just as nice. Another in the parade of beautiful female employees here at the Barn.
She was on the tall side, with shoulder-length dark blond hair, and she turned and gave me a wide, earthy smile and said, “What’s your pleasure?”
I laughed.
Now that wasn’t the most original line I ever heard, nor the wittiest, but I laughed.
It was a nervous laugh, a laugh to cover any of the surprise that might have shown through when I found out who she was.
For one thing, she had a name tag on her red sweater that said “Lucille,” meaning she was the pleasant voice on the telephone who had directed me here.
For another thing, she was Glenna Cole.
9
She didn’t recognize me.
At least I didn’t think she did. Nothing showed in her eyes, or anywhere else. Maybe I’d managed to watch her all that while back in Florida without her noticing, after all. Maybe my trick of shaving off the beard had worked. Maybe my efforts to complete my half-face tan had been worth the bother.
Or maybe she was just better than me. Maybe she could be surprised without registering it one iota. Maybe she could recognize somebody without having to cover with a silly nervous laugh. Maybe a lot of things.
Right now she was waiting.
And it took me a beat to remember what it was she was waiting for, which was the answer to the musical question, “What’s your pleasure?”
“Coke,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you’re the guy,” she said.
I managed not to do my famous nervous laugh this time.
“What guy?” I said.
“The guy who’s been ordering the straight Cokes all night long. Don’t you know that stuff’s not good for you?”
I’d said Coke only to be saying something. Simple reflex. Truth was, all that caffeine-loaded cola had helped make me feel jumpy, and left me with a lousy taste in my mouth as a bonus.
But it was an opening, a place to start a conversation, so I followed up.
“I suppose booze’d be better for me?”
“Sure. Ever see what a nail looks like when you leave it in Coke over night?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Eats the sucker up. Like acid.”
“You convinced me.”
“You’re swearing off Coke.”
“No. But I won’t go leaving nails in it.”
She laughed, just a little. Not a nervous one, either. Not covering up anything. I didn’t think.
“Somehow you don’t seem the type,” I said.
“Which type is that?”
“Bartender type.”
“Is that it? You don’t trust lady bartenders?”
“Can you make a gimlet?”
“Can I make a gimlet? Gin or vodka?”
“Gin. Make yourself something, too.”
She went away and made a gin gimlet for me and something for herself and I sat wondering how I could ever have failed to recognize that voice on the phone earlier today. Sometimes the full timbre of a voice is lost over the wires. On the phone hers had seemed pleasant, sultry, but that’s all. Here, now, in person, I was reminded of how haunting that baritone but in no way masculine voice of hers had seemed to me when I was first hearing it, memorizing it, learning to pick it out from the giggly crowd down round the pool at the Beach Shore. It was a voice I should have recognized, even though tonight was my first conversation with her.
She brought me the gimlet and I sipped it and nodded approval.
She sipped the Manhattan she’d made herself and said, “I know you from someplace.”
Well, now.
“Shouldn’t that be my line?” I said.
She gave me that earthy smile again, the gums showing, but attractive as hell. “Maybe so. You a regular here?”
“No. I’m from out of town. Why? Are you new?”
“New? Not exactly. This is my first night on the job at the Barn, if that’s what you mean. But new I’m definitely not. Hey, I do know you from someplace. Really. “
“I talked to you on the phone this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes! I gave you directions.”
“Pretty damn good ones, too, for a first-nighter.”
“Well. I just got here this morning myself, came by way of Des Moines like you did, so it was all pretty fresh in my mind.”
A waitress with short blond hair, an attractive pout, and perky little breasts that poked at her barn red sweater came up alongside me and said to Lucille (as Glenna Cole was calling herself here), “I hate to bust up this budding romance, but I got a couple dozen booze-happy cardplayers who’d be happy to get the couple dozen drinks you’re supposed to be making.”