Betting Blind (26 page)

After paying a rip-off ten bucks, I got my car out of the garage and drove out of McCarran down Las Vegas Boulevard. I passed the famous sign, “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.” The seat next to me felt very empty. I was strung out in that way you get after a night of no sleep. The Strip looked different in the daylight, with dazed people wandering out of casinos and club flyers fluttering on the sidewalks like confetti from a party the night before.

I looked up Crescent School on my phone, and it was open nine to nine, seven days a week. Typical Vegas. I mapped it, took a right on Flamingo, and drove down a few miles to Sandhill Drive. I parked in the corner of the lot under some palm trees. The school was in the middle of an office park, a two-story brick building, tired-looking but clean, with cactuses planted around the entrance. Doors were closed, shades down.

I let my seat back and watched as the sky turned brighter until it was an unreal shade of blue. When it got too bright, I shut my eyes and thought of Irina. In the airport she said she was crazy about me, and she
sounded
crazy when she said it. I replayed the words over and over and wondered when I would get to see her again.

When I woke up, my neck hurt and the light was fierce. Compared to Seattle, Vegas felt like the whole ozone layer had been stripped away. I checked my phone: noon! I rubbed my eyes and squinted into the mirror. I was looking torn up, but nothing a shave wouldn’t fix. I got my kit out of the trunk, did a quick shave on the down low, and changed my shirt. There was about an inch left of two-day-old Red Bull, and I chugged it.

Then I headed into Crescent School. I was glad to see the inside wasn’t too sketchy. The carpet was decent, there was real furniture, and there were framed pictures on the walls of bartenders shaking mixers and sticking fruit in drinks.

At the reception desk was a black woman, seriously curvy, with bright red braids, wearing a suit that was bursting at the buttons. She was flipping through a magazine. Behind her was a row of closed doors. I could hear people laughing and talking back there.

She lowered her magazine and looked me up and down. “Help you?”

“I just wanted to find out more about your school.”

She rattled off, “We’re one of the only accredited bartending schools in the United States. Training in our simulated cocktail lounge will help you increase your speed, coordination, and confidence behind the bar. You’ll graduate in four weeks with a full understanding of liquors and liqueurs, lingo, and customer service tips, the back bar and under bar, bar tools and equipment, and over two hundred cocktails, including the latest shooters. New classes start every second Monday.”

She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. Her eyelids were glittery purple.

“How much does it cost?”

“Nine hundred fifty for the full course. Three hundred for a refresher.”

That was a big chunk of what I had left, but it was about what I’d expected. “Yeah, okay.” I pulled out my clip, and her eyes got wide.

“What you doing? You just gonna pay cash like that?”

I lowered my hand. “Well, yeah.”

“You don’t want to see the facilities or nothing?”

Feeling like an idiot, I stuck my money back in my pocket. “Yeah, show me the facilities.”

She gave me a look like I wasn’t fooling anybody, and stood up. She swished over to one of the doors and held it open. “Come on, then.”

I followed her through. When they said simulated cocktail lounge, they weren’t kidding. The place was more than just a bar; it was a whole setup. People were sitting at the bar, some more were at tables, and two bartenders were making drinks. The only thing missing was music.

When we walked in, everybody looked up. “Hey, Danitra,” called a guy sitting at one of the tables.

“That’s Paul, the owner,” Danitra said in a low voice. She walked me over. “Paul, this gentleman’s thinking about signing up.”

Paul was a skinny dude with a brown ponytail, wearing jeans and a “Palms” T-shirt. He stood up and shook my hand, asked my name. Then he said, “Why don’t you go to the bar and order something? You can watch them practice.” He winked and added, “Make it hard, not a well drink.”

I smiled. I liked his vibe—something about him reminded me of Missy, even though he was a guy. I headed to the bar where a man and a woman were mixing drinks. They were both wearing black aprons that said “Crescent School of Bartending and Gaming.” There was a line of red stools at the bar, four of them filled. I sat on the empty one.

“Paul told you to order something?” said the guy behind the bar. He looked like he just turned twenty-one, with curly red hair and skin that was blinding white under the lights. I nodded, and he said, “Okay, what are you having?”

I thought about it. What was the weirdest drink I knew? “Chocolate snakebite.”

He scowled and threw a quick glance in Paul’s direction. “Aw, man. What kind of chick drink is that? Ask for a Jack and Coke or something.”

The woman bartender’s eyebrows went up. She was Mexican or Spanish, very short and round, with long black hair and a sassy look. “I’ll make it.”

The guy rolled his eyes at her. “Shut up, Luce. You don’t know what it is, either.”

“I don’t?” She grabbed the Bailey’s, Kahlua, crème de cacao, and Goldschläger, and started dumping shots in a metal mixer. I actually had no idea what was in a chocolate snakebite; it was just something I’d heard my mom order a few times, and I thought it was a funny name.

“Is that it?” the guy demanded, looking at me.

I nodded. “She got it right.”

Luce gave me a nice smile, shook up the drink, whipped out a glass from under the bar, and poured the shot. She pushed it in front of me. “You don’t know for sure until you try it.”

I looked at the brown stuff. It was probably sweet swill, but I should at least do her the respect of tasting it. I lifted it and took a good swig—and almost hacked out my tongue.
Nasty!
It was moldy, metal sewer water!

Everybody at the bar, including both bartenders, were about pissing themselves.

“You think they let us practice with real liquor?” gasped Luce. “It’s water with food coloring!” Behind us, Danitra and Paul were cracking up, too.

I wiped my mouth and chuckled. “Okay, that was good. You got me.” I shook my head. “You got me good.” Somebody cheered and one of the people at the bar, a big bald dude, gave me a thumbs-up.

“That was a test,” the redheaded bartender explained. “If you got mad, we wouldn’t have let you join the school.”

“Really?”

He laughed. “No, man, we don’t get to decide. I’m sure Paul would have taken your money. But we would have spread the word that you were an idiot. But you’re in now. You passed the test.” He held out his hand. “I’m Aidan, by the way.”

I laughed as I shook his hand. “Nice test. I could see some people getting mad.”

“Only the assholes,” said Aidan, grinning.

After that we had fun; I hung around for a while, chatting with people, watching them practice. They took turns at the bar, and the rest played customers, pretending to be high-maintenance or psycho or just plain stupid. They had different personalities worked out, like somebody said, “Oh, Greg, do the perv!” and this older guy ordered a blow job from a girl bartender and started talking dirty so she could practice how to deal with pervs.

Then this cute brunette said, “I’m Wynn’s wife,” and kept turning drinks back in and saying, “Only pass the vermouth over the martini, only pass it.” The whole thing was like a comedy show where you actually learned something, and I knew after the first five minutes that I had found my spot.

When we went back to reception, I took out my cash again. “Okay, Danitra, sign me up.”

She said approvingly, “That’s right, honey. You fit right in. You just fill out these forms, and we’ll get you started. Don’t worry about the credit section, since you’re paying cash.” She slid a clipboard across the desk, and I sat in one of the cushy chairs and started filling out the forms. It was just some basic stuff, and they didn’t even ask for my birthday. I guess they didn’t care. There probably weren’t too many underage kids trying to pay a grand to play with colored water.

Then I came to the blank that asked for my address. My pen stopped moving. I looked at Danitra, her head bent over some crazy tabloid, her extensions falling over her shoulders like red ropes. She was nice. I decided to risk it.

“Danitra?” I said in a low voice. “I just moved here, like, yesterday. I don’t know what to put in the address part.”

She looked up and frowned. “For real? Where you staying at?”

“The Strip,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions.

She shrugged. “So put the hotel address, if you want. But you don’t want to be paying Strip prices. Why don’t you get one of them monthly rentals? They got some on Harmon and Trop, go for like five hundred a month. My cousin Chanel stays there. You got to share a kitchen and bathroom, though, and sometimes they kinda nasty.”

Five hundred a month! The number sank into my mind, practically glowing. For that, I could afford to eat, and get started on my job, and build up a better cushion. “What’s the place called?” I asked.

Danitra flicked a page. “Harmon Terrace. They got all four-plexes along Harmon between Sandhill and Pecos. If one don’t have a spot, you just drive down the road to the next one.” She pointed at my clipboard. “You can leave the address blank and fill it in next time you come in.”

“Thanks.” I finished the form, handed it in, and paid her. Handing over the grand hurt, even for a good cause. I said, “Danitra? Is it hard to get a bartending job in this town?”

She gave a quiet snort. “Only for the ugly ones, baby. You ain’t going to have any trouble at all. Not at all. Mmm-hmm.” She shook her head and pursed her lips.

I gave her a huge smile.

“Go on now. You get yourself a place to live. See you next week.” Danitra waved as I headed for the door. “You gonna do great here. Paul likes you already, I can tell.”

I waved back and headed outside. The air felt amazing, and somehow the whole office park looked nicer, like somebody had been at it with a paint roller while I was inside. Paul already liked me. The other bartenders liked me. And I was going to prove them right.

Then a thought hit me, and I got a strange feeling.
Had I just found myself a new form of dealing?

Well, the stuff in those pill bottles either got you hooked or did bad shit to your body, even in small amounts. Booze was different. It could hook people, all right, but plenty of people could handle their liquor, knew when to stop, just enjoyed a good drink.

Maybe this was what that bartender meant about handling your bar like a man. I didn’t like to think about cutting people off, but maybe that was part of it. Maybe another part was pouring a lot of free coffee. Not letting people get in their cars wasted. Stepping in when guys tried to get stumbling-drunk girls to leave with them. Maybe it was other things, too. I guessed I’d find out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

B
y that night, I had moved into Four Horizons Apartments. It was money down, some papers to fill out, and no questions asked. I wasn’t surprised; the place was so nasty, they should have paid people to live there instead of the other way around. It was a good thing my parking space was right under my window, because otherwise my car probably would have been ganked one part at a time, like food stolen by ants at a picnic.

Still, I felt like a king lying on my mattress, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling. There were three doors in the tiny room: one to the parking lot, which was full of hoopdies; one to the bathroom, which I shared with somebody who’d been using the same razor for about a century; and one to the kitchen, which had a sketchy, rotting smell and a refrigerator packed with Big Boy drumsticks.

But none of it mattered. I was on my own, not depending on Phil anymore, with plans that didn’t involve sitting at a desk.

And I had Irina. Even though I knew it was stupid to hope, and we were seventeen, a long way from anything serious, I had this feeling I’d found my girl. I wished I’d introduced her to my mom when I had the chance.

Thinking of my mom made me throw a guilty look at my phone charging in the wall. She’d had time to settle down and was probably starting to worry. She might have even called some White Center people, trying to track me down. I picked up my cell and dialed home, bracing for a blowup.

Mom answered on the second ring. “Gabe, where are you? You can come home already. Phil’s calmed down.”

Like I was gone because I was worried about Phil. “I’m in Vegas.” There was a crazy-long silence. “Mom?”

“
Las
Vegas? Nevada?”

“Yeah. I have to tell you some stuff.”

As usual, she didn’t listen right away. “Okay, I don’t know what you’re doing out there, I hope you had fun, but come home. I’m sorry we sprang the news on you like that. I’ve been thinking about it, and I should have told you alone, not with Phil sitting there.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“I know you don’t like him, but honey, you didn’t think he’d leave his wife, either. So maybe he’s not as bad as you think.”