Con Academy (7 page)

“Excuse me?”

“I don't know you”—she looks up at me, and I feel the intensity of her gaze—“but you
really
don't want to get involved with Casino Night. From what I hear, Brandt only invites people he knows he can fleece at the tables.”

I glance back at the carrel where I'd been sitting, halfway across the stacks. “You heard all of that?”

“What can I say?” She points to the sign reading
quiet please
. “Some people don't know how to whisper.”

“I'm sorry.” I take a step toward the desk, trying to catch her eye. “Have we met?”

“Not yet.” At last she glances up from the monitor and extends one hand across the desk, her chipped black fingernails looking like they might have been painted with a Magic Marker. “Gatsby Haverford.”

“Gatsby.” It takes me less than a second to muse over what kind of parents would name their daughter after one of American literature's most elegant train wrecks, and then decide I'd rather not ask. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” She nods at her computer, where my information is still up on the screen. “Will Shea. You're the transfer student from the Marshall Islands.”

“Is that why you work at the library, so you can blackmail the students with their personal information?”

“I guess I just couldn't resist the glamour of the job.”

“You're a student here?”

“A junior,” she says. “We're in the same English Lit class. But listen, Will. You seem like a decent-enough guy, so take my advice.” She leans across her desk and lowers her voice. “If you're so determined to throw your money away, you should just flush it down the toilet. That way there's at least a chance some of it might come back up.”

“Don't take this the wrong way,” I say, “but we don't even know each other. Why are you so concerned about me?”

“Maybe I just don't like seeing anyone get taken advantage of.”

“It hasn't occurred to you that maybe I'll win?”

“No offense,” she says, looking me up and down, “but that seems highly unlikely.”

“Why's that?”

“Let's just say that when Brandt's running the tables, the odds are forever in his favor.”

“Well,” I say, “I appreciate the heads-up, but I'm going to take my chances.”

“I figured.” Gatsby looks at me from between towers of books with a combination of fascination and pity. “But when you walk back in here tomorrow wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders, don't say I didn't warn you.”

“Well, my barrel's out for dry cleaning, so . . .”

Gatsby taps a few keys on the computer, scribbles a note on a scrap of paper, then stands up and comes around from behind the desk. “Stay here.” And before I can say anything, she disappears into the stacks, moving through the deep jungle of the Dewey decimal system with all the confidence and authority of a lioness.

While I wait, I find myself looking down at her workspace, at the half-finished cup of coffee and the cracked first-generation iPhone abandoned so trustingly next to the keyboard. I can hear music playing through the ear buds—it sounds like either punk or techno, with some twangy guitar mixed in—and for a moment I'm tempted to pick them up, just to see what she's been listening to. But I'm glad I don't, because when I turn around, Gatsby's already back with an armload of books.

“What's all this?” I look down at the one on top, an old hardcover that looks like nobody's checked it out in decades, and read the title stamped in gold across the spine:
Tips for Winning Poker
. It's resting on two even dustier tomes—
The Mental Game of Poker
and
How to Win at Cards
.

“Look, I appreciate all this, but—”

“Here.” She's already checking out the three books, sweeping them under the bar-code reader along with
A Beginner's Guide to Self-Defense.

“What's this one for?”

“Just take it,” she says, and checks out the last title, which I realize is an ancient edition of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason.

“And this one?”

“Transcendental logic.” She smiles. “You never know when you'll need it.”

“Thanks,” I say, shoving all the books into my backpack. “But I think what I really need is a bigger bag.”

“Happy reading,” she says, then goes back around to the other side of the desk, placing the buds in her ears and checking in books again.

B
Y THE TIME
I
GET BACK TO MY DORM ROOM,
I'
VE ALREADY
forgotten about the books that Gatsby gave me. Mentally, I'm prepping for tonight, and my mind is so preoccupied that when the dinner hour comes, I have to force myself to eat. Voices around me are excited and laughing, discussing weekend plans. I don't talk to anybody. I keep my head down.

After dinner I go back to my room alone, where I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall, running through hypotheticals in my mind, trying to think of everything that could go wrong tonight and how I'd respond. Making sure I'm ready. Figuring the angles. This is the hardest time for me: the waiting.

Outside in the darkness, the hours drag by, doled out by the occasional distant chime of the bell tower. Sometime around ten o'clock, I remember the library books and get them out. Gatsby's choice of the self-defense book and the Kant don't make any sense at all, but I glance over the poker books, more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. As I expected, the strategies are fundamental, most of them so simple and outmoded that they're totally useless. Opening the third book, I find a yellow Post-it stuck inside the front cover. It reads:

Will:

If you're reading this, it means you haven't written me off as a total whack job. If you still decide to go tonight, good luck. And be careful around Brandt. If you haven't figured it out yet, he cheats.

—G

I peel the note off and stick it up on the corner of my empty bookshelf, then look at it for a second. Sometime later, the bell tower chimes again.

It's time to go.

Students at Connaughton have a strict eleven o'clock curfew on Fridays, so I check to make sure the coast is clear before slipping out the window with my jacket buttoned up to my chin. The temperature's already plunged to what feels like single digits, and late-October starlight is so sharp that it feels like I could snap off whole chunks of it and suck on them like icicles. My breath smokes out behind me as I duck below the eaves of my building, keeping to the shadows.

Crowley House is only three buildings away, but it still takes me ten minutes of island hopping to get there, since I'm trying to avoid stepping out into the open. When I reach the dorm, I stop outside the door and look in at the tall, red-haired campus security guard shooting me a look of dead-eyed indifference.

I hold up the poker chip and tap it against the glass, and he opens the door without a word.

“Thanks.” Stepping in, I can't help but notice the guard has a dog-eared paperback propped up next to his stool, along with a styrofoam cup of coffee. The book is Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason.
The guard sees me looking at it and scowls.

“Is there a problem?”

“That book,” I say. “It's funny.”

“I think you've got the wrong author.”

“No, I mean, somebody just recommended it to me.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “How is it?”

He takes a sip of coffee and glances down at the cover. “Well, I can't say I'm crazy about his implicit assertion of transcendental idealism denying the reality of external objects.” He flicks his eyes up at me. “I mean, I suppose that you could argue that he refutes it in his discussion that self-consciousness presupposes external objects in space, but I'm not totally convinced.” Turning, he sits back down on the stool and regards me coolly. “Now, did you want to keep talking about philosophy, or are you ready to go lose all your money to that joker upstairs?”

“Tough call, but I think I'm ready.” For the first time I get a look at his laminated ID badge, which reads
murphy, george
. “Hey, George?”

His expression turns curious. “What?”

“You know much about him?”

“Kant?”

“Brandt.”

At the mention of that name, George's whole face goes sour. “Put it this way,” he says. “I've sat here on this stool long enough to watch punks like you throwing your trust funds into his bank account in exchange for a few minutes of feeling like you're some kind of postpubescent jet set.”

“So then how come you help him out like this? Serving as his personal doorman?”

“You're new here, aren't you?”

“My first week.”

“Let me fill you in on a little secret. There are only two types of people here at Connaughton—the kind that play along with Brandt Rush and his clan, and the kind that don't last.” He takes another sip of coffee. “I happen to need this job. Not that you'd know a whole lot about something like that.”

“It might surprise you.”

“I doubt that,” George grunts, and picks up his book again, disappearing behind it until I turn and start upstairs.

Crowley House is even older than my dorm, but it wears its age well, like the cabin of a vintage luxury yacht. It's eleven twenty as I head down the second-floor hall and realize that I've started walking faster, trying to keep time with my heartbeat. My pulse always speeds up when I'm getting ready to start a con. I used to worry about it, but at the last second I always cool off, so I'm hoping tonight is no different.

My mission this evening is simple: figure out how Brandt is cheating, and cheat better. I've got five of the most popular decks stashed in my pockets—Bicycle, Maverick, Bee, Streamline, and Aviator—matched up with the cards I've heard he's most likely to use. It's actually not particularly important that I don't get caught, and at some point I pretty much want him to know that I'm cheating—just not right away.

After that, things are going to get
really
interesting.

I can already hear the hip-hop music and laughter coming from the corner room. And I wonder, what must it be like to be neighbors with Brandt Rush? Or did the housing office just give him his own wing?

I get my answer when the door opens.

The dorm room is actually three singles with the walls knocked down, creating one spacious suite overlooking the quad below. It's already packed with students, thirty of them at least, gathered around the tables, talking and sipping drinks, savoring the occasion as if they were the European crème de la crème in the golden age of the French Riviera.
Some are actually wearing tuxedos, and the girls have on cocktail dresses and heels. I find myself thinking of the Sigils. I'm assuming most of the students here belong. Is there some kind of secret handshake?

Nobody so much as glances up when I walk in. I make my way through the crowd, until I find myself face-to-face with Brandt.

“Yo, bro.” Grinning, he grabs my hand and shakes it. “Good to see you. I'm totally stoked you got my invite.”

“Thanks.” I don't know if I'm more shocked by the warmth of his greeting and its ostensible authenticity or by the fact that somebody actually still uses the word
stoked.
Apparently we've come a long way from him sending me out to get his coffee.
The miracle of money,
I think, and smile. “I wouldn't miss it.”

“You get in okay? Any troubles at the door?”

“George let me in,” I say. “But I think I interrupted his reading time.”

“Yeah, dude's a trip, right? Thinks he's Sophocles or something.”

“He never gives you any trouble about curfew?”

“Who, that guy?” Brandt says, and rolls his eyes. “He's lucky to have the job. His son's a student here, and the tuition assistance is the only way he's able to keep the kid out of public school. He does as he's told. Anyway . . .” Brandt grips my elbow and steers me hard to the left. “You want a drink? Bar's over there. Epic Phil can hook you up with the beverage of your choice.”

“Great.” I follow him over to a long freestanding table full of bottles, where another student—the guy who helped me in our Global Risk class—is making three drinks at once, both arms blurring like an adrenalized octopus above a small forest of crystal stemware. “You know Epic Phil, right?”

“Hey,” I say, and the guy stops for a second to stick out his hand, which is cold and slightly damp from the martini shaker. His real name is Philip Van Eyck, but I guess he goes by a different moniker when he's slinging martinis. “How's it going?”

“Epic!” says Epic Phil, which I suppose must be his trademark. “What're you drinking?”

“Hmm.” I make a big deal of perusing the selection. “Do you have Pepsi products?”

Phil and Brandt exchange a glance and then they burst out laughing, and Brandt pounds me on the shoulder so hard that I feel my sternum pop. “Good one, bro!” he hoots, and tosses a sidelong glance at Phil. “Get him whatever he wants, on the house. He's my guest tonight.” Then he grabs my elbow again and steers me toward a table. “Hope you brought your rabbit's foot with you,” he says. “Word around the campfire is that you're a regular five-card stud. What's your game?”

Blackjack
is the word on my lips when I turn to approach the table and see the dealer standing behind it, shuffling the cards.

“You already met my girlfriend, right?” Brandt asks, and grins at Andrea. “Take good care of him, huh?”

And Andrea smiles back at Brandt and then at me. “Absolutely.”