The Spinster Sisters (14 page)

Abbot thinks that I’m jealous, that Hunter is supplanting me as the most important person in Jill’s life. This took me right out of the lovely mood the delicious dinner at Trattoria 10 and beautiful opera at the Lyric Friday night had put me in, and while I am rarely disinterested in his physical affection, I claimed exhaustion and left him chastely at the car. This prompted a particularly large floral arrangement to be delivered the next day, which made me feel worse, since I had asked him for his thoughts and hadn’t been fishing for him to tell me
my
opinions, and hated that perhaps he thought I was punishing him with no sex.

Then Ben tried to take me to the movies but got the time wrong, and everything else at the theater one or both of us had already seen. This irritated me, and we got into a sniping match about being attentive to details, which Ben took as my scolding him about his age, and even though we made up over ice cream at Cold Stone, the date left me more annoyed than not, and questioning how much longer I’d be interested in hanging out with him.

Jill, of course, thinks that I’m so excited about Connor that it is making me pick fights with the Father and the Son, so that I’ll feel mentally free to focus on the Holy Ghost. Jill never lets go of a metaphor if she can help it. And she is right about one thing; I am really sort of excited about this date. He’s coming in about a half hour, and I just need to perk up my makeup and change clothes. He wouldn’t tell me where we’re going, so I’m trying to be strategic about the wardrobe. Skirt, in case it’s a little fancier, but flats in case it’s more casual. Light shimmer on the eyes, and a simple gloss on the lips, but a serious red lipstick in the purse just in case.

I’m just finishing the last coat of mascara when the doorbell rings. I skitter down the long hall to the buzzer and press it. “Hey, hang out in the foyer. I’ll be right down.” I grab my coat and purse, take a deep breath, and head out the door. By the time I get down to the second landing, I can hear the hum of voices. Oh crap. I pick up the pace. But turning the last curve of the stairs, I realize it’s no use. Ruth and Shirley have cornered Connor in the foyer. Sneaky bitches.

“Really? Five brothers?” Shirley is saying.

“That must have been exciting,” Ruth flirts.

“Yes, ma’am. Never dull at the Duncan house.” Connor looks up to see me coming down the stairs and catches me off guard with his bemused air. “Well, there she is.”

“Well, dears, you run off and have fun, now,” Shirley says, pulling on Ruth’s elbow.

“Stop tugging at me, Shirley, I know we can’t keep them.” She snatches her arm back. “Have a lovely evening, chickens.” She leans over and kisses me. “Dishy,” she whispers in my ear. I feel my cheeks flush.

“Good night, you old biddies.” I shoo them into their apartment. I turn to Connor. “Shall we?” He still has his little smirk on.

“I don’t know, I have half a mind to ask them to join us.” We head out the door and down the front steps.

“Oh no, you don’t have dinner with the aunts until you have proven yourself worthy.”

“And what, pray tell, would make me worthy?”

“Not that easy. Trust me, when you get there, I’ll let you know.”

“So coy.” He walks up to an old Chevy pickup truck and unlocks the door. “Your chariot, m’lady.”

“Thank you, sir.” I hoist myself into the cab of the truck and settle in as Connor closes the door. I like the car. It’s a nice contrast to Abbot’s sort of stuffy Mercedes and Ben’s more and more irritating lack of one. Unpretentious, but clean and obviously well-loved. The sort of car Jill and I refer to as noncompensatory, as in, the opposite of sports car.

“So, you up for an adventure?” he asks.

“Always.”

“Glad to hear it. Settle in, we have a little drive ahead of us.”

The conversation is as easy as it has been all week. He admits to listening to the show earlier today and praises our style. He also admits to having ordered the books on Amazon.

“I’m very flattered.” Usually guys don’t feel obligated to read the books, figuring they’re just fluffy girlie things anyway. Or they run out and read them right away and start to quote them back at me. But this is nice. He appears to be genuinely interested but not feel the need to put any pressure on it.

“I believe in research,” he says simply.

“Well, you aren’t our target demographic, but I hope you enjoy them.”

“I think the idea of being strong and independent and not needing a man to define your life is a great message,” he says. “I knew a lot of girls growing up who could have used your advice.”

“We do what we can,” I say as I look out the window at the passing scenery.

“So, where does that leave you on the relationship front?”

This is a bold move, considering it’s a first date, but I’m inclined to approve of his forthrightness. “Well, I suppose you would define me as currently out in the world. I’m not dating anyone exclusively, but I am dating and interested in new people. If someone comes along with whom I am compatible, and it organically develops into something serious, I’m not a commitment-phobe, and I will take steps to explore that potential with someone. But I’m not really looking for that sort of relationship; I’ll just be open to it if it happens to arrive.”

“Good to know.”

I can’t read him at all. He doesn’t seem angry or disappointed like some guys. “How about you?”

Connor pauses. “I suppose I am most focused on my work these days. It has been a long time since my last serious relationship, and like yourself, I haven’t been terribly inclined to pursue another commitment, but I’m not averse to the idea either.”

“Sounds like you and I are very much on the same page,” I say and decide a change of subject is in order. “So, where are you taking me?”

“You really want to know?”

“Please.”

“Hammond.”

“Hammond? As in, Indiana?”

“Yep.”

“And what, if I may be so bold, is in Hammond, Indiana?”

“Riverboat.”

“Gambling?”

“Is that okay? I just thought it might be fun. Bad idea?”

“No, great idea. Very great. It’s just, well . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to gamble. I’ve never done it before. Is it hard?”

“Of course not. You stick with me. I’ll teach you all the tricks.”

And bless him, he did just that. After a quiet drive, which flew by in light conversation about work and family and friends, we boarded the floating casino, and I began to feel the buzz that everyone always talks about. We started at the blackjack tables, where he handed me a stack of chips and gave me the simplest of instruction. You always assume that the dealer has a ten under the card they show. If your hand can’t beat your assumption of their hand, you take a hit until seventeen. If you can beat it, you stay. Apparently, I learned this lesson reasonably well, because after a while, I have a pretty big stack of chips in front of me, and a small crowd has gathered. Connor’s luck has been up and down; he’s probably about even from when we first sat down, but he seems to be taking personal pride in how well I am doing.

“Okay, then. Feeling ready for another challenge?” he asks.

“Sure!” I love the giddy feeling I have, like I’m getting away with something.

He turns to the dealer. “Color us up, please.” The dealer leans over and counts up my pile of chips, over $700. He hands me several black chips, a couple of green, and a couple of red. “Give him the red ones,” Connor whispers in my ear, “as a tip.”

I smile at the dealer and push the two red chips toward him. “Thank you very much!”

He smiles at me. “Thank you, ma’am.” Then he knocks the chips loudly on a small metal box next to him and drops the chips inside.

Connor receives his chips, just slightly over the $200 he started with. I hand him two of my black chips.

“What’s this for?”

“That’s the money you gave me to start with. I thought I should give it back.” He looks puzzled.

“I didn’t mean . . .” he says. “I wanted you to play, you know, it isn’t about the money.”

“I know, but it is actual money, and now I’ve won a bunch to keep playing with, so I thought you should get your stake back.”

“Tell you what, you keep it for now. We’ll settle up at the end of the night.”

“Okay. Where are we going now?”

“You hungry?”

“Actually, not really. It’s weird, I should be, but I’m not.” I should be starving. But I’m so excited about the evening that I just don’t feel like eating. Plus I did go pretty heavy on the hors d’oeuvres at cocktail hour. “But if you’re hungry . . .”

“Nope, the adrenaline gets me, too. Makes my stomach shut itself off for a bit.”

“We’ve invented a new diet!” I say. “Trade your food addiction for a gambling addiction, and you’ll be skinny!”

“But broke.” He laughs.

“Only if you lose.”

“Which, eventually, you will. But hopefully not tonight. And besides, skinny never really appealed to me.”

Which is exactly the thing a curvier gal like myself wants and needs to hear, especially early on in a new relationship. I get a teeny shiver up my spine the way he says it, not with pointed eye contact or anything lascivious, just a simple statement of fact. Skinny never appealed to him. He just went up fifteen points on the yummy scale.

He scans the casino while I silently preen. “Wanna try your hand at shooting craps?”

I’ve always loved the idea of craps. It seems like the sexiest of the games. Very Rat Pack, which I’m a sucker for. I have long fancied myself the gamine companion of a Frank Sinatra type, the kind of guy who would call me “doll,” and have me kiss his dice for luck, and buy me diamonds and furs just for the hell of it. You know, minus the mob ties and the alcoholism and smacking around.

“Absolutely,” I say.

We wind our way through the crowd and get to a craps table. We settle in at one end, and Connor asks the croupier to exchange our chips for smaller denominations. Actually, what he says is, “Can we get color?” which makes no sense to me until the guy hands us our chips. I must look confused, because Connor says, “
Color up
means take the chips and give the smallest number of chips in return, and
get color
means to break a larger chip down into smaller ones.”

“Thanks. I don’t seem to know any of the lingo!”

“Stick with me, doll. I’ve got your back.” Oh. My. Goodness. I’m suddenly all squishy. Funny what one little endearment can do. “Now, just bet exactly how I bet. Same number of chips and everything. We’re going to start small to get your feet wet. Craps moves really fast, so you can lose a lot pretty quickly. Just remember, you’re paying for entertainment; don’t think about winning—just have fun. If the money is all gone in ten minutes, we can still make a movie.” He makes me feel very at ease. He places a single chip on the table in front of him, on something called the pass line. I do the same in front of me. The guy with the dice rolls.

“Yo, eleven,” the croupier shouts. “Pay the line!” One of the other guys hands chips all around.

“We won?” I ask Connor.

“We won. Pick up your chip.”

The guy rolls again.

“Four, the point is four,” the croupier yells. The guy who paid me my chip takes a huge hockey puck that says On and places it on the box marked four.

Connor puts two chips behind his pass line bet, and I follow suit. Then he puts one chip in the middle of the table, in a section marked Come, which, twelve-year-old that I am, makes me smile. I put my chip next to his.

The guy rolls the dice for about ten minutes, the croupier calls numbers, I keep following Connor’s bets, and periodically pick up the chips the croupier hands me, which I assume are winnings. It does move very quickly, but I’m starting to understand the game a tiny bit, not enough to play on my own, but enough to anticipate some of Connor’s moves. We are like synchronized swimmers. Suddenly something happens, and the whole table sighs. Then all of our chips on the table get swept away.

“What happened?” I ask.

“He rolled a seven, crapped out.”

“New shooter, new shooter coming out, place your bets!” The croupier does a weird shuffle of five dice and then pushes them toward me with a long stick.

“You ready?” Connor asks me.

“I’m going to roll?”

“Yep. No problem. Just pick the two dice that look lucky to you.”

There are two dice right next to each other, a four and a two. Well, I’m thirty-four, and Jill is thirty-two, so they seem a good pair, even if we aren’t so much these days. I pick them up. They are heavier than I would have thought, and sharply pointed on the corners.

“Now just throw them so that they hit the bunkers at the other end of the table, and keep betting the way I bet.” Connor looks deep into my eyes. I nod. And throw the dice.

 
We’re sitting at a small table in the casino, and I’m drinking my third glass of water. Gambling is thirsty, dehydrating work.

“I know, it’s all the extra oxygen,” Connor says, draining his own glass.

“What extra oxygen?”

“They pump extra oxygen into the casinos. Helps keep the crowd awake and euphoric and gambling.”

“Is that legal?” I ask.

“What are you going to do, sue them for making you breathe oxygen?”

We laugh. “Connor, this is the most fun I have had in a long time. Thank you.”

“Well, nothing like winning a few grand to make a girl perky, huh?”

Yep. Six thousand four hundred and twenty-four dollars to be precise. Apparently, I am the best craps shooter
ever
! The croupier said he’d never seen six hard eights in a row. Connor won just over four grand, because he never plays the “hard way” bets, but those paid off really well for me.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt, that’s for sure!”

“What do you say we get out of here before they realize you have telekinesis and are controlling the dice with your mind?”