Cold Deck: A Novel

35

||| 157 ||| Lucas looked at Beth, who shrugged and said, “Dad, you’re so weird.” “No,” Lucas said, “that’s pretty philosophical, Dad.” I forked a steak on Beth’s plate, one on Lucas’s, and last on my own. I turned to take the broiler pan to the kitchen, then stopped and eyed them. “What now?” Beth asked. “Okay, here it is. I fix a meal like this because I like cooking, but also because . . . well, of how much your mother can’t cook.” “You got that right,” Lucas said. “That’s okay. Don’t trouble yourselves. I’ll get the salad.” I called from the kitchen, “If I asked you two to do something without questioning me, would you do exactly as I said? Would you think it was important enough?” “Dad, you’re being weird again,” Beth said. There was a silence, then Lucas spoke. “I would.” Then Beth said, “Dad, you’re scaring me.” 35 “So my mother looks at me and says, ‘You know her. You met her.’ And I say, ‘No, I didn’t.’ But my mother doesn’t believe me because she’s got it in her head,” Norma said. “Mothers,” I said, meaning nothing in particular. I smiled like the fool who accidentally found a pearl in an oyster. It was the best I could do. The shufflers discouraged play, a pattern at the Monaco repeating itself here. Day to day, games in the high-end pit stood dead for hours, and I stood idle as my worries drumrolled in my head. What and when? When and what? And what was my part in it to be? For the first time in years I took to sitting among dealers on breaks and listening to the bitch sessions and the petty gossip I once abhorred. I did so mostly because Norma amused me and the company helped quiet my mind. She drew on her cigarette and looked at me. “She’s completely blocked out the fact that I never met her friends, any of them, and that I didn’t talk to her for thirteen years. Is your mother like that, Jude?” “She’s dead.” “I’m sorry.” “No need.” “What was she like?” “Tell the truth, I don’t know. Pretty, I guess, and she changed the color of her hair a lot. They divorced when I was young. She took my younger brother and sister. Dad kept me. I went to visit her when she ended up in ||| 158 ||| a hospice in Los Angeles. Her skin was almost transparent, and she didn’t know who I was.” “That’s depressing. A childhood without a mother.” “No, not really. My dad was a good father, but he died when I was twelve. My uncle, his brother, took me in. He taught me how to lay block and patios.” “But you didn’t know your brother and sister, right?” She blew smoke at the ceiling. “No. I have their phone numbers, but don’t know—” I realized I was talking more about myself than I had for years, and it made me self-conscious. I pointed at her cigarette, and to avoid the conversation getting more personal , said, “You should quit smoking.” “And breathing casino air? What’s that do for us? Really, you don’t remember anything about your mother?” I said, “Nothing significant.” It saddened me to say so. “You know, Jude, for a moment it seemed like you were actually human.” Norma took a draw off her cigarette and stubbed it out. “Time to go.” “No. Too soon.” She walked the hallway to the casino with me. As we neared the main pit, she said, “I wonder if Linus Berman is going to play. Last time he was here, he didn’t make a laydown on our shift. I’m thinking it’s you. Maybe he sees bad omens. Maybe you’ve got toenail fungus or something.” “Gotta be the fungus, that or the automatic shufflers.” “They use the same shufflers we do on swing shift,” she said. “And he didn’t play then either, did he?” I got a whiff of her perfume and asked, “What’s that you’re wearing?” She glanced down at her blouse and tie and gave me a sly smile. “A uniform.” “I mean, you smell good.” “Jude, are you flirting with me?” I didn’t know what to say. I considered her a moment and realized she could interpret it that way, or maybe...