Because he was, without a doubt, the most beautiful man she’d ever been this close to.
He was tapping his fingers as he studied his cards. From the corner of her eye, she watched. He’s a dancer, Frannie felt sure. Even seated, he held himself like a dancer: his back arrow-straight, his neck long, his shoulders thrown back, his head … was “noble” the word? She caught just a whiff of a citrusy aftershave. He seemed to be dressed all in black, too. Interestingly his jacket was black; his sweater was black with slices of white at the neck and wrists. No wedding ring she noted (stupid old woman, she thought, but couldn’t help smiling), and … unhappily, the rest of him was blocked by a meaty young woman to her left who’d pushed herself between them. As casually as she was able, Frannie leaned forward. The prince was absorbed in his cards (what were they playing here?). And his face, in profile, was beautiful-rough, though his eyes were invisible.
Stolidly, the woman next to her obscured her view, and defeated, finally, Frannie sat back to watch the game. Oh – blackjack. Right.
She didn’t actually know how to play blackjack, but based on the other players there – a touchy-feely couple (the girl was obviously not wearing a bra and Frannie was envious); a pair of unshaven, swarthy men arguing heatedly about every bet; a boyish, three-donuts-away-from-obese young man in a short-sleeved, too-tight plaid shirt. If this miscellaneous group could play it, the game couldn’t be all that hard, she concluded. Which meant that she could pick it up. But Frannie wasn’t able to concentrate. Citrus.
Eventually, the woman beside her left and risking a full-on look, she found herself in instantaneous love with the man’s high cheekbones and the line of his short straight nose, a little broader than it was fine. He had fair, smooth skin and something a little slack – something cruel? – about his mouth. The single most striking thing about him, however, was his remarkable hair. It was as white as a summer cloud: white and abundant and worn unfashionably long. George Washington-style, he’d gathered it low on his neck in a narrow black cord. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five, Frannie estimated. If that.
How would it feel to be young enough for a man like that right now? A spasm of loss cut her in half and she gasped.
Randi. Randi, that self-styled gatekeeper. Had anyone even seen Randi in this place, actually? Except for her? She’d find one of those men from the bar and ask. Or maybe the “headband” boy. And she actually half-rose from her chair. But then she’d lose her place beside her … prince. She subsided back onto the stool.
All right. If there had actually been some spectacular vanishing act, or even just the terrible accompanying sounds she thought she’d heard, people would have noticed. And, obviously, no one had. So there couldn’t have been a scroll or a pact. No gatekeeping Randi at all. But had she imagined The Hair House.
No. That was real.
And overwhelmed by loss once again, she brushed away unwelcome tears for … what … the fourth time that day?
No, she’d concentrate on this blackjack. She was good at self-distraction. A minor perk and inadvertent side effect of the passage of years.
She’d need to buy some chips.
From her wallet, Frannie withdrew her hundred-dollar bills. It wasn’t often she carried this much money around, but without Stanley there she’d felt unsure of things like parking charges and entry fees. And nothing should be left to chance tonight, she’d decided before she’d left. Well, some joke! She handed the dealer her folded bills. Tonight had been all about chance.
The blackjack dealer, a sad, stringy blonde, accepted Frannie’s money and, with one fabulous, pink-taloned hand, slid a small stack of chips smoothly across the felt. After arranging the chips in mini-stacks – a kind of enjoyable thing to do, Frannie thought – she sat there, pretending to be pondering, but actually ill at ease. She had absolutely no idea what to do next.
The man to her left, however, the prince, had somehow noted her uncertainty, however, and rode to the rescue. With a lovely warm smile (as she planned to report to Arlene), he plucked a single chip from his diminished pile and tapping its edge on the table between them, caught her eye to silently indicate he would help. That was when she saw his mouth and saw it wasn’t cruel at all. It was sensual. Like Brando’s.
A card sailed onto the felt in front of her – a ten. She scanned the horseshoe to see what everyone else was doing and noted most players placing chips in front of them – some more, some less. Hopeful, she turned to her left.
“Basically,” the prince had a whispery, smoky baritone “basically, you want your own cards to get you as close as they can to twenty-one. You’re playing against the dealer’s cards,” he pointed to the face-up card the dealer had dealt to herself, “and the trick is to get as near twenty-one as possible without going over. Over twenty-one, you lose.”
He was so close she might have stroked his cheek. Instead, she inhaled his lovely scent.
He pointed to the card in front of her.
“You have a ten, for instance, so you’re going make your bet on the likelihood of getting another ten, or better yet, an ace.
“You mean,” Frannie asked, “I just have to add up the cards that are dealt to me and bet?”
“That’s it,” he answered, laughing easily. Sexily. Why did she keep doing this younger-man thing? It was humiliating. She knew how she must look to him.
“It’s really pretty simple. If you can add, you can play.” He flicked his own card, a four. “Now, the really great thing would be to be able to keep count in your head. To count every played card, basically. That would help a lot.”
He grinned at the unlikelihood of such a thing and, in the process, exposed the kind of teeth that – if everyone had had them forty years ago – she and Stanley would be homeless today.
At that, Frannie had to laugh aloud at herself, which made her, suddenly, decide to have one more Bloody Mary. How exhilarating to have this unbelievably attractive man helping her, to be taking any kind of interest at all in her; a woman who – in every respect – just wasn’t a player.
He had wonderful manners, too.
So I’ll just sit next to him here for a while, Frannie decided, having given her order to one of the waitresses. Play a few hands and lose whatever I lose. She pushed two chips toward the center and awaited her first card: a seven. The dealer turned up a four. Frannie’s next card was a five and when her mentor whispered, “Don’t take another card – stand,” she did just that. And she won. What a delight! On the next hand, though, she had an ace and then a six, and was certain she had lost, but the dealer had a ten and a five, and on the next card, went over twenty-one. So Frannie won again. Now she began to leave her chips on the table, as she’d seen others do. Because she was feeling invincible, all at once. Her new hair, maybe. Or her too-close-for-comfort close call. More likely, she concluded, it was her white-haired accomplice. Half-listening to the dealer’s patter as she expertly dealt out the cards, Frannie understood – with a strange and exhilarating certainty – that tonight she was going to win.
What a rollercoaster tonight had been! First, terrified and humiliated by a pranking hairdresser and now, the ally of this drop-dead young man, and risking serious sums, for her, on this game she’d never played before.
Which was why, perhaps, when the winning began in earnest, when the good cards kept coming her way, when the bright-colored chips piled up, fell over, then piled up again, she wasn’t surprised. Not even when she’d accumulated so many chips that she built a little house with them – then, a mansion – then a palace. Not even when the other players began making grudging jokes about her luck, or even when, out of nowhere, groups of kibitzers pressed around her and her prince, applauding every card. Every so often she’d lean to her left to whisper