“So what are you going to do about it?” asked Archer evenly.
“Hey, hey!” called out the dealer. He was beady-eyed and thick at the waist but with a steady hand in which the little ball already rested. “You got a seat, you got to bet.”
“Sorry,” said Callahan. She quickly put a chip on ten black.
Archer pulled out some of his crap chips.
The dealer shook his head. “No, no, you need to use roulette chips here, sonny. Let me see what you got there.”
Archer pulled out all of his chips and showed them to the dealer. The man eyed him with interest as he totaled them up, scooped them away, and placed a stack of colorful chips in front of Archer.
“Okay, what do you want each to be worth?”
“Excuse me?” said Archer.
The dealer told him what his crap chips had been worth. “But you get to pick how much each of these chips are worth, while not going over the total value of the chips you just turned in.”
“Why so complicated?”
“It’s not complicated. It’s roulette. Everybody at the table has a different color chip. They tell me what they’re worth and I keep that in my head. What’s complicated?”
Archer glanced over the chips and gave the man a number.
“Thanks, genius,” the dealer said as he placed a like-colored chip atop the rail by the wheel and then placed a number marker on it that coincided with the chip value Archer had given him.
The dealer grinned at Archer. “Memories are iffy, marker chips make it easy.”
“Yeah, I can see that, genius.” He put a chip on ten black next to Callahan’s.
The ball was dropped and the wheel spun by the dealer. People kept betting until the ball was about to drop and then the dealer called out, “No more bets.” Seconds later Archer and Callahan lost their chips because the ball decided twenty-one red all the way on the other side was a much more comfortable resting place than ten black.
Callahan took a sip of her cocktail and said, “I’m going to Hollywood. That’s what you do if you want to be in the movie business, Archer. Ain’t you heard of that place?”
“I don’t go to many movies. Never saw the point. They’re not real.”
“Well, that is the point.”
“If you say so.”
“Life is crap, Archer. You go to the movies to get away from that for a little bit. Get some pixie dust thrown on you for a precious two hours.”
“And when the two hours are up and the pixie dust falls off, your life is still crap.”
“Boy, it must be fun walking in your shoes,” she observed.
“But then you go back to the movies for more pixie dust, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
Archer said, “So you’re an addict. Might as well be smoking reefer. Movies are about making money. And putting butts in seats. No butts in the seat, no autographs, no maids, and no newspaper pics.”
She frowned. “Thanks for popping the one dream I have.”
Archer sipped his highball and tapped a finger against the tabletop. “We all have dreams. Point is, what are you going to do about it? Just going to the place doesn’t seem like enough. I’ll bet it’s chock-full of people wanting to do the same thing as you.”
“I know that. I need to take some classes and work on how I walk and how I talk.”
“You can already walk and talk. And dance, too, and sing. I’m witness to that. You do it pretty swell, in fact.”
Surprisingly, her frown deepened at this compliment. “But there’s a lot more to acting than that. You have to have what they call the ‘it’ factor. The camera has to love you. It has to capture something in you that maybe even you don’t see. That’s how a star is made.”
“Heard that a bunch of actors fought in the war. Hank Fonda, Clark Gable. Lots.”
“Oh, poor Clark Gable. Wasn’t it awful what happened to his wife, Carole Lombard?” said Callahan. “That plane crash after she was out promoting war bonds. Her mom was with her but didn’t like to fly. She wanted to take the train back. Lombard wanted to take a plane to get back to Gable faster. They said she and her mom flipped a coin. Her mom lost and they took the plane. And it flew right into a mountain.”
“Yeah, I heard about that while I was overseas. Damn shame.”
“So you fought?”
Archer shrugged. “Sure, like most everybody else.”
“I worked in a factory making bombs.”
“Dangerous work.”
Callahan took a moment to pull a Camel from a pack she slid from her purse. She held out the smoke for Archer to light, which he did, using a box of matches he took from a stack next to a green glass ashtray overflowing with smoked butts. The air was thick with so much smoke Archer thought a fog had materialized inside.
She cupped his hand with hers as he lit the Camel. She glanced up at him as their skin touched, but he wasn’t looking at her, with good reason. He waved the match dead and plunked it with the other wreckage into the ashtray. Then he sat back and watched her smoke. She did it well.
She said, “One girl I knew at the factory got killed in an accident. And I lost a brother and a cousin in the war. One in Germany and one in France. They’re buried over there. I want to make enough money to go see their graves and put flowers on them,” she added, her expression growing even more somber, but her eyes lifted to his. “You lose anyone in the war?”
“Just almost myself.”
“Right,” she said, apparently disappointed by this.
“So Hollywood then?” prompted Archer. “Your dream?”
“Yes. And don’t give me a hard time about it,” she added in a pouty voice that Archer didn’t much care for. Women, he’d found, did that to move men one way or another.
The dealer suddenly barked, “Hey, lovebirds, you gonna bet or you gonna give up your seats, ’cause that’s the choice you got to make. And do it before I die of old age, will ya?”
Callahan looked at the man with an expression that gave Archer pause. It was akin to a snake sizing up its next meal. He didn’t like it, but he could understand it. With a slow, methodical, full-of-meaning motion, she pushed her remaining chips onto twenty-two black.
“You sure about that, honey? Just that one bet,” said the dealer, giving her an eye back as though to evaluate her mental acuity.
Turning to Archer she said, “It’s the year I was born, 1922. And I like black better than red, always have.”
Archer slid all of his roulette chips next to hers.
She jerked so violently her Camel came close to hitting her in the eye.
“Archer, that’s too many chips for a single ride on the wheel. Soften the blow with other bets on white, black, even, odd. Don’t be a dummy, spread the risk.”
“Lady’s talking smart,” said the dealer.
Archer finished his highball and sensed the others at the table watching him, wondering whether he was mad, rich, just stupid, or all three. “Thing is, I didn’t earn it. I just followed a guy over at the craps table and got out before I lost it all. For me, it’s free money.”
“Ain’t no such thing, buddy,” barked the dealer.
Archer eyed him. “You in the business of not taking bets, buddy?”
The man chuckled and spittle ran down his chin. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Your funeral, pal. So just to be clear, you’re doing a straight up bet on twenty-two black with no outside odd or even, red or black column bets? How about some inside splits, corners, street, double street? Last chance, amigo.”
“If I knew what any of that meant, I’d answer you,” said Archer. “But all I know is if that little ball drops on twenty-two black, we win.”
“You know the odds?” asked the dealer nervously.