“Evenin’, Lola,” Buff says. “It’s a cold ’un. Better keep that door shut to keep the warmth in.”
With a full-lipped smile that says she lives for contradicting people, Lola takes two strutting steps outside into the snow. Her feet are bare and she’s wearing a sheer, lacy dress that lets through more than its fair share of light. Underneath she wears only the barest of essentials, something lacy up top and down below, leaving little to imagination. She’s got to be freaking freezing her perfectly sculpted buttocks off, but if she is, she doesn’t show it.
“Sure you won’t reconsider my previous offers?” she says in a seductive, lilting tone, swaying her hips side to side, in a way that’s completely different to how Looza was earlier when she was mixing the stew.
“Uh, well, I think, we have to…” Buff is a tangle of words.
“Sorry, Lola. Not tonight,” I say. Not ever. When I find the right girl and the time is right, I certainly won’t be looking to pay for it.
“Another time, perhaps,” she says with a wink.
“Uh, yah, you too,” Buff says nonsensically as we walk away. He looks back several times.
“By the Heart of the Mountain, you’re pathetic sometimes,” I say.
“Says the King of Bad Breakups,” he retorts, magically finding order to his words again.
“At least I’m the king of something.”
“Hopefully we’re both the kings of boulders tonight,” he says. “Did you get the silver?”
I screw up my mouth. “Yah, but it’s only twenny.”
“Iceballs! It turned out I only had ten.”
“Son of a no-good, snow blowin’…” I spout off a few more choice words. With only thirty sickles we’ll be lucky if they even let us in the Chance Hole.
“Sorry. Darce had to use the rest of it to fix a hole in the wall.”
That brings me back to reality pretty quick. “Buff, I’m sorry. This is my fault. I never shoulda started something with Coker.”
“Icin’ right it’s your fault,” he says, but he’s grinning. “But he did have it coming to him. And it was kinda fun, at least until that freezin’ stoner dropped that stool on our heads.
I grin back. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”
Buff claps me on the back. “Like you said, Dazzo, we’ll fix things, just like we always do.”
~~~
We know we’ve reached our destination when the pipe smoke starts curling around our heads.
Against the stark white of the winter scenery, the gray smoke almost seems to take on a life of its own, with fingers that grab and clutch without ever actually touching you. The smoke wafts out from a stone staircase that descends cellar-like beneath a two story building that, based on the sign on the door, claims to specialize in Custom Doors. Other than in the White District, there’s not much demand for that sort of thing these days—most of us are just happy to have any type of door—so I suspect it’s just a front for the gambling operation.
Heavy voices rumble from below like distant thunder from some fire country storm. Moments later, a short man emerges from the cellar, looking distraught, glancing behind him with wary eyes, as if he’s likely to get knifed in the back. Which, coming out of a place like that, he just might.
He’s heading right for us, but not looking where he’s going. We just stand there, watching him, waiting for him to notice, but he keeps on coming. When he finally looks up, he’s so close he barely stops before running smack into my chest. “Oh,” he exclaims, twitching so hard that his knitted cap flops off his head and into the snow, revealing a head as bald as the day he was born. Buff reaches down and picks it up.
“Uh, sorry…and thanks…and, uh, sorry,” the man says, taking the cap and sort of bowing with his hands clasped together around the edges. He’s jerking every which way and can’t seem to keep his eyes focused on us for more than a few seconds. Each time they dart away, it’s toward the cellar steps.
“Are you waiting for someone?” I ask, nodding toward the steps.
“Oh, nay…nay, nay, nay, nay, nay! Most definitely not. But I really don’t know how I’ll…never mind, it’s not your concern.” The odd little man scurries off, his feet sinking into the snow up to his knees. “Not enough sickles in the world…ever pay them back?...What’ll Marta say?” he mumbles to himself as he plods away, trying to replace the hat on his head. But his hands are so jittery he can’t get it right, and eventually gives up, settling for cold ears until he gets to wherever his destination is.
“He lost big time,” Buff says. I nod, wishing it wasn’t true. Although perhaps if other patrons of the Chance Hole are losing, that means there’s plenny of room for us to win.
I hang onto that thought as we descend the steps. There’s no smoke or voices now, as the thick door at the bottom is closed again. A man as big as a boulder with legs like tree trunks stands in front of the door, thick arms crossed over his chest.
“I ain’t seen you two before,” he says in a voice that suggests his father is a bear. Given the thickness of his beard, his mother might be a bear too.
Buff lets me do the talking after his unfortunate tongue tie up when he spoke to Lola. “You haven’t. Usually we play small time, but we’re looking to up the ante tonight.” Yah, with the all of thirty sickles we have to play with.
He looks me up and down with a crooked smile, as if he doesn’t believe for a second that we’ve got the stones to play with the high rollers. My nerve falters under his gaze, but I don’t let it show on my face. When his heavy brown eyes return to mine, he says, “Buy-in’s twenny sickles, five-sickle ante per hand, betting starts immediately.”
When he opens the door the smoke and noise hit us like a morning fog.
Chapter Four
Inside is full of snakes. Not the slivery brown rattlers you’ll find in the woods sometimes in the heart of summer, but the greasy, venom-eyed, hustling kind who work the Red District underground. There are a dozen tables and all appear to be full. The slap of cards, jingle of coins, and groans of loss or shouts of victory muddle into one stream of sound that represents one thing and one thing alone: greed.
Here is where fortunes are made and bigger fortunes are lost. Just by stepping through this door we’ve proved that we belong, certainly more than the bald-headed man with the unsteady hands who left earlier.
Through the pipe smog, I scan the crowd, laughing when a chubby guy with a lopsided smile scrapes a pile of coins from the center of a table while a hooded man slams his cards down. For every winner there’s a loser.
“Advance?” a nasally voice says from beside us.
A pointy-nosed woman sits at a desk, stacks of coins in front of her.
“Excuse me?” I say, being as polite as possible.
She lifts a hand to her curly red hair, shakes her head, rolls her eyes. Maybe we don’t belong here after all. Even she knows we’re new to this scene. Slowing her pace, she says, “Would. You. Like. An. Advance?” She motions to the coins.
Forget trying to act the part. This woman appears to be offering us money—which we desperately need—so I need to understand. Keeping my voice low, I say, “Look, you know as well as us that we’re new to…all of this.” I wave my hand across the room. “We’ve played cards plenny of times, but never in a joint like this—for high stakes. So can you please explain how it works. The advance, I mean.”
She sighs, seems to resign herself to the fact that I’m not going away without some information. “Most of our…customers…are high rollers. They play for big stakes and they don’t back down. You think they carry hundreds of sickles in their pockets? Forget about it. They come here empty handed, and we keep a tally of their balance. We can also advance you silver so long as you’re good for it. We can do up to a thousand sickles the first time, until you’ve proven you’ll pay it back. Then we can go as high as ten thousand.”