Odds : A Love Story (9781101554357) (11 page)

“Just for one night,” he said, as if that might be fun, and for a moment, slowed by everything she’d had to drink, she thought, if offered, she might actually seize the opportunity to rewind to sixteen or seventeen and start over to avoid all of this—then remembered Emma and Jeremy. You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole—like the world, or the person you loved. With the Southern Comfort warming her, short-circuiting her thoughts, the idea seemed profound, and then as Art was leaving a note for the turndown service and she was checking to see if she had her room key, she dropped the stupid plastic card on the carpet so it bounced under the glass table. Recovering it required all of her faculties, and by the time she straightened up, clutching the arm of one chair like the rung of a ladder, the notion was gone, replaced by the urge to dance until she was sweaty and party till she didn’t give a shit about anything.

Odds of Heart playing “Crazy on You” in concert:
        
1 in 1

    Even as they waited outside in the bright, sterile mall, shuffling toward the theater doors with the other latecomers—most of them their age, Art noted—the reek of burning weed was overpowering, and brazen. He’d forgotten it was legal here, or at least decriminalized. Marion sniffed the air and arched her eyebrows like Harpo.

Inside, a fog hung in the trusses overhead, reflecting the kaleidoscope of the light show, and he wondered how the owners got around the fire code. When a joint came down their row, she hit it and passed it to him as if it was natural. He held the smoke in his lungs, watching Nancy Wilson strumming her twelve-string and stepping forward to press a pedal, her skin tinted yellow and then red under the gels. Her hair was only shoulder-length, and straight, not the luxuriant tresses he remembered, and she was noticeably thin, as if she’d been sick, her wrists bony. Though he’d sworn it was her, the woman from the restaurant had been someone else. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone out of his way to prove he was a fool. This was minor, comparatively. He exhaled, adding his breath to the cloud above. Beside him Marion swayed to the music, the crowd singing along so loudly he could barely pick out the vocals. It was like being trapped in a giant karaoke bar on Heart night.

For years he’d been hearing that dope was stronger. Now he believed it. They’d been drinking for hours, so maybe it was the combination. His lips were numb, his face a rigid mask, as if he were slowly being paralyzed. He felt himself receding, a flickering brain cell trapped inside a thick, inert head, like the lighted stage at the end of the dark auditorium. He watched the crowd as much as the band. They played two or three favorites, then a new tune nobody knew, everyone settling again, as if in protest. Someone down the row must have had a bag of joints, because they kept coming. The smell was piney, almost sweet. Marion coughed and laughed at herself, offered it to him. He needed to be in control for the dry run later, and rather than abstain and look like a lightweight, he took in a shallow mouthful and blew it out.

The new tune garnered tepid applause, and then the stage—the whole place—went black, as if they’d lost power, only the red exit signs floating in space. In the dark, people shrieked and whooped and whistled, called out songs. After a long minute a single orange spot found Nancy Wilson downstage, perched on the very edge, one high-heeled boot atop a monitor, her right hand raised straight in the air like Pete Townshend about to windmill. She waited until the shouting and catcalls subsided, lowered the pick to her Stratocaster and broke into the galloping opening riff of “Barracuda,” making everyone jump up.

She played it twice, three times, torquing the whammy bar, bending the last jangling chord so it ricocheted off the walls and scattered, then spun, kicked, and the flash pots bloomed like fireworks, blinding, as the rest of the band jumped in,
thunderous, hitting them like a wind.
So, this ain’t the end, I saw you again
, Ann shrilled. Marion grabbed him, and though he had no idea how to dance to the song beyond a headbanging pogo, and understood they looked as ridiculous as all the stiff, middle-aged baby boomers around them, he tried to match her enthusiasm, sticking out his chin and pouting, Jagger-like, lip-syncing to the words he didn’t know he knew. Her smirk was a challenge, half put-down, half come‑on. They mock-taunted each other with the chorus.
And if the real thing don’t do the trick—no?—you better make up something quick. You’re gonna burn burn burn burn burn to the wii-iick
. The coda was all churning guitars and flashing strobes. After the last cymbals crashed and the lights died, they embraced, sweaty, celebrating the greatness of the song and how wasted they were. When she kissed him, he tasted weed and tequila. She hung on his neck, shouted in his ear, “Is there anything left to drink?”

He made it his mission. There was no sense in both of them going. His mouth was dry and he had a craving for a beer anyway.

As he’d predicted, the lines were endless, the concessions people painfully, irritatingly slow. He didn’t mind missing a couple of cheesy power ballads from the eighties, but while he was still a dozen people from the front, he recognized, from a lifetime of AOR radio, the fingerpicked flamenco intro and then the strummed buildup giving way to the big fuzzy falling-down-the-stairs riff—“Crazy on You.”
We may still have time, we might still get by
. The song could have been about them, and he wished he were there with her for it.

Part of the reason the line was so slow was that they had to
check everyone’s ID, which made no sense, given the crowd. He shifted from foot to foot, looked to the ceiling for patience. The waiting was giving him a headache, and then when he reached the counter, incredibly, all they had was light beer, they were ten dollars apiece, and he could only buy two.

He didn’t tip his server, then felt guilty, which pissed him off even more. He took a sip from each beer so they wouldn’t spill and hustled across the concourse, skirting the steady stream leaving the arena. The band was playing another new song no one cared about. As he made his way down the aisle, he passed dozens of people texting on their glowing cellphones.

Back at the seats, Marion was doubled over, her head twisted, one cheek pressed against the seat in front of her. A woman he’d never seen before knelt beside her, shining a flashlight app around like she was trying to help. He thought Marion had passed out, and blamed himself for leaving her, and then she straightened up, smiling goofily, pinching something tiny and glinting between her fingers. The woman cupped a palm to receive it, tilted her head and refastened her earring. “Oh my God, thank you so much,” she said, hugging Marion like a long-lost friend. They were both completely stoned. She was from the row ahead of them, and bumped him as she slipped past, nearly spilling the beers.

“You were gone awhile,” Marion said, taking hers.

“I heard ‘Crazy on You.’ What else did I miss?”

“Nothing too exciting.”

“All they had was Bud Light.”

“That’s fine.”

It was a waste. By the next song, his beer was gone. Marion swayed along to “Alone,” but for him the mood was ruined. His back hurt from standing. It had to be nine-thirty. No way they would go two hours. He counted the songs they’d played, thinking they must almost be done. He imagined they were saving “Magic Man” for the encore. As they ran through their later, lesser hits, he expected every song to be the last. He pictured the casino teeming with people, the blackjack dealers calmly revealing their hands, servers bustling between tables with free drinks.

Between songs, as Nancy was switching guitars in the darkness, Ann strode to the front of the stage.

“We know it’s not Valentine’s Day, but we’re not here tomorrow—sorry. So we’d like to wish everybody a happy Valentine’s Day, all right? All right. This is a special night, and Niagara Falls is a special place, so before our last song we’d like to bring two people up here for something special.” She checked her cheat sheet. “Please welcome Tom Rutkowski and Alison Spagnotta—I hope I got that right. Tom here has something he wants to ask Alison.”

The crowd cheered as the couple walked on, and for a moment Art felt as if he’d been robbed. He rubbed a hand over the bump in his pocket to make sure the box was still there. Why hadn’t he thought of it? It seemed obvious now. A simple phone call and they could have been up there instead of these two—hefty, even beside Ann Wilson, and weirdly familiar. As the man lowered himself to one knee, knightlike, in the spotlight, Art recognized the orange Harley bandanna and leather vest.

“Holy crap. You know who that is?”

“Who?” Marion said.

“They were sitting right across from us on the bus.”

“Yikes. Don’t remind me of that bus.”

The woman said yes, and the couple embraced to a standing ovation. A gracious hostess, Ann Wilson kissed them each on the cheek and sent them off, waving to their new fans. As the lights dimmed, then died, Art imagined the congratulations awaiting them, and the happy place this memory would have in their married life, and thought that once again, through his own lack of imagination or foresight, he’d blown another chance.

From the darkness, softly, lilted a synthesizer riff he associated with something bobbing in water, and behind it, revolving like the scratchy edge of a record, the crash and hiss of surf washing ashore. Gradually the lights came up, bathing the stage a marine blue. A guitar joined in, and another synth, their twinned, single notes descending slowly, sweetly. He knew the song but couldn’t quite place it in their catalog—because it wasn’t one of theirs, he realized before Ann sang a word. It was the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me,” disorienting here, a complete surprise. As a teen he’d been skeptical of the anthem, too inexperienced and self-conscious to buy the idea. Now, on the far side of romance, he wasn’t sure it was realistic, or was he unworthy of the sentiment, split as he’d been? It made him think of Wendy and the beach, the lunch hours they’d sat at the chained-down picnic tables, necking and planning a future that never happened.

Marion tugged at his arm, and he leaned down. “I love this song! I didn’t know they played this song.”

“They don’t,” he shouted. “It’s probably because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

He wasn’t sure she heard him, because she didn’t respond, just swayed by his side as Ann overpowered Roger Daltrey.

At the end, both Wilson sisters came forward, arms over each other’s shoulders. “Thank you,” Nancy said. “And good night,” Ann said. They bowed and threw a
Dating Game
kiss. “We love you!” The stage went black, the synthesizer riff and the crashing waves still circling, softer and softer, until they were lost in applause.

All around him people held up their phones, a ghostly phenomenon he’d only seen on commercials and disliked on principle. The few surviving smokers raised real lighters, blatantly violating the law. He wished he had one.

They clapped in rhythm—“We want Heart! We want Heart!”

As expected, the band returned for an encore, taking their places again. Cynically, he thought it was all choreographed, as slick and shallow as Vegas. Why did it bother him? Everyone sold out to survive. It was the price of getting old. He’d tried his best, just no one was interested.

They surprised him with another cover, Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” which he danced to, feeling faintly embarrassed while Marion flung her hair around.
Been a long time since I rock and ro‑olled.
It was true. He had no moves, and was already pondering which of the two tables they should play. He bopped along, nodding in time, but finally gave up during “Magic Man,” standing quietly beside her, constrained and impatient, as if waiting to be released.

Odds of a black number coming up in roulette (European):
        
1 in 2.06

    Maybe what she needed all along was to get stoned, because walking through the high-stakes tables of the Lord Stanley Club, surrounded by players losing thousands of dollars every second, the whole place seemed unbelievably, laughably fake, and for the first time since Art unveiled the plan, she thought she saw the logic of his thinking. The money wasn’t real, so why not have some fun with it? It was like Monte Carlo night at church, a riskless thrill for the timid, which, despite what he might say, included both of them. They would have never been there if they hadn’t already lost everything.

Unlike the wide-open, gaudily decorated galleries downstairs, the club was a high-ceilinged room the size of a private library, separated from the main floor by an imposing black marble reception desk and paneled in what appeared to be teak. The atmosphere was serious, even stuffy. There were no slot machines plinking, no hidden speakers blaring classic rock, no revolving LED screens promoting the in‑house restaurants and shows. The entryway might have been a stage set. Below a full-length portrait of Lord Stanley himself, a fireplace lined with river stone blazed, attended by a pair of substantial wingback chairs. The design aspired to an exclusive businessman’s club, a civilized retreat, except for the baize-topped tables jammed with older,
chain-smoking Asian men in suits. At a glance, she understood that she and Art were the foreigners here.

She was also certain that everyone knew she was stoned. When a server came by offering champagne, she took one from the tray and quaffed it, both for cover and to settle her nerves.

There were no open seats at either of the two roulette wheels, and rather than forfeit whatever slight advantage Art thought they would have here, they waited, sipping and dispassionately watching the action, as if they might learn something from it. The croupier looked Chinese as well, possibly Korean, a husky pie-faced guy with a brush cut who kept the wheel lazily spinning while the players placed their bets. He plucked the ivory ball from the winning slot and, backhanded, sent it zipping around the rim, its orbit magically resisting decay—magnets, she suspected. The players reached across one another, adding impulsive last-second bets, pushing him stacks of chips to put on the numbers at the head of the table.