The Only Girl in the Game (15 page)

He could not sort out their names and faces, or remember how many there had been over the years. Maria, Antonia. Amparo, Rosalinda, Maria Elena, Augustina, Chucha, Dorotea.… There had been a comfortable sameness about them, an undemanding docility, a tremulous apprehension in the beginning that soon softened into cheerful affection, because it was easy for him to be kind to them. Almost without exception, months after they had returned to Mexico, he would receive one of the traditional wedding pictures, the bride and groom impaled on the thorn of time, staring rigidly into the unkind lens of the village photographer.

They had come to him on all those nights across the long busy years, with a reassuring sameness of firm young haunch and identical murmurs of love and healthy and strenuous participation, demanding nothing of him beyond this prearranged area of housework and bed—appreciative of his kindnesses, and devoted to giving him pleasure.

He had known it was wrong in the ethical sense. It was a voluntary slavery, but slavery nonetheless, enforced by
money. He could not see how anyone was hurt by such an arrangement, yet the nag of conscience was enough to make his parting gift, each time, handsomer than he had planned.

The last one, who was sent to him six years ago, was Gigliermina, from a village in Tlaxcala. His demands upon her were much less frequent than in the days of his full manhood. She was nineteen when she came into his home. During her first two years she had taken over more and more responsibility in the running of the household. She had an unexpectedly powerful personality and a talent for administration. No matter how many weeks he might be gone on business trips, he came to know that when he returned to the old ranch it would be spotlessly clean. There would be a fire, in season, ready to light. Gigi, with a smile at once shy and proud, would be the one to unpack his things, lay out fresh clothing, make his drink, plan his meals around the foods he most relished.

After two years he spoke, without conviction, of sending her back, as had been promised to her. She told him she could stay a little longer, if her presence did not offend him. He spoke of it again at the end of the third year, and the fourth, and then knew he would not bring it up again.

She had changed in physical ways. She had grown heavier. The broad Indio structuring of her face was more apparent. She dominated the household staff, demanding and receiving obedience. And she had become much more familiar with Homer Gallowell, but in ways that did not displease him. She guarded his health like a mother with a sickly child, railing at him when he let himself become overtired. Without his desiring it or asking for it, she had made him the focus of her existence, and it would have been unthinkable to send her away. Her English had become very good, and at her gentle insistence he helped her to acquire citizenship.

When he lived at the old ranch, she made a practise of coming to his bed when he retired, massaging his back and shoulders and the nape of his neck with strong brown fingers, rubbing away the tensions of the day while she prattled about ranch affairs in a way that rested him. She would stay with him and talk, and so she was there for him when he felt any stir of physical wanting. When he awakened just before dawn, she was never there, having returned—with her understanding of the proprieties of the relationship—to her room in the servants’ wing. When there were guests at the ranch, she never provided them the slightest basis for speculation. When he was alone with her he would
talk out business problems, and though they were beyond her comprehension, it seemed to clarify them in his own mind. Gigi was the only one he talked to without reservation.

He had satisfied his own feeling of responsibility toward her by adding a special codicil to his will. The trusted attorney who handled his most personal legal matters had been aghast at the sum involved.

“Can this … uh … person handle an amount like this?” he had asked warily. “Wouldn’t a trust fund be more.…”

“She will be able to handle her personal financial affairs better than you are handling your own, son.”

“I just.…”

“You just do as I tell you.”

It amused him to think how, when the terms of his will were made public, the sharpshooters would descend on this ignorant woman from a primitive village. And how they would be stopped in their tracks by a shrewdness that would see through every deception.

All of the others and now, finally, Gigliermina, had formed one line of defense against the sort of woman he had impulsively asked to sit with him.

“They took a good piece of money off me last evening,” he said.

“Word gets around,” Betty Dawson had said. “If somebody hits the house, they plant it in the columns. If it’s the other way around it’s just us captive chickens who get the word.”

“I guess you like to know about the people who have enough to lose so that when they lose it, it’s kind of a big thing around here. I guess right now I could win a popularity contest.”

The waiter brought her coffee. As soon as he was out of earshot, she stared at Homer with eyes suddenly narrow and said, “I give not a damn, old man, how much you lost or how much you have left. I spoke to you because you happened to look depressed. You win no popularity contests with me. I’m not on the make for you or your money, and if you can’t accept a friendly gesture without thinking everybody has an angle, then why don’t you just get up and go right through that door. I’ll miss you dreadfully.”

He stared at her for a moment, and then leaned toward her, his eyes as narrow as hers. “That’s just what I was a-needing, a lot of smart-alec lip from a girl makes her living singing dirty. Any time anybody has to feel sorry for me, I’ll wear a sign letting you know. To me what I lost is the same as you losing a ten-dollar bill.”

“Mail me a copy of your bank balance, rich man!”

“If anybody leaves this table, it shouldn’t be the one who was settin’ here first!”

“Why don’t you buy the joint and have it torn down?”

They sat motionless, their noses six inches apart, their jaws set. The corner of his mouth began to twitch. Her eyes began to dance. And suddenly they both yelped and roared with laughter until the tears ran freely. He banged the tabletop with his knotted old fist. The bartenders stared.

When all the gaspings had died away, they were friends who could talk to each other. And both of them were ripe for talking, and for listening. He wouldn’t let her go off to bed. He let her go change and asked her to come back. They breakfasted together, and on that cold bright day they took a walk along the Strip, had a long lunch at the Sahara and then taxied back to the Cameroon.

At lunch he had said, “You could get out of the business you’re in, couldn’t you?”

He had sensed a wariness and withdrawal in her as she said indifferently, “But why should I, Homer? I like the plush life.”

“It just isn’t a fitten kind of work for you, Miz Betty,” he had said stubbornly.

“Oh, come now! The songs are sophisticated, but there isn’t one of them that’s in bad taste, actually.”

“Wearin’ tight dresses so the boobs will stare at you.…”

“That’s part of the game.”

“Dammit, you should ought to be married, having kids—a woman like you.”

“Maybe. But you don’t order up a husband the way you order a drink, Homer. They have to sort of come along, don’t they?”

“But you got to do some looking. You got to help it a little.”

She shrugged. “Even if the boy did show, it’s just a little too … let’s drop the subject, huh?”

“Why should it be a little too late?”

“Please, Homer.”

“Has somebody got some kind of bad pressure on you, Miz Betty?”

She had hesitated just long enough to give him a certainty he was right before saying, “Nonsense! I’m free as a bird.”

“I can see you don’t want to talk about it, whatever it is, and it’s making you uneasy. But you just remember one thing. I got a lot of weight, Miz Betty. I like you. I don’t like many people. They all seem kind of dim and helpless lately. But
if there’s anybody got you in a bind and you want loose, you get hold of me any time, any place, and tell me who and how, and I’ll get you out from under. Money is the biggest damn lever in the world.”

“If I ever need a white knight on a horse, Homer, I’ll phone Texas.”

“You do that, hear?”

After they returned to the hotel he got hold of his pilot, and then she had insisted on driving him to the airport in her little old car, and, in the moment of parting, he had put a hesitant and leathery kiss on the softness of her cheek. A month or so later he had Neiman Marcus send her a dinner ring, a dark blue three karat amethyst, oval cut, superbly mounted in platinum.

She had sent it back to him by registered mail, with a brief amusing refusal in verse form. After ironic reflection, he had given the ring to Gigliermina.

Now her first show was over and she came smiling to his table to sit with him.

“Homer, you’re looking very fit.”

“Sure, Miz Betty, like an ole buzzard on a high limb. I don’t know if I ought to badmouth you some, sending back that ring like you did. I thought it was a purty thing.”

“It was a gloriously beautiful thing, Homer, and it took a lot of character to send it back, because I loved it on sight.”

“I was thinking of that same blue you got in your eyes.”

“Now-be good! I didn’t keep it because we’re friends, I think, and I had the feeling I would see you again some day. And when I did, I didn’t want to have the feeling that if I was nice to you I’d get another ring. Do you see?”

“In a manner of speaking. Maybe.”

“You cannot buy my favors, sir.”

“Never reckoned I could, somehow.”

“It would make me feel like a kept woman, taking a mighty jewel like that.”

“Well, you’d be about the longest-range, least-used kept woman on record, because I can’t stand this place more’n three days in a row, once a year.”

Leaning close to him and lowering her voice, she said, frowning, “Why on earth have you come back to let them clip you again, Homer? I heard you were here to gamble.”

“It might work out some different this time, Miz Betty.”

“Homer, Homer! That’s what they all say, and it never happens!”

“If I was you, I wouldn’t waste time worrying about ole Homer none. I’ve been studying on this thing a little since I was here last time. If a man keeps at it, those house percentages are going to sooner or later walk him down. So I don’t bet often, but I bet on the heavy side.” He hooked two fingers into his vest pocket and pulled out the ten chips. “Ever see any like these?”

She picked the top one off the stack. “It’s just a hundred-dollar chip, is all, but it’s got tape on it.” She turned it toward the light. “Signed by Max Hanes! Why?”

“That raises them some. It raises them up to twenty-five thousand apiece. It’s a deal I worked out with him.”

She put the chip back hastily. “My God! Ten of them! Put them away. They make me nervous. When do you start to use them?”

“I started already, Miz Betty. I started with eight and now I got ten. If it goes along like I hope, I’ll have me another three or four extry tomorrow, and another three or four or maybe even five on Monday, and then I’ll head on back home. What’s the matter? Why’d you look so funny there for a minute?”

“Nothing’s the matter, Homer.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“I just … have the horrible feeling that you know exactly how to beat the casino, if anybody in the world ever can. I have the horrid feeling you’re going to win.”

“It’s a bad thing to win?”

“I’m just kidding.”

“But you looked scared like, Betty.”

“Sometimes it isn’t a good thing to win too much.”

He studied her for a few moments. “Don’t get all nerved up. I can see as how they don’t like to let loose of it without struggling some. But I’ve been in the world for some time, Miz Betty. In nineteen eleven, when I was twenty-two years old, a man took some money off me that was mine. Three hundred in gold that I had collected from him on a note. He lathered his horse making a big half circle to come up on me, and he gut-shot me off my horse, took the gold, drove my horse away and left me for dead. I was to be married in three months, and it was no time for dying. I walked four miles, crawled three, and squirmed along for two more, rested some, then stopped a train going to San Antone by building a brush fire on the tracks. In three weeks I was mended, and I got some friends and went along to see that fella. We hung him a little bit, kept letting him down so he could talk, and
when he allowed he had done it and told us where the gold was hid, we hung him for sure and certain. Since then nobody has taken anything off me I wasn’t willing for them to have So don’t you worry none.”

She smiled and touched his hand. “Okay, you fearless old man.”

“Something’s going good for you, I’d say.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s writ all over you, Betty. You look like something that’s come into blossom. I’d say you found you a man.”

“I found him. Homer Yes indeed, I found him!”

“Going to get married up?”

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

“You’re not such a fool as to get tangled with a man who’s married already.”

“No. He isn’t married.”

“Then what’s holding you back, woman?”

“I guess maybe I love him too much, Homer.”

“Damn if I ever met anybody of the female persuasion made any damn sense at all, half the time.”

“Don’t get all stirred up now, Homer. I’m happy. Can’t you let that be enough for right now?”

“Sure can. You look happy, girl. You look fit to bust with it.”

“He’s strong, Homer. Where it counts. Integrity. Is that word out of style? That’s the kind of man I need. God knows I can find enough of them who want to collapse in my lap and live off my strength This is one I can lean on. But I won’t. I know I could if I had to, but I won’t. That’s what makes it so good.”

“Who the hell you in love with? Marshal Dillon?”

“Homer, I swear, you almost sound jealous. Thank you, dear. It’s a guy named Hugh Darren. He’s the new manager of this hotel … since last August.”