Page 72 of Never Never

“I heard that,” says Jim.

Fox rattles his chips, thinking. Finally, he splits them into two little towers: setting one on the 6, the other on the zero.

Glenda clutches Jim’s arm. “Oh, he’s going big! Big guy’s going big!”

The dealer’s hands hover above the felt. “Sir, that’s over the inside limit.” He nods at the brass stand by his elbow, the one Fox was blocking from me earlier. “Three hundred a number.”

“Oh,” Fox says. “Is that⁠—”

“Not at all,” the dealer says smoothly. “Just let me get my floor.”

He signals, and the floorman glides over, the man in the vest I clocked at the edge of the pit. The dealer whispers quickly in his ear as he nods, looking at the towers. At Fox. At me, and at my dress.

My heart stutters.

But the floorman smiles.

“For the lady,” he says, and nods to the dealer. “I think we can make an exception.”

Fox beams, and I smile, too, before I look back at the table and realize.

Fox’s chips are gone. They’re all out on the table: half on each number.

Shit. I meant half your stack total, Fox, I think. Not half on two bets at the same time. If neither number hits, which is overwhelmingly likely, then we won’t have anything left to bet with. And if we have nothing left to bet with⁠—

“No more bets!”

The wheel whirs. The ball clicks round and round. The motion is hypnotizing. Or nauseating.

Hit, I think. Hit, please. Keep us in the game. Don’t make this all be for nothing. Don’t⁠—

The spin slows. The ball skips on the 6. I swear it kisses it. Then it hops, ricochets twice, and drops.

One pocket too far.

“Double zero,” the dealer says. “Green double zero.”

The whole table groans.

“Oh, so close!” Glenda cries, reaching over me to pat Fox’s biceps.

“Son,” Jim says, pointing over his whiskey glass, “you’re either a genius or a lunatic.”

The rake sweeps once, and both of Fox’s towers vanish into the tray. We’re out. Just like that, we’re out. No more chips, no more cash, no invitation to anything bigger or better, no chance of breaking beyond this shitty ground level and its cigarette stink and migraine of a decor scheme.

I just don’t think you should go.

I close my eyes. Wendy was right. This was a dumb idea, a dumb, dumb idea⁠—

“Hey, easy come, easy go.”

My eyes fly open. Fox is smiling, shrugging like it’s truly no big deal, and the table relaxes around us, seeing that he’s not about to rage off or something. I’m formulating some polite way to say goodbye around the growing lump in my throat when Fox reaches into his left back pocket.

“Can I, uh, reload?” he asks the dealer. “Here?”

He holds out a stack of…hundreds.

I stare, my goodbyes forgotten. The bills are crisp, folded once, dead center, unlike the lumpy stack of cash he’d had before.