Peter Corris - Casino

‘Cliff, are you all right?’

I nodded.

I saw her take in the dinner suit, the lipstick on my face. She could probably smell the liquor on my breath and Vita Drewe’s perfume and the casino smoke in my hair and on my clothes. I opened the door slightly but just sat, saying nothing and her eyes drifted over the inside of the car. Opening the door was a mistake; the interior light let her see the crumpled corsage lying on the back seat.

She went back to the kerb, lifted her bags and dumped them on the bonnet. ‘Please get out and leave the keys.’

I climbed out and she looked me up and down. ‘I’ve never seen you looking so handsome, Cliff. Or so bloody ridiculous.’

She brushed past me, got in, started the engine and drove off. I hadn’t said a word. The brain behaves in a crazy way at these moments. All I could think of was what’s a Montana massage?

Somehow, I dragged myself inside, yanking off the tie and jacket as I went. I ripped open the shirt and stepped out of the pants. I took off the shoes and socks and dumped the whole outfit at the foot of the stairs. Then I went through to the bathroom and had a shower, scrubbing hard, washing all over, letting the hot water loosen my stiff shoulder and using the left arm almost as normal. It hurt like hell, but I told myself I deserved to hurt and didn’t spare it.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and went into the kitchen. The cat had had a big tin of tuna before I’d left on my big night out and it wouldn’t reappear for at least twenty-four hours. Fitting, somehow. I wanted oblivion and all I could find to help me get it was a half-bottle of gin, left over from a night when Glen and I had set up the TV and VCR at the foot of the bed, hired a pornographic video and drunk gin and tonic while we watched. The results had been highly satisfactory-multiple orgasms and a lot of fun and we’d resolved to do it again but hadn’t yet found the time and mood. I was out of tonic. I put a big measure of gin in a tall glass and added a few furry ice cubes and a couple of chunks of over-hard lemon. I took a big drink and tried to let the alcohol loosen the tightness I felt in every nerve and sinew.

The gin loosened my tongue. ‘You fuckwit,’ I said aloud. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ After another drink, I felt emboldened enough to pull the phone towards me and dial Glen’s number in Petersham. When she answered I’d think of something to say. I was the charm king-the man who’d beaten the breathalyser and steered the crippled ship back to safe harbour. The phone rang and rang with the tone that convinces you that the party is home but isn’t going to answer. More gin, definitely.

I slept until mid-morning, too drunk to be disturbed by the shoulder, and woke up feeling that to even make a start on this day was a mistake. My bladder insisted though, and I came down the stairs to find Glen sitting with a cup of coffee in the living room. She’d folded up the monkey suit and put the whole rig neatly on a chair.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘I doubt it. Excuse me, Glen. Nature calls.’

‘There’s coffee in the pot.’

I’d pulled on an old, torn T-shirt and crumpled, stained tracksuit pants and when I looked in the mirror I saw a face that matched the clothes. My eyes were bloodshot and there were asymmetrical bruises and swellings on both sides of my nose. I still wore a smear of lipstick, now with aggressive black beard bristle poking through it. I washed and tidied myself as best I could, but when I went back in with a cup of black coffee I still looked and smelt like a bum. Glen was in a crisply ironed white blouse and blue skirt. She was neat and well-ordered from head to toe, giving her a decided advantage.

I sat down and drank some coffee. ‘I’m sorry about all this. I’ve been very stupid. I’ll get the car fixed.’

‘I don’t care about the bloody car!’

‘No.’

‘You’ve been fucking someone.’

‘Once and once only. Not again.’

‘How’s that? I thought one-night stands weren’t your thing? Tell me about it. I want to know.’

I told her in some, edited, detail not putting myself in any worse light than I needed to, but not making too many excuses either. When I got to the mention of her name and the sudden change in mood it had triggered in Vita she looked shocked. ‘She must be unbalanced. You pride yourself on your ability to spot crazies. What went wrong?’

‘Bad judgement. That’s when your car got smashed. It was lucky it wasn’t both of us as well.’

‘Bad judgement, is that how you account for it? You wouldn’t root the first woman who offered just out of bad judgement, Cliff. Something was festering, feeling all wrong to you, eh?’

I nodded. ‘We seemed to be… separate. I don’t know. I suspected your south coast tour was more than just a job.’

‘That’s more like you. Suspecting stuff, looking below the surface. Did you snoop, open my mail?’

‘Of course not. I’m sorry, Glen. It was just a pile of little things… I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You were right.’

‘What?’

‘You’re right. I thought I might be able to string it out a bit longer while I tried to sort my feelings out, but the old Hardy nose was onto it.’

I shook my head and drank the rest of my coffee. It was stone cold but it didn’t matter. The taste was in my mouth, not in the drink. ‘So, it’s something serious. Are you going to tell me about it?’

‘Bugger you! Why don’t you jump up and hit something? Why are you being so fucking rational? How much does it matter to you?’

I held up my right hand and showed her the scabby knuckles. I lifted my left arm as far as it would go-not quite shoulder high. ‘I’m too damaged to hit things. Talk’s violent enough for me right now. If you tell me you love someone else… If you tell me that… we can take it from there. Glen?’

‘I don’t know. I just bloody well don’t fucking know!’

‘Who is it?’

‘Not it, he!’

I stared at her. Some of the carefully brushed and pinned brown-blonde hair had come astray. There was a light film of sweat on her upper lip and she’d splashed a few small drops of coffee on her pristine white blouse. The skirt had creased where she’d plucked at it and she was unconsciously rubbing the spot on her arm where the bullet had gone in and torn the tissue. It would trouble her always, she’d been told. It was certainly troubling her now. I wanted to reach out and put my arms around her, but the word-created barrier between us was like a three metre cyclone fence.

I said, ‘He, then. I guess he’s a policemen. That’s not so bad. Some of my best friends are policemen.’

‘Fuck you, Cliff Hardy. I can see any wounds I might leave healing up already.’

‘Don’t you believe it.’

Glen got up and began to walk around the room. She stopped at the chair where she put my clothes and stared down at them. ‘I was going to tell you, of course. I knew you’d sense it anyway. Shit, I’m repeating myself.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘You bet it’s all right,’ she flared. ‘I come back and I find you’ve been slipping it to some nutty flower power bitch who’s probably a lezzo anyway. Why should I feel guilty? You’ve never made a commitment, never wanted children…’

Neither had she, as I recalled. But all things must change and this sounded like the big one. I sat in my chair with my aches and pains and I realised that what she had said was true-I was looking past this, into a future where the actors and the script and the story would be different. I tried to pull back to the here and now, to feel the intensity of the moment. I couldn’t do it. Hardy, the great survivor. I sat mutely while she paced and talked with none of it really reaching me. In fact, my thinking started to slip sideways-towards my fleeting impression of the man I’d seen getting into the Mercedes outside the casino and what that might mean, towards Scott Galvani’s job and what it would be like to do it, towards my professional connection with Gina, which seemed to be growing more complicated and more distant.