Page 38 of A Midlife Gamble

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Finding her way to the games room proved as hard as Kay had imagined it to be, but once there she spotted Tony straight away and waved to him.

‘Marianne said you wanted to play?’ He smiled.

‘Well…’ she started, nervous all over again. And before she could finish, a man wearing a washed-out pink t-shirt that barely covered his stomach called to her. ‘Come on in third base!’

Third base?

Tony waved her in to the table. ‘That’s the name of the player on the right of the dealer.’

‘Ah.' Kay glanced at the other players. Besides the man in the t-shirt, there were two. Another man and a woman, both wearing the same inscrutable expression of extreme concentration. The chair on the right of the dealer was indeed empty.

‘Or we can move to a lower limit table?’ Tony said.

‘What’s this one?’ Kay whispered.

‘Twenty-five dollars.’

Twenty-five dollars!She nodded, her hand flipping the catch of her handbag up and down, her eyes taking in the piles of chips by each player’s hand.Twenty-five dollars?Twenty-five dollars on one hand meant the very real possibility of being a hundred dollars down in five minutes. Three minutes even. Twenty-five dollars was several hundred matchsticks out of her comfort zone. ‘A lower-limit is a good idea,’ she swallowed.

Tony slipped off his chair. ‘The five-dollar table is nice and empty. I’ll just colour up.’

‘Colour up?’

He grinned. ‘Watch.’

So she did. Focusing as he exchanged a large pile of red chips for a smaller pile of green. And a heap of green chips, for a few blacks. ‘They get heavy,’ he smiled.

‘Black is a hundred dollars?’

‘And red is five, and green, twenty-five.’

‘Ok.’ Over eight hundred dollars then, she’d counted going into his pocket. What did she have in her purse? Fifty in cash. Fifty in cash meant, ten hands. And suddenly she was as excited as a puppy let off its leash. Suddenly, ten hands of Blackjack seemed the most sensible and productive way of spending fifty dollars imaginable. Hadn’t she just spent almost that amount to kiss a plastic George Clooney? And heaven knows how much stuffing herself with food that she could neither smell, nor barely taste. ‘Let’s play,’ she said, her toes curling with excitement.

At the five-dollar table,she took the seat to the immediate right of the dealer, while Tony had slipped to the bathroom. ‘Third base,’ she said to the woman next to her, as she sat down.

‘Emma,’ the woman replied. She was eighty if she was a day, and almost bald. Through the pitiful scrap of hair she had left, she’d scraped a diamond hair slide into place. How it stayed, Kay had no idea.

‘Joanne,’ the woman opposite growled.

‘Oh.’ Kay looked from one to the other. ‘I didn’t mean, I’m called third base. I…’

But she was cut off by Emma waving a hand and letting out a laugh so croaky it sounded like a frog. ‘Honey, we know. We’re teasing.’

Kay smiled. Emma had her diamond hair slide and Joanne wore a sparkly jumper, bright red and covered in sequins. Kay glanced down at her own t-shirt. She felt hopelessly dull. Why wasn’t she wearing her jacket? Nearly five thousand miles she’d travelled to finally make it to a real gaming table and play a real game. Next time, she thought, and her eyes widened in surprise. She was already thinking there would be a next time? ‘I like your jumper,’ she said to Joanne. ‘I feel a bit underdressed, I’m new to all this.’

Joanne nodded. ‘We’re here every couple of months. Beats sitting at home in Miami, comparing dead husbands.’

‘Oh.’ Kay glanced at Emma, and back at Joanne. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’ Joanne rasped.

‘Your husbands. They’re dead.’

‘Not all of them.’ Emma snorted. ‘I've still got one above ground.’

‘Me too.’ Joanne shrugged. ‘And I’ve had five. Three passed, one vanished and one drip-feeds. And you honey? How many do you have?’

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