Back in Black (10 page)

Whoosh!
The cork ejected with absolutely zero spillage or foaming, earning Parker some minor accolades. Then he himself poured everyone a tall glassful before handing the bottle back to the flight attendant.

Sam hoisted her glass in the air. “Here's to wild and crazy us in wild and crazy Vegas,” she pronounced. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll! If only Eduardo could be here.”

“To Eduardo!” Anna chimed in.

Everyone clinked glasses—Parker was quick to notice that Cammie touched her glass to everyone's but Anna's. So. Cammie was still holding a grudge because of how her old boyfriend, Ben, had hooked up with Anna. It was time she got over it. Parker knew both these guys, and Adam Flood was way cooler than Ben Birnbaum any day of the week. But trust these girls to continue their ongoing Catfights of the Rich and Famous. It wasn't like they had anything else to worry about.

Parker drank. Whoa. Tasty. He loved good champagne; it flowed down his throat like honey. One of the problems of pretending to be rich was having developed the tastes of the rich. It was hard to go back to Korbel after enjoying the stuff on the top shelf.

The flight attendant touched his right ear, where he had an earphone that connected to the cockpit. “Please take your seats and buckle up, everyone. We're starting our descent into Las Vegas. We'll be on the ground in twenty minutes.”

Sam handed her champagne flute to Parker. “I'm going back to my seat. Drink up. You look like you could use it.”

He grinned. Fair enough. It was good champagne. He should have swallowed his distaste and tried to try to hook up with Sam long ago. With her on his arm, he'd have had access to everything. And she wasn't all that bad looking, either. But now she had some South American boyfriend whom she talked about in every third sentence.

Well, Parker knew Beverly Hills relationships just as well as he knew fashion: Today's in-love couple was only one step away from their big breakup. It was only a matter of time.

“So, what did Ben
say?
”

Anna looked up—she'd been lost in
Vanity Fair
— the Thackeray novel, not the magazine. For some reason, she found it calming to lose herself in another era, and when she read she felt as if she were actually there. But she forced her mind forward from the last century to this one. She was in an airplane—Sam's father's jet.

The lights of Las Vegas were off in the distance—they could only be minutes from landing.

“Ben?” Sam prompted. “On the phone?” She fiddled with one aqua quartz earring that had gotten tangled in her hair.

Anna flushed. “I didn't exactly call.”

“Because …?”

Excellent question. Anna had stared at the phone, nearly dialing Ben's number a dozen times. She didn't know what she'd say to him. Also, she didn't know what he'd say to her. What if he said, “Look, Anna, could you please not call me anymore. We're history, my father was delusional?” Possibly. If there was anyone in the world who could make her lose her carefully nurtured sense of control, it was Ben.

Sam leaned against the back of her seat. “You wussed out.”

“If I just knew how he felt, maybe I'd—”

Before Anna could finish her sentence, Sam was waving her own cell phone in Anna's face.

“I can't call from an airplane, it'll mess up the pilot—”

“Please. That's total bullshit,” Sam scoffed. “We do it all the time. Just press send. I already dialed his number.”

“Why did you—?”

“I might not have known you very long, Anna, but I do know you very well.” Sam smiled smugly.

“And you knew I wouldn't call him.”

“I'm so brilliant I scare myself. Now go to the back of the plane. And call.”

Sam hadn't left her much of an option. And there was no evil commercial airline flight attendant to turn her over to the federal marshals for leaving her seat while the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign was illuminated. So Anna went to the back of the plane. Sat down. Pressed send. Prayed to the gods to spare her from her fate.

The gods were with her. Voice mail.

Her heart felt as if it were jumping around inside, and she could barely catch her breath. “Hi, it's me. Anna.” She kept her voice low, not wanting anyone to overhear her. Then she realized that the noise of the Gulfstream's engines made that impossible. In fact, she'd better speak up or she'd be completely drowned out.

“I'm calling you from Sam's father's jet.” Anna winced. Great. Now she sounded like she was booming over a public address system. She made another vocal adjustment. “We're on our way to Las Vegas. It's the senior class trip.” Then she remembered that of course he knew that; he'd gone the year before. Dumb. But too late now. She plunged on. “Umm … I saw your father at the Academy Awards. He looked really good. And … he said that you were doing well. I'm happy about that, and …”

Her voice trailed off. What did she want to say, really? “I'll be in Las Vegas until Friday. Maybe we can talk when I get home.”

Should she add, I think about you a lot? Or how about, Come to Vegas and ravish me. But then she remembered yet another lesson that had been imparted early and often by the one and only Jane Percy: You rarely get into trouble for the things you don't say.

So all she finished with was, “I guess I'll see you later.”

Nothin' but Lobster

“H
ow tacky is this?” Cammie rolled her eyes as the group strode through McCarron Airport in Las Vegas. They had to dodge around every type of tourist—from old ladies with walkers to cheap-T-shirt-clad middle-agers from flyover states.

“No shit,” Parker agreed. Plus the noise was over-whelming. A row of slot machines lined the hallway they were traipsing through on their way out of the airport. Men in business suits, couples, and a set of what looked to be fortyish triplets in matching gingham shirts played the machines with utter concentration.

Cammie shook her hair off her face. “God, it reeks of desperation.”

“The odds must suck,” Adam added.

Parker wasn't so sure. A guy he'd met at a Chippendale's audition (they'd been more than willing to hire him, but he hadn't had a fake ID at the time and he'd been just sixteen) had said he'd won five grand in the Reno airport on the slots while he was killing time before a gig at Harveys Lake Tahoe. All it had taken was a buck and a press of the button on the machine.

The chump change Parker had in his pocket wasn't even going to buy a round of drinks at Rain, the nightclub at the Palms Hotel, where they'd all be staying. Five grand sounded good right now. Really good.

“Hey, what the hell, I'm a lucky guy,” Parker offered casually. “Hold up, you guys.”

“Parker, if you want to lose your money, why don't you give it to a worthy cause?” Dee rushed to suggest, righting her carry-on as it nearly fell over. “If you give it to me, I'll be sure it gets into the right hands.”

“Sorry, Dee.” Parker was careful to keep his tone light as he fished a tenner out of his pocket and fed it into the bill receiver of a slot machine—he couldn't risk having any of them guess how badly he needed to win. “But this money
is
going to a good cause right now. Me.”

He scanned the rules of the slot machine. A buck a bet. Three of the same symbol on the same line and he'd win five bucks on his dollar bet. Four of the same symbol and he'd win fifty bucks. Five of the same: plums, cherries, orange slices, and he'd win five thousand bucks. The big money was five dollar signs in a row. If that came up, he'd win twenty thousand dollars.

Sweet.

Parker blew on his fingers for luck, then wiggled them in the air. He hit the game button and got only two matches.

“Tough luck, dude,” Adam consoled him, as the others gathered around to watch.

He tried again. Two matches. Again. No matches.

“Come on,” Adam suggested. “Press the refund button and get the rest of your money back.

“Nah,” Parker was stubborn. “This is my machine. I can feel it.”

Whether he could feel it or not, the machine was eating his money as fast as other machines were eating the money of gamblers to his left and right. In two quick minutes, the ten dollars were gone.

“Sucker!” Cammie cooed cheerfully. “I could have bought half a fill for that at a manicure mill in Studio City.”

But Parker knew that Cammie didn't do manicure mills in Studio City. She went to Elle on Beverly Boulevard, where the mani-pedi combo ran a hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was where all the girls went; they had weekly standing appointments.

“I'm not ready to quit.”

He pulled a crisp twenty from his pocket, smoothed it out, and fed it into the machine, knowing all the while that if he lost it, he'd be down approximately thirty percent of his total stake for the trip. This time, he asked Cammie to hit the play button. Then Anna. Then Sam. Then Dee. She refused. So he pressed it himself. Nothing. Shit.

“It's probably rigged so that it never hits, man,” Adam sympathized. “You really should just cash out.”

But Parker was too far in it now. He hit the play button, and finally, up came three cherries. The machine registered that he had five dollars, and a sign lit up asking him if he wanted to cash out.

“Take the money and run.” Sam leaned against the wall. “Let's go to the hotel.”

Parker rubbed his hands together. “I'm just warming up, darlin'.” He played on. And lost. Over and over and over. It felt personal now. He was not going to let this machine take advantage of him. It felt too much like his life—a have-not trying to get something from the haves. Oh, sure, he knew full well that was the whole point—for the machine to take advantage of him. If the machine didn't take advantage of him, there'd be no machine. There'd be no Las Vegas, for chrissake.

But he fed the machine another twenty.

“Can we just go?” Cammie asked irritably. Adam started rubbing the back of her neck. She leaned into him.

The twenty disappeared as quickly as did the rest of his money, with a few five dollars hits along the way to tease him.

He took out his last ten, feeling sick to his stomach. But he kept a cool smile on his face.

“Really, Parker.” Sam sounded annoyed. “Let's go!”

Maybe he really should. Parker hesitated—he knew he'd be living off his friends' largesse for the rest of the week. Those friends were urging him to quit, too, even if they were nice about it. They had no idea how much winning would mean to him. They all thought he was just like them.

Yeah, right. He wasn't even sure his home phone would be working when he got back, because his mother only had part of the money for the phone bill.

But hell if he'd ever let on to any of them. Parker summoned every last ounce of dignity he had left and smiled at Anna. “Hit play for me?”

“On your ten dollar bill?” Anna asked.

“Hey, go for it.” Parker put his hands behind his head, a man without a care in the world.

Anna leaned over and hit play.

A dollar sign came up.

Then another. And another. And another.

And …
yes.

A red light atop the machine began to blink on and off; bells went off and sirens wailed. A fire-engine light whirled on top of the machine, flashing crazily. From all over the betting area—from all over the terminal!—people were running toward Parker to see what he'd won.

Parker couldn't help it. He leaped into the air. “Holy shit! I just won twenty thousand dollars!” He grabbed Anna and gave her an exuberant kiss.

“Congratulations, guy,” Cammie smirked. “You're buying dinner tonight.”

“Lobster, baby, nothin' but lobster,” Parker declared. “So how do I collect?”

An overweight woman in an
I WENT TO VEGAS AND ALL I'VE GOT LEFT IS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT!
T-shirt sidled up and pointed to the sign above the machine. It read,
ATTENDANT PAYS ALL WINS OVER
$500.

“You wait for the guy to pay,” she told him, her accent thick and Southern. “Dang, I've never seen anyone win that much before!”

Parker craned around, looking for the attendant. Meanwhile, the crowd of travelers edged closer to him, peering at the machine, marveling at his good fortune.

A gaunt older woman with an unfortunate bulbous nose in a gray uniform lumbered over to him. Her name tag identified her as Arlene Spector. She peered at the five-dollar-sign screen in real amazement, then inserted a key into the machine that turned off the bells and whistles.

“Wow, sir. You really hit it.”

“You're the attendant?” Parker asked.

She nodded. “Damn, I been working here for six months and I never seen anyone hit it before.”

Parker threw his hands in the air. “Must be my lucky day!”

“You can say that again,” Arlene agreed as she took out a form and wrote some codes from the winning machine on it. Then she propped an OUT OF ORDER sign on the machine and shut off the bells and whistles. “Come with me, sweetheart,” she told Parker. “We're going to the office so you can collect.”

“Can we come with him?” Adam asked.

“You'd better,” Arlene bantered easily, “if you want him to buy you dinner before he escapes into the night.”

The crowd of tourists around them laughed heartily, then parted so that the slots attendant could lead newly famous Parker and the others deep into the bowels of the airport. They trekked through a red high-security door marked
NO ADMITTANCE
! and then down a narrow corridor.

“Surreal,” Parker muttered.

Finally, they came to a utilitarian room with two desks, some computer equipment, and a row of wooden chairs against the wall. Behind one of the desks sat a late thirties-ish gaunt-faced blonde with serious roots in a gray uniform. Her face was spackled with makeup, her lips outlined in an entirely different color than her lipstick.

“Who's the lucky winner?” she asked as Arlene led the kids into the room.

“That'd be me,” Parker declared, oozing cool.

Man, this was so amazing. Screw
Everwood.
All he could have gotten for the gig would have been scale—the Screen Actors Guild minimum—plus ten percent. It would have only come to a small fraction of his win.

“Name, Mr. Winner?”