The Losing Game (9 page)

“Go on, Lucas, take it. One each. If Mum notices, I’ll say I ate them both.”

Mum had noticed, and Grace had taken the blame while Lucas still had the taste of chocolate on his lips. Grace was brave. Grace looked after her baby brother.

Lucas’s throat thickened. He wondered what Avery would be doing on the 25th. Perhaps they could “not do” Christmas together. He couldn’t bear the thought of festivity.

“Ready?” Avery called from along the hall.

Lucas scrubbed at his face as Avery emerged from her bedroom in a midcalf black beaded dress and a pair of suede low-wedge oxfords. Her hair, (Lucas would forever marvel at women who could do it) she’d twisted into an elegant knot with a crystal-studded comb.

Lucas stood. “Avery. You look ravishing. If I’d known I’d have dressed up.”

“Nonsense. You’re a delight.” She disappeared back into her room and reemerged in a full-length fur coat Lucas had never seen her wear before. She held out a plum-colored satin scarf. “However, you could put this on.”

Lucas gratefully wrapped the scarf around his bare neck. He’d thrown away his favorite blue one at the cemetery and hadn’t yet replaced it. The fabric of this new one was liquid cool and smooth, and it draped beautifully. As an added bonus, the scarf didn’t smell of perfume, as he’d cautiously expected. It smelled new.

“Did you buy this for me?”

“Maybe,” she said, ushering him out of the front door.

Once they were down on the street, Avery hooked her arm through Lucas’s. She nodded in the direction of the taxi rank at the train station. “You don’t mind being seen out with a woman old enough to be your grandmother?”

“You’re hardly old enough to be my grandmother. And you’re younger than my mother would have been, if she was still alive.”

The lights changed at the level crossing. They crossed the road and jumped into the first taxi. Avery directed the driver to take them to the Grand, an old and swish hotel on the seafront, minutes from Old Roseport and Dante Okoro’s shop.

Lucas had guessed from Avery’s attire that she’d had a mind for somewhere nicer than their usual wine bar haunt on Commercial Road. The Grand, though? He imagined a couple of cocktails there were going to set him back the price of a week’s grocery shop.

Still, Avery looked radiant and happy, and Lucas didn’t want to spoil her mood. Not when it was starting to rub off on him. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

Strings of colored lights lit up the promenade. In the distance, the sea shimmered under the illuminations reaching out into the bay. The taxi pulled in under a golden canopy supported by brass poles. Lucas drew up his scarf and rubbed the scuffed toes of his shoes up and down on the backs of his calves.

A top-hatted doorman greeted them and helped Avery onto the red-carpeted stairs leading into the hotel. Beyond the glass, a marbled foyer awaited, along with a dozen other gray-and-gold uniformed porters, receptionists, and a concierge.

“How much do they charge for a night?”

Avery steered Lucas to the right. “If you have to ask—”

“—you can’t afford it.” Lucas laughed a little too loudly.

“I wasn’t planning on us spending the night.”

“Good. I don’t think I’d be able to keep up with the likes of you.”

“You’d better believe it.” Avery sighed contentedly. “We’re here for drinks and nibbles only. You must have whatever you want. It’s on me.”

Usually they’d split everything fifty-fifty. Lucas didn’t have any outdated notions about gallantry, only a good sense about what was fair and decent. “Are you sure? It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg.”

“Good thing I have two of each, then. Of course I’m sure.”

They sat in the lounge, where a pianist caressed the keys of a white grand piano, near enough they could listen and enjoy, far away enough they could talk without having to raise their voices.

Avery relaxed in her club chair with a dirty martini. With the weight she’d lost, her face was more angular, her cheekbones and jaw more defined. Lucas could imagine how she’d looked as a young woman. Fierce and headstrong and stunning. Yet, as far as he was aware, she’d never married. She’d never even mentioned a love interest, past or present.

“These decorations are beautiful,” she said. “Especially the tree.”

“I thought you didn’t do Christmas.”

“I don’t. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the beauty of the season.”

Lucas decided not to ask about spending Christmas day with her. She knew he would be on his own this year. If she wanted his company, she’d ask him.

Avery took another sip of her martini. Lucas marveled at her elegance and how he hadn’t seen this side of her before. They’d frequented pubs and wine bars in the past, with Avery in jeans and natty jackets. Like this, he could imagine her keeping company with an Okoro gentleman, if Dante was anything to go by.

He couldn’t help himself, could he?

“How did you know Dante Okoro’s father?”

Her expression warmed. “I used to work for him.”

“You worked at Le Plaisir?”

“Yes, for a time.” She leaned forward and said conspiringly, “Those were the most fun times I had in my whole life.” She tapped the side of her nose, sat back, and motioned with her empty glass for the waiter to bring her another.

Lucas laughed. “You can’t leave it there. Tell me.”

“All right. But one more drink. And we should order some food. The bar snacks here are to die for.”

Lucas had seen the menu. The Grand didn’t call their light offerings bar snacks. They called them hors d’oeuvres and priced them accordingly. But true to her word, once they’d ordered and Avery had eaten the olive out of her second martini, she told Lucas about her days at Le Plaisir.

Initially she’d started working for Gabriel Okoro, Dante’s father, as a home help for his young son. Mrs. Okoro had left her husband and child for a businessman passing through the area. Despite Gabriel’s best efforts and entreaties to the police, they never saw or heard from her again.

“Some women,” Avery remarked, “aren’t cut out to be mothers. Blanche was one of them. Me too, I suppose.”

Lucas didn’t sense judgment in what Avery had said. She went on to tell Lucas that at the time, Dante was a year off starting school. When he reached school age, she continued working for Gabriel in the shop. (Which she much preferred to looking after a mischievous little boy.)

The sparkle in her eyes brightened. “I was so naïve in the beginning. You have to understand, back in those days, it was difficult to access high-end sex toys or pornography anywhere but the big cities. And most of what was available was geared toward men anyway. Gabriel was a smart man.”

Avery and Gabriel went to strip clubs and burlesque shows. They asked their almost-nonexistent female clientele what they wanted. Not every woman was interested in the current retail offerings or the party format of other retailers. They wanted something classier. More subversive. More intense. More everything.

Lucas listened, enthralled and thoroughly entertained. He’d had no idea, about Avery (he thought she’d spent her working life as a writer and food critic) or the evolution of the sex industry. Born into the electronic age, Lucas could only imagine how life must have been pre-Internet, pre-8G mobile coverage. The thought of having to go to a shop and buy a pornographic magazine to see images of naked people, or worse still, go to a cinema to see an adult film? Lucas shuddered.

Lucas and Avery sipped their drinks and ate their hors d’oeuvres, while Avery told Lucas about the workshops in the basement and eventually the custom line that Gabriel started.

“You should have seen me then. I used to model the gear, explain to people how to use the sex toys.” She leaned forward and poked her tongue between her teeth, a wicked glint in her eyes. “Not that it’s rocket science.”

Lucas laughed, heartily. “Avery, if I didn’t love you already…. You’re incredible.” He popped another salmon parcel in his mouth. He hadn’t thought about Dante in maybe ten minutes, but the second cocktail had warmed him inside and loosened his tongue. “What was Dante like, when he was little?”

“Dante?”

There was no way to ask about him without his irrepressible interest being obvious, but Lucas was willing to risk it. Avery didn’t comment. She only mulled over her answer.

“Dante was a serious boy, and clever. But difficult. He’d lost his mother, and he didn’t trust me.” She smiled. They must have been fond memories. “In time, he thawed. Once, I went down to the shop, and Gabriel and I—”

She stopped abruptly. Lucas wondered if he’d hit a nerve.

“You and Dante’s father?”

Avery nodded. “It’s ancient history. Gabriel became too possessive. He wanted me to settle down with him, and I didn’t want that. It was more painful leaving Dante than it was his father.”

Lucas thought but didn’t say, the young Dante Okoro must have felt like he’d been abandoned twice.

The spark had gone from Avery’s eyes, and they had a faraway look. The memory had made her sad.

“Avery?”

She shook herself. “The last time I saw Dante… I don’t even remember when it was. We had a bet—there’s nothing Dante likes more than a challenge or a bet—it was something silly…. Damn in hell, I can’t remember. I can’t even remember who won.”

She’d wandered off the tracks. Perhaps another drink wasn’t a good idea. In any case, Lucas had to be up for work in the morning.

The hotel concierge arranged a taxi for Avery. As they stood in the foyer, she opened her handbag and said, “You’re a dear friend, Lucas. I had a wonderful time tonight.”

“Thank you. Me too.”

Avery withdrew an envelope. “This is a little something for you, for Christmas.”

“
Avery.
It’s not even December yet, and you don’t do Christmas. I didn’t buy you anything.”

“You took me out tonight, on an afternoon’s notice. You listened to me reminisce and made me feel like a young woman again. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Now, I notice you’ve stopped talking about that trip to Asia, so I hope this will inspire you a little more in that direction.”

“Can I open it now?”

“No. You have to wait until Christmas.” She reached up and pulled Lucas’s head down for a kiss on the cheek. “One other thing. There’s nothing wrong with the single life, but don’t give up on love, Lucas. Leave yourself open to the possibility of finding someone.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Going out now and again with your eyes open would be a start. I’ll bet you didn’t notice the waiter giving
you
the eye.”

He hadn’t. He’d been too busy thinking about a man he couldn’t have.

Lucas put the envelope inside his coat pocket and walked Avery outside to her cab. The driver left his seat and opened her door before Lucas could do it.

As she settled in the back, Lucas caught the driver’s arm. “Please see her all the way to her door.” He handed him a twenty. “Make sure she gets inside safely.”

“Sure thing, sir.”

The taxi drove away, and Lucas walked along Grand Boulevard, toward the bus stops, hurrying to cross the mouths of the darkened alleyways between the buildings.

Lucas felt for the envelope in his pocket and quickened his pace. With all the running he’d been doing lately, it cost him no effort at all to speed. If he wanted to, he could run home. He could fetch his gun. He could run all over the island with it if he felt so inclined.

That was the gin and vermouth talking. Lucas needed to be patient, to wait a bit longer to deliver Shaw his comeuppance. Christmas was coming. Let the Shaw family feel the devastation of loss bang smack in the middle of the happiest time of the year.

That way Christmas would be ruined not just this year, but every year to come.

DESPITE WHAT
Dante had said to Lois (and to himself), in the cold light of day, letting go of his wager with Jim proved easier said than done. The wager itself meant nothing. He had no trouble letting that go. What he couldn’t do—not yet—was let Kit and Lois go with his blessing.

Friday and the weekend passed. The rush in the shop took priority, then a visit from Hope MacArthur, who crafted the custom leather items ordered by Dante’s customers.

Dante promised himself he’d resolve matters by the weekend. Absolutely and definitely.

The kitchen smelled of toast. The radio was on, and the host reminded listeners that there were only twenty-one more days in which to complete their Christmas shopping. As if Dante needed reminding.

He sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of muesli and two dollops of plain yogurt. Eggs Benedict was strictly a weekend treat. He couldn’t hold off the pounds like he used to. Two mouthfuls later, Kit and Lois came in, both sleep-ruffled. Lois wore red fleecy Christmas pajamas. Kit was dressed in jeans and a tatty jumper that Dante hadn’t seen before. It was far too big for her. It probably belonged to Sharps, and worse still, Dante couldn’t tell if she’d worn it coming in or put it on to go out.

Lois sat down opposite. Kit stood behind her and squeezed Lois’s shoulder.

“Morning, ladies. What’s going on?”

Lois reached for Kit’s hand and said, “I know you think we’re not ready, but Kit and I have lined up some flats to see. Tomorrow and at the end of the week.”

“Also,” Kit said, “Lois has a job interview next week, with Sanders Information Systems.”

The words hit Dante like a slap. Kit and Lois had been talking about flat-hunting for months. They’d
talked
about it a lot but always with a maybe-we-will-maybe-we-won’t level of commitment. Neither had mentioned Lois looking for another job.

One in front of the other, Dante’s girls aligned themselves offensively. They expected Dante to be hostile. He put down his spoon and folded his hands in his lap.

“Congratulations, Lois. It’s about time you started making use of the degree I paid for.” He forced a smile. “Where are the flats?”

“One at the top end of Roseport Quay.” Kit couldn’t meet Dante’s eyes when she added, “The others are just off the island. It’s cheaper on the mainland.”