Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“My dear Mr. Randolph, you were no longer my patient the moment you forced me to ‘escape’ with you from the Swiss clinic. Thanks to my unwilling association with you, my nails were broken, my shoes destroyed. I had to beg for food from farmers along the way and saw off leg casts, as well as tend a stubborn delusional stranger who was quite possibly insane but the gutsiest, cleverest person I have ever met. I was kidnapped by brutal men in a fast car, fought over on the most expensive street in Zurich, made love to in the most innovative positions of my life and wined, lunched, designer-attired, and dumped on the street outside the Zurich train station. I have never had such a wonderful time in my life.”

“Why me?”

She actually thought that one over, then gave a very French shrug. “Questioning such things is counterproductive. I found it refreshing that your memory loss meant you had no romantic, what they say here, ‘luggage.’”

“Baggage.”

Not true. There was the unsinkable Temple Barr. Obviously, she and Matt Devine were forthright, delightful people. Obviously, they made a forthright, delightful couple. All tucked away for the night and life ever after.

The fact was, he and Revienne had confided in each other. They shared a devastating teenage sense of failure and loss. The question was, Did you do that with mere strangers because there was no risk, or because it was all risk in lives so carefully lived ever after?

Max’s instincts were out to lunch. The adage about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer rang true, but he couldn’t define his motives when it came to Revienne.

“In your position,” she said, sipping from the demitasse of coffee and the tiny liqueur glass and sampling the plate of miniature sweets, including a white chocolate Eiffel Tower, “you are having a total eclipse of the mind and emotions. That’s my professional opinion. Anything you might think or do now is extremely unreliable. You shouldn’t trust yourself and you shouldn’t trust me.”

“An excellent diagnosis. When do you leave Las Vegas?”

He pulled her toy purse over to his side of the small table, opened it, and inspected its contents. The twenty-dollar bill he’d contributed, the lip gloss compact, a European brand he’d never known or couldn’t remember. The case had no hidden sections. The gambling card and the room card.

“When my work is done,” she said, unperturbed.

“Your classes in existential angst?”

“It’s a more common problem than you’d think.”

“Your ‘baggage’ is annoyingly innocent.”

“Thank you.” She reclaimed the compact and reglossed her lips as he put the credit card that read GARRY RANDOLPH with his green-eyed photo in the bill packet. Nothing he or Garry did had ever been innocent.

“Look,” Revienne said, “our last chance to see the Bellagio fountains dancing.”

He turned in his chair, watching the silent waltz of water and lights and music. The fountains were diminishing into sprinkler height as he escorted Revienne out of the restaurant.

She wanted to pause at her previous spot to put his twenty bucks in the slot machine.

He took the bill, studied the scene, then moved it and them to the end of another row. “This one.”

A skeptical blond eyebrow almost distracted him from the white skirt stretched tight as she sat on the stool and slid the bill into the waiting slot.

The moving icons chirruped and blinged and binged. Coins plinked into the stainless steel apron under the computerized slot machine. Revienne scooped them with her white-tipped French manicured nails into the paper cup Max held. Again she pushed the button. And again.

In a few minutes she’d won a hundred and fifty dollars. And she laughed like a kid while doing it.

“That is magic,” she said.

He shook his head modestly. “They position sucker slots to let someone win for a while and lure others to lose.”

“It’s all programmed?”

He nodded as she set her full cup on the shelf.

“It was fun, winning, but I don’t need the money. It’s not worth the fuss converting all these coins to cash.” She rose. “Let someone else find it, and think they got lucky too.”

Max laughed. And escorted her to the drive up.

“We can hear the fountains’ music from here?” Revienne asked.

“With a short stroll.”

“After dinner, a stroll is always good. Very Parisian.”

Max led her near Las Vegas Boulevard. As they arrived, the fountains paused for a moment to take a deep breath and then gushed up like geysers to the accompaniment of symphonic music paced by the lights and water. Behind the dancing shafts of water the Bellagio façade was lit with its own symphony of light.

“You know,” Revienne said, turning to view the spotlit Eiffel Tower behind them and the Paris’s festive neon balloon, “this almost reminds me of Paris, out of the corner of my eye, anyway.”