The Accidental Honeymoon. Portia MacIntosh

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СКАЧАТЬ cocktail dress I’m now certain was intended for someone with fewer curves than I have, but, like I said, I was grief-stricken. I wasn’t thinking straight. And now, here I am, sitting awkwardly in my dress that is possibly too tight (and short, and low), in my heels that are probably too high, about to let Liv loose on my hair, which definitely has to be my worst idea yet. Oh, and for the first time since John gave it to me, I am out without my engagement ring.

      ‘So, you wanna know what I’m doing or you want me to just do it?’ she asks.

      I think for a moment. When I started seeing John, the spontaneity slowly drained from my life. Everything had to revolve around his schedule, everything we did for fun was always on his terms. As a teenager I was a total wild child, but now… I don’t know what I am. I need to be spontaneous again.

      ‘Just do it?’ I reply. It was my intention to sound confidently decisive, but as my voice went up in pitch at the end, it just sounded like a nervous question.

      ‘You sure?’ she asks, giving me another chance to back out.

      ‘Yes,’ I reply confidently.

      ‘You in a rush?’ she asks, causing me to wonder what the hell she’s planning.

      ‘No…’

      ‘OK then, let’s get started.’

Chapter Three

      I glance at the $1,000’s worth of chips, fascinated that such little, unremarkable pieces of plastic could be worth so much money. They’re so gold I can see my reflection in them, and every time I look at them and catch sight of myself, it reminds me how different my hair looks now.

      After what felt like a lifetime in the chair, I am now the proud wearer of very long, very blonde hair, or ‘Playboy Bunny hair’ as the lady from New York described it. With my light, bright, fresh peroxide colour, the long length curled at the ends, combined with my hastily bought midlife quarterlife thirdlife-crisis outfit (I am nearly thirty after all) – I can see what she means. From the new clothes, to the hair extensions, to all the new make-up I bought from the hotel shop, I look nothing like myself right now, and that’s fine by me.

      Casinos are bizarre places, really. The room is split into sections, one end littered with green felt tables and the other home to rows and rows of brightly flashing, very noisy slot machines. It’s such a nice, sparkly, glamorous place at a quick glance. I’ve noticed a few people on winning streaks and, as miserable as I am, it cheers me up to watch people winning. A bit of good luck and they come alive, jumping up and down, victory dancing, grabbing their nearest and dearest (or just the nearest random person sometimes) in celebration. But when you stop and look, you can see the darker side to these places, those with anguished looks on their faces and just a few chips on the table in front of them. As their luck runs thin, so does their money. Just one good hand will turn things around for them, but sometimes it simply doesn’t come. It’s kind of depressing to watch and makes you wonder how much they’ve lost and what it will mean for them in the real world, after they leave the flashing lights and the free booze of timeless Las Vegas.

      Without windows or clocks, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is, or how long you’ve spent here without keeping an eye on your own watch. I can understand why people spend so much time here.

      I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’ve been hovering by this Blackjack table for a while now – the only card game here I actually know how to play. John was going to bring me here tonight, teach me how to gamble, have me as his lucky charm, blowing on his dice like you see in the movies.

      I watch as a forty-something, dark-haired man runs a hand through his hair as he waits with bated breath for the dealer to reveal his hand.

      ‘Blackjack,’ the dealer announces casually as he turns over his other card to reveal an ace. With the king the dealer was already showing, this hand is lethal and, with no chips left, the dark-haired man skulks off.

      The dealer takes no joy from winning, effortlessly moving everything back into its place on the table, ready for the next player. The dealer looks over at me and raises his eyebrows, silently asking if I’m planning on playing. If I don’t do it now, I never will, so I climb onto the stool as gracefully as possible in my short dress and place my chips on the table.

      ‘Place your bets, please,’ the dealer says robotically.

      I glance down at my golden chips, and take one final, long, hard look at myself in them. When the porter handed them to me, there was a little note with them saying they were complimentary chips and therefore could only be played, and not simply cashed out, otherwise I’d be spending this $1,000 on room service right about now.

      From what I’ve observed, Blackjack is an amalgam of luck and skill. Luck comes from being dealt the right cards, but you need some skill to know what to do with them. But what if you left it entirely down to fate?

      Confidently, I bet my entire $1,000. It was only yesterday I caught John cheating on me, and I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do. On the one hand, if he could hurt me, betray me and completely obliterate my trust like he has, then how can I be with him? On the other hand, we were engaged, we lived together and we loved each other… is that really something I should just throw away in an instant?

      The dealer places my cards down in front of me, giving me an ace and a four.

      I stare at my cards a moment too long.

      ‘That’s five or fifteen,’ he tells me, suspecting I can’t count. ‘Aces are one or eleven.’

      He loves me, he loves me not.

      ‘Thank you,’ I reply, although I knew that. ‘Hit me please.’

      If the next card is a winner, he loves me.

      ‘Queen – so that’s fifteen,’ the dealer tells me.

      ‘Hit.’ He loves me not.

      ‘A five – that’s twenty.’

      The dealer is showing a queen, so if he gets another ten or an ace then I’ll lose… or, I could see if luck is on my side, hit one more time, and if by some miracle I get my five-card trick, then John loves me, this was all a big mistake, and everything will go back to the way it was.

      ‘Hit,’ I tell him.

      The dealer goes to turn his card before stopping himself just in time.

      ‘I’m sorry, miss. Did you say hit?’

      I nod.

      ‘Miss, you have twenty.’

      ‘Hit,’ I repeat.

      He looks at me for a moment, puzzled. I think he’s trying to work out if I know what I’m doing or not.

      ‘Seriously,’ I add.

      He shrugs his shoulders and does as I wish.

      ‘King – thirty – bust,’ he says, sighing deeply in an I-told-you-so kind of way. Of course it turns out to be the king of hearts delivering this final blow to my love life. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve with this silly game.

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