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Cheating at Solitaire(3)

By:Jane Haddam


Stewart Gordon was over there against the wall, staring at her. His head was as bald as if he’d shaved it, but people said he’d lost his hair when he wasn’tweventy years old. He was a lot older than that now. He was ancient. And he was a snob. He was always carrying around the kind of book Marcey was sure nobody actually read; they just liked to be seen carrying it because it made them look smarter than everybody else. She didn’t care how smart Stewart Gordon was. He was a loser in the only way that counted. He was getting only five million dollars for this picture, and Marcey was getting seven.

Money. Liquor. The dress was coming off, again. The straps kept sliding down her shoulders. She was the only person in here with straps. Everybody else was dressed as if they were about to pose for an L.L. Bean catalog. Who bought things out of the L.L. Bean catalog? It was all such clunky stuff, and that other place, Harbor Halls, was even worse. All those pastels and twin sets and espadrilles, except in the winter, like now, when it was parkas and snow boots. Marcey had never worn a pair of snow boots in her life, and she didn’t intend to start now.

She got the strap adjusted on her shoulder and made her way slowly in the direction of the bar. She wasn’t walking very well. Her head hurt, and she was very dizzy. She tried to remember the number of champagne cocktails she’d drunk since they’d shut down filming at eleven, but she couldn’t do it. They’d shut down filming. She’d come over here with Arrow Normand and Kendra and some other people. She’d started drinking and then she’d started watching the snow. Kendra was gone now. Arrow seemed to be gone too. Arrow’s boyfriend—Marcey looked around, and blinked. The only other person from the film who seemed to still be here was Stewart Gordon, and she would swear on her life that he was still nursing the same big mug of beer he’d bought when he first walked in the door.

There was a bar stool in front of her. This was good news. She sat down on it and tried adjusting her strap again. She was fairly sure she could not be really drunk, because Kendra had told her that it wasn’t possible to get drunk on champagne. She felt drunk, though, and her right breast seemed to be completely exposed. She pulled at the strap again. The bartender had started pouring another champagne cocktail without being asked. He wasn’t much older than she was and he was looking straight at her nipple.

Somebody squeezed in against the bar between her stool and the one on her right. She looked up and saw Stewart Gordon handing her cocktail back to the bartender.

“Do something about your dress,” he said.

“Why is it that everybody on this island wears bow ties?” Marcey asked him. “Have you noticed that? They all look like Porky Pig.”

“Have you been running a tab?”

“It’s okay,” the bartender said. “That guy from the film comes over once a week and settles the tabs. You know, the guy—”

“Shit,” Stewart Gordon said.

“I bet you don’t run tabs,” Marcey said. “I bet you pay for that beer right when you get it and then you drink only one. You can’t take my drink away. You’re not my father.”

“Your problem is that nobody is your father, not even your father.”

“I make more money than he does. I make more money than you do. You can’t tell me what to do.”

The bartender was standing right there, holding the champagne cocktail in his hands. Marcey leaned across the bar and got it. Then she tilted her head back and swallowed almost all of it in a single long gulp. This was not the best thing she could have done. She hadn’t realized until she did it just what kind of a mess her stomach was in. She was probably going to throw up. This was all right, since she always threw up, but she preferred to do it without an audience. It was practically the only thing she preferred to do without an audience.

“Arrow does everything in public,” she said, looking at the third button on Stewart Gordon’s dark blue chambray shirt. God, the man was tall. He was enormous. “She even vomits in public. Don’t you think that’s pathetic?”

The bartender coughed. Stewart Gordon took what was left of the drink out of her hand. It didn’t matter. Marcey had won this round. She’d drunk most of it. Now if she could just stand up and get another one. She could go home, or up to Kendra’s, but she didn’t want to. The party wasn’t due to start for hours. There would be nothing to do up there.

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” she said.

“I know,” Stewart Gordon said. “And you’re going to keel over before the ball drops. Do you have a coat?”