In the meantime, Eddie had taken to staying in the apartment at the back of the El Capitan. Del had offered it to him for nights when he didn’t want to drive home, but bit by bit, Eddie had started staying there most of the time, at least the weeks when he was playing. When he wasn’t playing, he was mostly out of Vegas. He flew to New York, he drove to LA, he liked to show up at a club in Baltimore, where friends from Alabama had a combo.
And he talked about Cuba. He wanted to know everything about June and Del’s visit there, what they thought of the Sans Souci, who was playing at the Montmartre, what the people acted like, on the street, in the cafes, on the beach. Eddie liked to say that Cuba would be his bit of heaven.
June figured that Eddie stayed in the apartment because he’d had too many girlfriends, and the ’Side was a small community. She’d heard some of the blackjack dealers grumbling about him being at the El Capitan; how a Negro shouldn’t sleep anywhere in a Strip hotel. But she didn’t say anything about this to Del, and the employees got quiet when they realized she was around, and soon she never heard anything said at all. It wasn’t worth telling Del and making trouble.
Also, June liked having Eddie nearby, especially now that she had Marshall. She brought the baby to the casino every day. Del had suggested that maybe she would want to stay home, join a mothers’ group, meet some of the ladies in the houses nearby. And June had laughed. Having Marshall hadn’t turned her into someone else, hadn’t turned them into some other couple; she loved the El Capitan. So she and Del had switched offices, and she had set up a playpen and a basket and a little set of drawers in the larger one, and Marshall was growing up there with them. Several afternoons a week, when the sun shone straight in from the west and Marshall started to get fussy, she would head upstairs to Eddie’s apartment at the back. Usually he was just getting up.
Eddie might not want kids, but he was a natural with a baby.
“Eddie, you’re so good with him.”
“Honey, I’m good with everybody. Babies, women, children.” He rubbed his nose on Marshall’s chin, and the baby laughed.
“It’s a black thing? Black men are good with babies?”
“Black men? We’re good with everybody.”
June laughed.
“Actually, I got four little brothers. And an older sister. You didn’t know that, did ya?” Marshall reached up and pulled at Eddie’s lip and ear. “Bertie helped Ma with the cooking and the washing, and I took care of the babies. We had some adventures, my brothers and me, because I didn’t have no sense with the first ones.”
“You have four brothers? Are they all in Alabama?”
“Most of ’em. We lost Jacob. He died just before I came out here.”
June waited, wondering if Eddie would tell her, but not wanting to ask. Not sure she could ask.
He lifted Marshall into the air.
“How you doing, little guy? You gonna grow up in a casino, with your pretty momma and your rich daddy? You gonna run this place someday, Marshall Moses Dibb? You gonna be the rich daddy?”
Eddie was talking to Marshall in a low rumble that was almost a croon, but he didn’t look at June. He didn’t offer any more information about his brothers, about Jacob.
June sometimes thought that Eddie was probably just about as far from home as she was. Del belonged here. He grew up here, watching the casinos grow, seeing people move to southern Nevada from all over the country. So he was rooted in, part of the landscape, but she and Eddie, they had left different lives behind—so different that they were hard to imagine from here.
“Vegas is really different, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like home.”
“I don’t know about that. Vegas is a hell of a lot like Alabama some days. A hell of a different, and a hell of the same. That’s what I think.”
June was quiet. Vegas wasn’t like her hometown. She shook off the thought, and danced a few steps toward Eddie. “Want me to show you the mambo?”
“You going to show me the mambo?”
“Yeah. I got pretty good in Havana. At least, that’s what people said.”
She smiled her devastating June smile, and Eddie laughed. He whistled a little mambo rhythm, and she took Marshall from him. The baby laughed and waved his arms wildly, trying to clap, or catch his fetching mom’s cheek. She rubbed her nose on his face, and he opened his mouth and slobbered on her chin.
“Marshall, that move is not going to take you very far.”
She held the baby in front of her and swung his feet from side to side as she stepped and turned. Eddie sang a few lines. June was happy.
After awhile, she stopped dancing and set Marshall on her hip.
“Let’s go home, baby man. Let’s go home and make some dinner for Daddy.”
Eddie looked at June straight, held her eyes a minute, but she simply shifted Marshall’s weight, winked, and left.
She and Del were working late when the call came in. The count was down at the poker tables, and Del was worried that someone was running a game while he was busy at meetings in Carson City; it would be bad if one of their own dealers was in on it. All this left Del quieter and cooler than normal. He wasn’t one to get worked up, but June knew he was bothered; that his mind was spinning. She had returned to the El Capitan after dinner to keep him company, and even though Marshall would have been asleep for hours by now, she was anxious to get home. When the phone on Del’s desk rang suddenly, she felt slightly irritated, not alarmed. Then she heard him telling the operator that yes, June was here, go ahead and put someone through.
Del’s voice dropped lower. He was asking questions. He shot a look at her across the hall, and her heart dropped. Something was wrong.
It was her father. Dead beside her mother in bed. Maybe a heart attack. Or a stroke. No sound at all. Her mom had just tried to give him a push, move him from where he had rolled in the center of their bed, and he was gone. Her mom was confused on the phone; she’d called the police, she was about to call June’s aunt. She said she could hear the siren coming down the street, and hung up before June could take the receiver from Del.
June’s body turned to stone. Tears trickled down her cheeks as Del repeated what her mother had said. She concentrated on the possibility that this was not true. Her mother panicked easily—how many times had she panicked at something June had done?—so perhaps her father was not dead. When the ambulance driver examined him, perhaps he would be revived. They would laugh together at the fright her mom had given her.
Del reached out to hold her, but June stood stiffly. To fold into Del would be to believe it was true, and she did not believe it. Her mom was in shock, it was the middle of the night for her, she had called before the ambulance even arrived. Del stroked her head. “June, I’m sorry,” he said, and then, “June, it’s true,” because of course he already knew what she was thinking.