Shit, man, Rick said, that’s what bennies are for. You want? He tapped his shirt pocket and Nat nodded and Rick handed across a roll of pills wrapped in cellophane like a thin roll of candy Life Savers. Nat pushed two into his palm with his thumbnail and handed the roll back. Susan’s on her way over, Rick said.
Cool, Nat said, but even at the sound of her name he felt a jolt of guilt and longing run through him in equal measure.
So out-of-pocket on my mom’s surgery is gonna be eleven hundred dollars, Rick said.
What the fuck?
Yeah, I called her on my lunch break. That’s what she said. There’s some fuckup with Medicaid so they’re not covering all of it.
Shit, Nat said. Eleven hundred dollars. Jesus Christ.
Hopefully they’ll just do it and I can pay off the bill for like twenty years or something. He looked out toward where the café opened onto the casino itself. They might not do it because there’s still a big bill from the last time.
It’s Medicaid. They’ll do it, Nat said. I think they have to. It’s the Hippocratic oath or something.
We’ll see, Rick said. He returned his gaze to Nat. You all right? he said.
Yeah, yeah. Just wiped.
Shit man, don’t * out on me. It’s only like six or something.
I’m all right. Need to wake up is all.
He looked up but Rick was looking past him now. There’s my girl, he said.
How he wanted to turn to see her walking toward them, toward him, but he did not, focusing instead on his coffee cup, that black circle surrounded by the white porcelain of the mug.
Hey baby, she said, slipping into the booth next to Rick, their lips meeting just for an instant and then her eyes turning toward him. What’s up with you? she said. You look like hell.
Totally, Rick said.
You need a pick-me-up?
I just took one.
Dr. Susan is in the house and she’s got just what you need.
Nat looked up at her now. Her smile. Her eyes sparkling in the café’s yellow lights. She unzipped her tiny purse and extracted a small ziplock. No way, he said.
Yes way, she said.
This is why I love you so much, Rick said.
Very funny, she said, slapping him playfully on the chest. Shall we?
Oh yes, Rick said. We certainly shall.
THEY PILED into one of the stalls in the men’s bathroom and Rick cut the cocaine into three thin lines on the surface of Susan’s makeup mirror with a long-expired credit card he kept in his wallet for this reason alone. Nat stood against the metal partition. She was so close to him in that tiny space, her body bumping against his, her hands resting on his shoulders. Her hips. Her breasts brushing against his back. How he wanted her. How he remembered those breasts, those hips. God how he wanted her again, a thought followed immediately by the rushing current of his guilt.
You’re up, Natty, Rick said.
He leaned over the mirror, taking the rolled dollar bill from Rick’s hand and inhaling the only remaining line and then standing upright again, sniffing. That familiar stinging numbness. Susan clapped and giggled next to him and wrapped her arms around Rick and kissed him deeply, Nat pinned against the partition until they were through.
At the sink he laved water over his hair and across his face and nose and when he looked at himself in the mirror the visage that stared back at him was a wrecked shell, hair stringing down across his forehead and eyes sunken back into his skull. It would take ten minutes before the cocaine would fully enter his system and he wondered if he could even wait that long before passing out. Susan stood next to him smiling into the mirror and sniffing water up her nose from her wet fingertips. Ugh, she said. That’s better. Rick at another sink farther down doing the same. A man entered the bathroom and looked briefly at Susan and then disappeared into a stall. A moment later came the sound of him urinating.
Christ almighty, buddy, Rick said. You really look terrible.
I feel terrible, he said.
Maybe you’re getting the flu or something.
Could be, Nat said.
Susan put her hand on his forehead. It felt cool and smooth and he wanted her to hold it there for the rest of time. He could see himself leaning into her, her arms coming around him. He could see her naked, riding him on that stained mattress in his bedroom in the apartment midway through Rick’s prison sentence.
You feel hot, she said.
He had closed his eyes at some point but he opened them now. I’m gonna go outside and get some air, he said.
You want us to come? Rick said.
Naw, I’ll just be a minute or two.
Don’t go too far, Susan said. Party’s going to start soon.
He nodded but did not look at her. Could not. He pushed out through the lobby. From the receding hall that led past the Fireside Lounge and on to the Fish Bar and the room where he had just ground himself back to zero again came the harsh and tinny sounds of the poker slots, even now a siren calling him. Then the glass doors that led outside.
The night had gone cold in the hour and a half since he had first arrived at the casino and the air seemed to blow through his skin and into the dark red center of his body. He extracted a cigarette and asked a passing man in a blue suit for a light but the man continued to walk and Nat stood there with the unlit Marlboro in his hand. Susan was somewhere behind him, inside among the bright clanging machines. And Rick. The thought of them together almost too much to bear. And yet he had waited and waited and waited for Rick to return and what had happened between him and Susan would never have happened were it not for his friend’s absence. He believed it and would keep on believing it as long as it took to become true. How desperate and lonely he had been. How desperate and lonely he still was.