A Story About a Girl With a Pretty Face and a Black Heart. You know, one of those heart-warming dealies.

Here we go with the second entry in the May Smackdown, a story written by me, Brian Crane. Hopefully this won't be the last entry this month, but only time will tell. Mine just squeaks under the maximum word count, so I'll let you get right to it.

The Girl Who Won Big on the Yahtzee Slots
by Brian Crane

When she finally came out she was alone. She stopped in front of the entrance, her sun-browned shoulders hunched forward protectively as she rooted in her blue cloth purse. She looked up a few times while she searched, her dark eyes wary of something. Himself, he guessed. Even from this distance, he was struck once more by how pretty she was. Since the last time he’d seen her she’d pulled her long hair into a ponytail. Some of her hair had begun to pull free from the band – the sun glinted off of the wiry strands. Her tan legs, capped by a short denim skirt, shone thrillingly in the sunlight, but this time he was able to quash his desire. Now that he knew what kind of woman she was, he recognized her easy beauty as just another tool she used to her own advantage.

Once she’d found what she was after, a pair of enormous sunglasses, she put them on her face and started walking east towards the Paris casino. Towards him. Quickly, he slipped his quarter-back into his back jeans pocket (a sci-fi novel called Jupiter he’d picked up at the airport), and stared meaningfully into the baroque-style fountain he was standing in front of, feigning interest in the way a particular arc of water splashed into the penny-strewn pool. A moment passed, and she passed right by him. He waited a beat or two, and then followed.

As they walked down the strip, jostling shoulder to shoulder with a throng of tourists cooking beneath the sun together, he realized his next move was absolutely the wrong one. He couldn’t just surprise her with a firm hand on her elbow and compel her to talk to him, as he’d planned. All she had to do was scream and the prospect of any civilized discussion would go right out the window.

Before a sensible alternative plan occured to him, he noticed she’d stopped and was speaking to the hostess of an outdoor café attached to the casino. It didn’t look busy. He stopped and patted the front of his jeans looking for his cell. He took it out, flipped it open, and spoke into it. Some fifty or so yards away, the one-third scale replica of the Eiffel Tower loomed above them, a vast and rusted monster, one massive leg arcing down in front of the casino’s front entrance, looking as if it might suddenly tense and then lift to take another step.

He glanced over at his quarry. The hostess was leading her through the café and into the dark interior of the restaurant.

This, he knew, was his one and only play.

He stood next to the hostess’s lectern until she returned. “One,” he said. “Inside, please.”

Once inside he cursed silently. His eyes hadn’t adjusted from the bright sunlight; it was too dark to spot her. All he could do was hope she hadn’t noticed him. As soon as he was seated, he picked up the menu and held it in front of his face. The hostess was saying something to him about who his waitress would be but he ignored her. When his eyes were adjusted, he slowly lowered his menu and scanned the restaurant’s interior over the top of the pleasingly-yellowed parchment paper menu.

Across the room. Long brown hair, yellow blouse. Blue purse. Her back faced him.

He inhaled, exhaled, stood up, and walked to her table. He was seated across from her before she’d noticed anything had happened. She’d been airily perusing the choices when she looked up and saw him. She recognized him at once and opened her mouth, perhaps to scream, but he shook his head urgently and she was silent. “Do not scream,” he said, quietly. “Beneath the table.” She closed her mouth and her eyes flicked to the wooden tabletop. He nodded at her, but did not smile. “Yeah,” he said. “But I just want to talk.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said. Starting to look around the restaurant. No one was coming their way. “I don’t even know you.”

He snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s just you and me. There’s no casino security guys around for you to lie to.”

She looked at him now, her eyes bouncing back and forth as their focus shifted slightly from his right eye to his left and back again. “I’m supposed to believe you didn’t bring some kind of tape recorder?”

“I said all I want to do is talk, and I meant it.”

“So you didn’t bring a tape recorder, but you did bring a gun?” She wasn’t smiling when she said this, but the possibility of her smiling seemed far less remote now than it did when he first sat down. She wasn’t scared anymore, if she’d ever been.

He straightened in his seat. “Yes,” he said, unable to keep a note of falsity out of his voice. The fact of his lie seemed to hang in the air between them for a moment, and then he took hold of his cold, thick-handled salad fork, (but did not pick it up), and shook his head. “I do have one,” he said.

“No you don’t.”

He sat motionless for a moment, watching her, weighing whether to keep up the bluff or let it go, and finally he sat back in his chair. “Okay. Fine.”

Her expression was unreadable. Was she figuring her next play, or waiting for him to say what he was going to say?

“Are you going to scream, or can we talk?” he said.

“Go ahead,” she said, affecting a bored tone of voice. “Talk.”

He leaned forward. “I want the thousand you promised me,” he said.

“No.” Her expression was defiant now. Ugly. The opposite of how she’d looked when they’d been sitting together in front of the Yahtzee slots. She’d been beautiful then. Radiant. You could almost have believed she’d felt something for him.

“You were broke. I gave you a twenty and you promised if you won the jackpot, which we both assumed you wouldn’t, you’d give me one thousand. Against all odds, you won. That’s it. Fair is fair.”

She did an extended eye roll and sighed petulantly. “Do you have something in writing?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Than what is there to talk about?”

He clenched his fists tightly beneath the table. “You won four. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. All I’m asking for is the one thousand you promised me.”

“You know. I think I will scream.”

He shook his head and looked away from her. “No, no, no, no,” he said. “Keep your grand.” He knew she wasn’t going to scream, not now, but the threat of embarassment and forcible ejection wasn’t what was distressing him at the moment. He hadn’t expected it to go this way. He really thought he could shame her into doing the right thing. How stupid. He looked at her now. “Can I have my twenty back?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. She looked disappointed. “What do you think?”

He took a breath and stood up. She struck the table with an open hand but did not look up at him. “Sit down,” she said. After a moment’s deliberation, he did. “I’ve been playing those fucking slots for six years, every weekend thinking this is going to be the one. Never was. And even though I figured it out, you know, the whole con? I still kept coming in. Someone told me the slots were looser at Circus Circus, so I go to that awful fucking place and drop quarter after quarter into their filthy machines, breathing all of that goddamn smoke, listening to all of those crying wetback kids waiting to see the fucking clown. Last weekend I was in Primm Valley, getting hit on by fat old bastards with BO sour enough to knock you on your ass. But I was just as nice as could be. And they’d give me money. Made ‘em feel good. Whatever I have to do to work those slots for another half hour. So you come along today, think some pretty girl’s into you, give her a twenty probably thinking you’ll get it back some other way, and I win. I win?” She sounded strangely offended by her improbable victory over bad luck. “For the first fucking time since I moved here I win some real goddamn money and you want me to be fair?”

The waitress was standing next to her now, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry. Just came to get your drink orders.”

“Diet Coke,” she said. “He’s fine with water.” The waitress was already rushing away.

She pulled her purse onto the table and started rooting around in it again. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you your twenty back, but only if you promise to stand up, walk out of here, and never talk to me again. What do you say?” She flung a crumpled twenty onto the table. It landed next to the centerpiece, some plastic thing filled with lace and ugly white flowers.

He picked it up, stood up, and put the bill into his pocket. “You are not a good person,” he said, and, at that moment, he felt like it was the worst thing he’d ever said to anyone.

As he walked past, she dropped her purse onto the carpet next to her. “Yeah,” she said, calling after him loudly. “But now I’m rich. What do you think counts for more in this place?"