To start at the beginning go here.
I walked away, headed towards a tram that might take me anywhere, as long as it was our separate ways.
It was dark and unseasonably cold by the time I made my way to the casino, neither of which helped me in being late. Gaspard, seeing me in not much better condition than last time, sighed with resignation and waved me towards the locker room. He made some comment about the dim lights of the slot machine sector hiding my face, as if he were planning on having me work anywhere else.
In the reflective prism of the slots and all the new information I had, time passed quickly. The only occupational problem being whether a high-class hustler and a couple of his whores needed ejecting. That didn’t require much of my brainpower, though – a raised hand from Thibalt indicated they had permission from someone to be there.
Even so, when my first break came around I was too restless to spend it sitting, so I cruised around searching for Jasper. He was outside, under the awning of the employee entrance, sucking on an electronic cigarette. He couldn’t even get being French right. At least, I noted, he stood just outside the external cameras field of vision, blocked by the corner.
A tiny blue light flickered at the end of the cylinder he had in his mouth. Both of us stood in the shadow of the industrial fluorescent lighting of the employee entrance and said nothing. Jasper pointedly ignored me. I jumped whatever social complexities he was trying to construct by saying, “I need to get ahold of Sartre.”
Jasper languidly exhaled a cloud of vapor, as if he were Alain Delon himself. Staring off into the night, he might have been preparing some bit of poetry, but instead he said, “Oui?”
“Yes, oui,” I inflected the French version of the word with my worst American accent, making it sound like it was pronounced by some lost Appalachian tribesman. I knew there weren’t any microphones on the external cameras and with no one around I spoke unreservedly. “He told me you were working for him. I know it was you who passed him the information about the high-roller that night the Beard was in the casino, so I know you have a means of contacting him directly.” That last part was a guess, but the flash in Jasper’s eyes told me it was a good one. “So I just need you to tell him we need to talk. I have his answer for him.”
Imitating a man of much greater importance that he was, Jasper replied, “Tell me what you want him to know and I will pass it on.”
Jasper’s unctuousness was annoying to me at the best of times, but now I tightened my fists so I could hear the ligaments creak. “Tell him I need to talk and that I’ll be here till the end of my shift.” I stepped close enough to him that he was forced to straighten himself from the constant slouch that hours of monitor watching induced. “If I don’t see him before I leave I’m going to assume you didn’t speak to him.” I mentally hardened myself, externally projecting my restraint as I flipped through my list of options of continued responses. A direct threat might give Jasper a reason to go to management; I probably wouldn’t lose my job but I didn’t need the trouble. So I breathed deeply and exhaled out of my nose, lifting a finger to level it at his chest, bringing a seriousness to contrast with my words. “If that’s the case, you will hurt my feelings.”
Confusion flooded Jasper’s eyes, then new kinds of anxiety and fear followed as he tried to understand my words. His mouth dropped open to reply and the e-cigarette fell out, which he caught with a stumbling gesture. He stared at it in surprise as if it had dropped out of the sky. When he lifted his eyes back to me, he smiled weakly and said, “Oui, of course. We are friends, yes?”
I grabbed him by the shoulder in an ostensibly chummy manner grinding the bird-like bones of the complex joint together, causing his smile to waver as I made the subtext of my message clear. “Thanks.” I faked as much sincerity as I could in that statement. I released him and headed back inside.
I tried to relax for the rest of my shift. Inside the casino was about as safe as I was going to get and I had little to no control on what happened outside the casino. A part of me worried about Sophie, but I knew she would tell me not to, so I tried to focus on other things. I stayed out of guests’ way, kept a careful eye out for too loose slot machines, and tried to get off my feet when I could.
Sometime past midnight there was a buzzing in my ear, a tone letting me know it was one-to-one communication. Jasper’s voice came through and only said, “Out back, next to the loading dock.” I tapped on the earpiece’s receiver, letting him know I had gotten the message, and said thank you to the open air, confusing a young and slightly drunk couple who were walking by at that moment. They glanced at me, then at each other when I didn’t speak further, then laughed and walked on. I watched them walk on for a bit, my envy going with them.
Not wanting to deal with Gaspard, I let Thibalt know I was being summoned by management, and he nodded with the trust that exists between professionals. I took the same path out that we had used to get rid of Lanzo when he had been just some unknown Corsican. Walking through the utility hallways, I wondered if we would be better off if I had never mentioned him to Sophie. I put that out of my mind just as quickly. There was no point in dwelling on that now. Sartre was waiting.
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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