Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

at Boris. “In or out?” I asked him. “Let’s go, people. Are we playing cards here or quilting?”
    I heard the ping of three chips, but I wasn’t looking. I had just thought of another irritating coincidence. Maybe it was nothing, but at this point, I wanted to check out everything. I knocked back a second vodka, feeling it burn all the way down, and reached for a handful of potato chips. I had to do something to keep my strength up for all the running around I’d have to do the next day. In addition to everything else, I was on a panel in the afternoon.
    I looked up in time to see Bucky trying to see my cards in the mirror on the wall behind me.
    “Close to the vest, gentlemen,” I said as I got up and walked over to the bathroom. I came back with a bath sheet and draped it over the mirror. “My error. We should be sitting shivah. Haven’t two of our colleagues just passed on?”
    When I sat down again and looked around the table, Bucky no longer had a poker face. He was scowling as he studied his cards. What was he going to do next, the slime, send Angelo to steal chips from the rest of us? Just how far would he go, I wondered, to make himself feel he was winning?
    It was going to be a long night, but that was precisely the point. I’d promised myself I’d do whatever I could to keep the game going until morning.



THIS IS SO SUDDEN, HE SAID

    W e need more ice,” Boris said. “Wodka not cold enough.”
    I looked out the open window and saw the first glimmers of pink in the sky.
    “Ice, Rachel, ice.”
    “Okay, okay,” I said, wanting everyone to be happy so they’d stay at my party, “I’ll go down the hall to the ice machine.”
    When I picked up the ice bucket, Dashiell got up and went to the door. I checked my pocket for the key. None of these guys looked sober enough by now to get up and unlock the door for me when I came back.
    “Don’t any of you touch my chips. I counted them.”
    “Ice,” Boris said, clearly a man in need.
    “Ice, ice, I’m going.”
    I didn’t bother with my shoes. The hall carpeting was thick and soft, and the maids vacuumed it every day. They were always there, cleaning the hallways, early in the morning when I was going out with Dashiell. Anyway, at that point, I wasn’t sure where my shoes were.
    When I got to the end of the corridor, there was a candy machine and an ice machine. But the ice machine wasn’t working. Someone had taped a sign on it saying there was one on four. So I took the stairs, found the working ice machine, and scooped up a bucket full of ice so that Boris could chill the rest of the vodka properly. Next thing they’d be sending out to an all-night deli for more snack food.
    I headed back to my room, swinging the ice bucket at my side as if I were Jill coming down the hill, and when I got to my door, Dashiell immediately welded his nose to the doorstop, hoping for a preview of Betty. I fished the key out of my pocket, blew the lint off it, and attempted to slip it into the lock. But it didn’t seem to fit. I figure I must have had more to drink than I thought I did, because it wasn’t until after my third try that I looked at the number on the door and saw that I was at 405.1 heard a dog sniffing and sneezing near the saddle from the other side of the door, and though I clearly was not as sharp as I could have been, I knew it was a little dog, not a German shepherd.
    I turned to go back to the stairs I’d come up, though I could just as well have used the stairs near the elevator. Just as I rounded the corner where the hallway dog-legged in another direction, I heard a door open behind me. But when I walked back to see who it was and to reassure whomever it was that it was only me, I found all the doors closed.
    Downstairs, I headed back toward my room, padding quietly around the turn and then straight along the empty hall. My key still in my hand, I checked first to make sure it was the right room, then slipped it into my lock and opened the door.
    Boris was out for the count. Stretched across the foot of my bed, snoring, he resembled a hibernating bear. Bucky had moved to the one upholstered chair, where he was asleep with Angelo curled on his lap. Chip had apparently stood up from where he’d been sitting on the window seat and was walking toward me. I heard the toilet flush, and Woody came out, barely looked at me, and lay down on the bed perpendicular to Boris, his head on one of the pillows, curled like spoons with