Alice in Wonderland

ELLE LOTHLORIEN

I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem

to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward!

… but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you

know. “Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?”

―Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

For my dear friend, Alexandra Sokoloff, who took my hand when I

needed it most and pulled me down the rabbit hole with her for

a most unforgettable adventure through Wonderland.

Chapter One

I have a totally unhealthy and unrealistic fear of being eaten by a great white shark. This is

because I belong to a very specific demographic called American Child Whose Parents Made the

Ill-Advised Decision To Allow Her To Watch the Movie Jaws At a Sleepover During Her

Formative Years.

Multiple viewings of Steven Spielberg’s iconic film (and years of Shark Week on the

Discovery Channel) left me terrified of oceans, lakes, creeks, swimming pools, bathtubs, and

glasses of water until I was well into my teens. My sharkophobia was still at its zenith in tenth

grade when I refused point-blank to participate in the P.E. swimming rotation, knowing that deep

water was where sharks stage for people treats. I informed my nonplussed teacher that the drain

at the bottom of the deep end appeared to me “as if the shadowy harbinger of aqua-death.”

This unfortunate bit of clumsy poetry made its way into My Permanent Record—not only

earning me an F in P.E. that semester, but making me a shoo-in at the end of the school year for

the title “Most Likely To Be Eaten By a Shark.”

Which is why, as an adult, I headed straight for the mountains of landlocked Colorado.

Because you can’t be too safe, you know?

Unfortunately, at this very moment I’m striding into the turquoise waves of Surfer’s Paradise

in Queensland, Australia like a crunchy, five-foot, nine-inch-long shark treat—something one

might consider The Exact Opposite of Safe.

“Are you going to tell me how it went, or do I have to guess?”

My sister, Harlow, is over 8,000 miles away, but the disdain in her voice manages to come

through clear as a bell.

“You have to guess,” I say, scanning the water in front of me, ready to make a break for it at

the sign of any object larger than a water molecule. “I’m busy trying not to look like anything

edible. And take me off speaker phone. You know I hate it.”

She promptly ignores me. “You’re doing it? You’re in the water?”

“That’s affirmative. I’m almost up to my waist.”

“Oh, my God, I can’t believe it! Well…how is it?”

“It’s—I don’t know, it’s wet I guess.”

Her tone is dry. “Yeah, it’s gonna be wet, Faye. It’s water.”

“Shut up, okay? I’ve never been this far out in the ocean before.” I feel a sudden surge of

homesickness and frown. “I miss the cabin. I miss the woods.”

“Okay, Laura Ingalls-Wilder, you’re in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia! The little house in the

big woods is half a world away—”

“And one day in the past.”

“What?”

“It’s already tomorrow here.” My eyebrows pull together as I exert real mental effort trying

to understand where and when I am in the universe. “It’s still yesterday there. International Date

Line, remember?”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Gabe said that—what’s that rattling noise? Is our connection bad?”

“That’s m-m-my teeth. I thought the water would be warmer.”

She laughs. “It probably is warm, dummy, you just don’t have anything but your hot tub to

compare it to.”

“Whatever. It’s winter here, remember?”

“Well I know, but you said yourself it was in the seventies and that it was no different than

summer here in the mountains.”

This is true; winter on the Gold Coast does feel like summer, which makes me wonder what

kind of blazing, hellish heat makes its appearance in February in this place. I groan. “Everything

about this country is wrong!”

“It’s the wrong season and the wrong day and the wrong time and the wrong hemisphere…is

there anything right happening there?”

“No. They drive on the left side of the road here. I almost crapped my pants the first time I

tried to cross the street.”

“Just pretend you’re in kindergarten and look both ways, Faye.”

I try not to laugh too loud, afraid a bark-like noise will be mistaken by any great whites

lurking in the area as the distress call of a juvenile seal. “It’s not quite that simple, Harlow, but

okay.”

I’m about to follow that up by explaining how a lifetime of looking left first and then right

before you cross the street can’t exactly be undone in a space of a day when I hear a deep,

muffled voice far in background. Harlow is back, laughing. “Gabe wants to know if they’ve kept

your straight jacket tied nice and tight like he showed them.”

My brother, Gable, doesn’t have a serious bone in his body. He’s also the oldest and most

traveled of my five siblings, so I know he’s familiar with the downstream psychological

problems caused by crossing the International Date Line.

“Whatever,” I say. “Tell him I left a comment on his Facebook page this morning. According

to my account, it posted yesterday.”

My brother says something in the background in that baritone of his that sounds a lot like:

“Told you before you left it’d screw with your mind.”

I eye the azure water in front of me. “Well, tell Clark Gable that it would’ve been more

helpful if he’d focused on the fact that it’s hot here in the winter. Then maybe I would have

packed tank tops instead of Artic survival gear.”

Harlow deadpans, “He says he doesn’t give a damn.”

Welcome to the Dahl House.

In age order, “the Dolls” are my brother, Clark Gable Dahl, followed by my big sister, Jean

Harlow Dahl. Then there’s my sister, Marlene Dietrich Dahl, me, and my younger sister, Marilyn

Monroe Dahl—collectively known as the “Baby Dolls.” For reasons no one has ever been able to

explain to my satisfaction, we’ve all gone by our middle names (or shortened variations thereof):

Gabe, Harlow, Dee, Faye and Munny, instead of Clark, Jean, Marlene, Alice, and Marilyn.

It’s complicated, but, basically, when our mother bellowed our first names as kids, we knew

we were in serious trouble. Whenever I rattle off the names of my siblings to inquisitive

strangers, the inevitable response begins like this: “What a lovely idea! Your parents must have

really loved all those old films.” It typically ends with a frown , an awkward pause, and this:

“So…if you’re one of the Baby Dolls, why did they decide to skip over you?”

Sigh.

Alice Faye was probably one of the biggest starlets of her time (who no one remembers).

That’s because when she realized how many of her scenes in the 1945 movie Fallen Angel had

been cut, she walked out of the screening, handed her keys to the studio gate guard, and drove

away from Hollywood forever—at the height of her fame and popularity.

It might’ve been better for her legacy if she’d died at the age of twenty-nine from renal

failure, like Jean Harlow, or overdosed like Marilyn Monroe at thirty-six, but she had the bad

luck to live until the ripe old age of eighty-three—plenty of time to fade into complete and utter

obscurity, one of those smattering of actors who get polite “golf clap” applause when the

Academy rolls through all the people who traded their SAG card for a dirt nap the previous year.

Harlow comes back on the line. “You should, like, send some stock tips or sports scores back

in time to me since I’m still stuck in yesterday here. I’ll place a few bets, and when you get back

we’ll have all the money we’ll need.”

“Wow, that’s a really solid plan, Harlow.”

“Hey, it worked in the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.”

“Yeah, well, I think you should leave all the bet placing to me from here on out. I’m at the

final table in ten days.”

Before my sister can answer, I see a shadow in the water about ten feet off my port side. I

take a panicky step backwards, and suddenly I’m under the water, and up and down are moot

points as my cell phone is ripped from my hand. I flail around in a blind panic until my feet find

the sand, and then I’m hard at work trying to maintain my balance while simultaneously forcing

salt water out of my mouth and eyes.

And then several things happen in a blurry succession: The female half of a nearby couple

looks at me, screeches something incomprehensible, and swims, arms and legs flailing, in the

direction of the shore. A microsecond later, her partner and dozens of other nearby people have

also turned into human eggbeaters.

That’s when I look down to find myself in the middle of a slowly expanding circle of bright

red. Like, blood red.

My severe sharkophobia excepted, I’ve never been a panicky person. In fact, in moments of

crisis, I’ve always been able to (in my mother’s words) “downshift into calm.” This time is no

different. My mental voice, always cool, assesses the situation and delivers this assessment:

Calm down, Faye. It’s just your hair.

An arm slips over my shoulder and tightens in a lock around my neck, yanking me off my

feet. I end up on my back, clawing at the arm, thrashing to get loose while trying not to inhale

more seawater. “Let go! Let me go!”

The arm disappears just as a warning siren erupts over our heads. I look up to see a helicopter

buzzing the shoreline, a loudspeaker affixed to the side crackling to life with this helpful

announcement: “SHARK! Get out! Run for your lives! Go, go, go, go, go!”

Well, I exaggerate a little. Actually, I exaggerate a lot. What the guy from the Shark Control

Program Aerial Surveillance is really saying (with all the garbled urgency of a sleepy drive-thru

attendant repeating a burger order) is this: “Attention. Please clear the water. If it’s convenient

for you, clear the water, please. At your own pace, of course. A large, carnivorous fish has been

spotted. Eventually, the beach will be closed. If, of course, everyone decides to evacuate the

water. You know…whenever.”

“Shark” is all I need implied to shift from calm to pure panic. Faster than you can say

“you’re going to need a bigger boat,” I’m churning the water into a meringue-like froth with my

legs, past my would-be rescuer (as well as several less-motivated swimmers), until I’m back on

terra firma. Struggling to breathe, I lurch back to the pile of my belongings on the sand and

pluck my burgundy beach wrap off the ground. I’m trying to double the knot when a wave of

dizziness rolls over me, so strong that I nearly fall onto the sand. I sit down—hard—arms

crossed over my bent knees, taking deep breaths, trying to get on top of whatever this is.

Sunstroke? I think. Maybe I should just go back to the hotel and take a nap.

“Hey, are you okay?”

The accent of a fellow American gets my attention, and I turn around. Then my mouth falls

open.

Wearing white swim trunks, and holding a white hotel towel and a pair of sunglasses in one

hand, a man ambles towards me. I use the word “man” loosely. A better description would be

“the most beautiful specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens with a set of XY chromosomes to grace

the planet Earth at this moment, or any other era, epoch, or age in history.” And it’s not just me

who thinks this; his good looks and amazing body leave mute, slack-jawed women from eighteen

to eighty in his long-legged wake.

He comes to a stop in front of me, and runs a hand through his still-dripping, platinum blond

hair. “Are you okay? Did you step on a piece of glass or something?”

“Glass?” I know I sound like a dork, but that’s all I can get out of my mouth. It’s his eyes.

They’re a disconcerting, otherworldly blue, flecked with streaks of frost white. Framed by the

tanned skin of his face, they glow like an acetylene torch. And his hair. I mean, even wet you

can tell it’s white-blond, the kind you normally only see on toddlers, the kind that turns green in

chlorinated water.

It sounds cliché, but the guy’s making my little heart go pitter-patter. In fact, it’s beating so

fast that it’s getting uncomfortable. I cover my chest with my open hand, as if this alone will

slow things down.

His eyes narrow. “Wait, it’s your head that’s bleeding, isn’t it? I should go get a lifeguard.”

I look at the reddish liquid that’s running from my neck down my arms, and dripping off my

fingertips onto the pristine white sand. I shake my head. “I—my hair—it’s just dye,” I stammer.

“All that red in the water…that was your hair?” He crouches next to me and takes up one of

the sopping wet, fire engine red locks spilling over my shoulders, dabbing it with his towel.

When he pulls it away, the white’s stained bright crimson. He cracks up laughing. “Someone

thought you’d been attacked by a shark!”

The line from Pulp Fiction—the one Samuel L. Jackson shouts at John Travolta as they’re

trying to wash blood off their hands—pops into my head: “I used the same soap you did and

when I dried my hands, the towel didn't look like no fuckin’ maxi-pad!” I almost—almost—

share this most quotable of cinematic quotes with him, when I remember it contains The Word.

You know: “maxi-pad.”

“I only dyed it this morning. It does this for the first few days afterwards…you know,

staining stranger’s hotel towels and stuff.”

He laughs as he slides on his sunglasses, covering those strange, mesmerizing eyes that I’m

not even sure are real. Contacts, I think. Gotta be contacts. This is just fine with me, because

now I can focus on lips so pouty and pillowy and perfect that I want to touch them, just to see if

they’re as soft as they look.

“I love it, that bright red,” he says. “I’d love to see what it looks like dry.”

And spread out over a pillow, I add for him in my head. That’s when I notice his freckles.

They’re barely there at all, just a smattering sprinkled across his tanned nose and cheeks, but I

feel the last bit of my conversational brilliance (and decorum) slip away. “Freckle juice,” I blurt

out.

He looks confused. “‘Freckle juice?’”

Ho boy. “The, uh…the book?” I clear my throat. “The children’s book, Freckle Juice? I

thought it was about how to get freckles.” I shrug. “Then I read it. It doesn’t tell you.” There’s an

uncomfortable silence, which I fill with: “How to get freckles, I mean. It’s not what the book’s

about at all.”

He looks perplexed. “No, I guess it’s not.”

My smile is weak. Hell, I’m feeling pretty weak, my vision going from cloudy to bright and

back again. It’s getting hard to think too. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I like your

freckles,” I say. “I’d love to see what they look like when they’re dry. And spread out over a

pillow.” Oh, my God, I didn’t just say that, did I? My head is swimming, but I make a last-ditch

effort to salvage the situation anyway. “And, uh, thanks for trying to save me. Sorry I wasn’t,

you know, bitten by a shark.”

His smile gets wider. “I think you’re perfectly capable of saving yourself. That was quite an

exit from the ocean there, by the way; although there’s still a small child out there if you want to

circle back and take a shot at almost drowning him too.”

I don’t even have the energy to laugh. I take a deep breath, trying to summon the strength to

respond in a way that doesn’t make me sound even more ridiculous. “I never should’ve been in

the water in the first place,” I say with a glance at the helicopter passing overhead. “They’ve

been flying all day. They only do that when they spot sharks.”

“C’mon,” he says, “not you too. Sharks? Are you serious?” He turns away to look at the

people making their way out of the water at the sulkiest, slowest speed possible. “They don’t

exactly look like they’re trying to avoid a shark attack.”

Talking takes real effort now, and I can only pant out a few words at a time. “Locals. They’ll

eventually get out. They’re annoyed. Like when Americans go to the lake. And it’s closed.

‘Cause some kid pooped in the water.” Oh, my God…‘poop?’ I think, horrified. You can’t say

‘poop’ to a guy you just met!

“What’s going on, Rabbit?”

We both look up, squinting against the sunlight. A tall, overly made-up, bottle-bleach blond

comes to a stop in front of my mystery man, her huge fake boobs attempting a jailbreak from her

microscopic royal blue bikini top.

Rabbit? I think. Please don’t say his name is Rabbit. I already feel sick enough.

“Nothing, honey,” he says, sounding annoyed. “Just trying to help someone out.” He nods at

me. “Turns out she didn’t need my help.”

I feel really strange, like I’m floating. “Hey…you don’t look like a rabbit.” Then I do

something completely out of character: I giggle.

The Man Called Rabbit laughs while Jailbreak Bikini looks me over in a way that conveys

her message loud and clear: “You’re no threat to me.” When she reaches down to touch his

shoulder—a gesture only a few species and a million or so years removed from lifting a leg and

marking him as her territory with a stream of urine—enough bracelets and bangles to lay track

across the Australian Outback slide down her arm and come to a jangling stop at her wrist. “I’m

Honey. Who are you?”

Honey? Rabbit? You’ve got to be kidding me. I pull the reigns back—hard—on my urge to

ask her if this is her real first name, or if she saves it strictly for special occasions. Like pole

dancing gigs.

“I’m Alice Faye Dahl,” I say, the words coming out like the wheeze of an unplugged vacuum

cleaner. I giggle again. “I never call myself Alice.” My eyes widen. “Uh-oh…sounds like

someone’s in trouble, doesn’t it?” Another giggle.

“I like Alice,” he says. “My mother’s name is Alice.” He smiles. “And it all depends on what

you mean by ‘trouble,’ Alice.” He caps this suggestive statement with an even more suggestive

wink.

I shake my head, wanting to correct this glaring misunderstanding as soon as possible. “My

name is Faye.”

Honey squeals like…well, like a grown woman named “Honey.” “Ooh, like Faye Dunaway!

I just love her, don’t you? She’s so glamorous. Well, she was before she, you know, got old and

wrinkly and everything.” Then she proves that she has the attention span of a trilobite by shifting

her focus back to the man between us, and acting like I’m not there.

Okaaaay, time to go. I struggle to my feet, and lurch sideways as a new wave of dizziness

hits me. God, what is wrong with me?

I expect at least a “Nice to meet you, Faye” from one or the other of them, but what comes

next isn’t even in the catalog of What To Expect When You’re Leaving: Honey looks at where I

was sitting and shouts, “Is that blood?” followed by an “Oh, my God, it is blood!” and lots of

ear-splitting screaming.

I want to care, I really do, but my heart is beating so fast I can’t tell one pulse from the next.

Then he reaches out and touches my waist with one hand, and tugs at my beach wrap with the

other one until it falls away. He looks so frightened that I want to ask him if he’s okay, and I

want to tell her not to burst her implants over a little bit of hair dye staining the white sand.

But I can’t do any of those things, because I have that white sand on my face—lots of it. In

fact, it’s in my eyes, but when I try to brush it off, I realize that I’ve face-planted on the beach.

He’s there, telling me it’s going to be fine, and his voice is so amazing to listen to, and his face is

so close to mine, I could swoon.

“Alice?” he says. “Help’s coming, okay?”

Then I swear I see my beach wrap between his teeth. I hear a long ripping noise, and then it

feels like a boa constrictor’s found my leg and is trying to strangle my thigh. I try to protest, but

I’m shrinking and shrinking, and everything around me—including him—is contracting and

pushing into a long tunnel. Then the whole tunnel turns ninety degrees, and I feel myself slipping

sideways.

Rabbit’s voice gets farther away, farther down the dark tunnel, as if he’s falling too. His

voice is anxious as he calls up to me: “Stay with me, Alice, okay? Stay with me.”

So I do, falling effortlessly straight down the rabbit hole.

Chapter Two

I’m nursing one of those hospital orange juices with the aluminum foil, peel-back lid, and my

sister, Dee, has just answered the phone, when he walks in, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

The guy likes black and white and every shade in between; this time he’s sporting a black

leather jacket over an unbuttoned white and pale gray plaid shirt. Underneath that is a plain white

t-shirt. Black biker boots—the same ones he wore when he came to see me yesterday—peek

from the bottom of a pair of worn and torn, chemically bleached jeans.

Well, maybe “came to see me” is a bit of an exaggeration. I mean, I was too drugged up to do

more than stare at him like a bee in a smoked-out hive, but I remember opening my eyes and

seeing him there. When I blinked again, he was gone. Just in case it was all real, I made sure to

brush my teeth as soon as I was able. I even asked for a hair tie to pull my long, blood-red hair

into a twist at the nape of my neck so I wouldn’t have that “freshly hospitalized” look.

I’m a little flustered. I smile up at him, glad to have Dee’s call for an excuse to put off any

actual conversation. I point at the cell phone glued to my ear, and he smiles and nods before

pulling up a chair. That’s when I notice his glasses. Not sunglasses, of course, but those indoor

ones with the tinted lenses. His have thin silver frames with gray lenses, but they’re just opaque

enough to camouflage those curious, white bands in his bright blue irises.

That’s probably why he wears them, I think. He probably has people asking about his eyes

all the time.

Now that his blonde hair is dry, I’m pleased to see that it falls from an effortless side-part

across his forehead to just below his ears. One side is tucked behind his ear, leaving a tuft of hair

turned up in a charming curl that I’m certain he’s not aware of. For a guy with such pale hair,

blue eyes, and freckles (not to mention one who dresses all in white), you’d think he’d have

albino-like skin too, but he somehow manages to tan up just right.

Makes his freckles even more adorable, I think.

By this time, I’ve forgotten all about my conversation with Dee.

And the hospital.

And the beach.

And the shark bite.

I wince at the thought. Okay, well maybe I haven’t forgotten about that.

“I knew something was wrong,” says Dee. “I tried to tell Harlow as soon as the call dropped,

but she wouldn’t listen. Why didn’t you call us? We had to find out on the internet!”

I glance askance at my visitor, knowing I’ll need to be evasive and end the conversation as

soon as possible. I know this is going to piss Dee off, especially because after being nibbled by a

bull shark, and dropping my call with Harlow (literally—right into the Pacific Ocean), I was

ocupado for the next twenty-four hours, getting stitched up and receiving a blood transfusion in a

trauma center. But what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

“I didn’t say something because she didn’t ask!” I wrinkle my nose, bracing myself.

“Well, Faye, dear,” says Dee, laying the sarcasm on like cake frosting, “I’m sure Harlow’s

sorry she didn’t think to ask if you’d been eaten by a shark. That’s totally on her.”

I smile. “I’m fine. The doctor says it was just an exploratory bite.”

I grimace, thinking someone should come up with a new phrase for “I left the ocean without

a kiwi-sized chunk of my lower-left butt cheek” to replace the rather nebulous term “exploratory

bite.”

“An explor—wait, is this the girl who spent her whole life too scared to go in the deep end of

the pool?” Without waiting for an answer she mutters, “God, I’m never going sky diving or

bungee jumping…I always told everyone there was a reason I was scared of heights!”

“Yeah, I’m not going to be taking my chances on either of those anytime soon either. No

need to push my luck.”

“Well, I’m glad they were able to stitch you up and release you. And I’m not even going to

ask if you want us to come out for the final tournament.”

There’s no way Rabbit can hear her, but I glance at him anyway to be sure. “You know, you

say you’re not going to ask, but what you just said is another way of asking.”

She sighs. “Well, do you?”

“No. You know that’ll just make me nervous.”

She snorts. “‘Nervous.’ Please. You’re never nervous. You just like saying that so everyone

thinks you’re just like the rest of us.”

I take a deep breath. “How is she?”

The seconds of silence that elapse before she answers tells me more than any words she

could say. “Yesterday was better,” Dee says finally.

I stop breathing. I’ve got to get out of this hospital. Right now, before I lose my spot. “Okay,

Dee, let me go, alright? Give my love to everyone, will you? Give Munny a kiss for me, tell

her—” I press my lips into a tight line, willing myself not to get upset in front of a stranger,

especially one named Rabbit. “Tell her I’ll see her soon.” My throat gets tight, and I wait for the

spasm to pass before clearing it. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Wait! You haven’t told me where you’re staying! Are you still at the Surfside Hotel? And

what are going to do for the next two weeks while you wait for the tournament anyway?”

“Uh…I switched hotels.”

“Well, what’s the name of it? In case we can’t reach you on your cell? You know…the one

you fed to the shark.”

I smile. “Turns out ‘water resistant’ isn’t the same thing as ‘shark proof.’” I look down at my

heavily bandaged thigh and decide a whole lot of bluffing is in order here. “Dee, I know you’re

my big sister and all, but I’m thirty years old. I think I’m capable of amusing myself without

giving you a formal itinerary to review.”

“Fine, be that way. Just give me the name of the hotel or Mom will have a cow.”

“It’s the Gold Coast—hey, let me call you right back, okay?” I hang up before she can

answer. Then I take a deep breath, exhale, and look over at him. “Hey, Rabbit.”

Now that I’ve said his name aloud, it isn’t so bad. I mean, once you see him sporting the

leather jacket and biker boots, a name like Butch or Dawg would’ve been a little over the top.

Somehow Rabbit has a moderating effect.

“Back to save me from some more sharks?”

He smirks. “What was the name of that hotel you’re staying in? ‘The Gold Coast Hospital’

was it?”

I frown.

“I mean, it’s none of my business, but why don’t you want to let your family know that

you’re, I don’t know, recuperating from a major shark attack?”

I shift on the bed. “They know.”

He exhales and sputters dismissively at the same time. “C’mon, Alice, they don’t know,

otherwise they’d be here.”

“How—how do you know my name?”

“You told me your name.” I must look confused because he adds, “The other day on the

beach.”

A bubbly, petite nurse with short brown hair ducks into the room. “G’day!” Her shoes make

no noise, and she appears to glide across the floor like a phantom. “Oh, my goodness, look at that

hair! How are you feeling, Alice?”

“You can call her Faye,” says Rabbit with an authority in his voice that’s hard to argue with.

The nurse looks at the chart. “Your Christian name is Faye?”

Rabbit glances at me. “Your ‘Christian name?’ Is your family religious or something?”

I shrug. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

The nurse laughs. “Sorry,” she says, sounding like a female Crocodile Dundee. I’ve been

itching all day to ask her to say “a dingo got my baby” or “throw a shrimp on the barbie,” but

just can’t work up the courage. “I forgot you were from America! Your first name…is it Faye or

Alice? Your records say Alice.”

“It’s Alice Faye, but my family calls me Faye.”

“What’s your date of birth?” She smiles and holds up a fresh IV bag. “Just so I know I have

the right person before I switch this out.”

“Four, four.”

Her brow furrows in confusion. “Forty-four...?”

“April fourth,” says Rabbit.

Her face brightens. “Right! You two here on holiday then?”

This rather innocuous question makes us both shrink away from her, our discomfort at her

assumption that we’re “together” obvious and mutual.

“Uh, something like that, yeah,” says Rabbit, choosing the easy way out.

She nods and makes quick work of setting up the new bag, flushing the IV port, and, after a

few appraising looks in Rabbit’s direction, she soundlessly shuffles out.

He stands up and holds out the flowers to me. “You shouldn’t have,” I say, taking the huge

bouquet from him. “I mean, you’ve done so much already. This…” I hold them up. “This is too

much. Thank you, really.”

“Hey, you’re welcome. And you look a lot better today.” He shrugs out of his jacket, and the

delicious smell of the leather mixed with his cologne drifts over me. “Less, I don’t

know…pasty.” He drapes the jacket over the back of the chair and sits down again.

“Yeah, well, it turns out that it’s a little hard to hold your color when you’ve lost thirty

percent of the blood in your body.”

He looks impressed. “You’re pretty scrappy, Alice Faye. Not even a shark attack slows you

down, does it?”

I blush and try to change the subject. “Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that

sounds deceptively like English but isn’t? I mean, I’m trying to figure out why I can’t seem to

converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do.”

He laughs. “Get used to it. I’ve only been here for three days, and I feel like all I do is say

‘wha’?’ and ‘huh?’ over and over.”

“I have a theory…”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Australians are descended from a boatload of English convicts, right? So two hundred years

in isolation at the bottom of the planet is plenty of time for the language to evolve into some sort

of double-speak prison slang.” I throw up my hands in exasperation. “I mean, they call appetizers

entrées, and entrées mains. I can’t even figure out how to order a meal!”

“Don’t feel bad,” he says, grinning. “I’m not having any better luck. I tried to pay for

something with my card the other day, and the guy holds out a pen with the receipt and says,

‘Pen or sign?’ I said, ‘Well, buddy, I’m probably going to need one to do the other, right?’”

I laugh until my eyes tear up. “That threw me at first, too, until someone finally told me that

they mean ‘debit or credit.’ I said, ‘Well, why don’t they just ask me to put in my PIN?’ My

friend looked at me and said, ‘Uh…he did.’”

I pluck a tissue out of the box next to my bed to wipe away my tears. “Speaking of luck,

you’ll love this: When I woke up, they kept trying to tell me how lucky I was, and I was trying to

agree with them—”

“Wait, you didn’t tell them you ‘lucked out,’ did you? Did they pat your hand and say things

like, ‘Hang in there, it’s not so bad, things will get better’?”

I start cracking up again. “Exactly! So I said, ‘No, no, no, you misunderstood me; I know I’m

lucky to be alive…I really lucked out.’”

“Did you try saying it louder? Because I’ve noticed that sometimes works.”

By now I’m laughing so hard I’m about to pee myself—understandable given the amount of

IV fluid they’ve pumped me with. “How was I supposed to know ‘lucked out’ means ‘I got

screwed over’ in Australian?”

He stands up and takes the flowers from me. That’s when I notice that what I thought was a

rather hickish key chain attached to his waistband is actually a stunning, silver pocket watch.

“Did you hear what they call ‘pharmacists’?” he says. He grabs a nearby water pitcher and

disappears into the bathroom before leaning back into the room to answer his own question.

“‘Chemists.’” He vanishes again and I hear the roar of running water. “Makes it sound like every

drugstore is staffed with crystal meth cooks, doesn’t it? By the way, don’t thank me for saving

you, thank the lifeguards. If it was up to me, I would’ve just carried you off to the building by

the boardwalk that said SURGERY.” He reappears, the flowers nicely arranged in the pitcher.

“I’m sorry, but there’s a big difference between a family doctor treating you for the sniffles, and

a guy who actually owns and knows how to use an operating table.”

He deposits the flowers back on the stand and sits down while I try not to die laughing. I

wave my hand in a gesture I hope conveys my need for him to stop being funny immediately. “I

fold! I fold!” I choke out between bursts of laughter. “No more!”

He slides his fingers together and drops them into his lap. “So, what brings you all the way to

Australia, Alice Faye Dahl?”

I end my laugh track with a long sigh. “Oh, well…”

“What—you can’t tell me? You’re CIA, aren’t you? Do you need me to help ‘bring you in?’

Who’s your handler? I’ll call him right now.”

I smile. “I’m here to, uh, play poker.”

“‘Poker?’ As in ‘International Poker Tour?’”

I nod.

He crosses his arms. “Huh. So how’s that working out for you?”

“It’s working out okay.”

“Define ‘okay.’”

I clear my throat. “Well, I made it into the final round.”

“Really? Out of seven thousand people, you made the Final Nine? I’m not going to lie—I’m

impressed.”

Now I’m thrown. “How do you know what the Final Nine is? Are you a player?”

“Not exactly.”

“What are you doing here then? Don’t tell me: You’re ‘on holiday,’ right?”

He smiles. “No, I’m a sports journalist. I cover a lot of poker tournaments. I’m not sure how I

missed seeing you; a little hard to miss a beautiful woman with hair like yours.”

I look away and become preoccupied with picking at the sheets with my fingers.

“Oh, I see…the hair color is a new thing,” he says. He studies me for a few seconds before

saying, “Huh…interesting.” Then he slaps his thighs and stands up. “Well, I don’t want to get in

the way of you, uh, checking out of your hotel room here. Should only be a few more hours,

right?”

I look up. “How’d you know they were discharging me?”

He acts like I didn’t say anything. “So, how ’bout we do this…” He flips back one of the tails

of his plaid shirt and grabs the silver pocket watch. With a touch of a button on the side, the

cover flips open. “Where did you say you lived? Back in the States, I mean?”

“I didn’t, but Colorado.”

“Your family too?” He smiles.

“Bay Area, but most of them are at our family’s cabin in Colorado right now too. Why?”

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon here.” He snaps the watch closed and lets it fall to the end

of its short, silver chain. “Which means it’s ten o’clock at night in Colorado. Which means your

family will be going to bed soon.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Okay…so?”

He smiles. “Which means you have about eight hours to turn your lie into the truth.”

“What lie?” I watch as he slides an orange, plastic card from his wallet and plunks it on the

stand next to the flowers.

“The lie about the supposed ‘hotel’ you’re staying in.” He looks around my room. “Since

you’re in a hospital you don’t know, in a town you don’t know, in a country where you don’t

know anyone, I’m guessing you don’t have alternate accommodations lined up.” He pulls the

leather jacket off the chair and shrugs into it.

I frown. “My reservation at the tournament hotel was only through yesterday morning.” I

shrug. “I didn’t—”

“You didn’t expect to win, right?”

I’m dumbfounded. “Yeah…I didn’t expect to win.”

“Of course you didn’t. Because that would be crazy.” He nods towards the orange plastic

card. “IPT comps a suite for me for the duration of the tournament. Luckily for you, it comes

with several bedrooms.” He heads for the door like we’re done talking or something.

“But—but I can’t just—”

He turns around and leans against the door-frame. “You can’t just—what?”

“I can’t stay with you…I don’t even know you!”

He looks at me over the tops of the smoky gray of his lenses. Even from where I am, I can

see the surreal blue glow of his eyes. “I’m the guy who saved you from dying of a Type Three

Hemorrhage on a beach 6,000 miles away from home.” He smiles and lifts his head before taking

another gander at the pocket watch. “Gotta go, I’m late.” He snaps it closed and points to the key

on the table. “Twenty-first floor. Be a good little Alice and just follow the White Rabbit, okay?”

With that, he turns on his heel and disappears into the hallway, leaving me staring, mouth

agape, at the white rabbit “skull” and carrot stick “crossbones” stitched onto the back of his

black leather jacket. Much, much too late, one important fact occurs to me—so important that I

say it aloud to the empty room: “But I don’t even know what room you’re in…”

Chapter Three

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I mutter. My voice comes right back at me in the long,

empty hotel hallway. The doors are few and they’re very far between—the result, no doubt, of

some serious living space behind the walls. “Or some criminally underutilized dead space,” I say

under my breath.

I lean on the white cane that magically arrived twenty minutes before I was discharged from

the hospital, courtesy of “W. Rabbit.” I look over my shoulder before taking the plastic card out

of my pocket and waving it in front of the scanner on the first door. The light above it turns red.

“Damn it!” I shift my weight onto my injured leg and take a step. The burn of the incision

makes me hiss in pain. I take another step. And another. And dozens of others, like the little boy

in The Shining, until I’m in front of the next door. I wave the key; the light turns red. I look

behind me to see if anyone’s watching what looks like a crippled burglary attempt of the luxury

suites.

“Not like I can ask the desk which room Mr. White Rabbit’s in,” I mutter before moving on.

Not that I didn’t consider this, mind you. If he was going to ask me to stay with him, why

couldn’t he just help me get a cab here? And where the hell is my luggage anyway?

All of these questions have to wait, though, because I’m breaking out in a sweat from the

effort of walking on my injured leg (your injured butt cheek, I correct myself), which is

throbbing in time to the beat of my heart, which at least is plugging away at an acceptable rate.

I’m starting to shake from the effort of it all. One more, I think, stopping in front of yet another

door. I lift the key to the scanner. One more door and I’m done. I’ll find somewhere else to stay.

No sooner have I thought the words than I hear a click! and the door pops opens. The scent of

flowers rolls over me as I push inside, grimacing when my hip strikes the foyer wall. The

grimace quickly turns into a “Holy hell…”

I stare, stupefied, at the hardwood floors, the vaulted ceilings, the peach-colored walls and

pristine white trim and crown molding of a living room and dining room separated by a

gorgeous, see-through divider made up of thin strips of black metal. Smack in the middle of a

row of four enormous windows framed by pale peach curtains, a glass panel door the width of

two end-to-end compact cars has been pushed aside, providing a stunning view of the turquoise

Pacific Ocean far below.

Between the peach walls, the golden hardwoods, the orange lampshades on the individual

bulbs of the dining room chandelier, and the vases of burnt orange hibiscuses covering every

horizontal surface that isn’t a floor, the place is a warm and welcoming contrast to the cool

colors of the blue ocean and sky beyond.

“Rabbit must be a helluva reporter,” I mumble. I clear my throat and in a louder voice call

out, “Hello? Anyone here?”

When no one answers, I take another look at the dining room before shuffling off to my right

into the living room. Two white leather loveseats, each sporting oversized black and orange

pillows, face each other in a silent standoff over a white leather ottoman. I slowly make my way

across the black area rug covered with a white and orange pattern that mimics the twisted shapes

in the room divider. I stop at the closer of two bronze leather armchairs to consider the dark

brown leopard-patterned cushion before deciding that I’m going to need something a lot bigger.

He promised a bed, so I’m going to find a bed.

I have to push myself, I’m so exhausted, but I make it to the wide, absurdly long hallway

beyond the living room. A pair of wide open doors are closest, and I inch towards the bright light

spilling into the hallway, holding onto the doorframe for balance as I turn into the room.

If my mouth hangs open any farther, my jaw’s going to permanently dislocate. I expect to

find a bed in a spare bedroom; instead, the door opens into another living room, the walls and

furniture in varying shades of gray. Splashes of chartreuse accent the place in the form of

pillows, vases, and framed artwork. The wall opposite the couch is painted a darker, gray and

boasts a flat-screen TV that may just be larger than the last hotel room I stayed in.

“‘Luckily for you, it comes with several bedrooms,’” I mumble, my tone mocking as I repeat

what Rabbit told me this morning. “More like a whole other apartment.”

Normally, I’d caution myself against rolling into someone else’s hotel suite and making

myself at home. But the exhaustion brought on by the journey from my hospital bed to where

I’m standing, combined with the fact that I don’t feel like I’ve properly bathed in two days, has

made me feel like I’m on a death march to Mordor.

I focus on my feet so I don’t catch them on the edge of the area carpet. Shuffling inch by

painful inch, I reach the open doors of the bedroom. Just as I’m about to cross the threshold, a

tall, attractive blonde—another Honey clone, although more professionally attired in a black

pantsuit—comes out of the bathroom.

I take a surprised step backwards. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“Ms. Dahl? You’re early. I’m Zoe,” she says in a lilting Australian accent. She motions

towards the bathroom. “Everything’s ready. May I help you into the toilet?”

“Uh…” An image of me nonchalantly standing upright, soaking my feet in a toilet bowl

flashes through my mind, just like it has every time someone in this country refers to the

bathroom. My eyelids flutter with the effort of forming a response. “Sorry, what’s this about?”

She smiles and holds out her arm, so I lean on it and hobble into the bathroom with her.

When we reach the edge of a whirlpool tub overflowing with bubbles, she drops her arm and

grabs for some sort of cylindrical bubble wrap with a soft rubber diaphragm capping each end.

“The bandage on my leg is already waterproof,” I tell her.

“Waterproof yes, but not heat proof.” Before I can protest, she’s kneeling down and stuffing

my leg into the contraption, cinching it tight with Velcro straps.

“There,” she says, smacking her hands together as she gets to her feet. “That will make the

water more comfortable. I’ll be outside the door. Just call for me when you’re in the bath, and

I’ll be happy to assist you.”

She’s so businesslike that I don’t have the courage to tell her that I’m not four years old, and

I don’t need help taking a bath. Apparently, Zoe cannot be stopped, however, because sixty

seconds after I slide into the best-smelling bubble bath I’ve ever submerged my body in, she raps

on the door and walks back in, settling herself on a stool by the edge of the tub.

After a few questions about what I use to dye my hair—“What a lovely color! And so

flattering for your skin tone! Very few women could make that work!”—she holds up a bottle.

“This will help seal the hair cuticle so the color doesn’t seep out when you wash your hair.”

Or, presumably, when you submerge your hair in the ocean during a shark attack.

She turns the whirlpool jets on before getting down to business, wetting, washing and rinsing

my hair with a succession of liquids, interspersed with a detangling pass or two with a paddle

brush. After a final rinse, she clips it in a twist on top of my head. At that point, any hopes I had

of simply relaxing in the tub are dashed when she turns on the spray in the adjoining shower.

“You can rinse here when you’re done washing yourself,” she says. “You’ll find fresh clothing

in the dressing room there.”

‘The dressing room?’ Come on, this is getting ridiculous. Since I know she’s going to stand

guard outside the bathroom door waiting for me, I can’t really refuse.

By the time I’ve washed, shaved, and rinsed, I’ve approached the outer limits of exhaustion,

panting with the effort of just trying to dry myself. I remove the waterproof plastic and limp into

the dressing room, hoping to find my suitcase. Instead, dozens of sundresses in different lengths,

styles, and colors hang from a rack. I’m about to gripe to Zoe when I remember that all I brought

to Australia were jeans—not really ideal garb when recovering from a shark bite to your

buttocks.

I yank a silver-gray dress from its hanger and pull it over my head, happy to see it that slides

over my figure perfectly—not too tight, not too loose. It slithers down to just above my ankles,

covering every trace of my ugly bandage. Another gentle rap on the door and Zoe’s back, this

time urging me into a sleek, hydraulic stylist chair.

“This really isn’t necessary, you know,” I say.

She must know I’m spent, because she just smiles patiently until I climb into the chair and

resign myself to her ministrations. When she turns on the massage function and reclines the

back, the combination of the vibrations of the chair, the white noise of the hair dryer, and her

gentle fingers on my hair lull me straight to sleep.

***

“Ms. Dahl?”

I startle awake. “Yes?”

Zoe’s smiling face is above mine. “I’m finished. Would you like to see?”

The chair is suddenly upright, and she spins me around to face the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

“Oh, wow.” My hair, normally straight as a poker, cascades over my shoulders in gentle

waves. And I must’ve been out like a light, too, because Zoe’s somehow managed to apply

blush, lipstick, eye shadow, and eyeliner while I snoozed.

Looking almost apologetic, she holds out a tube of mascara. “Your eyes were closed,” she

explains.

Before I can tell her how fantastic everything is or thank her for her trouble, she’s gone,

leaving me holding the mascara and gaping at myself in the mirror. I finish up the mascara and

decide that, my barber chair nap notwithstanding, my need for another horizontal, full-length,

body-sized piece of furniture is still at a critical level. You’ve never looked so good just to go to

bed, I think.

I’m too desensitized now by the beautiful surroundings for exclamations, interjections, or

expletives. With a brief glance at the wide-open bay windows and the postcard view of Surfer’s

Paradise, I let a half-hearted “wow” slip from my lips before I move as quickly as exhaustion and

injury will allow, toss the cane against the wall, grab a turquoise sofa pillow, and collapse onto

the length of the taupe leather window seat.

That’s when I see them.

On the top of a turquoise-inlaid end table is a poisonous-looking, emerald green liquid, two

squat goblets, a pitcher of ice water, and a white box. The bottle’s label has been covered by a

piece of white paper with block letters in black marker spelling out DRINK ME. On the top of

the white box are two words: EAT ME.

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, how ’bout you can eat me, Rabbit,” I mumble as I struggle to sit up.

“I’m sorry, but this whole thing is just too weird…”

“Alice!”

Wearing nothing but a white towel loosely tied around his waist, his wet, white-blond hair

slicked back with a comb, his blue eyes visible even from thirty feet away, Rabbit looks

remarkably composed, like he always goes directly from the shower to half-naked small talk in

the guest bedroom.

I stare at the door frame so I don’t become irretrievably mesmerized by his blazing blue eyes

(or his David-esque physique) as I swing my legs onto the floor. “Look, Rabbit,” I say, reaching

for the cane, “I really appreciate your offer, but—”

“Don’t get up! I just got back from an appointment. Zoe told me you two were done, and I’d

just gotten out of the shower…I didn’t know you were even in here! Hang on, let me get some

clothes on, and I’ll help you.” He starts to turn, and then freezes. “Wait—where’s Mouse?” He

cranes his neck to look around the corner into the adjoining bathroom, like I accidentally left

someone on the counter in there or something.

“Who? You mean Zoe?”

He looks angry. “No, I mean my personal assistant, Mouse. Where is she?”

“Uh…I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I came here alone. Other than Zoe, I haven’t

seen anyone.”

“No.” There’s such a tone of furious denial in this one word, I don’t know how to respond to

it. He shakes his head. “No. You didn’t come all the way up here on your own. You didn’t walk

all the way down that hallway.”

“I—I—”

His slipping white towel seems to have slipped his mind; he steps out of the two foot-shaped

watermarks on the hardwood floors and crosses the bedroom in three steps before punching a

button on a touchscreen on the gray wall.

A woman’s face appears. “Good afternoon, Mister—”

He cuts her off. “Rebecca, I’m trying very hard to understand why my friend—who was just

released from the hospital after nearly dying from blood loss less than two days ago—just limped

into my suite. Alone.”

Rebecca is clearly startled. “I arranged the car for Mouse myself, sir. The driver confirmed

with me personally when she arrived at the hospital. I instructed him to call me once Mouse and

Ms. Dahl were in the car. I assumed her discharge paperwork had been delayed.”

Rabbit slowly turns to me, like he’s trying to give the universe a sporting chance at serving

up a different outcome. “Alice?”

I shift to my non-injured leg. “Yeah?”

“How did you get here?”

“I called a cab. Listen, don’t worry about—”

He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

“You ‘called a cab.’ And how exactly did you get from the cab to this suite?”

I lift the cane a few inches off the ground. “You sent this. I thought—I mean, I didn’t

know—”

He opens his eyes, a warm smile curling the corners of his mouth. “Of course you didn’t

know. And that’s my fault.” The warmth vanishes as he swings his head back to poor Rebecca on

the screen. “I assumed that Mouse would have the sense to actually get her ass out of the car and

assist with Ms. Dahl’s release.”

“I do apologize, sir. If you’ll just give me a few minutes to find out what—”

“I’m not interested in who the weak link is down there in guest services, Rebecca. Find

Mouse, get her back here. Thank you.” He stabs a finger at the screen and it goes dark. Still

holding the towel in place with his left hand, he runs his right over the tanned, naked skin of his

upper arm before turning to me. “Why didn’t you call—” He stops. “Oh, wait a minute…you

don’t have a phone anymore, do you?”

“It’s totally fine. I mean, I appreciate what you’ve done for me, and really, if you think about

it, you saved my life, so the rest of this is totally—”

“No cell phone, no phone number, no room number, no car, no help…and you somehow still

managed to make it here.” He shakes his head. “You’re one scrappy woman, Alice Faye Dahl.”

When I blush, he takes pity on me. “Give me thirty seconds, okay?”

He disappears, and my backside has no sooner touched the taupe cushion then he’s back. No

leather jacket this time, but a gray sports coat over a long-sleeve white button-up shirt. And the

gray tinted glasses are back too.

“You have a thing for monochromatic or what?” I say.

Halfway across the bedroom, he stops short, looks down at his clothes, and laughs. “I never

thought about it that way.” He’s a few feet from me when he says, “I prefer simple, how’s that?”

One of my eyebrows tugs upward. “Then what am I doing here?”

His smile falters ever so slightly. “That’s a very good question that I thought I knew the

answer to.” He shoots me a playful wink that leaves me speechless. “Let’s sit outside. The sun’s

on the other side of the hotel now, so it’s not so hot.”

Even with his eyes covered, he’s just so, I don’t know, perfect-looking—with those lips, and

that chin with just a hint of an indentation, and a nose that’s within spitting distance of being

flawless—that it’s hard to hold his gaze for very long. It’s like stopping to appreciate a marble

statue of a Greek god in a museum—and having it open its eyes and look back at you.

Speaking of the gods, his prohibition on her ever laying eyes on him didn’t stop the mortal

Psyche from agreeing to marry Cupid. I don’t have to look at him, I think. I’ll do like Psyche and

just think about looking at him.

This comfortable thought comforts me for exactly two seconds before he touches a lock of

my hair and says, “It looks just as beautiful dry as I thought it would.”

I blush until my face is almost as red as my hair, and I’m grateful for both the cane and the

steady support of his arm. Using both, I cover the distance from the window seat to the

cushioned patio chair in no time at all.

“What do you think of the room?” he says, ducking inside and reappearing with a black

serving tray with the EAT ME/DRINK ME daily specials on it. “Better than the hospital, right?”

He sets it on the glass patio table and reaches for the bottle. “You can call your family in a few

hours when they wake up to tell them where you’re staying. The suite number is 2121.”

I lay the white cane across my knees and narrow my eyes at him as he works the cork out of

the bottle. “Who do you work for exactly? And why does a sports reporter need so much room?”

A smirk is dancing around his lips as he pours a bright green liquid into each goblet.

“Alice…” He places what looks like a small, silver, perforated pie server on top of the first glass

before balancing a sugar cube in the middle of it. “I love how new all of this is to you.” Then he

takes the pitcher and dissolves the sugar by slowly pouring ice water over it—through the sieve-

like pie server—and into the glass, transforming the jewel-colored liquid into an opalescent mint.

He hands the goblet to me and repeats the process with the other one.

I’m offended by his condescending tone. “All of what? Sorry if my gambling budget doesn’t

include a house inside of a house. And stop calling me Alice. Only my mother calls me that, and

only when I’m in trouble.”

He takes his own goblet and raises it slightly, his grin laced with a touch of menace. The

sparkle in his eyes, visible even behind those smoky gray lenses, is less mischievous and more

devious than it seemed before. “To Alice. Who’s in plenty of trouble and doesn’t even know it.”

Chapter Four

“I am, am I?” I’m not sure I share the sentiments of his rather strange toast, but I clink my

goblet against his anyway before taking a tentative sip of the suspicious green stuff, peering at

him over the top of the glass as I do. Whatever liqueur or spirit this is, it blazes a trail of fire

from my mouth to my stomach, making me hold my breath and wrinkle my nose.

“What do you think?” says Rabbit.

“What is this? It’s like St. Patrick’s Day Jägermeister or something.”

He laughs as he leans over to retrieve the white box. “I’m going to assume that it’s too early

for the green fairy to be talking, and that you’re always this funny.”

I arch an eyebrow at him. “Sorry…‘the green fairy?’”

He nods at my glass. “Absinthe. It used to be called ‘the green fairy’ back in 19th

century

Bohemian Paris.” He pops the lid to the box, revealing a small chocolate cake with a dusting of

powdered sugar. The cake is already cut and sectioned off with pieces of wax paper, and he lifts

one out of the box and hands it to me on a napkin.

It’s not the light cake I’m expecting; it’s heavy, like a brownie. “Absinthe?” I say, holding

the goblet at eye level and studying the contents while I chew. “Isn’t that the illegal stuff that

causes hallucinations?”

“I like to think of it as ‘clarity of thought,’ not hallucinations,” he says with a smile. He

empties his goblet, smacks his lips, and slowly exhales as his eyes fill with water. “How’s the

cake?”

I stop chewing and look at what’s left on my napkin before dropping it onto the tabletop.

“Okay, what’s going on here?”

“What do you mean?”

I struggle to my feet. “Absinthe? Brownies? Are you drugging me or something?”

He frowns, like I’ve offended his sensibilities. “Alice, sit down. No one’s drugging you.”

“Then why do I already feel lightheaded and weird?”

He stares at me, looking incredulous, before tearing the white DRINK ME paper off the

bottle. “See the small print at the bottom?” he says, lifting the bottle towards me. “One hundred

and forty-eight proof? That’s seventy-four percent alcohol.” He puts the bottle back on the table.

“That’s why you dilute it with ice water.”

I pick up my goblet. “Then why did it turn this crazy color? I’ve cut scotch with water

before, and it never changed colors like some—some Hogwarts, Professor Snape potion!”

His eyes dance with amusement. “Way to throw down your Harry Potter cred. Are you

going to sit down?”

“No, I’m not going to sit down! Not until you explain…” I point at my glass. “That.”

He slowly slides his glasses onto the top of his head and leans back in his chair, like he needs

maximum visibility and a little distance to figure out why I sound like a crazy person. “Okay

then. The color change? It’s called the louche…it’s French for, uh, ‘shady’ or ‘suspicious.’”

I snort. “It’s English for ‘suspicious!’” Now I’m annoyed, not so much by the absinthe, but

because I can tell by the way he struggled to translate “louche,” and by the way he says it—with

that difficult-to-master “zzhh” sound on the end instead of the sloppy “sshh” sound an American

would make—that he speaks French. And it didn’t sound forced the way it would if he was

trying to impress me with his French-wooing accent. Instead, he says the word reluctantly—like

he’s the child of a native speaker who’s grown up feeling embarrassed that he knows the

language at all.

I can’t allow myself to make eye contact, not now. Forget the hypnotic effects of the

absinthe; now that his glasses are gone, the risk of being snared by a combination of his eyes and

the Language of Love is too great, especially with seventy-four percent alcohol keeping my

inhibitions at an all-time low.

“You add the water to cut it,” he says, “but also to get the flavors to bloom. The anise, the

fennel—when you add the water, they come out of the solution and make it cloudy.” He spreads

his hands and shrugs. “That’s it. Basic high school chemistry.”

I’m somewhat mollified. Speaking of chemistry, I think. Before this goes too far… “So,

where’s your friend?”

He looks confused. “‘My friend?’”

“Your friend from the beach…Honey, right?”

“Honey isn’t a friend of mine.”

“She seemed to know you pretty well. Weren’t you hanging out with her the day I met you?”

He seems appalled that I would think so. “‘Hanging out?’” He shakes his head. “No, there

was no ‘hanging out’ going on between me and Honey.”

“Then how do you know her?”

“Honey is a…how should I put this? A groupie, I guess is the best way of explaining it.”

I raise one skeptical eyebrow. “Sports reporters have groupies?”

He laughs. “No, no, no, she’s not my groupie. She’s part of Talon Hawk’s entourage. When I

met you the other day, I’d just finished interviewing him—he’s one of the Final Nine—right

there on the beach. He left right afterward for another meeting, and I was, I don’t know…sort of

stuck with her. Thank God you got bitten by a shark, is all I can say,” he says with a wink.

All in all, I feel pretty ridiculous as I stand there, not sure what one’s supposed to do after

accusing one’s host of cavorting with an airheaded, large-busted hanger-on and drugging you

with an exotic, 18th

century hallucinogenic.

Luckily for me, he breaks through the awkwardness. “Would you please sit down?” he says,

gesturing towards my chair. “I mean, I think I’m going to start hallucinating that I’m sitting here

with someone who survived a shark attack—which I’ve been told by everyone from my buddy in

L.A. to the front desk clerk is about as likely as getting hit by lightning.”

I smile and ease my backside into the chair—slowly, though, so I don’t howl when my

injured bottom touches the cushion. It doesn’t hurt that it also makes me look reluctant; playing

hard to get is never a bad thing. “They lied to you too?”

“They did lie to me. And I bought it.” His expression is suddenly wistful, like he’s thinking

of something far away and long ago. “That doesn’t happen very often, I can tell you that.”

I feel like he’s talking about something else now, something that doesn’t have anything to do

with me, so I figure it’s the perfect opportunity to change the subject. “How does a sports

reporter end up covering poker? Did you get burned out on football games and golf tournaments

or something?”

He laughs. “Haven’t you already used up your quota of questions? Isn’t it my turn?”

I tense up. I’ve never been the kind of person to share, probably the result of how I grew up.

My parents were very private people and always tried to disrupt the influx of what they called

the “persistent pessimism of the outside world,” encouraging me and my siblings to rely on each

other rather than spouting personal or family problems to anyone outside the fold. Sure, we had

our ups and downs like all brothers and sisters do, but for the most part we managed to make it

into adulthood with our affection for each other intact.

Still, the guy probably did save my life. I mean, yeah, the shark that left me with a two-inch-

deep, crescent-shaped “exploratory bite” on the back of my leg was just having a tentative

nibble, but I was in such immediate and serious shock that, unlike everyone around me, I

couldn’t tell the difference between hair dye and my own blood. According to the news reports I

saw in the hospital, all that blood I left in the water caused a shark convention to immediately

convene in the area, and it probably wouldn’t have been long before another one came along to

do more to me than just “explore.”

The thought makes me reach for my absinthe. I take a deep breath and finish it off, slowly

exhaling through my nose after I do so I don’t inhale the vapors and start choking. Once it’s safe

to breathe again, I put the goblet on the table. “Are your questions personal or professional in

nature?”

“Do you mean will I be asking them as a reporter covering a poker tournament, or as a man

who brought you flowers and has been showering every compliment he can think of on you for

the last six hours?” He smiles. “What do you think?”

Uh-uh, no way, I think, a deep blush overspreading my cheeks. No way I’m falling for that. I

look over the balcony, down to the waves breaking on the beach far below. “Fine. Ask me a

question then.”

He chuckles. “Well done. Never trust someone who answers a question with a question.”

He’s suddenly serious. “I’ve been involved with the poker scene in one way or the other for the

last four years, but I’ve only been doing this—covering the players and the tournaments as a

journalist—for the last year, which is why I’m here.” He presses the fingertips of each hand

together and pauses. “So…” Another pause. “I arrived in Surfer’s Paradise three days ago to

cover the final round of the International Poker Tour, and I was given a list with seven names on

it, none of which were yours. Two days ago, that list of seven was amended, and I only

recognized six of them—until I ran into you.

I narrow my eyes. “‘Seven names?’ If the last round is called ‘the Final Nine,’ wouldn’t there

have been nine names on the list?”

“Two players skipped the qualifying rounds and bought one of the final spots. They’re

probably keeping a low profile so they can surprise the rest of the players on the day of the Main

Event.”

I shift in my chair. “You mean a buy-in? You can do that… just pay for a spot in the Final

Nine? How’s that fair?”

He shoots me a look that says that he’s not sure if I’m joking or not. “It’s not ‘fair’ or

‘unfair,’” he says with a shrug. “It’s poker.”

I think of the 6,000 plus people in the huge banquet halls over the last week—me one of

them—grinding through dozens of games that went on for hours, and I frown. “The last round I

played lasted fourteen hours, so we’re going to have to agree to disagree there.”

He nods. “Fair enough.”

“If you can do that, then why doesn’t everyone just do it?”

“Because the cost is beyond the reach of most players.”

I wait for him to tell me a number, but he doesn’t. This feels like a way of saying, “If you

have to ask, you can’t afford it,” which jacks my pique right back up to maximum. “So what—I

don’t get to know how much the easy way costs?”

His mouth turns down into an expression of extreme displeasure. “It costs twenty-five

thousand dollars, your soul, and everything and everyone you’ve ever loved.”

This was not the answer I was expecting.

“So,” he says, “as a reporter and a regular guy, here’s my question for you: I’ve been doing

this for a long time, and I know every player and every story on the circuit, but I’ve never heard

of you. I wonder…how is that even possible? So you tell me, Alice Faye Dahl: How is it that no

one saw you coming?”

I shift in my seat, leaning to the side to take the pressure off my throbbing leg. “I didn’t mean

for any of this to happen.”

He reaches for the bottle of absinthe, one side of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. “Are you

apologizing for winning?”

“No, I guess not. Sorry.” I wince as soon as the word leaves my mouth.

He pours another shot of absinthe in his glass and starts the ritual with the sugar cube and the

water all over again. “Well, that’ll be the first thing we work on. Go on…”

‘The first thing we work on?’ What’s he talking about? I exhale, and it morphs into a heavy

sigh. “Honestly?”

“For now. That’ll be the second thing we work on.”

I shake my head in exasperation. “It’s just that I don’t even know where to start!”

“Start at the beginning. When you get to the end…stop.” He leans back in his chair and

smiles like a crocodile.

He’s got me so confused that I decide the best way forward is to unload half my life story on

him, just so he’ll stop interjecting. “A friend I work with, she and her husband had what they

called ‘poker nights,’ and they kept inviting me. They said, there were a lot of single guys who

came to them.”

He bristles a little at this revelation and—I can’t help it—I glow like a propane lantern. “I

told them that I didn’t know how to play, that I didn’t know a royal flush from a toilet flush, but

they—”

“Where do you work?”

The question seems curiously off-topic. “Uh, I’m a high school math teacher.”

“Your degree in college…mathematics?”

I nod, confused.

His eyes light up. “Ah. That explains a lot. Go on…”

It does? “Well, I finally went, and I thought it was going to be just a few people sitting

around a table, but it wasn’t. It was a—”

“A home poker tournament?”

I nod. “There were about six tables set up all over their house with eight or nine people at

each table.”

He grins. “How’d that work out?”

I cringe at the memory. “Oh, my God, it was so embarrassing. Besides my girlfriend, I was

the only woman there. And when they realized that I wasn’t kidding about not knowing how to

play—that I didn’t even know the different hands—my friend’s husband went into the basement,

and got this—this picture off one of the walls.”

His expression turns quizzical. “What kind of picture?”

I roll my hand at the wrist, trying to describe it. “It had, like, all the winning hands on it.” I

rattle them off in a gust of words. “Pair, two-pair, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind,

straight flush—with pictures.”

He laughs long and hard, the same as everyone else who’s heard the story. “Well, it could’ve

been worse.”

“Really? How?”

“I mean, at least it wasn’t that picture of the dogs playing poker that every amateur poker-

playing dude seems to have hanging in his guest bathroom.”

I laugh and echo his words back at him. “Fair enough.”

He picks up his goblet. “So you’re—what? Sitting there with a table of guys, all seasoned

players, with a framed picture of winning poker hands propped up next to you?” He chuckles

some more at the thought. “Do you have any idea how great this story is going to be when I write

it? You’re going to be—”

“No.” The word comes out harsher than I mean it to. “No way. If you’re going to write an

article, then I’m done talking. You understand me?” I lean forward in case I need to stand. “This

is either off the record, or I’m done.”

He looks floored by the turn things have taken. He sets his glass down and half stands, one

hand raised to stop me. “Of course, of course! I apologize. I absolutely should’ve asked you first.

Off the record is fine, no problem at all. I just figured that you knew…” He trails off. “But you

don’t really know anything, do you?”

I stiffen. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, sorry. That’s not what I meant. Go on…finish your story.” His smile is contrite.

“You were telling me how you won a home poker tournament with nothing but mad math skills

and a framed print of poker hands.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t win anything that night. I lost all my chips after a few hands.”

“What was the buy-in?”

“Fifty dollars...and don’t say a word because that was a lot of money for me.” I think about

it. “It still is.”

When I don’t continue, he waves his hand towards his lap. “Here I am, sitting here, not

saying a word.”

“So I lost all my money, but I decided to stay and watch everyone else play. And I had to

stand there and listen to all these guys saying how they loved it when a woman was at their table,

because they knew that—” His expression becomes so unreadable as I talk, that I cut myself

short. “What?”

“May I ask how long ago this was? From the night you busted out in the first round and stuck

around to watch from the rail until now….how long?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. About four months ago, I guess.”

He shakes his head. “In four months you went from home tourney noob to virtual table

rookie to international pro? That—I mean, that’s unbelievable!”

“But you’re not going to tell anyone, right? You agreed you wouldn’t write an article or

anything.”

He shakes his head slowly, leveling a look on me that I can’t read. “Believe me when I tell

you that I’m not going to tell a soul.”

His tone as he says this doesn’t bring me the comfort I’d hoped for. My smile is tentative.

“Thank you.”

He frowns. “Don’t thank me yet. What happened next?”

“What happened next was that I got mad.”

“‘Mad?’ At who?”

I point at my chest. “Myself. I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t heard them refer to female

players as ‘fish’ and ‘donkeys’ all night, but I did and it pissed me off. So I taught myself how to

play. You know…so I would know for next time.”

“And what form did this, uh, education take?”

“Every form. I bought some books and software, I watched recordings of old tournaments, I

opened an account on Poker Twist. I just started practicing every spare minute I had—at the play

money tables at first, but after a day or two I realized that no one at those tables was playing for

real.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“Basic economic theory. People behave differently based on how much they think

something’s worth. Because everyone got their chips for free, people made huge bets on every

hand—no matter they were holding.” I shrug. “People who play with everything on the line—for

real—don’t act like that.”

“No, they certainly don’t,” he murmurs, so low that I almost miss it. Louder he says, “How

long before you went back?”

I can’t help it; I smirk a little. “Two weeks.” This is the climax of the story, of course, so I

drag it out, waiting for him to guess (as most people do at this point) that I cleaned the floor with

all those guys a few weeks later, walking out with the first place prize of seven hundred dollars.

At the very least, I expect him to urge me to finish the story. What I don’t expect is what he says

next.

“So you went back to your friend’s next donkament two weeks later, and this time you just

laughed right along when they gave you that framed picture of the poker hands. And when they

called you ‘pigeon,’ ‘fish,’ and ‘muppet,’ you just smiled and batted your eyes and said stupid

things like ‘Does a straight beat a crooked?’ And while everyone else was throwing a party, you

just sat there acting like a tourist with your kill stack until you were in the money.”

He shakes his head in wonder. “Those poor dills…they didn’t know what hit ‘em, did they?”

Chapter Five

“I—that’s not—” I sputter, trying to articulate the reasons why he’s got this all wrong, but

it’s as if I haven’t spoken at all.

His eyes dance with good humor, but his tone is a mixture of awe and bafflement. “They still

don’t know what hit ‘em, do they? And maybe you’ve got us just where you want us.”

I stare at him, not sure if he’s talking about the poker scene or himself. One is vaguely

insulting, the other is terrifically complimentary. I look down at my lap, at the shimmering gray

dress, and suddenly all the pacifying he achieved a few moments ago with Honey and the louche

is wiped away, replaced with raw cynicism and extra helpings of fresh doubt.

I tug on the fabric. “I guess I can’t answer that until you tell me what’s up with the charity

case, paper doll makeover. Or do you offer every down-and-out, up-and-comer on the poker

circuit an ‘extra bedroom?’” I use air quotes to emphasize my dissatisfaction at his grotesque

misuse of the concept.

He watches me get all worked up, that maddening smirk turning up one side of his mouth. “I

wanted to believe that you needed help and I was in a position to help you. Classic male ‘damsel

in distress’ reaction, I guess.” He shrugs. “After that? I don’t know. I suppose you just fascinate

me, Alice Faye Dahl. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let you just walk away.”

Oh, my God, forget his eyes, forget the French, I think. Even his English is like honey. The

lifespan of that particular synonym is about one microsecond before it ejects out of my brain like

a downed fighter pilot. In no universe do his sentiments resemble the “tits on a stick,” bubble-

headed groupie who calls herself Honey.

He lays his glasses on the table and pulls something silver from his pocket. I’m about to ask

how many pocket watches he thinks one guy needs when I see that it’s just an engraved, silver

playing card holder. He slides the pack of cards out and sets it on the edge of the table, close

enough for me to read the words:

Silly Rabbit, tricks are for kids.

I’m still considering the significance of that when I hear the now-familiar stutter of cards

striking each other in a shuffle. When I look up, he’s holding the stack face-down in his right

hand. “You’re a little old to be playing Go Fish still, aren’t you?”

He responds by pulling the cards apart, and forcing them back together before flipping the

entire stack from face-down to face-up—all with one hand. “How much do you know about the

scene, Alice?”

My forehead creases. “‘The scene?’” I clear my throat. “Uh, I don’t know exactly what—”

“The scene. Everything besides the mechanics of the game. The players—their names, their

motivations, their strategies, their strength and weaknesses. The business—the alliances, the

investors, the reporters, the bookies. The culture.”

I shrug. “Not much. I don’t want to know.”

“Really? ‘I don’t want to know’…that’s your strategy? Tell me something: how many real-

world tourneys have you played in? Two? Three?” When I don’t answer, he all but guffaws.

“You got an IPT entry from winning a satellite tournament, didn’t you? You’ve never played

face-to-face in your life!”

I answer him with stony silence.

“Oh, man…” His lips spread into a wide grin. “You know, Mark Twain once said, ‘It is

strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the

informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then

success is sure.’” He laughs when he sees my dubious expression. “Alice, you might be the

product of the biggest ball of ignorance, confidence, and good fortune the universe has ever

manufactured. But if you’re thinking that you can take your results at the virtual tables and your

grand tactic of Ignorance Is Bliss, and make that work for the Main Event, forget it—it won’t.”

I frown. “I’ve done okay so far.”

His cheerful disposition disappears as the cards in his hands melt into a blur of motion. He

divides them in half, smacking them back together between his palms. Next is a shuffle I know

from the footage I watched of dealers in the casinos: cards on the table, the edges closest to him

snapping together on the tabletop. Suddenly, his right hand is by his shoulder, and the cards are

blowing through space into his other hand, all the way down by his lap.

He lays them down on the table between us, sliding them from left to right, until they’re

spread out in a neat, overlapping line. One card appears in his hand, and he uses it to flip the

leading edge of the line before following the ridge of cards as they turn over in a domino effect.

Quick as a flash, they’re back in his left hand. He lifts half the deck off with his right hand,

before rotating the cut with his left and rejoining the two. I’m unimpressed. I’ve been watching

dudes demonstrate these rotating card and poker chip tricks for the last four days, and it doesn’t

look like anything to me but one big distraction.

But then I am impressed.

Instead of one-half of a cut stack in each hand, he splits it four ways, with two sections in

each hand. In a blink of an eye there are six, and then eight sections. I don’t even know which

fingers he’s using to hold them anymore; even someone with polydactyly would be fresh out.

The cards start rotating as he consolidates them—eight down to six, then again until only four

rectangles turn between his two hands, fast and furious, before they’re finally reunited in his left

hand—save one card. This lone card he leaves spinning and snapping and rolling over the fingers

of his right hand before he allows it to come to rest on top of the others.

Rabbit doesn’t even look like he’s concentrating that hard to do any of this as sets the stack

on the table between us. “Can you tell me what I was doing there?”

I glance over my shoulder into the bedroom, waiting for someone to jump out and tell me

that I’m being Punk’d by the International Poker Tour or something. “Uh…trying way too

hard?”

I expect him to laugh at my snarky response, but he looks dead serious, the thick lines in his

irises burning white-hot. “Wrong.” He taps the stack with his index finger in time with the words

that follow. “In order: weave shuffle, palm pivot, riffle, breaking the bridge, riffle stacking,

spring, ribbon, controlled swivel, eye cut, squeeze cut, flicker.” He looks down at the cards, and

in a milder tone says, “Two of them aren’t cuts or shuffles at all—they’re mechanic moves and

they’re cheating.”

He only has eyes for the cards now and returns to shuffling them again, albeit slowly enough

for me to actually see the suit and rank of each one. And since everything I know about

mechanics I learned when my dad showed me how to change the oil in my car, I bite my lip,

throw back the rest of my absinthe, and just assume that an alternate meaning will reveal itself

with more context. Or maybe we’re going straight from here to a salvage yard to repair old cars

or something.

Twenty seconds later he spreads the cards out in a line again, face-down, sliding them across

the table with one hand. “Remember this? This is a ribbon.” With his finger, he flips the first

card, which overturns the next, and the next, continuing along the line until they’re all face-up.

Now I’m really impressed, because in those twenty seconds I realize he wasn’t actually

cutting cards, he was sorting the scrambled deck into suit and rank order: from Ace to the King

of Spades, followed by Ace to the King of Hearts, and so on. This fact no sooner registers, than

he’s scooped them up to shuffle and cut, over and over, like a beginning magician too nervous to

start his first trick.

After about a dozen rounds of shuffles and cuts, my head is aching from the snapping of

waxed playing cards. Or maybe it’s the alcohol. Or the fact that I just got out of the hospital after

almost dying of blood loss. Whatever it is, I’m starting to feel seriously unwell. My upper lip and

forehead are beaded in sweat, and I feel like I did that day on the beach, with everything growing

and shrinking, almost like the objects around me are breathing. Or maybe I’m the one growing

and shrinking, I think.

“Okay, okay!” I shout, pressing my fingers to my temples. “Oh, my God, just stop, okay?” I

smile weakly and throw a belated “please” on the end.

I’m about to ask him if he minds if I go to the guest bedroom to lie down when he winks at

me, forcing all those crazy attraction chemicals in my brain to act like a temporary anti-nausea

shot, forcing me to rally against my will, even after he throws one more shuffle and cut in at the

end, just to piss me off.

“You think they’re good and shuffled now?” he asks with a smile.

I level a sardonic look on him before replying in the driest tone I’m capable of. “Yeah, I’d

say so.” I’m getting uncomfortably warm again. I twist around at the waist, looking for a piece of

paper or a magazine—anything to fan myself with. There’s nothing within arm’s reach, so I

make do with flapping my hand in the general direction of my face.

He freezes. “You okay?” He looks truly concerned, so I must look as bad as I feel.

“I’m fine. Sorry, it was just the noise, and it’s sort of hot out here, and—”

He sets the cards on the table and jumps up. “I’ll be right back. Hang tight.”

Before I can say a word, he dashes into the hallway and disappears. I’ve barely had time to

pour some ice water into my goblet and take a sip, and he’s back. In his hand is a roll of clear

tape, the wide, thick stuff you use to seal moving boxes. He tears off a bunch of strips and

leaves them hanging from the edge of the table. Then he takes the stack of cards, spreading them

into a perfect fan shape with one hand, before snapping them face-down onto the table.

What the…? I take another sip of water and watch as he snatches up a piece of tape and

carefully presses it onto the cards where they meet at a point, followed by two more higher up,

and three after that higher still, until he’s reached the top of the fan. Then he carefully lifts the

whole thing and turns it over, repeating the process with the other pieces. He moves faster now,

wrapping the last piece at the point to reinforce the “handle,” before presenting it to me with a

gentle wave, a smug smile, and a “there you go.”

“Hey, this is great! How’d you learn—” I cut myself off mid-sentence, baffled by what I

see…

From the left side of the fan to the right, not one card has changed position from the series he

showed me before he started shuffling them.

Not. One.

My eyes must be bugging out of my head, because he sits back, elbows on the arms of the

patio chair, and laughs at my astonishment. I notice that the King and Queen of Hearts, which are

centered almost perfectly in the middle of the fan, are higher than the rest. I stare at them,

wondering if it was a mistake, or if there’s some subliminal message for me there. I look from

him back to the fan, replaying in my head all the noise and action these same cards made for two

solid minutes, the result of which was…nothing at all, apparently.

I lift my chin and beat the fan up and down by my sweaty neck. (Hey, this thing is actually

working a little bit!) “Why did you show all this to me?” I say, lifting my hair with my hand to

tackle the perspiration lurking underneath.

He smiles. “Because in a week and a half, you’re going to find yourself sitting with some of

the biggest liars and cheats in the world. You thought that bull shark was a problem? Wait until

you’re surrounded by eight sharks—all of them ready to rip your guts out. Trust me: ignorance

will not be your friend.”

I roll my eyes at him and drop my hair. “Even I know that the cards are factory shuffled

before the dealer touches them. The only time I’ve seen players doing those card tricks was away

from the table. Players aren’t even allowed to have their own cards at the table!”

His smile is maddeningly patronizing. He grabs the sides of his chair with both hands and

scoots it forward until his knees are almost touching mine. Then he leans forward and plucks the

fan from my hand. I think he’s going to show me the cards again to reinforce the take-home

lesson, but he simply lays it in his lap before placing his hands on my forearms, way up by the

elbow, and running his fingers along the thin skin of my inner arm in one slow, languid motion.

He does this without ever taking his eyes off me, until I’m a rabbit caught in a snare. More

like a snare caught by a Rabbit, I think. Up this close, his irises are stipple points of blues, from

aquamarine to cobalt, and I see that the snowy dots are actually just points with no pigment at

all—they’re just more “whites of his eyes” made more noticeable by his shock of silver-white

hair.

I’m not really thinking about this as hard as all that though, because his fingers are now on

my palms, and my own fingers automatically uncurl so he can trace a path right to the tips.

“Alice,” he murmurs, and a puff of wintergreen-tinged licorice scents the air between us. I

unconsciously lean towards him, my hair falling forward over my shoulders.

“Yes?” I’m staring at his lips, anticipating a kiss, and eager to get on with it.

He lifts a hand to my face and traces the line of my jaw with one finger. “You didn’t get this

far without realizing that you don’t have to cheat to win.” His expression turns dark. “You just

have to accept that people are easily manipulated.”

He’s so close now, close enough for me to shut my eyes in anticipation.

“Je suis en retard,” comes a woman’s voice from behind us.

Rabbit and I pitch backwards, away from each other, and I spin around to find yet another

pretty platinum blonde leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking as bored and

unperturbed as it’s possible to be without being propped up in a wax museum. Unlike Honey’s

garish makeup, this woman is naturally pretty, her face almost bare of makeup. Instead of an

oversized physique bursting out of too little clothing, she’s casually dressed in jeans and a

tucked-in, white baby doll t-shirt.

“Je suis en retard,” she says to Rabbit, “pour un rendez-vous très important.”

I have no idea what she’s just said, but whatever it is, it makes Rabbit furious. He jumps

from his chair and sputters a mixture of English and French at her. “You’re goddamn right

you’re late! And it was important! Où avez-vous été? Alice has been here pour deux heures!” he

yells, slashing the air with his hand. “Absolument unacceptable!”

She trains her apathetic eye on me before turning back to Rabbit. “Elle est lune des Finale

Neuf, oui?”

Now, I don’t know much French, but the end of that bundle of words is what sounds a lot

like a question mark. I watch Rabbit nervously, waiting for him to explode again, but he doesn’t

do anything but flare his nostrils and glower at her.

Her smile is sardonic. “You’re losing your touch, Lapin.”

“You’re out of line, Souris.”

A stray thought runs through my brain. ‘Souris?’ I thought his assistant’s name was Mouse?

Rabbit glances across the table at me. “Alice barely made it to the suite. You left her on her

own to take a cab here and walk all the way down the hall? I mean…why?”

She shrugs. “I figured the harder I made it, the less likely she would be to show up.” She

waves a hand at me. “I mean, this is pretty pathetic, even by your standards.”

Everything—her unkind words, the almost-kiss, the cards, the hospital, the shark attack, the

stress of the tournament, and the real reason why I’m here that no one knows about but me—it

all backs up on me and mows me down. I cover my face with my hands and burst into tears. I

want desperately to get away from this handsome, mysterious stranger, and this awful, pretty

Doppelganger, but I can’t will myself to uncover my face, and I can’t walk without the cane, and

I can’t use the cane without one of my hands—

For a moment I think I’ve fallen backward out of my chair, but a second later I realize that

he’s simply scooped me up, and he’s carrying me—past her and her sputtering apologies—back

into the bedroom. Despite the way his arms feel around me and the warmth of the bare skin of

his neck against my forehead, I’m grateful when the cool fabric of the white down comforter is

underneath me.

I roll away from him and bury my face into a pillow, not moving even when he covers me

with a soft blanket. I’m surprised when he lifts my hair out of the way, surprised by the feel of

soft stubble (he doesn’t even look like he can grow a beard!) as he touches his lips to my cheek.

He freezes that way for a few seconds before standing up and walking out. From the living room,

I hear raised voices followed by a door slammed hard enough to rattle the windows in my

bedroom.

I’m at the edge of a deep sleep, gratefully falling, when I feel the bed shift under a person’s

weight. At first, I think he’s come back, and my heart swells. But the tilt of the bed is all wrong,

and the fragrance wafting over me isn’t the spice of his cologne, but the softer, floral smell of a

woman’s perfume. Bursts of air flutter my hair and cools my skin, and I realize that she’s

fanning me with the “card fan” Rabbit made.

Gentle pats of my arm are followed by her whispers, with the incomprehensible phrases

“pauvre bête!” “ma petite chatte” in heavy rotation.

I’m physically and emotionally exhausted, and I didn’t even take French in high school or

college, but I’d swear that this horrible person is calling me her “cat” and maybe even weeping a

little. My last thought before I drift off: If you turn out to be ‘Mouse,’ sweetheart, then you can

bet your ass I’m going to be the cat.

Chapter Six

There’s a series of quick raps on the door, and a “May I come in?”

I turn away from the mirror where I’ve been gawping at myself for the last ten minutes, and

limp to the door to let Souris in.

“Sorry!” I say, “I know we’re late. I was just changing my bandage. It took a little longer

than I thought it would.”

This is a total lie. I’ve been ready for the last thirty minutes, but haven’t been able to work up

the courage to leave the bathroom. That’s because he’s out there in the suite somewhere, and I

haven’t seen him since yesterday’s disastrous nervous breakdown on the bedroom balcony.

“Take your time,” says Souris. She’s stunning in a short, white cocktail dress that I wouldn’t

dare to wear even if I wasn’t impersonating a triaged mummy. “Hey, you look great! I really

love that hair color on you. Is this one of your dresses? Color fade is so fun, isn’t it?”

I look down at the floor-length, dark turquoise skirt I’m wearing, courtesy of the White

Rabbit Damsel in Distress collection. “Isn’t this great? No, it’s not mine.” I separate the form-

fitting, dark blue tank top and gauzy, bright turquoise overlay from the skirt. “And it’s actually

not a dress.” I look back into the closet. “It’s nice that someone around here has better taste in

clothes than I do.”

She smiles. “Must be Zoe,” she says. “And here I thought she could only pick out clothes for

men.”

“She picks out his clothes?” I pull off a strip of medical tape from the roll on the counter and

hike up my skirt.

“Oh, yeah. Lapin’s all about the image. It’s almost like he—” She stops and smiles

awkwardly. “Nearly done? Can I help with anything?”

I press the strip of tape over the ten others already sealing the gauze wrap, just to give my lie

a little credibility. “There. Done.” I grab the cane and follow her into the living room, stopping

short when I see a white wheelchair blocking the door to the hallway. “Wait, that’s not for me, is

it?”

She frowns. “He didn’t want you walking. Especially after, you know…yesterday.”

Now I’m torn. On the one hand, I don’t really want to be wheeled around when I’m actually

pretty mobile with the cane as long as everyone’s willing to walk a little slower so I can keep up.

On the other hand, although she hasn’t apologized outright, Souris has been nothing but kind

since yesterday, even going so far as to sleep on a foldout bed next to mine so I wouldn’t be,

like, carried away by gangrene or sepsis during the night.

And although I don’t know exactly what’s going on between the two of them, I’m pretty sure

that they’re not romantically entangled, especially given that Souris has a room of her own. Sure,

it’s still in the same suite, but it’s completely separate from Rabbit’s rooms.

I feel terrible even asking, but my pride gets the better of me. I clear my throat. “Do you

think we can, uh, just use it for—”

“Oh, trust me,” she says with a naughty little twist of her lips, “we’re going to ditch it as soon

as we get downstairs. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

I resign myself to it, settling into the chair and pulling the sides of the skirt up before tucking

it under my legs so the fabric doesn’t get caught in the wheels. Once my feet are on the footrests,

Souris releases the break and rolls me soundlessly down the tile hallway, across the hardwood

floors of Rabbit’s living room. I tense up, expecting to see him around every corner, but every

room between my bedroom and the front door to the suite is deserted.

It’s a struggle, but we finally manage to get the chair through the door and into the hotel

hallway; a few minutes later we’re in the elevator. Once the doors close, she says, “Here, get up.

It’s just a short walk to the bar, and I’ve made arrangements with guest services to take it and

store it for us at the concierge desk.”

I don’t ask questions, I just struggle to my feet while she stabs at a lever on the wheelchair

with her foot, collapsing it. By the time the elevator dings! and the doors open into the lobby, it’s

been abandoned against the wall. Souris breezes out of the car, me tottering close behind, as if

she’s never seen the thing in her life. She nods at a young, curly-haired kid dressed in what looks

like a cabana boy uniform from the 1950s, and he springs into action.

“C’mon,” says Souris, taking my arm and leading me towards the thumping strains of house

music and a lit neon sign spelling out the word STINGRAY in pink cursive lettering.

She specifically requests a circular booth at the back of the bar that isn’t located directly

under a subwoofer, so we can actually hear each other talk. I look around at the raucous, growing

crowd, which resembles a slightly better-dressed version of American college kids on spring

break.

Then again, it doesn’t look like that at all. In fact, I can’t help but glance back at them as I

peruse the menu, studying them as they trickle in, trying to put my finger on how this bar does

and does not look like the ones I’m used to back home.

“There’s a lot of, uh, good-looking men in here,” I say, wanting to start the conversation to

see if I’m the only one who notices that something’s slightly off, but not knowing how else to

put it.

Souris rolls her eyes. “Yeah, not that any of them will notice either one of us.” She waves a

hand at her carefully made-up face and coiffed hair. “I’m not sure why I even bothered.” She

grabs the straw poking from her gin and tonic and stabs at the ice cubes with it.

I nod, finally understanding. “Well, I guess the women in this hotel have to eat somewhere,

because I was going to say that I’ve never seen so many women in a gay bar before.”

Her eyes widen in surprise, and she holds up one hand. “No, no! That’s not what I meant!”

Then looks around and laughs. “I guess with totally straight men hugging each other every five

minutes and saying how much they love each other, it sort of looks like a gay bar, doesn’t it?”

She tilts her head, a curious look in her eyes. “Didn’t you notice it was the same way at your

hotel…the one you were at before you came here? It’s like this no matter where you go.” She

adds under her breath, “And I thought I was going to meet a surfer while I was here.”

I don’t really want to admit that I went straight from the Brisbane Airport into a cab, and

from the cab into a hotel room in Surfer’s Paradise. I ordered room service for every meal,

emerging from my self-imposed solitary confinement only long enough to attend the exhausting,

endless rounds of the tournament. Well, except for the time I set aside to be attacked by a shark.

She puts her menu down and leans over the table, as if she’s about to tell me something she

doesn’t want anyone else to hear—as if anyone not sitting between us on our table could even

hear us. Hell, I had to scream my drink order at the server three times before she got it.

“This is important, okay?” she says. “So listen very carefully: guys do not go to clubs or

cruise bars in this country in order to meet women.”

She nods once and sits up, having done her duty by imparting this critical piece of

information. I turn to watch the clusters of people in the bar and realize that that’s what’s “off.”

Men and women have—whether consciously or unconsciously—self-segregated by gender.

My curiosity is piqued. “Okay then…so if they’re not gay, and they don’t go out to meet

women, then why do they go?”

Souris appears surprised by the follow-up. “They go to hang out with their ‘mates.’ Trust me,

that’s all they’re doing.”

“C’mon,” I laugh. “Look at the women in this place…their dresses are the size of dinner

napkins! Look at those stilettos! I mean, I could use those for home defense.” I shake my head.

“Even a guy in a coma would respond to that.”

Souris doesn’t bother looking to where I’m pointing. I mean, even her dress is pushing the

bounds of reasonable in my book, but she might as well be wearing a burqua compared to the

rest of the women in this place. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad when you have to walk around next to

naked just to get a little attention,” she says. “What else are they going to do? I mean, they have

to fight back somehow.”

I watch as a clump of sexy, scantily clad women saunter suggestively past five or six totally

oblivious blokes by the bar. One guy actually does glance up for a moment, his mouth breaking

into a wide grin of delight, his arms outstretched, and I think he’s about to prove Souris

wrong…until he gives a shout of “Hey, mate!” and welcomes another dude into the fold with a

bear hug.

“I was talking to this Australian woman at the tournament the other day,” says Souris, “and

she was telling me how much she missed the U.S. military base that used to be near her home

town when she was growing up.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Really?” All my experiences with military men in the Bay Area of

California—from my teens through my early twenties—ranged from mildly unpleasant to

downright offensive. Maybe they act differently overseas, I think, an idea Souris immediately

quashes.

“She said it was because ‘American men knew how to pay attention to women.’” She makes

a snuffling sound and rolls her eyes. “Seriously, when your women are pining away for drunk,

ass-grabbing American jarheads, your population projections are in some serious trouble.”

“There are only twenty million people on this entire continent,” I blurt out. “Did you know

that?”

Souris pitches forward over the table laughing. “My brother was so right!” she manages

between gasps for air. “You’re hysterical!”

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I memorize numbers really easily, and I just remembered that I read—”

I stop and blink in surprise. “Wait…your—your brother?”

She wipes the tears from her eyes. “Lapin? My brother?” Her mirth morphs easily into

confusion. “Wait—you didn’t know?” She narrows her eyes. “I mean, what did you think I was

doing here with him?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammer, burning with embarrassment. I definitely can’t go full-on

Flowers in the Attic and tell her that I thought the two of them were an item. “I guess I was

confused. I mean, first I got here and there was a woman named Zoe. But then she left, and he

said he had an assistant named Mouse. And then you showed up, and he called you Souris, and

you called him Lapin, and then you guys were yelling at each other, and I figured your personal

assistant wouldn’t probably do that, and that made me even more confused.”

She covers her mouth and giggles, her delicate silver-blonde hair—so similar to Rabbit’s that

I feel stupid for not having guessed it before—falling forward around her face. “I see why you

were confused. I had no idea he didn’t tell you.” Her eyes become unfocused, like she’s

remembering something. “Oh, my God, is that why you were so upset yesterday? Because of

me?”

I sink down into the cushion, not happy about where the conversation is going. “Uh, you

know, I wasn’t really feeling well, and all that blood I lost, plus I’ve never really drank green

fairies before, and I was thinking about my sister—” I stop short and fold my lips in until they

disappear inside my mouth. Great, just keep talking, Alice…wait, did I just call myself Alice?

Either I’m losing my mind, or I am in trouble.

My concern about divulging too much is unfounded, because Souris is preoccupied with

rubbing her forehead with her fingers, thinking and muttering. “What was it I said? I can’t even

remember.”

I jump in with an assist. “You said, ‘This is pretty pathetic, even by your standards.’”

She gasps and puts her hand on her chest. “Alice, I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t talking

about you being pathetic.”

I wait, willing to hear her out.

“I was talking about Lapin, and how he used to—when he was—how in the past...” She trails

off, and turns nearly purple with embarrassment. “He’s changed,” she says finally. “He’s not that

guy anymore. Not—not like that anyway.”

And then I get it. I stop her with a raised hand. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not important,” I

say, wanting to spare her from trying to explain that she thought I was just some tournament

bimbo her brother had enticed into his room.

“What’s this about a sister?” she says, ducking down for another swig of her drink. “Is it just

the two of you?”

Uh-oh. Now you are in trouble. I’m already feeling fuzzy from the margarita, having had far

more than I should have on an empty stomach. “No, I have a brother and three sisters.”

“Four girls? That must be pretty great, right? Are you all spread out age wise? Are you the

oldest?”

I throw her my stock answer: “I’m the middle Doll, and the middle Baby Doll.”

She arches an eyebrow. “The what?”

I laugh. “Our last name is ‘Dahl’—D-A-H-L—but kids in school started calling us the

‘Dolls’—D-O-L-L-S, and me and my sisters Dee and Munny ‘The Baby Dolls.’”

“Why the special treatment for the three of you? What about your other sister and brother?”

“Well, me and Dee and Munny—we’re all six years younger than Gabe and three years

younger than Harlow.”

Souris looks confused. “But that means that you’d have to be—”

I nod. “Triplets, yeah.”

“Oh, my God, what?” she squeaks. “That’s so cool! Are you guys identical or fraternal?”

“Identical.” I pause. “They have normal hair though.” Another pause. “Well, except Munny

now, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” says Souris. “Is your sister trying some crazy new hairdo too?”

“Uh, no, it’s not that. Munny has—she’s been struggling…” My throat burns when I exhale,

and I know I’m probably going to cry. There’s not much chance of going back now, not if we

keep talking about it. I look Souris in the eye. “My sister has leukemia. She’s dy—” I stop,

horrified by what I almost said.

She’s not dying, she’s fighting! I scold myself.

“She’s fighting leukemia,” I say.

“That’s—that’s terrible! Oh, God, Alice, I’m so sorry for your sister and your family!”

“Thank you.” I’ve never been very good at dealing with the sympathy, but I’ve found a

simple “thank you” works best, beating out “don’t worry about it” and “it’s not your fault” by a

few million miles. I tap my fingers on the tabletop. “She’s being treated.” I stop. “Well, I mean

she was being treated.”

“‘Was?’ What do you mean? Does that mean she’s in remission?”

I manage a weak smile, not sure why I’m dumping this horrible story on this poor woman

who I barely know. “No, it means that her company eventually fired her because she couldn’t

work, and her health insurance capped out, and they won’t pay for a bone marrow transplant.”

Eyes wide with horror, Souris covers her mouth with her hands. “No!” She starts tearing up,

which makes me feel sorry for her. She slowly lowers her hands. “But you and your other sister

are—”

I nod, already knowing where she’s going with this. “Me and Dee are ready-to-go, perfect

donors. That’s what makes it even worse, you know? It’s not like she needs to put her name in a

database and hope for a match, not with two genetic replicas of her walking around chock full of

healthy bone marrow.” An unconscious bark of laughter erupts from my mouth. “Well, maybe

mine are working overtime for me right now, but…”

Souris chokes back a chuckle, looking mortified. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing

the back of her neck with her hand. “I guess it’s not funny, is it? I don’t know what I was

thinking.”

I try to salvage the situation. “No, it was funny. It’s just that—I mean—” I sigh. “I was just

going to say that I didn’t tell you that so you’d feel sorry for me. I just wanted you to know that I

was more upset by that yesterday than I was by anything you said.”

“What can she do?” says Souris. “Can you guys fight the insurance—”

“My brother Gabe is an attorney, and he’s been fighting the insurance company for a year.

But it takes time, and she…” I trail off, not sure how to finish on an up note. “Anyway, that’s

why I’m here.”

“Why you’re ‘here?’” She points down at the tabletop. “Here in Surfer’s Paradise?”

I shake my head. “No, here at the IPT. The kind of transplant Munny needs costs $250,000

out of pocket. My family’s drained their savings paying for everything else the insurance stopped

covering.” I spread my hands out, palms up. “We’re all out of money.”

There’s awe in her voice. “Alice, you’re already one of the Final Nine. The entire prize pool

is eight and a half million dollars…you’ll get a $250,000 payout just for showing up!”

I shake my head. “I’m not interested in fourth place or anything below it. First through third

are the only prizes that pay enough.”

“But you just said—”

“The transplant costs $250,000,” I say. “That doesn’t include all the drugs and care that

comes afterward. It doesn’t cover the cost of a second transplant if the first one fails, and it

doesn’t pay off the second mortgage my parents took out on their house.”

She slowly sinks against the back of the booth, her eyes drifting from my face until it doesn’t

seem like she’s looking at anything at all. There’s such an awful, disturbed expression on her

face as she mentally folds in on herself that I can’t help it—I’m alarmed. “Hey, are you okay?”

Her eyes snap back into focus, and she glances at the entrance of the bar before leaning

across the table and putting her hands over mine. “Alice, look at me, okay? Listen to me.”

“I’m listening…what’s wrong?”

“You cannot tell anyone what you just told me, okay?”

“Well, it’s not exactly a topic for lighthearted cocktail banter,” I scoff. “Besides, who am I

going to tell? I don’t know anyone here. Well, except for your brother, but—”

Her hold on my hands tightens until it’s almost painful. “You’re not listening to me. You

can’t tell anyone.” She punctuates the last word by widening her eyes and shooting both her

eyebrows up.

“Oh. Oh, you mean you don’t want me to tell Rabbit?”

She gives my hands one final squeeze and releases them. “Anyone.”

I rub the back of the hand that took the brunt of her ill-treatment. “Okay. Okay, I won’t.”

What the hell? He’s been nothing but nice to me since the beach…why would he be any different

just because my sister’s sick?

Souris seems momentarily satisfied, but her neutral expression very quickly turns into a

scowl. “Goddamn insurance companies. Sometimes I think their whole business plan is to just

deny treatment for people until they die.” She gasps. “Alice, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“Souris, just because you hear someone is sick, doesn’t mean you can’t make jokes or laugh

anymore.” I have to raise my voice over the hooting and hollering of a crop of new and, by the

sounds of it, inebriated arrivals. “Or that you have to stop using words like ‘die.’”

My internal self laughs at that last bit. Ha! You can’t even say the word ‘die’ without choking

on it. Who are you to talk?

I smile at her. “And I’ll forgive you if you tell me one thing.”

“Anything. What do you want to know?”

“Who the hell is Mouse?”

Before she can answer, a voice booms over the span of the bar. “Hey, look, it’s Mouse! Look,

everyone, it’s Mouse Montgomery! Right over there!”

We turn simultaneously. A soaking wet, larger-than-life guy wearing a comical mall-rat

hoodie is bearing down on us, dripping water across the floor with every soggy step. A collection

of bedraggled, waterlogged women and two men trail behind him.

“Oh, shit,” says Souris. “Rabbit’s going to kill me.”

Chapter Seven

I look at Souris. “Wait, you’re Mouse? I thought your name was Souris?”

Without taking her eyes off the approaching horde, she says, “Souris is my real name. It

means ‘mouse’ in French.” Still forcing a smile for the unidentified man sidling up to the table,

she adds, “Same for Lapin. Why do you think everyone calls him Rabbit?”

Ohhhhh, I think, feeling pleased at the resolution of two mysteries at once.

“Well, if it isn’t Mouse Montgomery!”

Souris gives up on the smile altogether and offers him a lukewarm greeting instead. “Hello,

Talon.”

When I hear the name, I jolt upright. Oh, shit, he’s one of the Final Nine! Time to get out of

here…

“Fancy finding you here,” he says in a voice much louder than is necessary to traverse the

two feet of space between us. He twists his head over his shoulders—first left, then right—

scanning the bar. “Where’s your bunny brother?” For a guy who’d have at three vertical and at

least a dozen horizontal inches on Rabbit, he looks strangely apprehensive.

“He’s on his way,” Souris lies, patting her purse. “I just got off the phone with him.” She

turns to me. “Talon, this is my friend, Alice.”

He rotates his huge frame in my direction, and looks me over in a way that makes me

uncomfortable. “Well, hello there, Alice!” My hand disappears between his wet, meaty palms,

where he squeezes it like it’s a two-by-four in a sawhorse. “How in the world did I miss a pretty

thing like you with such pretty hair? Can I buy you a drink?”

Oh, yuck, I think. I can feel my upper lip trying to spasm towards my nose in revulsion at the

prospect. Just…yuck. I tug my hand out of his grip.

“What happened to you guys?” says Souris, looking over the members of the as-yet nameless

band of groupies.

Whatever befell them, Talon’s enthusiasm for telling it is sizeable. “Oh, man!” he says,

throwing his arms out wide, nearly popping a nearby sodden disciple in the face. “You should’ve

seen this storm we got caught in down on the beach!”

I slide as unobtrusively as possible to the opening on my side of the booth until I’m hidden

behind Talon Hawk’s huge frame. With my left hand, I grab the cane off the seat.

“Raindrops the size of Basset Hounds, I’m not shittin’ you!” he bellows. “I thought Honey

was going to get nailed by lighting, ‘cause she wouldn’t put her goddamn umbrella down.”

“I told you I didn’t want to go, Talon!” wails Honey. “I told you it was going to rain!”

From what little I can see from behind Talon, Honey’s umbrella didn’t do her a lick of good;

with her streaked makeup and drooping, tangled hair, she looks like she got trapped in a car

wash. So far she hasn’t seen me, which is more a testament to her devotion for the man in front

of her than my ninja-like stealth. I’m frantically trying to remember if I have a key to the suite or

if I gave mine to Souris to hold, when any hope of escape from the booth is lost.

“Why don’t you guys sit down?” says Souris, with a wave of her hand. “We’re leaving as

soon as Rabbit gets here. You guys can have the booth when we leave.”

“Hey, thanks!” says Talon. “Don’t mind if we do.” Without so much as an “excuse me,” he

nearly crams his backside into my face, a collision I avoid only by lurching back to the left and

scooting as fast around the circle towards Souris as I can.

I shoot her an incredulous look, and she returns my stare with a snappy shake of the head,

followed by an intense narrowing of her eyes. If she’s trying to tell me something, I have no idea

what it is. Where is Rabbit? I think. Why isn’t he here already?

Once the principals in their party are seated, with those lower on the totem pole left to

grumble and move on to find another table, our once-cozy booth transforms into a damp fusion

of vacuous wretchedness, with the three women all complaining alternately about their wet

hair/clothes and their respective distance from Talon, while the man himself is trying to

maneuver his Paul Bunyan frame way too close to me. I’ve nudged so far up against Souris in an

attempt to escape him, that she’s been forced to rest her arm on the back of the booth behind my

head, like we’re on a date.

Our server takes note of the quadrupling of people at our table and hurries over. “We’ve

already ordered,” Souris tells her. She looks at Talon. “You guys go ahead.”

While they’re hemming and hawing over their menus (the trio of chicks across from us

bemoaning the lack of gluten-free items), I turn to Souris and boldly attack the problem head-on

by hunching over, cupping my hand next to her ear and whimpering, “What are we doing? I

don’t want him to know who I am!”

Souris whispers back, “Talon’s edge is bluster and bravado. He can play the game, but his

interpersonal skills rank about as high as his IQ. He’s not going to make the connection between

you and the Final Nine.” She glances at him and snickers. “Most of the players call him Hawk.

Everyone I know calls him Dodo.”

“He’s soaking wet!” I hiss. “He’s getting my skirt wet, and he keeps trying to rub my leg!”

“Watch…” Souris holds her clasped hands on the tabletop, waiting for everyone to order. As

soon as the server walks away, she leans across me and touches Talon gently on the arm. “Talon,

have you noticed how the fact that Australians drive on the left side of the road changes the

spatial culture of everything else—particularly ambulation?”

He maintains an affable grin, but behind it isn’t the spark of comprehension but a dim bulb

on the verge of going out. “Sure, Mouse. Sure I have.”

She bats his eyes at him. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one! It’s frustrating, isn’t it?”

I stare at her, wide-eyed. I’m not sure if her line of attack is to suck the moisture out of their

clothes with a dry, boring sociology lecture or what, but it doesn’t seem to be inspiring anyone to

want to leave except me.

“What’s ‘spatial culture?’” says Honey.

Give her points for being curious, I think.

“Well, it means that in the States, because we drive on the right side of the road,” says

Souris, “we tend to automatically stay on the right side of everything else when we’re walking.”

She shrugs. “Sidewalks, grocery aisles, hallways…that sort of thing.”

“Ohhh,” says Honey. I can tell by the way she says this that she’s not agreeing with Souris so

much as recalling every Australian who’s given her the stink eye since she deplaned in Brisbane

a week ago. She confirms this a few seconds later. “From now on, if someone Australian is in a

hallway, I’m not walking in it.”

Talon dismisses her plan with an eye roll. “How are you going to know they’re Australian,

Honey?”

She considers this. “I’ll wait until they start talking.”

“What if they’re alone?” he counters.

I drop my face into my hands and mutter, “Oh, my God.”

“Food’s here!” says Souris in a chipper falsetto.

On her recommendation, I ordered the fish and chips, and they look just as greasy and

delicious as she described. I’m hovering over the plate, ready to tuck in, when I realize the server

is still lingering.

“Would you like tomato sauce?” she says.

I look down at my plate and back at her, trying to convey to her without words that I don’t

have a meal that requires tomato sauce. When this fails, I break under the strain of her expectant

stare. “Sure,” I mumble, although I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do with marinara

sauce and French fries. Putting it on breaded, fried fish is absolutely out of the question.

Instead, she plunks a familiar red bottle on the table in front of me. I pick it up and study it,

waiting for her to walk away before holding it in front of Souris. “Okay, I’m sorry,” I say in my

most sarcastic voice, “but if it’s red and you’re squeezing it out of a bottle for fries, that’s

ketchup.” I pause. “Cat-sup if you’re feeling sassy.” Souris dissolves in laughter as I squeeze

some onto my plate, muttering a gratuitous “It is not tomato sauce.”

“Oh, I agree. It’s not tomato sauce.”

Across the table, my editorial has switched on Honey’s neural circuits. Everyone falls silent,

yielding her the floor. Hell, even I’m curious. Who knew we’d find common ground over a

condiment?

Honey inhales a lungful of air and restates her thesis before sharing her supporting

arguments. “It’s not tomato sauce, you know? Tomato sauce is what you heat in the microwave

in the glass jar when you can’t find a bowl, and you forget to take off the metal lid because you

didn’t know about the sparks, and you never realized that the reason they make you sit so far

away from the fireworks on the Fourth of July is so those falling pieces don’t burn little holes

through your shirt, and your mom cried because she thought your hair was on fire, and then you

decide you didn’t want any spaghetti anymore.”

The dead air that follows is quickly filled by Souris, who’s apparently reached her capacity

for stupidity. “Oh, hell, you know what, Alice? I just remembered I need to go to the bank and

get some cash.” She sighs heavily, like this is going to put a major crimp in our plans for the

evening. “Do you mind if we just pop down the street really quick to that ATM we saw?”

Since I haven’t been anywhere but the lobby, the bar, and their hotel suite, I have no idea

what bank she’s referring to, but I’m already scooting out of the booth behind her, sticking to her

like a conjoined twin. “Sure, sure, no problem. Let’s go.”

“What about your food?” says Honey.

“Uh, you have it.” I smile. “You can even have my tomato sauce.”

“Hey!” says Talon. “Looks like the rain’s stopped! Whaddya say we start hitting some

clubs?” He nods in my direction. “I know Alice here is wanting that drink I promised her, and

I’m in the mood for some dancing!” With that, he begins flailing his beefy limbs around in some

sort of steroidal homage to Saturday Night Fever that almost overturns the table.

“Her name’s not Alice,” says Honey, in a classic example of a fifteen-minute after-the-fact

afterthought. “It’s Faye. She’s the one who got attacked by the shark the other day.” She tugs on

Talon’s shirt. “I told you about it, but you wouldn’t listen!”

Talon Hawk’s demeanor is suddenly a lot less friendly. “You’re Faye Dahl?” He slides from

the booth and towers over me. “You’re the fish who came in off the bubble?”

“You can call me Alice.”

He sputters with laughter, a few drops of spittle hitting my face. “You girls won’t give up,

will you? The IPT’s been around fifty years, and a girl’s never won.”

“That’s probably because you have to be eighteen years old to play,” I say, holding my

ground.

Souris presses my cane into my hand. “C’mon, Alice. We’d better get to that ATM before

it…” She doesn’t finish, because really…where’s she going to go with that? “Runs out of

money?” “Closes?” “Gets up and walks away?”

Talon leers at me. “Heard that bull shark got you high on the thigh.” He leans down, closer to

my face. “I’m going to be your shark, fish. You don’t have to wait for the Main Event…I’ll take

a taste out of your thigh right now.”

“No thanks…Dodo, was it?” I lean heavily on my cane. “I don’t know if I can watch you

have performance problems twice in ten days.”

Talon’s face turns magenta with embarrassment and rage, which is a little more than the

“bluster and bravado” Souris promised. His face is so close now that I can smell his beer breath.

“You little—”

A warm hand touches me on the back, followed by the leather and cologne scent of him.

“How’s it going, Hawk?” says Rabbit, handing me the jacket I left in the suite. He slips his

hand around my waist and pulls me towards him until we’re hip to hip. “I just sent your

interview to my editor so it would make the morning papers in the States,” he says to Talon. “I’m

not going to lie, man…I made you look pretty damn good.”

Talon is torn, looking back and forth from me to Rabbit. “She yours?” he says finally.

“Oh, I’m sorry! By the way you guys were talking, I thought you’d met.” He lets go of me

and turns sideways to facilitate an introduction. “Talon Hawk, this is Alice Faye Dahl, the ninth

chair at the Main Event.” He reaches back and grabs Souris by the hand. “And you remember my

sister, Mouse, don’t you?”

Talon’s eyes never leave mine. “She yours?” he says again.

Rabbit’s patience for diplomacy comes to an end. He steps sideways between us before

putting an arm out and gently pushing me behind him. “I wish. C’mon, man, save it for the

cards.”

“She won’t last two hands,” he sneers.

Rabbit considers this. “You know that for a fact? Because that would mean you’ve been able

to dig up something on her.” He folds his arms over his chest. “Which would be interesting,

because even I’ve tried, and you know what I got?” He holds up one hand, fingers curved into an

O shape.

“In fact, I was working on a piece about her with what little I could find… hey, let me run

this by you and you tell me what you think: ‘Like your sweet, affectionate house cat, Alice Dahl

is easy to underestimate. It’s not until the songbirds in the yard show up eviscerated on the front

porch that you realize you should’ve kept that bell collar on her—because those poor birds never

even saw her coming.’”

Talon takes a step backward. “Fine. You better make sure you keep that collar on her then,

Rabbit.”

“Oh, I’d say you’ve already been warned, Hawk. I’m not sure she can ring your bell any

harder than she already did.”

Talon totally misses the subtle wordplay in Rabbit’s analogy, and now he just looks angry

and confused. “Fine,” he grumbles before bestowing a nasty scowl on me and Souris. “The only

place I want to see two bitches is in a bikini or in my hand anyway.” He turns and stomps back to

the table, sitting down and helping himself to my food.

Rabbit grabs each of us by the elbow. “Let’s get out of here,” he says under his breath.

We’ve almost reached the bar entrance when Talon calls out: “Make sure he teaches you

everything he knows, fish!” followed by maniacal laughter from the entire table.

Chapter Eight

“That was ‘bluster and bravado?’” I say to Souris once we’re in the lobby and far away from

Talon Hawk and his entourage. “That guy’s a psychopath!”

“How does Talon Hawk know who you are?” says Rabbit. “Did you tell him?”

I shake my head. “Your friend Honey outed me.” I jam my arms into my jacket, trying to

cool down. “‘The only place I want to see two bitches is in a bikini or in my hand,’” I mutter,

repeating Talon’s verbal send-off. I snatch my cane out of Rabbit’s outstretched hand. “I just met

the guy…why’s he calling me a bitch? What did I do to him?”

Rabbit and Souris exchange an amused glance, which just infuriates me more. I stop in my

semi-limping tracks. “What?” When they don’t answer, I say it louder. “What?”

“Do you really think I’d let him call my sister a ‘bitch?’” says Rabbit. “Or you for that

matter? Talon Hawk’s dumb, but he’s smarter than that…he’d be crawling around on his hands

and knees picking his teeth off the tiles.”

“Well, that’s what it sounded like to me.”

“‘Two bitches’ is just a poker hand,” he says.

I snort. “Really? Funny, I don’t remember seeing that on the poster at the poker party.”

Souris touches my arm. “It really is…‘two bitches’ is just table talk for a queen pair.” She

smiles. “His remark about women in bathing suits was actually a lot more offensive.”

I relax one muscle at a time until I’ve shrunk back to my normal size. “Oh. Well, I didn’t

know that, did I?” I can feel Rabbit staring at me, and I know he’s thinking the same thing. “And

why did everyone laugh when he said for me to make sure you taught me everything you know?”

They trade another look, this one noticeably void of amusement. “That one was an insult, but

it was aimed at me,” says Rabbit. “Can you walk a short distance, Alice? Just two blocks? Or I

can call for a car…”

I know I shouldn’t feel so childish over what just happened, but I can’t help it. My response

is surly and petulant. “Where are we going? I never said I was going anywhere.”

He looks at me, frustration clouding his features, before smiling and shaking his head.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing. I just can’t seem to stay angry when I’m around you. I don’t know what it is.”

“Not normally a problem for you, is it? Staying pissed off?”

He laughs. “No, I guess it isn’t.” Still smiling, he looks back at the bar entrance. “Since

someone else is eating your meal, I’m going to float the idea that dinner wasn’t what you’d call a

success story.” He tugs the cane out of my grasp and offers me his arm. “Let me buy you dinner.

After what just happened, it’s the least I can do.”

It takes every ounce of willpower I have, but I ignore his arm and hold out my hand for the

cane. “I can walk better with that. And I’m not hungry.”

He hesitates, like this wasn’t the answer he expected. Then he smirks at me, a playful, sexy

look that just about makes me stop breathing. “Well, maybe I’ll just keep this then, so I can be

sure you’ll be right here when I get back.”

Souris grabs it from him. “Ça suffit, Lapin!” She holds it out to me. “He’s kidding, Alice.

Don’t pay any attention to him.”

“Is he kidding?” I turn to Rabbit. “You don’t hear ‘no’ very often, do you?”

He looks amazed, like he can’t believe the conversation we’re having over a dinner offer. “I

don’t make a habit of hearing that word very often, no.” He smiles. “Don’t make me Alice-nap

you, Alice.” His smile stretches into a playful grin. “Because you know I can carry you.”

The incurable romantic portion of my brain faints dead away. I plant the rubber stopper of

the cane between my feet so I don’t pitch forward and follow suit. I look down, away from him,

so I can think straight.

“I need to use the restroom, Lapin,” says Souris. “I’ll be right back…will you guys wait for

me?”

“I’ll be right here,” he says, watching me. “I can’t speak for Alice.”

“I’ll be here,” I mumble.

He calls to her as she walks away. “Look out for the spiders.”

This seemingly nonsensical bit of advice is followed by gales of laughter from Souris, still

audible even after she disappears around the corner.

I can’t help it; I have to know. “Spiders?”

“You haven’t heard about the spiders?”

“I didn’t leave my room a whole lot, remember? And you know nobody really talks at the

tables.”

He shakes his head. “I’m almost afraid to tell you. Let’s put it this way: clean toilets are the

least of your problems in this country.” He stops. “On the other hand, I guess after surviving a

shark attack, a man-eating spider should be no trouble for you at all.”

“Just tell me! My God, the anticipation is worse than the spider.”

“It’s nothing. Just an endemic species of poisonous spider that likes to make its home on the

underside of toilet seats.”

I turn cold, thinking of all the times since I’ve been here that I’ve cavalierly hung my

backside over a toilet seat, with absolutely no regard for personal safety. “Please tell me you’re

kidding.”

“You’re not going to go and do like Souris did when she found out, are you? Just a gentle

reminder that you can only boycott the bathroom for so long before your kidneys shut down.”

Souris reappears and I hobble towards her. “Is he telling the truth?”

She frowns. “That’s always a loaded question.”

Behind me, Rabbit mutters, “Please.”

“About the spiders.”

She laughs. “I’ve found that lifting the lid with your foot is the most thorough and least gross

path to two minutes of peace of mind.” She looks back and forth at the two of us. “Are we going

to eat eventually or what?”

I sigh. “Can I make a request?”

“Whatever you want,” says Rabbit. “The strip’s got everything: Italian, Asian fusion—”

“No, not that kind of request. Can we just please go somewhere that I don’t have to cross the

street to get to?”

He looks confused. “What do you mean? If it’s too far, we get a car. Problem solved.”

“No, I don’t mind walking, it’s just that I have a policy of not crossing the street.”

Rabbit glances at his sister. “Okaaay. Is this a blanket policy, or just a temporary one for

Australia—like her and the toilet seats?”

I smile. “No, it’s just here. I’ve watched about a dozen tourists almost get hit by cars since

I’ve been here. I barely made it to the beach alive the other day. I mean, no one knows what

they’re doing. They swing their heads back and forth like they’re mounted on a door hinge, but

they don’t even know what they’re looking for, not really.”

They watch me, bemused, as I wrap up my road rage manifesto. “And that’s basically it,” I

say. “Cars just come at you from all sorts of unnecessary directions here, and we’re all probably

going to get killed.”

“Souris?” says Rabbit.

“Yeah?” Neither of them has taken their eyes off me.

“Call for a car, please.”

“Got it.”

Once we’re alone he says, “Alice, I want to ask you something.” He pauses. “Well, we both

wanted to ask you something, but I figure I might as well just do it now, you know? That way we

can just eat and enjoy—”

“Ask me what?”

He runs his fingers through his corn silk blond hair. “Souris and I…we’re leaving. We’re

going to Sydney.”

A wave of disappointment washes over me. “But why? I thought you were here to cover the

tournament?”

“I am. And I will, but I’ve already turned in my reports and interviews in the lead-up to the

Main Event. Nothing exciting’s going to be happening between now and then—there’re no

official events scheduled…so we thought we’d take a mini-vacation.”

“Oh.” I’d spent so much time alone since I got here, I thought talking to anyone but my

brother and sisters would be just a waste of time, a distraction. But now that I’ve made two

friends—one of them interested in more than just friendship, maybe—I realize that the next two

weeks without them will be an unbearable bore. “Okay, well, I can get my stuff out of your suite

after dinner and start looking for a hotel room.” I smile. “Because I’m pretty sure I can’t afford

yours.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to get your stuff, Alice, I want you to come with us.”

I take a step back, splayed fingers on my chest. “Me?”

He glances over each of my shoulders before looking at me again, his eyes dancing with

amusement. “Since there’s no one else standing here but you and me, and I’m already going, I

think that means you, yes.”

“I’d love to!” I hesitate. “Wait—is Souris okay with me crashing your vacation?”

“It was her idea.”

This bums me out a little—that she had to suggest it. Well, look at him, I think. It’s not like

he has to bring along female companionship—he could probably find it at every gas station, bar,

and drop-in poker game on the way. “Oh. Oh, okay.”

“To be honest, I was relieved when she suggested it.”

I narrow my eyes. “Why?”

“Because trying to think of how to ask a woman you’ve known for exactly two days if she’d

be willing to get into a car with you and take a road trip across the country was something I

hadn’t quite worked up to yet.”

I smile. “What would you have done if I’d said no?”

He touches my forearm, skimming his fingers over my skin before slipping his fingers

around mine. “If you’d said no, I would have been tempted to just stay here.” He gives my hand

a gentle squeeze and winks at me. “Someone’s got to protect you from the sharks.”

I blush, thinking of Talon Hawk. “Literally or figuratively?”

“Both, I’d say.”

“Did you ask her? Is she coming with us?”

Rabbit turns around as his sister walks towards us. “She’s coming.”

She smiles wide. “That’s great. I’m really glad.” Her expression changes to distaste when she

looks at Rabbit. “Otherwise I would’ve been stuck alone with my little brother for the next week

and a half.”

“Aw, c’mon, Mousey. It wouldn’t have been that bad. I’m paying you to hang out with me,

remember?”

Souris is unmoved. “Yeah, it would’ve absolutely been that bad, and worse. Come on, the

car’s here.”

While they banter, I’m floating across the lobby on a cloud (well, like a cloud with a

significant limp), my right hand still in his. It’s hard to think when he’s this close to me, let alone

touching me, but I figure it will be pretty obvious if I permanently drop out of the conversation

and turn into a love-struck deaf-mute.

“I don’t know,” I say, “hanging out on vacation with no one but my brother, Gabe, wouldn’t

be my idea of a spectacular time.” I peek up at Rabbit through my lashes. “Sorry.”

“I have no interest in going on vacation with your brother either, so the feeling is mutual.”

He squeezes my hand. “Unless your brother’s sister’s tagging along…in which case I’ll start

packing right now.”

“Hey! I have three sisters. I’d fine-tune that compliment if I were you.”

“Whoops. Duly noted. Is it too late to retract that and resubmit it?’

By this time, we’ve descended to the circle drive in front of the hotel, me leaning on Rabbit

for support as I carefully step down the final rise. “It’s never too late.” I pause. “Well, wait…if

you’re actually on vacation with one of my sisters, then yeah, it’s probably too late.”

Rabbit waves away the driver, and opens the back door of the car himself. “Unless you have

an identical twin,” he says, taking the cane from me and helping me slide into the back, “your

sisters are all safe from me.”

Climbing in from the other side of the car, Souris looks at me, and we both collapse onto the

backseat, howling with laughter.

***

“Forget it, I can’t take it seriously,” I say.

“What do you mean you can’t take it seriously? You just used one of yours to pay for an ice

cream cone.”

He holds up a pink and purple, rectangular-ish, paper-like item that he’s referred to

repeatedly and determinedly as “an Australian five-dollar bill.” The ones in his other hand are

even more absurd, with the green and aquamarine one-hundred-dollar bill the worst offender of

the bunch.

Back in the car after a steaming, gut-stuffing plate of Tortellini alla Panna con Funghi Porcini

the size of a pile of laundry, I dismiss it with a shake of my head. “First, I’d like to point out that

I didn’t use ‘one of mine.’ You refused to let me pay for my ice cream cone with a good ol’

fashioned credit card, and you forced your pretend money on me. Secondly, I can’t take any

currency seriously that looks like it belongs in a psychedelic-inspired Special Edition Monopoly

box.”

“Fine,” he says, “but I hope you know that IPT payouts are in local currency.” He stuffs the

bills into a wallet, and the wallet into his sports coat, and takes my hand again.

This causes yet another shock to my system, which makes the next word shoot out of my

mouth more forcefully than I mean it to. “Fortunately, the entire population seems to be

brainwashed into thinking that a piece of recycled plastic that someone’s spilled a mixed drink

on can be exchanged for tangible items of value, like honeycomb butterscotch ice cream. As long

as—”

“Don’t forget the tequila shots,” says Souris, who up until now has been content with leaning

drunkenly against the car window and snoring softly.

“Yes, thank you, Souris. And tequila shots. As long as this mass delusion holds until I can

convert my winnings to American dollars and get out of the country, I’m okay with that.”

“What about our road trip? Or will that be a cash-free experience for you too?”

I scowl. “Well, apparently I’m not allowed to pay for anything on this trip, so I guess I won’t

get a chance to find out, will I?”

He laughs. “You can pay for whatever you want, but I just want to warn you that I prefer to

stay at places that don’t start or end with the word ‘motel.’” He pauses. “Actually, now that I

think about it, you’re right—you can’t pay for anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because a tour of Sydney and all major tourist traps in between wasn’t on your original

itinerary when you came here. You’ll have to be our guest.”

“I’m assuming one of you has the master travel plan?” I say. “I need to call my family and let

them know where I’m going to be. Speaking of that…I need to get a phone.”

It’s been three days without one, and other than a fifteen minute phone call from the phone in

the hotel room—for which I will no doubt pay dearly—I haven’t spoken to any of the Dolls at

all. Being a triplet is an incredible pain most of the time, but a lifetime of nearly constant contact

with your two genetic clones makes cutting the cord this abruptly pretty difficult. And I need to

find out how Munny’s doing, I think, feeling a flash of guilt for making plans to cavort all over

Australia without a care in the world while my family’s back home doing the day-to-day heavy

lifting of caring for her.

“That’s my fault, Alice,” says Souris. “I’ll have the concierge send one up when we’re back

in the suite.”

“How is it your fault?”

She glances at Rabbit. “Included in the many instructions my brother gave me yesterday

prior to your arrival—”

“Which you enthusiastically ignored,” he says.

“Which I totally ignored,” she agrees, “was that I was supposed to replace your phone so you

could call your family.”

Rabbit smiles at me. “Don’t think I didn’t see that call from the hotel phone.” Before I can

apologize or offer to pay for it, he says, “It’s already been taken care of, so don’t even think

about offering to pay.” He glares at Souris. “I should take it out of your check.”

“Just so I have this straight for when I talk to them,” I say, “we’re renting a car in the

morning and following the Gold Coast Highway all the way to Sydney?”

“Well, we’ll have to stop along the way—probably one night each way. We could drive it in

one day, but—”

“But we’re not going to,” says Souris. “My butt has a maximum drive time of seven hours.”

“Anyway, that means we have a week to spend in Sydney if we want.”

“Rabbit likes the indoor stuff. He’ll drag you to museums and monuments and memorials—

all those places perfect for dying of boredom.”

“Mouse likes to drag you to uninhabited areas with no cell signal—all those places perfect

for dying of exposure.” He wrestles his wallet from his coat pocket and pulls out a five.

Souris leans across me and touches him on the arm. “They don’t tip here, remember?”

He groans. “Right, I forgot. It just feels weird.”

Before he can put the bill away, I hold out my hand. “Is the five the one with Queen

Elizabeth on it?”

He hands it to me. “There she is.”

I nod. “Since she’s the only woman I recognize on the money, I’m going to ask that all my

winnings be paid in five-dollar bills.”

Souris sits up. “Seriously. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Australians have a lot of

bitches on their cashola.” She looks out the window. “Are we almost to the hotel? I’m beat.”

“It’s another block,” says Rabbit.

I try to remember the portraits on the fronts and backs of the other denominations. “No, I’m

pretty sure Queen Elizabeth is only on this one,” I say, holding up the pink and purple five-dollar

bill.

They look at each other and laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“For the record,” Rabbit forces out between chuckles, “you should not assume that just

because ‘two bitches’ is slang for a queen pair—”

“Lapin,” says Souris, too softly for him to hear.

“—that one can then use the word ‘bitches’ as synonymous with ‘queen’ in any sentence.”

“Lapin,” she says again, this time with a little more urgency. Rabbit must be used to ignoring

his sister (a phenomenon I’m familiar with), because he doesn’t respond.

“Although,” he says, “substitutions in some circumstances are completely understandable—”

“Lapin!” she shouts.

I look up at the same time he does.

Rabbit drops my hand and leans forward. “Don’t stop,” he tells the driver. “Keep driving;

circle around to the back entrance.”

I push away from the seat back until I’m perched on the edge. “What? Why?”

As the car veers away from the hotel drive, Souris looks at her brother. “Lapin, you have to

tell her.”

“Goddamn it!” he mutters under his breath, forcing himself against the seat back so hard that

he bounces off of it.

“Tell me what?”

He clenches his jaw. “The Queen Bitch. She’s here.”

Chapter Nine

I crane my neck, trying to see what they’re looking at, but I don’t see anything but a caravan

of limousines queuing in the drive and a bunch of people milling around.

“The Queen Bitch? Who’s she?”

He chews the inside of his cheek for a moment before answering. “She’s my boss."

“Your boss? You mean she’s your editor?”

“Not exactly.” He turns to Souris. “We can’t stay here.”

“Lapin, let’s just talk about it once we’re in the room, okay?”

“Fine. But we’re not staying here.”

I try to see myself reacting to a disagreement with my boss by getting into my car and driving

away to go sightseeing, but I can’t make the thought experiment work. I sit there between them,

an unwilling, uncomfortable buffer, and wonder if this is more of a problem between brother and

sister than employee and boss. The car stops at what I thought was going to be a service

entrance, but which turns out to be just a less glamorous entry than the front. There is precious

little in the way of offers of help when it’s time to get out, and I feel a sharp, pulling sensation

under the bandage as I struggle out of the car.

Not a word is exchanged between the two of them from the car to the elevator or during the

long walk down the hallway to his suite. Rabbit seems to have forgotten that I exist; after

dropping my hand to talk to the driver, he never picked it up again and never said another word

to me.

The door no sooner closes behind us than they pick up where they left off, leaving me to

slowly and discreetly make my way down the hallway to my room.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Rabbit says. I hear the clink of something metallic—

pocket watch, I think—as it strikes the granite counter in the kitchen. “Once Dodo figured out

who she was, I knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d blast it to everyone.” I hear the stop-and-go

sounds of pacing.

“Lapin,” says Souris, “if you would—”

“Why’d you stay there? Why didn’t you get Alice out of there as soon as you saw them?”

Wait—what? Halfway down the hallway, I stop in my tracks. What do I have to do with this?

My apprehension about getting caught in the middle of a family squabble is very quickly turning

into something else entirely. I turn around and walk back to the end of the hall to listen.

“I was going to at first, but then I thought: why not let him see her for more than thirty

seconds? I figured it would increase the chance that he’d remember her when he saw her again.

And she said herself that she hadn’t been out of the hotel at all—well, other than the day you met

her on the beach. And I don’t know how she met Honey!”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Honey was right next to me when I met Alice at the

beach.” He stands that way for a second before throwing his hands in the air and turning around

in a circle. “Great! This is just great!” He stalks off into the living room and flops onto the white

love seat with a groan.

“Well, I guess that would’ve been good information for me to know, don’t you think?” says

Souris, following close behind him, and yelling at him over the back of the couch. “Along with

the fact that Honey already knew her real name! I mean, where were you, anyway? If you’d been

there on time, we would’ve been gone before Dodo ever got there.”

“I ran into someone.”

“Who? Who did you see that was so important that you couldn’t say, ‘I’m sorry, I’d love to

reminisce about poker games past, but I’m meeting friends for dinner—gotta run!’?”

Rabbit doesn’t answer her. Even his silence sounds angry.

In a softer voice, Souris says, “What did you expect coming here, Lapin? Did you think you

were going to avoid her forever?”

“Of course not!” says Rabbit. “This isn’t about me, it’s about Alice! If I’d just ignored her

when I saw…well, you know.”

I‘m so stunned by the fact that two people I just met are arguing about me like this—

especially when I’m standing about ten feet away from them—that I feel myself growing tense

again, my shoulders pulled back like I’m about to cage fight someone. Since they both have their

back to me, I hurry as fast as I can, much more than my bandaged leg will allow, crossing the

hardwood floors to the door.

“And you’re missing the point!” he says.

“Fine, what’s the point?”

“The point is that we’ve run into two of the Final Nine in the last thirty minutes! She can’t

stay here.”

Out in the hallway, I quietly close the door and plant the cane in the carpet, heading for the

elevator. Souris’s laugh is faint, but her words are still audible. “You mean you can’t stay here,

Lapin Montgomery. Don’t drag Alice into your personal problems!”

I’ll have the front desk send someone up for my stuff, I think, stumbling onto the elevator and

trying furiously to reason my way out of this situation, something that gets harder and harder to

do as the floor numbers flash by. It was always too good to be true, I tell myself. People like that

don’t just take a sudden interest in you for no reason.

Then why?

Irrelevant, I tell myself. Just get your head back where it was before, I think. Nothing

matters but the Main Event. Nothing.

I’m certain that with enough repetition, I’ll even believe it.

The elevator doors open, and I’m suddenly at the periphery of a mass of people and popping

camera flashes that’s overflowed the lobby into the seating area on one side, and the hotel exit on

the other—effectively cutting me off from the front desk. Great, I think.

My incision feels like someone poured acid on it, a result of not listening to the doctor’s

advice to “stay off your backside.” It’s funny: you don’t realize how few things can be done

standing or lying prone until the act of sitting down has been proscribed. And I’m exhausted

again, having ignored his second mandate to “rest as much as possible.” I hobble towards the far

side of the crowd, breaking intermittently to lean over, put my hands on my knees, and gasp for

air.

By the time I get past the potted trees, 1950s-inspired furniture, and indoor fountain, sweat is

pouring down my leg. A sweaty bandage seems to defeat the purpose, and since the doctor told

me to “open it to the air after a day or two,” I pull it off completely. I ease onto a bizarre green

chair, the back of which extends about two feet above where my head touches it. That’s when I

realize that my cane has disappeared. Did I leave it in my room? The thought cheers me. Hey, I

must be getting better! They said I’d have trouble walking for at least the next week…ha! What

do they know?

From my retro throne, I settle in unnoticed and watch a different kind of drama unfold. The

crowd eventually shifts enough for me to see past the bodies, all the way to the middle of the

circle. I lean forward and crane my neck. On top of that I narrow my eyes—hard—because I

already feel woozy and dizzy, and I can’t be certain I’m not hallucinating.

The focus of everyone’s fixation appears to be a child…sort of. I mean, from the back, she’s

so tiny and petite that the word “child-like” springs immediately to mind. But then she turns just

enough, and the crowd parts a little more, and I can see she’s wearing a short, strapless black

cocktail dress, a choker of black pearls, and an outrageous pair of black high heels. She’s either

Japanese or Chinese—I’m not close enough to tell. Her strawberry blond hair—a shade you

think would never work on an Asian woman with naturally inky-black hair, but it somehow

manages to look amazing—has been carefully arranged in an Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at

Tiffany’s up-do. A gold and diamond tiara is rather endearingly positioned off-center, like a hip-

hop singer would wear a baseball cap.

I try to guess her height from the people around her, but since everyone seems to tower over

her, I have no benchmark to work from. Five-one? Maybe five-two? Nah… that’s being

generous.

How many boyfriends does this lady have? I wonder, watching as a cadre of men swarm

around her, trying to capture her attention, like the fawning dancers in Madonna’s Material Girl

video. I’m too far away to see her face clearly, but the reason for the fuss is obvious: she’s

absolutely and utterly mesmerizing.

I learned years ago that some women are like Cleopatra who, if you can trust the coins with

her likeness on them that were dug up, was no beauty at all. They just have “that thing”—that

mixture of confidence, sensuality, charm, and unavailability that sends men into a frenzy. This

woman has all of that and then some. Hell, I’m a disinterested heterosexual woman, and even I

can’t take my eyes off her. On the other hand, I feel so weak, my arms falling slack over the

sides of the chair, that I don’t really have the strength to look anywhere else.

The little woman works the crowd—with a smile, a word, a touch on the arm for everyone—

just enough to make every man certain that she only has eyes for them without inciting a jealous

riot. For the first time I notice that there are absolutely no women in the pack—not one. And then

I realize that the camera flashes I thought were reporters are actually just fans—male fans of

some kind. The whole herd of them moves in fits and starts across the lobby in the direction of

the ballrooms where the IPT qualifying rounds were held the week before.

Who is she? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen her before, but then again, I’m not exactly on top

of pop culture. Maybe she’s like Paris Hilton and she’s just famous for being famous. The idea

makes me chuckle a little. Could be worse…she could be carrying a dog in her purse.

Suddenly, the giant, three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld appears

next to her—sans two of its heads—and sits down. As a child, we had a neighbor with a Great

Dane, and I know they’re about three feet tall at the shoulder. Allow another twelve inches for

their T-Rex-sized heads, and you’ve got a dog that this woman could throw a saddle on and ride

like a pony.

What I can’t figure out is her name. Every few minutes some guy will try to get her attention

by shouting something that sure sounds a lot like “Beanie Baby.” For reasons I can’t explain, this

makes me incredibly uncomfortable, like they think she’s a cuddly, collectible, stuffed toy they

want to take home with them.

Which she kind of is, I have to admit.

Now that she’s closer, I have to rescind my guess that she’s resorted to working her

personality overtime to make up for a deficit in the looks department. Wrong. Beanie Baby is

jaw-droppingly exquisite, there’s no other word for it. Despite the dress, the shoes, the hair, and

her heavily shadowed and lined eyes the color of coal dust, she still somehow manages to look

ingenuous, the glamorous Girl Next Door.

A man she’d been speaking to suddenly breaks away from the group and takes off sprinting

across the lobby, no doubt off to defend her honor, say, or slay a dragon to win her hand. For the

first time, there’s no barrier between us and we make eye contact. All of a sudden, I feel like the

character in Raiders of the Lost Ark—the one who watches in horror as the wispy, beautiful

angels floating from the Ark of the Covenant morph into howling, homicidal demons. You

know, right before he melts like a cheap candle.

Beanie Baby has no charm to spare for me. Her naïve façade falls away like scales from a

reptile, her glossy, bee-stung lips turning down into a deep scowl. Her gaze never falters, her

eyes never change, but she has no trouble whatsoever conveying her intense loathing for me. It’s

so overpowering, that I close my eyes, just like the good guys in Raiders. Don’t look at it, I

think. Shut your eyes and don’t look at it, no matter what happens!

“Alice!”

It takes some work, but I open my eyes, expecting to find myself in bed. Instead, the world is

sideways, and a piece of furniture seems to have been glued to the side of my head. When I try to

pull it away with my hand, I find that my hand refuses to make an appearance.

Suddenly Rabbit’s face is in front of mine, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s on his knees, my

cane in his hand. Oddly enough, the handle of it looks like it’s been dipped in blood. I wait for an

angry explosion from him; instead he just looks frantic. He puts a hand on my arm. “Are you

okay? Oh, God…” A bloody tangle of gauze and medical tape rises into view. “Oh Jesus, what a

mess. What the hell happened? How did you get down here?”

His questions just confuse me, so I say this: “No, why?”

For some reason, this answer seems to trouble him. “Alice, your leg’s bleeding again. Did

you tear the stitches?” He gets to his feet. “Can you stand up?”

“What happened to her?” says the smooth, silky voice of a woman.

I try to look to see who she is, but I’m hanging over the edge of the chair, my face resting on

a side table. “Beanie Demon,” I mumble to no one in particular. “Dog from hell.”

“Get away from her, Mako,” says Rabbit. “Don’t touch her, just leave her alone.”

“Is that Alice Dahl?” says the woman. “Talon told me to be on the lookout for that hair. He’s

right—I definitely don’t remember hair color like that in the qualifying rounds.” She giggles

charmingly. “So this is your new game, Rabbit? Always were a sucker for a woman in trouble,

weren’t you?” There’s a smile in her voice sharp enough to bite. “That just brings back so many

good memories of us, doesn’t it?”

“Queenie.” This is Souris, who’s apparently joined our little party, her greeting flat with

dislike.

“Mouse! I heard you were here too. How lovely to see you!”

“The feeling’s not mutual, I’m afraid,” says Souris.

“Why don’t you let the hotel take care of this, Rabbit? Come join us—join me. It’s just a

small, intimate gathering in my suite.”

I assume Rabbit has walked away, or that I imagined him there in the first place, but when I

open one eye, he’s still where I left him, on his knees, staring up at someone like a pagan

worshipping a temple goddess.

“Mako…” he says.

That’s when I see that he’s been captured by the Beanie Demon and her evil minion, Dog

Pony. She leans closer to him and puts her hand on his arm, her voice breathy and treacle-sweet.

“It’s late. I don’t think anyone will stay long.”

“Why don’t you get back to your party, Queenie?” says Souris.

“Just a toy,” I tell myself, taking deep breaths to stave off the dizziness and nausea that’s

overwhelming me. Rabbit’s head snaps in my direction. “Just a toy,” I say again, tears welling in

my eyes. I’m so dizzy now I think I’m going to be sick.

Rabbit shakes his head, like he’s waking up from a dream. A bark of laughter escapes him.

“You can say that again.” I feel his lips on my cheek again, his fingers pushing the hair away

from my forehead. “Hang in there, okay, Alice?” he whispers in my ear. “I’m getting both of us

the hell out of here.” I answer him by closing my eyes.

“Why don’t I call Bill?” says Demon Baby.

Rabbit’s voice is cold. “Stay out of this, Queenie-baby. Alice isn’t your concern, she’s mine.

Mine and Souris’s.”

“‘Queenie-baby?’” says the Demon, an edge to her pretty voice that’s frightening. “People

close enough to me to call me ‘Mako’ usually do. Since when do you call me anything else?”

“Since you didn’t listen the first time I told you to get away from her.”

My head is swimming with all the names being thrown out, until I’m not even sure how

many people are standing around me anymore.

“We have to call an ambulance, Lapin!” says Souris “All this blood! We have to get her to

the hospital!”

“Now there’s a reasonable suggestion,” says Queenie-Demon. “Let me make a call. I’ll take

care of everything.”

“No.” I feel Rabbit’s hands under my knees, threading through to the other side of my body.

He repeats this under my back and picks me up. “You’re not doing that to her, Queenie, I won’t

let you.”

“‘You won’t let me?’” Her laugh is cruel. “I’ll have her head on a platter if it makes me

happy, Rabbit Montgomery, and yours too. Although…” Her voice is closer again, sweet again.

“I’d rather keep yours right where it is. It can do so many amazing things when it’s still

attached.”

“Don’t touch me. Jesus, you—you disgust me.”

On the other side of me, I hear Souris gasp.

“Oh, dear,” says Demon Bean, her voice instantly brittle and menacing. “That’s not the

sound of hot make-up sex, is it?” I hear a succession of beeps as a cell phone is dialed. “In that

case, I think what’s best for IPT is that they be informed of the condition of one of their Final

Nine players, so they can respond appropriately.”

“You’re bluffing,” says Rabbit. “You won’t bump her. Why would you? She’s no threat to

you. And you have no idea who will come in off the bubble.”

Bean Bag’s laughter is like the tinkling of glass. “Silly Rabbit, tricks are for kids.” Her voice

turns to stone. “And you don’t remember me at all if you think I’m playing games.”

I push back at the gray cloud moving across my eyes, so much so that even I’m impressed by

the degree to which unadulterated anger helps me rally. I suck in a gulp of air, lift my head and

train my eyes on her. “I’ll get you, Queenie-baby,” I say to the miniature ingénue through gritted

teeth. “I’ll get you… and your little dog too!”

I have the satisfaction of seeing her blanch, of watching her take a step back and reach up to

put a protective hand on the Dog Pony—who growls at her—before I’m too tired to keep

fighting. I shut my eyes just to block out the sight of her. The muscles in my neck give out, and

my head flops over onto Rabbit’s arm as he lifts me.

That’s when I notice that we seem to be following a path of bloody shoeprints and streaks

across the pristine tile of the hotel lobby. “Hey, someone’s bleeding,” I mumble.

“We can’t do this,” says Souris, her voice suddenly louder and clearer, as if we all got fifty

times bigger, or the room just shrunk down around us.

“If we stay here, Queenie will just use Alice’s injury as an excuse to bump her. And for

what? All for the crime of having met me.”

“I understand, Lapin, but what if she gets worse? What do we do then?”

Even though he’s not walking, Rabbit seems to suddenly buckle at the knees before

recovering himself. Above me, I hear him sigh. “What do you want me to do, Mousey? I don’t

know what to do.”

There’s a long pause. Then someone has an epiphany; it even makes a ding! sound, just like

in cartoons. My head goes back to bouncing along as Rabbit walks forward, and I realize that we

were on an elevator.

“Bill’s here,” says Souris from somewhere behind him. “In the hotel somewhere…you heard

her.”

“No.”

She snorts. “‘No,’ he’s not here, or ‘No,’ you won’t call him? He’s a doctor, Lapin. She

needs a doctor.”

I hear the click of the door lock, and the smell of flowers. There’s another long pause. Finally

Rabbit says, “Fine. Call him before Queenie does. Get Alice out of here before one of her

bootlickers from IPT sees her and stones her.”

“No need,” says a man from somewhere behind Rabbit.

“Bill,” says Rabbit, defeat plain in his voice.

Someone turns the lights off, and then I realize that Bill must be a powerful wizard, because

suddenly I’m in my bed, lying on my right side, and he’s magically appeared somewhere down

by the foot of my bed—right out of thin air.

“I debrided and Steri-glued her incision, and wrapped it back up. She’s got two large-bore

IVs going for the dehydration. She’ll be fine in about an hour. Her biggest problem is rest: she

needs it.” I hear the rattle of pills in a plastic bottle. “Here. Force her if you have to.”

“Thank you, Bill,” says Souris. “Thank you for helping her, for helping us.”

“I owe you one, man,” says Rabbit. “When I saw Queenie dial your number, I was sure we

were fucked.”

“Lapin!”

Bill chuckles. “Rabbit’s smart to doubt,” he tells her. “They don’t call me ‘Lizard’ for

nothing.”

“Why do they call you that?” says Souris.

“Ever cut the tail off a lizard?”

“Uh, not recently.”

Bill laughs. “Try it sometime. Watch what happens.”

“Why help her?” says Rabbit. He sits on the edge of the bed and takes my hand. “She can’t

pay you back. She can’t do anything for you. And, my God, Bill, you know when Queen Bitch

finds out…”

“‘I’ll get you and your little dog too?’” says Bill. He dissolves into a raspy fit of cackling

laughter that goes on and on. “How well did Queenie-baby take that?”

“Not well,” Rabbit admits.

“You say your girl can’t pay me back?” says Bill. He chuckles some more. “Believe me

when I say that that little gift’s just gonna keep right on giving.”

Chapter Ten

Two days later

It’s quiet. Sitting on the ground, my back against a boulder, I hold my breath and listen. It’s

been almost an hour. Moving very, very slowly, I inch my way to my feet before peeking over

the top of the rock wall into the black night. Please say they’re gone, please say they’re gone, I

chant. Please say—

“There she is!”

I moan in terror, and take off running in the opposite direction, getting only a few steps

before something strikes me on the cheek, hard enough to draw blood. This is followed by a rain

of objects striking my stomach, my chest, my arms.

Rocks! I think. They’re throwing rocks!

One—the size of an egg by the feel of it—hits the back of my leg hard enough to hobble me.

I lurch forward, dragging my now-bleeding leg behind me, holding up my hand to protect my

face, but not fast enough; a larger stone strikes me in the middle of the forehead, and I pitch

headlong into the darkness.

“No!”

I jerk awake to find myself lying on my stomach, drenched in sweat, on top of an unmade

bed. Wearing only a pair of boyshorts and a tank top, my bare skin is being pelted with

raindrops. I push myself up and off the bed, half-awake, my only thought to close the doors to

the balcony.

“Ow!” An ungodly stabbing pain on the back of my leg causes me to lose my footing and fall

onto the ground. And just like that, it all comes back to me…

Shark.

Rabbit.

Mouse.

Hawk.

Lizard.

I wrinkle my nose at the last odd visual. Lizard? I definitely don’t remember a lizard. Sharks

and Rabbits, yes. Lizards, no.

And then things get even more curious.

I expect to see the view of the ocean from my bedroom balcony. And I do—the only problem

being that it’s not the same bedroom.

Or the same balcony.

Or the same ocean for that matter.

I’m relieved to at least see the familiar white cane leaning against the wall by the headboard.

I crawl to it, and use it to help me stand up and cross the wet carpet to the balcony. I forget all

about being half-dressed, forget about being soaked from head-to-toe, forget about the rain; I

walk forward until my stomach hits the metal crossbar of the balcony rail.

Below is a beach all right, but the turquoise waters of Surfer’s Paradise are gone, replaced by

a New England shade of navy blue. The shoreline in every direction, as far as the eye can see, is

lined with rocks—boulders really—painted in bright greens, yellows, blues, some of them with

pictures and words I can’t make out. Even in the rain, people stroll along this kaleidoscopic

rockscape as if organized, mass graffiti of one’s sea wall is perfectly acceptable.

“Where the hell am I?” I say aloud.

“Nambucca Head, New South Wales, Australia—still—but there’s a perfectly good

explanation for that. Good morning. Or maybe I should say ‘How’re you going?’”

I’m so startled by Rabbit’s voice behind me that I drop the cane; it clatters to the concrete.

He strolls into my room, wearing the same white swim trunks and amazing body he had on the

day I met him.

“Did you sleep okay? How’s the leg?” He stops short once he takes in the whole scene.

“Hey, how about getting in here so I can shut the door? We already have a private pool on the

other side of the suite, remember?”

“Don’t you come any closer!” I shout. “You stay away from me!”

He seems confused, looking back at the doorway he just came through, like he’s hoping

there’s someone else standing just over his shoulder. “Who are you talking to?” He crosses the

room, coming right onto the balcony with me. Without warning, he grabs me around the waist

and sort of lifts and swings me back into the bedroom, making sure I’m steady on my feet before

closing the balcony doors. “Mind telling me what that was all about?” he says, once the doors are

shut and locked against the rain.

I rub my face with my hands, feeling confused. “I don’t know. Sorry, I think I was having a

bad dream.”

He frowns. “That’s the second one in twelve hours. I think you need to get off those narcotics

Bill gave us. Do you still need them?”

My smile is wan. “I guess we’ll find out.”

He looks down, like he’s just noticed what I’m wearing (or not, as the case may be). He just

as quickly finds something fascinating about the crown molding. “Souris is making us some

food. Since we’re leaving in the morning, I thought we could take a walk along the boardwalk to

see the rock art.”

At the word “rock,” I flinch.

Rabbit misunderstands the source of my discomfort, because he shoots me a sheepish grin

before continuing with the ceiling inspection. “Sorry, I meant that I’ll walk, and I’ll push you in

the wheelchair. And I checked the weather report,” he says, waving his hand in the direction of

the balcony. “All this is supposed to clear out in the next hour or so, and it’s going to warm right

back up.” He heads for the door without looking at me. “And it’s not really a boardwalk at all—

just a wide sidewalk that runs along Wellington Street, all paved, nice and smooth, I already

checked it out.” He stops, holding the door-frame in his right hand, his right side to me, still not

looking at me. “Sound good?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“And…” He smacks the door frame once. “And I thought we could talk, you know, about

what happened in Surfer’s Paradise.”

“Okay.”

He bumps the door-frame with a closed fist this time, and starts to walk away.

“Hey, Rabbit?”

He walks backwards until I can see the side of him again. “Yeah?”

“Did—did you and Souris ever get me that phone? I need to check in at home, you know, and

let them—”

Souris breezes past him into my room. “It’s right there in the nightstand drawer—oh, my

God, what happened to you? You’re soaking wet!” She stops and looks back at her brother still

in the hallway. “And half-dressed. Get out of here, Lapin, what’s the matter with you?”

“I’m in the hall!” he says.

She frowns, like that answer doesn’t really satisfy her, which seems odd considering he’s

seen me in a bathing suit that’s smaller than what I have on now (not to mention various states of

hospital and convalescence undress since then). The way she’s belatedly committed to guarding

my modesty is sort of endearing though.

“And before you get too worried,” she says, “both me and Rabbit have talked to your family

several times, so they all know what’s going on with you, and why they haven’t heard from

you.”

“You have?”

From the hall, Rabbit says, “Mostly your brother, and it was mostly me, but yeah.” He

pauses, a look passing over his face like he’s spent more than a few minutes mind-wrestling with

something, and he still hasn’t made peace with it. “And let me tell you how weird it is to talk to

someone that sounds exactly like you, but isn’t you.”

I smile. “You talked to Dee?”

“Several times. And Harlow too. Never talked to your other twin though.” He pauses. “Or is

it ‘other triplet?’ Which is probably just as well; I think I can only handle one ‘Alice clone’ at a

time. Anyway, I think she was still there at the cabin with everyone else, but she was busy or

sleeping the times I called, so everyone else filled her in for me.”

I look at Souris, who slowly shakes her head, her meaning clear: I didn’t tell him.

Which makes me confused all over again, especially when twenty-four hours ago, the two of

them seemed to be hatching a plot involuntarily involving me.

You were confused, I think. You’d already torn your stitches before they started arguing, you

just didn’t realize it yet. You probably imagined half the stuff you saw and heard.

I frown, feeling unsatisfied with that explanation. I’m grateful Rabbit’s willing to tell me

what happened in Surfer’s Paradise later, but I really wish I could get to the bottom of it right

now. Just not while I’m standing around in my underwear, I think. I guess I’ll wait for the walk.

“Food’s almost ready,” she says. “I know you’re probably still not hungry with all those

drugs you’re taking, but why don’t you grab a shower, and try to eat a little bit before you guys

go out, okay?”

‘Go out?’ I think. “You’re not going with us?”

“Oh, I saw it all this morning when I went for a run.” She smiles. “It’s great, you’ll love it.”

With that, she walks out, muttering, “Let the poor girl have a little privacy, you big peeping

Tom” to her brother on the way down the hall.

***

Souris was right; the “Graffiti Gallery” of Nambucca is pretty great. It’s actually a

breakwater—the “Vee Wall,” as it’s named—made up of boulders that extend from where we

are on an artificial promontory, all the way into the distance along Wellington Street. According

to the sign by the parking lot—correction, car park—it was built over one hundred years ago to

protect the harbor from eddies caused by the convergence of the ocean, the Nambucca River, and

the huge sandbar sitting smack-dab in the middle of the bay.

“I don’t know what this place looked like one hundred years ago,” I say to Rabbit, who is

behind me pushing the much-hated wheelchair, “but there’s no way I’d go swimming out in

that.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he murmurs.

We both watch as the efflux of water from the river pushes the inbound ocean water around a

sandbar the size of a small island, creating a whirlpool effect. Perfectly normal-looking waves

come in from the ocean, growing and peaking—and never breaking. Instead, they travel on and

on before being slung around the sandbar and back out to sea. It’s the most bizarre behavior of

open water I’ve ever seen.

Along the stretch of the promontory, the boulders of the Vee Wall were offered to tourists as

open canvasses a few years ago, and they promptly attacked them with paint and mottoes,

pictures and poetry, abstractions and extractions, from every language and all over the globe.

There are dedications to people who have died (which I make a point of not looking at), stick

figures of families passing through, as well as more elaborate paintings of frogs, dwarves, and

recreations of famous works of art.

Ahead of us, the promontory turns ninety degrees. As soon as the chair makes the corner, I

look up and mutter, “Oh, c’mon…you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Rabbit starts laughing. “I didn’t want to ruin it, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to be

your favorite rock.”

A massive wedge-shaped boulder has been painted gray, with yellow and orange paint used

to create the eyes and open mouth of a shark. The natural prominences on the sides have been

shaded to create the impression of the pectoral and dorsal fins. “Yeah, that’s really funny,” I say.

“Hilarious.”

“I think I can say with confidence that it’s a lot funnier if you haven’t actually been attacked

by a shark.”

He slows the wheelchair to a stop just past the less-than-funny shark. When we don’t move

again, I crank my head around. “Are we turning back? Because if you’re just trying to solve my

post-traumatic stress problem by exposing me to rock sharks until I’m desensitized, trust me—

that ship has sailed.”

He smiles. “Funny girl.” His head drops a few feet as he squats behind the wheelchair. I hear

the sound of a zipper as he opens the storage pack attached to the back of the chair. “I thought it

might be fun to paint a rock,” he says, reappearing with a plastic case filled with tubes of

different colors of paint.

I sit up straighter. “We can just do that?”

He motions to the boulders nearby. “Where do you think all these came from?”

“I don’t know. I just figured maybe you had to apply for a rock, get a permit or something.”

“Nope, it’s just a graffiti free-for-all apparently.” He pushes the lever that engages the brake

and holds out his hand. “I did a little rock reconnaissance this morning, and I think this one is a

good one for you—not too big, and you don’t have to climb over other rocks to get to it.”

“This is so cool.” I’m genuinely excited about the prospect of painting a rock, which maybe

says a lot about the lack of variety of my leisure activities of late, which fall into a two-tiered

hierarchy as follows: shark attack, poker.

I let him pull me out of the chair.

“Do you want some help sitting down?” he says.

“Yeah, thanks.” I keep hold of his hand and slowly ease myself down until I’m sitting on the

sidewalk. He hands me a paintbrush and points to a fairly flat, one-by-two-foot rectangular rock.

“Mine’s a little farther out. Hopefully I don’t end up in the water.”

I hold up the tube of green paint. “You mind if I use most of this?”

“You already know what you’re going to paint?”

I smile. “I’m ready to be turned loose.”

“In that case, it’s all yours.”

I squeeze it until every drop of green paint is on the rock, then I use the brush to spread the

blob in the center to the four corners. Rabbit hop-scotches over four or five rocks until he reaches

the one he’s staked out. We both work in silence for the next ten minutes until I realize that I’m

missing a golden opportunity to have our talk. The setting is perfect, because now I can say

whatever I want without him eyeballing me. We won’t even have to look at each other.

“Rabbit?”

Perched precariously on two rocks about ten feet away, he leans away from his rock canvas

so he can see me. “Yeah?”

I take a deep breath. “When we were back in Surfer’s Paradise, after the three of us went to

dinner, you and Souris got into an argument back in the suite...”

He freezes. “That’s not really the part I was referring to when I said we’d talk about what

happened.”

“Well, that’s the part I want to talk about.”

“Why?”

Now I’m mad. “Well, let’s see…maybe because it’s weird to have two people you barely

know scream and yell at each other over you while you stand ten feet away feeling like a piece of

furniture.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second, and I can’t read the expression on his face. Finally he

says, “Fine, let’s discuss it at some point, but can we just not talk about that right now?”

“No, we can’t not talk about that right now. In fact, I think after you’re drugged with

narcotics, thrown into a car, and driven eight hours down the road in a foreign country without

your permission—I think that’s the perfect time to talk about ‘that.’”

Now he just looks pissed as he tosses his brush onto a nearby rock. “That wasn’t what

happened, and if you’d just—”

“Look, I know you think I’m some ridiculous girl from the sticks who tripped and fell and

found herself a finalist in a poker tournament, and maybe you’re right! But I know enough to

know that something is all wrong about this.” I jut out my chin and make a quick, tight circle in

the air with it. “All of this.” My jaw tightens. “And you.”

Without any warning whatsoever, he jumps to the closest boulder. I sit there, brush in hand,

unable to move, as he leapfrogs back the way he came, bearing down on me, looking mad

enough to boil a bunny.

Chapter Eleven

“So what—you think we’re planning to hurt you?” he says, huffing and puffing over me. “Is

that what you’re saying?”

Down on the ground, I continue carefully painting the block letters on my rock, trying not to

betray how rattled I am. “Well, what am I supposed to think? I mean, it sounded to me like you

and Souris had been talking about me when I wasn’t around. You know…plotting.” I’m running

out of letters on the rock, so I slow production a little in order to buy some more time. “It made

me feel really weird.” I frown and decide that honesty is better. “It scared me.”

His expression turns from angry into horrified and contrite. “Oh, my God, Alice, I’m sorry!

Listen, we’d—well, I mean I planned to talk to you about it that night when the three of us went

to dinner, but then I sort of chickened out. If we’d had the conversation at dinner that I wanted to

have, then what you overheard in the suite would’ve made a lot more sense.”

I think about it. “Even if you’d asked me to go with you guys to Sydney at dinner, what

happened back in the suite still would’ve freaked me out.”

He rubs his eyes and groans in frustration. When he pulls his hands away, he looks

embarrassed. “That wasn’t the only thing I was going to ask you at dinner,” he admits.

“Oh.” The fact that he’s acting like a nervous schoolboy is making me feel like a nervous

schoolgirl. What else could he have asked me that could top an invitation to Sydney? I think. The

anticipation is killing me, but I try to stay cool even though my hands are shaking now. And he

doesn’t say anything else, which is just making the anticipation worse. I finally get tired of

waiting for him to talk. “Okaaay…so what were you going to ask?” I’ve run out of letters, and I

need a different color anyway, so I lean back for the bag with the paint in it.

Rabbit looks down at my handiwork, reading the black block letters over the green

background:

LIFE ISN’T ABOUT HOW TO SURVIVE THE

STORM, IT’S ABOUT HOW TO DANCE IN THE RAIN

“Wow, that’s really nice. I like that. Did you come up with that yourself, or is that some

famous quote I should know?”

My throat immediately clamps up. I know it’ll take a few seconds to pass, so I stall him by

rummaging through the bag until I find the tube of white paint. “It’s for my sister Munny.” And

so he won’t ask too many questions, I add, “Her favorite color is green, so…”

He crouches down next to me, sitting back on his haunches, and hands me a clean brush.

There’s nothing but the sound of the waves for a few moments, and then he takes a deep breath.

“Alice, I’m going to help you win the IPT tournament in seven days.”

I chuckle at the joke. “Okay, well I’m glad that’s all settled.” I squeeze some white paint

onto the brush and “sign” my rock with three white hearts in a row, one for each of the Baby

Dolls. “So, what were you going to ask me?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him frown. “I’m being serious. I was going to ask you if

you’d let me.”

I read over the lettering one more time to make sure I haven’t made some embarrassing typo

for posterity to mock. “There. Done,” I say. “Can you help me?”

He looks eager, almost thrilled. “I can, I absolutely can. If you let me help you, and you do

exactly what I tell you, you will win the Main Event. I promise.”

My eyebrows pull together in confusion. “I mean can you help me stand up?”

His thrilled expression disappears as he scrambles to get up himself.

What is this? I think, as I struggle to my feet with his help. Once I’m standing, I let go of his

hand, smack mine together a few times to get the dirt off, and say, “Rabbit, I really appreciate

your offer, but I don’t need your help.”

He closes his eyes, probably willing away the storm cloud I can see forming there. “Yes, you

do.” He opens them again. “At least, you do if you want to do better than ninth place.”

I scratch a nonexistent itch on my nose. “What are you going to do for me—be my traveling

poker tutor or something?”

His good mood seems to have all but vanished now. “I’m going to get you prepared, so when

you walk into the hall in one week, you don’t make a fool out of yourself. You don’t know

anything about these people. You don’t know how to play them. I do.”

I turn to watch the waves cresting and never breaking as they circle the sand bar. “I didn’t

come here to play people, I came here to play cards.”

“And that’s why you’re not prepared.”

I snort. “So you keep telling me. It’s really helping my confidence, I can tell you that. Can

we head back now? My leg’s starting to hurt.”

He gives me that smile I hate, the patronizing, condescending one. “Alice, it took big, dumb

Talon Dodo thirty seconds to get you so pissed about a poker hand pun that you were about to

beat him to death with your cane. You think he hasn’t filed that away? You think he’s just going

to forget how easy it is to play you?”

Now I’m getting annoyed. “So, what—you think learning the lingo for poker hands and all

sorts of fancy new ways to shuffle cards is going to somehow help me?”

“That and other stuff—yeah, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because that way you’ll know what—”

I hold up my hand and shake my head to stop him. “That’s not what I mean.” I shift to my

other foot, and try not to wince. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But even with the

hotel room and the phone and the dinner and all your help—even with all that, you don’t strike

me as particularly altruistic. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t come all the way to Australia for The

Poker Education of Alice Faye.”

“Alice, that’s not what—”

“So why do I feel like everything you’re doing for me is part of some master plan?” I pause.

“I guess what I meant by ‘why?’ was: Why would someone like you help someone like me?”

His expression is resigned, like I’ve backed him into a corner, and he’s run out of sweet talk

and smokescreens. When he does answer, I barely hear him over the waves breaking on the

rocks. “I don’t know, okay?”

I shake my head. “Sorry, that answer’s not good enough. Let me know when you think of

something better.” I pull out my new phone to snap a picture of my artwork so I can text it to

Munny and Dee later, but I’m having a hard time focusing on the task at hand with my insides

churning with disappointment. Why would you think someone like him would ever be interested

in someone like you, Alice Faye? I rub the bandage on my leg. “Look, I need to go back and

change this, and then I think I’d better just pack my things.”

“‘Pack your things?’ Why? We’re not even leaving until tomorrow morning.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going to head back to Surfer’s Paradise. I don’t want to

risk losing my spot.”

He shakes his head. “That’s the worst thing you could possibly do. If you go back now, you

won’t have a spot next week.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Look, it’d just be better if the Final Niners didn’t have another chance to talk to you, okay?”

“Why? What—are you worried Talon Hawk’s going to offer to buy me another drink?

Thanks for thinking of me, but I can fend off one drunk poker player. I’ve been doing it for four

solid months now.”

Rabbit blinks hard and looks down at the rocks, like he’s having trouble processing what I

just said. “Maybe I am thinking too much about you,” he murmurs.

Talking to me, or talking to himself? I wonder. Aloud I say, “You’re thinking about me too

much?” I roll my eyes. “Please, Rabbit. I obviously don’t know your history with Queenie, but if

you needed to skip town to nurse a broken heart, you can do that without me.”

He sets his jaw. “I haven’t been involved with Mako in over a year and a half.”

I try to look noncommittal, but inside I’m churning with jealousy. “Oh, so you’re back to

‘Mako?’ I’m sure she’ll be relieved to hear it.”

His eyes are flashing. “I didn’t leave Surfer’s Paradise to avoid Queenie-baby…I left—we

left—so you’d have a fighting chance at winning.”

“So she did break your heart. And you’re not over her, are you?”

“What does this have to do with anything? You don’t want to have a run-in with her, Alice

Faye. Please believe me when I say that.”

“I don’t even know her,” I say. “Why would she care about me?”

He exhales in exasperation. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but Queenie’s the

eighth seat at the Main Event, okay?”

“She—she’s one of the buy-ins?” My outrage at the idea that you can just open your wallet

and stroll right in to the Main Event while everyone else had to fight and sweat their way to the

table really galls me.

“There’s an eight-point-six-million-dollar prize pool at stake. They’re all going to care about

you, and not in a good way. You’ve become the most fascinating unknown that the IPT’s ever

seen.” He looks suddenly uncomfortable. “The most fascinating unknown to her too…and she

likes her games.” He watches me to see if I understand who he’s talking about. “She’s good at

playing them, and I’ve never seen her lose.”

“Who? Queenie-baby?” I give a snort of derision. “What grown woman goes around letting

people call her that anyway?”

He smothers a smile trying to bubble to the surface. “Look, she did break my heart, okay?

Just not in the way you think. And for the record: I ended things with her, not the other way

around.”

I shake my head. “I still don’t understand why she’d care about me. If she’s such an

amazingly skilled player, how am I any threat to her?”

He frowns. “She’s going to care about you because she knows that I do.” He reaches out and

takes my hand. “Queenie doesn’t handle rejection well. Or competition,” he adds.

My heart is hammering away with relief and elation, and it’s becoming really difficult to stay

focused. On the other hand, I can’t even feel the pain in my leg at all anymore, which must be

my brain overriding all other functions so I have a shot at finding a boyfriend after a fourteen-

month dry spell. “So let me get this straight: ‘Everyone’s going to care about me and not in a

good way’…except you, right?”

He takes his sunglasses off and tosses them on top of the paint bag. “Do you want to sit

down?”

He’s trying to hypnotize me again with his eyes, I think. Damn it, it’s working too. After a

false start where I open my mouth and nothing comes out, I manage to get a few words out. “‘Sit

down?’ No, I don’t want to sit down…why?”

“Good.” All of a sudden, it’s like I’m back in the hotel balcony again as he takes me around

the waist and hoists me up, turning me until my back is to the rocks and the ocean. “Sorry to

manhandle you,” he says with a smirk. “But you don’t look very steady at the moment, and I

want to be sure you don’t fall over in the next thirty seconds.”

“Why would I fall over?”

He takes my left hand. “Well, first I’m going to answer your question.”

Great, I don’t even remember the question anymore. “Uh…just for purposes of clarity, which

question will you be answering exactly?”

He smiles. “You said, ‘Everyone’s going to care about me, and not in a good way…except

me, right?’”

“Oh, yeah. That.”

“And my answer is ‘yes.’”

My head retracts on my shoulders. “‘Yes’ what?”

“Yes, I’m going to care about you—but in a good way. You’re the most fascinating unknown

I’ve ever met too.” He pulls my arm, bringing me closer to him. “How many seconds do I have

left?”

I look behind me at the giant triangular shark. “I don’t know, but I didn’t fall over.” I raise

my chin, feeling smug. “Told you.”

“Well, that’s because I haven’t done this yet.”

Before I know what’s happening, he’s leaning into me, gently pushing me with his body

across the few inches of space separating me from the rock, his hand on my back to cushion the

impact. And just like that, I’m in the jaws of a shark again, and just as oblivious to it as the first

time it happened, but now it’s because he’s kissing me—hesitant at first, watching my face,

waiting to see if I’m going to object.

Instead, I do what I’ve been dying to do: I reach up to touch the back of his neck before

running my fingers up into all that soft blond hair. He touches his forehead to mine and sighs

with pleasure, and all I can think over and over again is how I’d definitely brave another real

shark if Rabbit Montgomery would kiss me again me until I fell over.

And he does. But I don’t.

Chapter Twelve

One day later

“Are we anywhere close to there yet?” I look from the hood of the car to the top and back

again, because in about ten feet, I’m going to have to make a crucial decision in order to get the

door open. Both of my hands are full, a bag of orange poppy seed muffins in one hand, one chai

latte and two espressos from the gas station café in the other. That’s right—a café in a gas

station. Hell, even the McDonald’s restaurants in Australia have a café, the main counter being

too pedestrian for the serving of designer pastries and the variety of espresso-based drinks that

are all helpfully (and misleadingly, especially if you have any cardiac issues) referred to here as

“coffee.”

“Alice?”

I slide the drink holder onto the hood and grab the shoulder strap of my purse just before it

falls completely off my arm. Behind me, Rabbit is twirling the car keys on his finger, watching

me with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. Feeling a little exasperated at the lack of help, I

say, “What?”

He nods towards the car. “You driving?”

I close my eyes and groan. “Ugh! No, you know I’m not. Why do you do that?”

His eyes are wide with innocence. “Do what?”

I look through the right-side window at the steering wheel. “Let me keep walking to the

wrong side of the car! I look like an idiot.” A group of Australians walking by eye me in

unanimous agreement.

Rabbit gives me a peck on the cheek. “You look cute.” He takes the bag of muffins from me.

“You know, you can drive anytime you want. It’s an automatic, so I don’t think your leg—”

“No way. I haven’t even mastered being a passenger yet.” I glance at the car, a make and

model so far outside of my income tax bracket that I’m not even sure I know what it is. “If you’d

rented a Honda or a Ford or something, then maybe. I mean, what if I crash this thing? I

wouldn’t earn enough in a lifetime to pay for it.”

He smiles. “I wanted something that wouldn’t bounce you around like popcorn. Bill said

your bite came awfully close to nicking an artery; he was worried about you hitting it against

something.”

I hate to admit it, but if that was the goal then it’s definitely ‘mission accomplished.’ The car

doesn’t so much drive as float above the road, like we’re making our way to Sydney in a

hovercraft. “Wait,” I say, “are you blaming me for your overconsumption?”

He gives me another kiss, this holding his lips to mine for a few seconds, before saying with

a smile, “Get in the car, Alice Faye.”

“Fine. Maybe I’ll even end up on the right side this time.”

“Next time you screw up, just play it off.”

“How? Get in and drive away?”

He shrugs. “Just do what I do.”

I grab the drinks off the hood and head for the left side—the passenger side—of the car.

“And what’s that?”

“When some smart ass asks you if you’re driving, you say, ‘Nope, just kicking the tires.’ You

have to make sure you actually kick them all, though, on your way around to the passenger side.”

He gives me one of those winks that would melt butter. “Otherwise it’s like lying.”

“Great,” I mutter, once I’ve recovered from his sexy winking ways. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll

hold that in my heart for next time.”

“What did you get?” says Souris, looking road weary and bleary-eyed as she trudges back

from paying for the gas.

I wrest one of the espressos from the holder and hold it up. “One ‘Kick My Arse Coffee,’ as

requested.”

“Thank God.” She takes it from me and has a tentative sip before climbing in the back.

Once all three of us are inside and buckled up, doors closed, Rabbit looks at his sister in the

rearview mirror. “Was that really necessary, Mousey?”

I twist around in my seat. “What happened?”

Souris takes another swig. “Let’s put it this way: If one more person tells me how big this

country is, I’m going to go kick a koala.”

I must look utterly confused, because Rabbit says, “Allow me to recreate that little gem of

international relations.” He turns in his seat to face Souris, an eager smile on his face. “Puis-je?”

“Whatever,” she mutters.

“How you going?” he greets her in a cheerful and not unconvincing Australian brogue.

She says something that sounds like, “Yeah, good.”

“Renting a car, yeah?”

She smiles. “We sure are.”

“Going for a drive?”

“Why, yes,” she says, not only playing along now, but rising to the occasion with an overly

bright voice of her own. “We’re driving to Sydney to go sightseeing for a few days!”

Rabbit affects a look of grave concern, like he wants to tell her something, but doesn’t know

how to break it. He touches his lips with his fingertips, as if reluctant to let the words come out.

“You—you know that it’s a really long way, right?”

I’m incredulous. “Someone said that to you?” I look from one of them to the other. “Who

said that to you?”

“‘Someone?’” says Souris. “How about every other person who sees the rental car tags?” She

sighs. “Look, I snapped, okay?”

“What did you say?” When she doesn’t answer, I turn to Rabbit. “What did she say?”

He puts the keys in the ignition and starts the car. “I believe it went like this—and stop me if

I’m wrong, Mousey: ‘Listen, we may not be our own continent and everything, but we have a big

country over in America too.’”

Silence settles on the car like pea soup fog. Finally I say, “Oh. Wow.”

Souris breaks the quiet with a snort. “Yeah, well, when they say ‘You know it’s a long way,

don’t you?’ what they really mean is: ‘You know it’d be faster if you just rode a kangaroo, don’t

you?’”

“What are you talking about?” says Rabbit. He points at the speed limit sign coming up

ahead of us. “Look at that…haven’t you always wanted to go 110? And here we are in Australia,

livin’ the dream.”

I cover my mouth to catch the chai latte jet about to erupt all over the dash. I’m taking

Souris’s side on this one, because once I realized that Australia’s top highway speed of 110

kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm

for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most stretches

of the highway are restricted to 60 kilometers per hour, which is how fast Americans go when

we’re, like, passing a stopped school bus disembarking small children, or driving through a herd

of puppies in the road.

“Speaking of how we’re going,” says Souris, still looking pretty grumpy over the whole

encounter, “we must’ve crossed over some magical line somewhere between Surfer’s Paradise

and here, because all of a sudden everyone’s asking us about our mode of transportation.

‘How’re you going?’ What kind of greeting is that? I’m going to tell the next person who asks

that I’m going by wallaby.”

“Congratulations, Mousey, you’ve managed to insult every marsupial in the country in just

under three kilometers.”

How much farther do we have anyway?” She rolls her eyes. “

“What is it with you guys complaining about the distance?” he says, putting the car into gear

and easing it back onto the road. “Americans invented the road trip, remember?”

already “I’m not complaining about the distance, I’m requesting information,” she says. “We

passed Miami and Palm Springs, so I’m not even sure what country I’m in anymore.” She makes

a dismissive sputtering sound. “Is it just me, or do Australians need to get their own names for

their towns? I mean, ‘Miami’ comes from the name of a Native American tribe, so I’m feeling

fairly confident that we had that one first.”

Rabbit holds up the map that was in his lap and pretends to look it over. “Well, we just went

through Brooklyn, so I’d say we’re about an hour outside Salt Lake City.”

“Okay, okay!” I say, laughing and waving my hand at them. “I’m begging you to stop. I’m

too scared to drink my chai. You guys are worse than Gabe and Harlow.”

“Fine, a truce,” says Souris, retreating with a smile into the back seat. “For now.”

Rabbit looks over at me. “You up for some more quizzing?”

I think about it. In a moment of weakness somewhere between the kissing at Shark Rock and

the Cloud Nine walk back to the hotel suite in Nambucca Head, I agreed to let him put his poker

school on wheels and drive it across the country. Frankly, the whole thing’s become pretty

tiresome.

On the other hand, the blond god in the driver’s seat has spent the last hour making me feel

like the most fascinating person alive, peppering me with question after question about my ho-

hum life—“What kind of car do you drive?” “Were there a lot of women majoring in math when

you were in school?” “Does teaching high school make you never want to have kids of your

own?”—as if it’s the most enthralling stuff he’s ever heard. Despite the fact that he was

alternately holding my hand and running his fingers up and down my arm the entire time, I

managed to answer every question, taking full advantage of the opportunity to stare at him—

marveling at my good fortune—while Souris took a snore-filled nap in the back seat.

I’m not sure how much more poker quizzing I can handle though, I think. I don’t care how

good he looks; I have my limits. “Sure,” I say, my tone filled with unmistakable reluctance.

“‘Aces over, lost to three of a kind.’”

I think it over. “Two pair with aces, lost to three cards suited.”

“Good. ‘King Kong in the hole, tripped kings on the flop.’”

“Dealt a king pair, made a king three-of-a-kind from the first set of community cards.”

“Correct. ‘No rockets or paired Rembrandts in the pocket.’”

“Ta gueule, Lapin, give it a rest, will you?” Souris groans from the back seat. “I can’t listen

to this for the rest of the way…I feel like I’m trapped in a frat house.”

“I don’t know what this is for anyway,” I say. “I mean, let me tell you what I’m never going

to say to any human being, ever: ‘I had hunting season off-suit in the pocket, but I've had kicker

trouble with that hand often enough to fold it.’” Both of them start laughing, Souris more

enthusiastically than her brother. “No one even talks at the tables. So who am I even going to say

this crap to?”

“You may not ever say that to anyone, but the lingo does have a purpose.”

“What—so the cool kids will invite me to their picnics and parties and marshmallow toasts?”

“Don’t forget the frankfurter roasts,” says Souris.

“Fine, you guys go ahead and have a big belly laugh.”

“Seriously,” I say, “what is the purpose? Maybe I’d feel better about walking around

speaking fluent jive if I knew there was a reason for it.”

“You came up through the online tournaments, so you didn’t have to worry about this, but

the lingo is just mnemonics so you don’t have to work so hard to hide your cards from the other

players. It’s easier for most players to remember that they have ‘fives full of kings” than to

remember ‘I have three fives and two kings.’” He shrugs. “When you can’t remember your hole

cards, you’ll just keep looking at them over and over again. And the less time you spend looking

at your cards, the better.”

This actually makes sense, but I’m feeling combative. “Who cares if someone looks at their

cards? I mean, I don’t do it, but it’s only because it’s easy for me to remember numbers—math

teacher, remember? I look at my hole cards once, and I never pick them up again.”

“Then that’s probably one of the reasons that you’ve done so well. You shouldn’t even look

at your hole cards—not even after they’re dealt—until you have to act, but most players can’t

stop looking at them, and the more you look at them, the more clues you give away about what

you’re holding. Not to mention you miss watching everyone else. Why you’d cheat yourself out

of all that time to catch tells from other players, I have no idea.”

“I like it because when people use a lot of poker lingo, it usually means they’ve been playing

the game for a while,” says Souris. She pauses. “Which is why I immediately avoid those

people.”

“If you don’t know any lingo at all when you’re shooting the breeze with other players,

they’d definitely exploit that, because they would know you were a new player. On the other

hand,” says Rabbit, giving me a long, sideways glance, “it could be a great strategy to fool other

players into thinking you’re a fish when you’re not.”

I stare straight ahead, waiting for a chance to change the subject.

He puts his eyes back on the road, deep in thought. “Hmm.”

I pull out my phone, the new one Souris got for me. The screen flashes on, and I frown. “I

don’t understand this.”

“What’s the matter?” says Rabbit.

I hold up the phone. “I don’t think this is working. I called and texted every person in my

family last night and I haven’t gotten a single response.” Call me crazy, but the way Rabbit

straightens and grips the steering wheel makes me think he’s trying to stop himself from looking

in the rearview mirror at his sister.

From the backseat, Souris shows me her phone. “I don’t have a signal out here either. Once

we get closer to Sydney, I’m sure all your voicemails and texts will drop right in.” She leans

back out of sight, chuckling a little, like she’s remembering something funny.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just that my phone whistles when I get a text message, right? So when our plane

landed in Brisbane last week, all my text messages came in at once.”

“Yeah, that was really great,” says Rabbit, with zero enthusiasm. “First class sounded like a

catcalling construction crew for about five minutes. And you wonder why I prefer to fly

separately.”

“I thought that was to spare Mom the grief of losing both of her children in the same plane

crash.”

“No, it’s because—”

“That doesn’t work anyway,” I blurt out. When Rabbit shoots me a sidelong glance, I know

I’m not going to get away with leaving that thought unexplored. “Taking two different flights, I

mean.”

“Why not?” says Souris.

“Well, your odds of dying in a plane crash aren’t that great anyway…around one in ninety

million. You’d have to fly every day for the next 250,000 years before you’d be in a plane crash.

The odds are the same whether you fly together or separately. And even if the crash is fatal, your

chances of dying are only two out of three.”

“Really?” says Rabbit in that dry tone of his. “So ‘fatal’ only kills you two out of three times

these days? That’s good to know.” Before I can clarify, he says, “Just out of curiosity, are your

odds of dying in a fiery crash better or worse than the odds of being attacked by a shark?”

“Ha-ha.” Then I pause, knowing I’m going to regret what comes next. I take a deep breath

and plunge ahead. “They’re worse. But I only know that—” I raise my voice to be heard over

their ear-splitting laughter. “I only know that because of Dee!”

“Oh, sure, drag your sister into this,” says Rabbit, still enveloped in mirth, and trying hard

not to run us off the road, “one who conveniently can’t even be reached by phone to corroborate

your story.”

“No, I’m serious! You were wondering how I knew all that stuff about how people bet

differently when they’re using real money? Dee told me that. She’s writes papers on probability

and studies how people bet on stock markets and stuff.”

Rabbit stops laughing. “I sure hope that’s something besides a hobby.”

I roll my eyes. “She has a PhD in economics. It’s her job.”

“Gotcha. Is everyone in your family some kind of math genius?”

“Uh…” I have to weigh the question, separating out the “math” and “genius” components

from each other. I decide to set aside for the moment the fact that my dad’s a retired aerospace

engineer, and that all of my siblings except one have careers in science, engineering, or

technology. Instead I offer up this feint: “My mom’s a piano teacher.” She was actually a concert

pianist, but she did teach a few lessons after her arthritis got too bad to play professionally, so I

don’t feel too bad about my lie.

“Music’s just more math,” says Rabbit. “And that explains a lot, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Poker is nothing but math and probability. You’re able to turn cards into numbers. The best

players usually can.”

“I thought you said poker was all about playing people? Now it’s all math and probability?” I

shake my head. “You need to fine tune your message, young man, because I’m getting really

confused.”

He reaches over, takes my hand, and squeezes it. “For those of us who aren’t geniuses like

you, it is about playing people. How do you think we compensate?”

Normally any type of contact followed by a compliment would leave me too stupid to talk,

but my fascination with this guy tends to override everything else. “Okay, hold on. When I first

met you, I asked you if you were a player, and you said ‘no.’” I tug at the lap belt, creating some

slack so I can carefully shift onto my right hip and rotate a little towards him, sparing my poor,

straining neck. “Pardon me for being blunt, but I don’t believe you.”

He pulls his hand out of mine and puts it back on the steering wheel, a tactile rebuke that

stings worse than anything he could say. “I never said ‘no.’ I believe my words were ‘not

exactly.’”

“Lapin, if you don’t tell her, I will!” says Souris. “Everyone saw you guys being all lovey-

dovey together, and then you pulled your ‘white rabbit in shining armor’ routine with Talon.

Seriously? She’s going back to play the Main Event in less than two weeks…call me crazy, but

I’m pretty sure someone’s going to mention it to her sooner or later.”

He sighs.

“Talon Hawk,” I say. “When we left the bar that night, he said to make sure you taught me

everything you knew. I assume he wasn’t talking about your amazing journalism skills.”

He makes a guttural sound in his throat. “No, he wasn’t talking about journalism.”

“Are you a journalist?”

“I am now.”

I mull that over for a few seconds. “Do you ever answer anything in a way that people expect

you to?”

He smiles. “I’m good at being vague and unpredictable. It’s sort of a hard habit to break. You

can blame my old job.”

“So you’re saying you were a player?”

“I was, yeah.” He gets that distant look, the same one I saw the first day we danced around

the topic on the balcony in Surfer’s Paradise.

“Were you good?”

From the back seat, Souris barks with laughter. “What do you mean ‘was he good?’ He’s

placed in twelve tournaments, and he won the IPT Main Event two years ago, their biggest

payout ever. He’s still one of the best.”

I’m stunned. “Then—then why are you covering this tournament, and not playing in it?”

“It doesn’t matter, okay? The only thing that matters is that I know how to win.”

I turn forward again, settling back into my seat, thinking. “Is Mako a journalist too?”

“Oh-hoho!” Souris cackles from the back. “You’d better never let her hear you call her that.”

I frown. “I can’t in good conscience call a fully-grown human being ‘Queenie-baby.’ My

mind just won’t accept it. It’s like me calling you ‘Mouse.’”

“You didn’t seem to have any problem with ‘Rabbit.’”

“Oh, I have plenty of problems with Rabbit, it’s just that my comfort level with his name is

standing in line behind about a hundred more important things.”

“Wait—you mean you have even more issues with me?” he says.

“How did you start? Playing, that is.”

“My old job involved a lot of international travel, and a whole lot of time with nothing to do,

so a bunch of colleagues and I started throwing games together. They were pretty informal at

first, but it didn’t take long before they outgrew the homes of people willing to host them, so we

rented different venues and held local tournaments. Within a year we were hosting regionals for

Poker Global.”

I’m stunned. To be that involved for that long—to be that good—and then not play? It didn’t

make sense. “How is she your boss?” I say. “Queenie, I mean. If she’s one of the Final Nine,

how can she be your boss? Isn’t that sort of a conflict of interest?”

He and Souris exchange one of those looks again.

“Stop doing that!” I say.

He turns to me, looking guilty. “What?”

plotting “Stop looking at each other like that! If you’re trying to convince me that you’re not

to drive me out into the bush to feed me to a dingo, then stop with the conspiratorial looks. Just

say you don’t want to talk about it, or it’s none of my business, or you’ll tell me later or

something.”

Ahead of us, signs warning of an imminent reduction in speed ahead of yet another

roundabout, along with a bewildering array of navigational arrows shooting off into every

possible direction, including Sydney, catches my eye. Not just mine, apparently.

“We’re on the outside of the city,” says Rabbit, his voice terse. “Unless one of you knows

off-hand where I can find a dingo, how about a little bit of peace and quiet so I can find our

hotel?”

Chapter Thirteen

“What’s taking him so long?” I say, bracing against the chattering of my teeth. “It’s getting

chilly out here.” Standing on the beach, watching the waves roll in, I fold my arms against the

freezing drizzle blasting off the water. “And why couldn’t we just wait in the lobby?”

Rather than staying in Sydney itself, Rabbit followed the advice of an Australian

acquaintance who recommended staying across the harbor in the relatively quiet hamlet of

Manly Bay. Of course, there was no way we were going to be staying in a place called “Manly

Bay” without the two of them beating it to death at every opportunity. I’ve already had to hear

about the virile properties of the “Manly ferry,” the “Manly drugstore,” and the “Manly

grocery”—all banter I would’ve appreciated a lot more if I hadn’t basically been told to “shut

up” thirty minutes ago.

“Give him time,” says Souris. “He’s probably in the lobby, still reading a sign or something.”

“What sign?”

She smiles. “Any sign. All the signs. I don’t think Australians ever use a couple of words

when twenty will do just fine.”

I stare at her, waiting for what she’s saying to make sense. She takes a swipe at her runny

nose and does a few tap dancing moves in an effort to keep warm. “You haven’t noticed?”

“I guess not. Are you talking about signs in hotels?”

“Everywhere! You saw the road sign, right? ‘Next Overtaking Opportunity, 5 Kilometers?’”

“Yeah, I saw them. What’s an ‘overtaking opportunity’ anyway?”

“It’s a passing lane!” she says with glee.

I frown. “No way. Why not just say ‘Passing Lane?’”

“Right? Okay, okay,” she says, like we’re playing a game now, “how ’bout ‘refuge island?’

Any guesses?”

I vaguely remember seeing this sign in Nambucca Head. “An evacuation center or

something?”

“No!” she says with real enthusiasm. “It’s the median. The median in the road.”

Now I know she’s pulling my leg. “C’mon, Souris.”

“It’s true, I swear! Okay, you must’ve been too busy trying not to bleed to death on the beach

back in Surfer’s Paradise, because I think you missed the crown jewel.”

“Which was…?”

She holds her hands out like she’s framing a movie shot. “‘No Lifesaving Services Available

At This Location.’”

“Uh…you mean ‘No Lifeguard,’ right?”

“Hey, I’m just telling you what the signs say,” she says, smiling.

The corners of my mouth turn up the tiniest fraction, but she sees an opening and takes full

advantage. “I just saw this one a few minutes ago when we were walking to the boardwalk:

‘Accommodation Available Now.’” She waits for my response, eyes wide.

I shake my head. “No idea.”

“It was right outside a motel…”

“‘Vacancy?’”

“Right. Okay, one more, and I swear I’ll stop. ‘Please Arrest the Forward Momentum of

Your Car Entirely.’”

“Uh…‘Stop?’”

“Yes!”

Now I’m skeptical. Seeing my expression, she laughs. “Okay, not that one…but all the other

ones are totally real!”

She hasn’t chosen the best time to sport with me; I feel grumpy all over again, something she

at least has the good sense to notice. After a few minutes of bouncing and bobbing and

exclaiming “It’s cold!” she touches my arm. “Alice, listen. I’m sorry about—I mean, I feel

caught in the middle here, you know? I’m Lapin’s sister, and I’m your friend—well, at least I

was hoping we could be friends.”

I kick at the sand with my foot, feeling myself thaw towards her a little. A very little.

She lets out a long, weary exhale. “I—I know that my brother seems like he’s being a jerk

sometimes, but remember that he doesn’t know everything about your life, and you don’t know

everything about his, and I think that it just sets you both up for all kinds of misunderstandings.

Can you just—I mean, you guys were sort of thrown together unexpectedly, and you haven’t had

more than a few hours apart from each other since then. But I want you to know that I haven’t

seen Lapin act like this about a girl for a long time.”

I flush, warming from my toes to the ends of my hair follicles, and look down at the sand in

embarrassment.

“If—if you guys end up wanting to tell each other your life story, you’ll have all the time in

the world to fill in the blanks, you know? So maybe just give each other the benefit of the doubt

until you know each other better, that’s all I’m saying.”

All my good feelings evaporate. “If, by ‘the blanks,’ you mean my sister, then I’d say two

things: First of all, I may have ‘all the time in the world,’ but she doesn’t. Second, you told me

not to tell him about Munny. I mean, why would you say something like that unless—”

“I’m sorry. I was wrong, okay? I thought he might—I was worried he might try to write a

feature on you. I mean, he’s a journalist now; that’s his job. And your story—even without the

part about your sister—would’ve been a pretty big scoop for him. Then when he told me he

wanted to invite you to come to Sydney with us…well, I didn’t know what to think then.”

“Me neither,” I say. “And when you told me that he used to—with other women—that before

he changed, he would, you know…” I don’t know how to finish. How do you tactfully spin the

term “man-whore” to someone’s sister? I clear my throat. “Anyway, I thought maybe he was

using me, too.”

“Well, he’s not, okay?”

“How do you know?”

She snorts. “If my brother was using you, it would’ve spared me at least ten hours of

listening to him go on and on about how great you are, how beautiful, how smart, how funny,

how perfect you are, how lucky he is to have met you…ugh! You have no idea how much I’ve

had to listen to!”

I can’t help it—I glow a little. Well, a lot, maybe. She’s distracting you, I think. Focus. “If he

says those things to you, then why does it make him so uncomfortable to talk about Queenie?

Every time I bring up her name he either gets mad or he just shuts down.”

The look on her face reminds me instantly of Rabbit. “Lapin doesn’t have any feelings for

Queenie if that’s what you’re worried about,” she says. Then she turns away, shutting me out,

and we’re right back where we were when we started the conversation.

Rabbit appears, hotel cards in hand, out of breath, and strangely eager. “Sorry, guys, that

took a lot longer than I thought, and I wanted to make sure—” He stops when he sees me.

“You’re freezing!”

Before I can protest, he wraps me in a hug, rubbing my back and arms in an attempt to warm

me up.

“Here.” He releases me and takes off his leather jacket—that leather jacket—and before I

know it, I’m in it and feeling a lot warmer for it. “Come on, they’ve got the fireplaces going in

our rooms. We can warm up and talk about where we’re going to go tomorrow.”

“I don’t know why we couldn’t just come up to the rooms with you,” I grump.

“I, uh, wanted to be sure what they’d reserved was going to work for us before you saw the

rooms,” he says, trying for belated cheerfulness. “No need to haul everyone and everything up to

a bunch of suites if all we’re going to do is move.” He looks up through the rain at the clouds. “I

didn’t know it was like this out here.”

“It’s a five-star hotel,” I say. “What’s the worst that can happen—they forget to leave the

light on for you?”

His persistent jollity is downright annoying. “I don’t know…there was this one hotel that

forgot to turn down my bed. I had nightmares for weeks.” He takes my hand and kisses it. “What

can I say? I wanted everything to be perfect for you.”

Souris shoots me a look behind his back that says, See? Told you.

We walk in silence—all the way to the Pyramid Hotel—and through the ultra-modern glass

lobby that clearly draws inspiration from The Pyramid outside the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Some hotel flunky insists on showing us to the suite of rooms, even after Rabbit reminds him

that he was already given the grand tour while we stood outside and froze to death. The guy’s

physical presence alone needles me, because I want to broach the topic of my phone—which still

isn’t working, despite Souris’s assurances that getting closer to Sydney would do the trick.

“It’s our pleasure to have you with us, Mr. Montgomery,” the hotel guy oozes. “Please don’t

hesitate to let us know how we can make your stay an enjoyable one.” He opens the door wide,

and I walk in, thinking that I’ve succeeded in becoming desensitized to the grandeur of five-star

luxury; after all, I’ve all but forgotten what the suite in Surfer’s Paradise looked like.

Yeah, I was wrong.

Instead of the horizontal spaciousness I’m expecting, this suite is laid out vertically. I stop

walking, Souris jamming up behind me, my neck craning back as my eyes are coaxed from the

royal blue upholstery, cherry-wood and silver accents of the living room, all the way up to the

cathedral ceiling, where a bedroom loft overhangs the space, separated from the precipitous drop

by a thin silver railing.

“Whoa…cool!”

“You like it?”

I drop my purse on the table. “It’s amazing!”

Behind us, the hotel suck-up rattles away like a broken record. “Is there anything else I can

get for you? May I make an appointment for you in our spa? We have an award-winning wine

collection, and I’d be happy to—”

“Actually, there is something you can do for me,” I say, digging in my purse. I hand him my

phone. “I think this phone is broken, and I really need one that works.”

He takes it from me, looking keen about having something to do. “Of course, I’ll have it

replaced immediately, it should only take—”

“Actually, no,” says Rabbit, plucking it from the man’s hand. “It’s fine, thank you.”

The poor guy looks both crushed and mortified. Or maybe that’s just the way I look, because

I’m not sure that this actually just happened. I’m frozen to the spot, unable and unwilling to look

anyone in the eye after being so utterly and thoroughly humiliated.

“We’ll let you know if we need anything,” says Rabbit smoothly as he ushers him right

through the open door into the hallway.

The lock clicks home, and I try to consolidate the dozens of epithets, expletives, and

exclamations whirling through my mind into just a few choice words. “What. The. Hell?” I’m

shaking with the effort of keeping my voice from becoming utterly hysterical. After a few more

leave my mouth, the whole project becomes futile, my composure slipping away. “What the hell

are you doing?! Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you?”

Even Souris looks alarmed. “Lapin, forget this whole—”

“There’s nothing wrong with your phone,” he says, cutting his sister short before handing it

back to me.

“Yes. There. Is.” My hands are balled into fists now. “I’ve only told you this about a hundred

times between Nambucca Head and here. I can’t reach anyone, okay? I’ve tried calling, I’ve tried

texting, I’ve tried every single person in my family, and nothing works!”

He smiles. “Well, that’s because I took out the SIM card before I gave it to you.”

I feel like my eyes are bugging out of my head. “You what? But—but why would you do

that?”

“Simple: I didn’t want you talking to your family.”

His grin is so cocky, so…I don’t know…maddeningly self-congratulatory, that my head feels

like it’s been submerged in boiling water. I’ve never been angry enough to strike a person before,

to hit somebody—until now.never even felt the desire

I take a step towards him. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” I say, stabbing him in the

breastbone with my index finger with every emphasized word that follows. “If you had even the

idea how much pain you’ve caused me—and my family—in the last twenty-four faintest

hours…”

Rabbit steps backwards, eyes wide in shock as he tries to escape the violent prods of my

finger, his smug look gone, all his bluster and conceit nowhere to be found.

“…if you even had a heart, if you were any kind of man at all, you never, ever, in a million

years would’ve done something so fucking soulless.”

“Now see, if it were me,” I say, my familiar sarcasm floating down on us from above, “I

wouldn’t have led with that. I would’ve gone with something like ‘G’day’ or ‘Wow, aren’t you a

little hottie?’”

I feel like I’ve been plunged into a ventriloquism experiment gone awry. My hand flies to my

throat; I look up just in time to see what looks like me skipping down the silver spiral staircase,

although this “me” has brown hair instead of fire engine red, and appears to have lost all traces

of her limp. She shoots me a self-satisfied smile.

I blink once, twice, unable to trust what I’m seeing.

“No shit,” says a deeper voice. A tall, handsome guy wearing jeans and a red t-shirt reading

“Trust Me—I’m A Lawyer” leans over the loft railing and frowns at me. “I sure hope you’re not

going to be all whiney and bitchy like this the entire week, Faye, or I’m getting on the next plane

to LAX.” He looks suddenly amused. “What the hell did you do to your hair, little sister?”

“Get a little bored Down Under, did we?” my brunette self adds with a smirk.

A single shriek of disbelief escapes me before I stumble forward, trying to reach Dee,

holding my arms out for her, tears running down my face. I fall onto her, weeping hysterically,

unable to stop, powerless to explain.

“Okay, okay, hey, hey, hey…” Dee says, her voice shifting from sarcastic to soothing in an

instant. We somehow end up on the couch, my brother behind me, patting me on the back,

throwing out a typical stiff-upper-lip comment every once in a while to counter Dee’s nurturing

approach.

I’m not sure how much time goes by, but eventually I run out of tears and lift my head up. A

seasoned veteran of four sisters, Gabe’s hand immediately appears over my shoulder, a wad of

tissues clamped between his fingers.

“Thanks,” I sniff. I dab my eyes and blow my nose, and only then do I remember. “Oh, shit, I

forgot to—” I turn around, so used to having Rabbit and Souris at my fingertips that I’m

completely floored to find the space they were filling a few minutes before empty.

“Did you think your boyfriend was going to stick around and watch you do that?” says my

brother, most unhelpfully. “If we weren’t related, I would’ve left too. Actually…” He cocks his

head to the side. “Is it already too late for me to leave?”

Dee glares at him. “Shut up, Gabe. What’s going on, Faybey?”

Her use of my childhood nickname makes my eyes well with fresh tears. “Nothing, I just

thought—when you didn’t call me back—I just thought, you know…” I drop my face into my

hands, sobbing, thinking of Munny, wondering how we’re ever going to deal with what I know is

her inevitable loss.

Once she understands my problem, Dee covers her mouth with her hand and shakes her head,

her eyes wide with horror. “No, no, no, Faye, that’s silly! Munny had a really good day

yesterday, okay? A really good day. We told her about the shark attack, and she almost cried, she

was laughing so hard…wasn’t she, Gabe?”

“I was on tissue standby for her too,” he confirms. “I haven’t seen her laugh that much in

months.”

I envision my sister smiling—laughing even!—and my gloomy mood is immediately thrown

into reverse. “Really?” I swab at my face with the bundle of tissue, and try for a smile of my

own. “Well that’s—that’s really good news!”

Dee touches my hand and exchanges a look with Gabe. “And—and I don’t know exactly

what happened right before you guys got here, but you should probably know that we asked

Rabbit not to tell you we were coming. He said he’d do whatever he had to do so it would be a

surprise.”

“Oh. Oh, my God.” I close my eyes, trying to block out the horrible words I said to him.

My brother reads my mind. “Oh, Faye, he’ll get over it.”

“Yeah? How? Did you even hear what I said to him?”

He shrugs. “He’s a guy. We’re easy and stupid. Just go bat your eyes at him and beg for

forgiveness. It’ll take five minutes…three if you wear something low-cut.”

Dee scowls at him. “Gabe! Gross!”

“Hey, she asked.” He grabs me by the shoulders and twists me around so he can see my back.

“And if this ‘girlfriend of a high school jock with a rabbit mascot’ leather jacket thing isn’t just a

joke, you should keep this on too.” He heads into the kitchen and starts opening the cupboards.

“I’m starving. Got any snacks in here?”

I ignore him. “I can’t believe all this time he was trying to surprise me.”

“Other than the low-cut shirt thing, Gabe is right. I mean, I’m not supposed to tell you this—

we both sort of promised—but you’re not stupid and you would’ve figured it out ’cause you

know we’re all dead-ass broke. This was all his idea.” She motions to the room. “The hotel, the

plane tickets—he paid for all of it.”

I cover my face with my hands and groan. “This just gets worse!”

“You’re missing the point, Faye. All that work, all that time on the phone…no man does that

unless he’s crazy about someone.”

“Was crazy about someone.”

She snorts. “Shut up, okay? Just go talk to him.” With a furtive glance at the kitchen, she

says in a lower voice, “And if you happened to pack something a little on the tight, short skirt

side—well, I’m just sayin’…”

I frown. “You guys are the worst.”

She smirks. “No, we’re ‘worse,’” she corrects me. “‘Worst’ would be if Harlow was here

with him.” She jams her thumb in the general direction of our foraging brother.

“Well, I don’t think showcasing my shark bite in a short skirt is going to help things.”

Gabe comes back into the living room, a pile of chips in his hand. “Sure it will. Helpless and

sorry…we can’t resist it. You think you can you make your limp more pronounced without

making him suspicious?”

I eye him. “When did you go from international human rights attorney to matchmaking

charlatan?” I look at Dee. “Do you know where he went? Is his room next to ours?”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

I haul myself up from the couch. “Yeah, I suppose there is.” I turn to my brother. “What do

you think? Swollen nose and red eyes? Or wait until my head’s shrunk back to its regular size?”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “That’s the thing you girls never get. It doesn’t matter if you just woke

up, or just got done bawling, or just finished your make-up. When a guy’s all love-sick over a

chick, she looks exactly the same to him all the time: perfect.”

I give him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Gabe.”

“Think anyone will care if I help myself to the soda?” he says by way of a response.

I smile and hobble off in the direction of the door.

Chapter Fourteen

My mind knows it’s the middle of the winter here in August, but my hard-wired circadian

rhythm can’t seem to accept it. So my first thought when the elevator doors open and I round the

corner into the lobby is: It’s dark! followed by a long, drawn out, mental Whoooa.

The immense, train station-sized lobby of the Pyramid Hotel glows with the light of hundreds

of candles sparkling like stars against the glass of the skylight that separates us from the dusky,

twilight blue above it. Clusters of frosted votives dance and flicker, the light caught and released

by thousands of strands of translucent silver suspended from far, far overhead. Distorted

staircases cascade midway from the heights, running lengthwise along the walls and down to the

lobby floor like white picket fences after an earthquake.

The designated hotel candle lighter, a pretty woman in a beige sweater and floral skirt, moves

between the constellations of holders arranged on round, black lacquered coffee tables that sit

between the plush silver armchairs, chaises, and divans making up the seating areas spread

across the space. She touches a small, sputtering wand to the last of the candles and freezes, her

mouth slack, staring.

And no wonder. With his platinum hair, heather gray t-shirt, blazing white jeans, and the

silver-rimmed lenses of those ubiquitous gray glasses, Rabbit perches on the edge of a divan,

elbows on his thighs, hands clasped in front of him, staring pensively into the candles like

Christmas tinsel eye candy. The picture of him is so beautiful, so perfect, that I stand there,

partially obscured by a glossy, black grand piano, and a massive, overflowing crystal vase of

white flowers, and watch him.

I come out of hiding, grabbing a crystal votive as I slowly cross the gray marble to where

he’s sitting, making generous use of the rubber-tipped cane on the way. He’s so lost in thought

that he doesn’t even notice me standing there, doesn’t even look up until I tilt the candle, a little

bit at a time, letting one drop of wax fall from the edge onto his bare forearm.

He yanks his arm back and looks up, the surprise on his face quickly replaced by a look of

happy caution. “What was that for?”

I leave the candle on the table and sink down next to him, letting the flickering lights

hypnotize me. “I used to love Greek mythology. My favorite story was the one about Psyche and

Cupid…you know it?”

“Refresh my memory.”

“Cupid caught his hand on one of his own arrows right before he was about to shoot Psyche,

so he falls in love with her and marries her. The only catch is that she’s not allowed to look at

him—ever. He only comes home when it’s dark, and she’s not allowed to light candles or lamps

when he’s there.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him smirk. “And she agreed to this because…?”

I shrug. “Who knows? Maybe he had a great personality. Anyway, somehow they were

happy…until her sisters convinced her that she was married to a monster. Her curiosity got the

best of her, so she snuck up on him with a candle while he was sleeping to see for herself.”

“Wouldn’t a flashlight have been better? An open flame near linen is always a bad idea.”

I smile. “Probably, but it wouldn’t be that great of a story.”

“You’re right. Tell me the rest.”

“While she was leaning over him, trying to see him, she pricked her arm on one of his

arrows. She instantly fell head over heels for him, so much so that she couldn’t move; she just

stood there and stared at him. Of course, the candle was still burning away, and a drop of wax

fell on his arm and woke him up. He was so angry with her that he cursed her and disappeared

forever.”

The seconds tick by, neither of us speaking, both of us transfixed by the candles. Finally he

says, “Did the Ancient Greeks ever write anything funny—like slapstick? I mean, I think I speak

for everyone when I say that there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of well-written physical

comedy.”

My mouth turns up at the corners; I can’t help it. “I was actually thinking that if he’d had

something like a gun safe in the house, none of that would’ve happened. Who sleeps with a

bunch of arrows anyway? It’s a miracle no one had been seriously hurt before then.”

“Good point.”

“I always liked the ending though.”

“You did? I don’t think I heard the same ending you did. Maybe you should tell it again.”

I smile. “Sure, it was sad, but really—what were the odds that it would’ve worked out?”

“True. There was that whole problem with her getting old and dying at some point.”

“Well, besides that. People don’t like to admit it, but we have gods today…they’re movie

stars and rock stars and all the people who are famous for being famous. I mean, there’s a reason

they all marry each other. They’ve transcended the unwashed masses, and we’re better off not

trying to be part of that world, because they have the power to take it all away and disappear, you

know?”

I stare straight ahead, even when I see him turn his head to look at me. “Alice?”

“Hmm?”

“Why do I feel like we’ve stopped talking about Greek mythology?”

“We still are.” I frown. “Sort of.”

He covers one of my hands with his before resuming his candle-watching vigil. Just the feel

of his skin on mine—I can’t help it—makes me radiate goodwill into the universe. Another few

minutes pass by before he speaks again.

“I hope you’re not upset—I mean, I know you were hoping it would stay private—but Souris

told me about your sister,” he says quietly. “I’m really—”

“She’s fighting.” I clench my jaw against the tears that are always there, always threatening.

“She’s a fighter.”

His smile is sad. “I have no trouble believing that at all.” He gives my hand a gentle squeeze.

“Back in the car, right before we got here…I was rude to you for no reason at all. I’m sorry.”

“Rabbit, I didn’t come down—”

He holds up a hand to silence me, but his eyes are kind. “Let me finish. You deserve an

explanation.” He smirks. “Especially after that oh-so-subtle Greek mythology parable. Well

played, by the way.”

I’m not sure what to say, but I’m interested to hear what his takeaway lesson from the story

was, because I’m pretty sure it’s not going to match up with the reason I told it. The candles have

turned out to be a real conversation aid, though, and I can tell that he’d much rather stare at those

when he speaks than look at me, a tack that has my wholehearted support.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he says, his tone droll, “my sister and I speak French. And the

reason we speak French is because our grandparents came to the U.S. from France in 1945, so

our mother spoke French. But what most people don’t know is that my grandfather was a French

diplomat before World War II. He obviously gave all that up when he got his American

citizenship, but he still had connections and contacts all over the world, and he stayed in touch

with those people. When my mother finished college, she worked her way up through the ranks

of the State Department in a bunch of different jobs until she was chosen to be the American

ambassador to France.”

“Oh! Oh, wow.”

He smiles. “Yeah, being the kid of Ambassador Montgomery was pretty great, I’m not going

to lie. I was twelve years old when that happened, and our whole family was transplanted to

Paris. Being an ambassador’s kid wasn’t normally glitz and glamour, but…well, it was Paris.

And our grandfather’s legacy preceded our arrival, and it was like our mother took on this, I

don’t know, ‘mantle of celebrity’ I guess is the best way of putting it.”

“Makes sense.”

“For four years we had a huge house and servants and drivers. We were petted and favored,

and dressed up and taken to parties—everything from the Cannes Film Festival to Paris Fashion

Week. Weekend trips to Monaco to visit the royal family weren’t uncommon.”

My mouth is hanging open far enough to trawl for deep-sea fish. “Child of privilege” I

suspected, but this…

“At the end of the four years, we went back to the States, and it was as if—” He stops,

struggling to find the right words. “It was culture shock, that’s the best way of putting it. We

were still pretty wealthy by American standards, and we lived in Washington D.C., and there

were still parties and stuff like that for my parents, but kids weren’t caught up in the lifestyle in

the States the way they were encouraged to do in Europe. Souris left for college, and I was just

this weird kid who had a funny accent who didn’t know how to drive a car or play football, and

who thought binge drinking sort of missed the point.”

With one finger, he pushes the side of one of the crystal candle holders again and again,

rotating it in a stuttering, misshapen circle. “And boy, did I miss that life…the money, the

parties, ‘being seen.’” He smiles. “Not that I wanted to work for any of it, mind you. The way I

saw it was that it had been taken from me, and I thought it was, I don’t know…an injustice that

someone would eventually rectify.”

“Souris,” I say, “did she—”

He shakes his head. “Souris was always the more grounded of the two of us, just like our

mom. They both understood in a way that I didn’t that the lifestyle was just part of a job—

something to be tolerated, even something to entertain you and amuse you, but they both knew it

wasn’t real.” He stops poking at the candle, returning his hand to rest on his leg. “I graduated

from high school feeling angry, and I stayed that way—all the way through college and even

after that.”

“What did you do after college?”

He smiles. “What else? I applied to join the Foreign Service.”

I let out a long, low whistle between my teeth. “Wow. I’ve heard it’s easier to get into

Harvard than to be accepted into the Foreign Service.”

“That’s true, but remember that I didn’t think of it as something I had to earn, I thought of it

as something I deserved.”

“Did you…I mean, were you—”

He nods. “Oh, I was accepted, sure.”

I stare at him, disbelieving. “Wait a minute. Your ‘old job,’ the one that involved all that

‘international travel’…are you saying you were a diplomat?”

“Well, not right away. The State Department sends you to the Foreign Service Institute to be

prepped for your first duty station, so off I went like a good little diplomat-in-the-making.” He

chuckles, but it’s totally devoid of humor. “And then the delusion came to a screeching halt.”

“Why?”

“Because I hadn’t been born yet when my mother started her career. When she was working

her way up through the ranks, I was still in grade school. When she was shipped out of the

country, Souris and I stayed back in the States with our dad or with our grandparents. When she

got the ambassadorial appointment, it was the first time we’d ever gone out of the country to

live.”

I shake my head, confused. “What does your mom’s career have to do with your delusion?”

“Because it never occurred to me that before the glamour of France came the dirt of Mali, or

the civil war of Nicaragua.”

I raise an eyebrow. “They send you to places like that?”

“Sure they do!” he says, eyes sparkling with high good humor. “That’s exactly where they

send entry-level diplomats. After you cut your teeth on a few civil wars and a famine or two, you

might get lucky and be given a plum post somewhere in the Second World.”

For some reason, I don’t think this is nearly as amusing as he does. “It sounds like the Peace

Corps or something. What kinds of places did you go?”

He ticks them off on his fingers. “Benin, Comoros, Vanuatu, Seychelles.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Are those even real places?”

He laughs. “The fact that you’re even asking me sort of makes my point.”

“Now I see why you had so much time on your hands to organize poker tournaments.” I

pause. “So I’m guessing you never made it back to Paris.”

“I don’t know…does Laos count?”

“Isn’t that in Asia somewhere?”

He nods. “Next to Vietnam and Thailand.”

“Why did they send you there? Do you speak, uh…” I have no idea how to turn the country

name into a language, so I just let it hang and wait for him to fill it in.

“French?” He grins. “I thought we already established that.”

“French? They speak French in Laos?”

“It’s a former French colony, so yeah. All the countries I was sent to were Francophile

countries. And that’s why I happened to be in Laos four years ago when their Imperial

Highnesses Prince and Princess Akishino of Japan paid an official visit.” His tone goes dead.

“And that’s where I met Himeko Tanaka.”

He says this like I should know the name. “Who’s that?”

“Himeko Tanaka, known to a privileged few as ‘Mako,’ better known to most people as

‘Queenie-baby.’”

I’m confused by all the names being thrown at me. “Wait—what’s her real name?”

He lets out a huff of breath that isn’t quite a chuckle. “Himeko Tanaka is her real name.

Himeko means ‘princess-child’ in Japanese.”

“Queenie-baby,” I murmur. “So that’s why people call her that.”

“That’s exactly right.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So where did ‘Mako’ come from?”

“Mako was just a short version of Himeko, and it just happens to be—”

“A species of shark,” I finish for him. “Poker player. Shark.” I smile sardonically. “I get it.”

“That too, but Mako is also the first name of the Emperor’s granddaughter, Princess Mako.”

He smiles. “And the name means ‘child of truth’ in Japanese which, if you know anything about

the Tanaka family, gives it a certain irony.”

That last bit goes right over my head. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me any of this.”

“Because I want you to understand how I got involved with Queenie.” He frowns. “And why

you can’t simply dismiss her as just another Final Niner at the Main Event.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

“We met at an official function in Laos, and I was—I mean, she was—” he stammers.

“I saw her, Rabbit. She’s beautiful.”

His expression grows dark. “On the outside, yeah, she is. And despite her name, she’s not a

member of the royal family, not even close. Her mother was a diplomat, same as mine, which is

why she was there. Me and Queenie—we understood each other. And all of a sudden, it was all

back, just like that.” He releases my hand to snap his fingers.

“What was?”

“That life—the one I had in France as a teenager, only this time I was an adult and it was…”

There’s a glow on his face like I’ve never seen before, like he’s remembering things I’ll never

experience (and probably don’t want to know about). “It was one never-ending party,” he

finishes. “The private jets and yachts, the vacations and celebrity parties—it was all back.”

“But it did end.”

Just like that, the glow is gone. “Oh yeah, it ended all right.”

“How? Why?”

“It wasn’t long after we met that Queenie started playing professional poker, and she was

good. She was so good that her family bought a bunch of regional Asian and European

tournaments and consolidated them into the IPT, just for her, just so she could have the

international prestige her mother thought she deserved.”

I’m having a hard time digesting this information. “Wow,” I say finally. “And I was excited

when my dad co-signed on a car loan for me after college.”

He laughs. “By that point, my perspective was too skewed to appreciate anything on a

normal scale, believe me. I mean, I was buying cars for my family.”

“But that’s not a bad thing.” I shrug. “So you were rich. Lots of people are rich. So what?”

“Because it never occurred to me that the party could ever end.”

I look around at the grandeur of the Pyramid Hotel and smile. “I think you’re still doing

pretty okay.”

He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not this. Not money. That’s not what I’m talking

about. I’m talking about access. All the money in the world doesn’t equal access.”

“Access to what?”

He groans. “It—it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t already know, Alice.”

I bristle. “Well, I’m sorry I’m such a commoner, but you’re right—I don’t know. And if you

haven’t been listening to yourself, then I’ll just state the obvious: despite all your money, you’re

just a commoner now too. So what are you saying? That you miss your old life? That you want it

back?”

He seems to shrink—to turn in on himself, to fade even—like this very question has taken

him many, many times to some dark places in the deep of night. He looks into the candles for a

long time, like he needs the light to find his way back from that place. Finally he says, “No. No, I

don’t think I do.”

“Could you? Get it back, I mean.”

“Sure I could.”

“So why wouldn’t you do it?”

We’ve both been hypnotized by the candles for so long, I’m actually startled when he tears

his eyes away and looks at me. “I would’ve thought that was obvious.”

I hold my breath, a little precipitously it turns out.

He glances at his arm where the wax has solidified into a pearly white oval. “I’d have to

adjust your Greek myth to suit my experience better, but suffice to say when I held up that

candle to get a better look at Mako, I found out that I actually was with a monster, and her

mother was the angry god who could make it all disappear.” He presses his index finger and

thumb together and flicks the wax off his arm.

“So her family owns the IPT,” I say. “In the end, it’s just another business. You really think

her mother would jeopardize the reputation of her business interests just to retaliate against her

daughter’s ex-boyfriend?”

He turns back for another staring contest with the candles. “I’m afraid it isn’t quite that

simple. Not anymore.”

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?”

He takes off his glasses and tosses them onto the table before rubbing his eyes. “Because her

mother bought the publication I work for, and made Queenie the editor-in-chief.”

“Oh.” I sit there, staring into the candles, thinking this over, mulling the implications of this

information. “But I don’t understand why she’d jeopardize her diplomatic appointment, her

connections to the Japanese royal family over something so—so, I don’t know…petty. I mean,

all because you broke up with her daughter?”

He bestows another one of those ‘Aww, ain’t that cute?’ smiles on me. I’m feeling pretty

offended, and I’m about to tell him so, when he turns his entire body towards me. Before I have

time to process what’s happening, his fingers are racing across the skin of my neck, sweeping my

hair from where it’s hanging in front, up over my shoulders until it’s flowing down my back. His

eyes, more bewitching than any candle, immediately put me back into that same trance. He holds

me in place, just with his eyes, while he brings his hands back the same way they came, his

fingers dancing across the sensitive skin on the back of my neck, stopping when they’re under

my ears. With his thumbs, he brushes the apples of my cheeks and my cheekbones once, twice,

before pulling my head forward into an unexpected, forceful kiss.

I think he’s going to end the kiss and release me—after all, we are in the middle of the

lobby—but he seems to have other plans. He leans into me so fast that I don’t have time to

rebalance myself, and I drop backward onto the divan, his hand on my back turning the

movement into more of a controlled fall. Our feet are still basically on the floor, and we’re both

cranked at awkward angles, but I could care less about that. Gone are the more innocent kisses of

Nambucca Head, replaced by skill as sophisticated and sexy as the setting. The hand on my back

pulls me into him—hard—and I unconsciously tilt my hips up against him…

“Ow!”

He immediately pulls away. “Sorry, did I hurt you?”

I shake my head, so disappointed that it’s over I could weep. “My bandage. It—I don’t know.

It was tugging on the stitches or something. Sorry.”

Suddenly, my brother’s voice booms down on us. “Well I would say ‘get a room,’ but since

you both have more than one, I don’t know what to tell you.”

We look up to find Gabe standing over us, a bemused expression on his face, with Souris and

Dee not far behind. He looks over my bare legs and smirks. “Nice skirt, Alice Faye.”