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“You give me something and I’ll give you something.” The problem is that she so overestimates her bargaining power that you’re embarrassed for her. She’s negotiating with counterfeit currency—her professional expertise, soon her sexuality—though she won’t find out what a fraud she is until way too late. A problem of equivalences haunts the story—what does Ford have that’s equal to that gun? Not one thing.
    Nevertheless she marches straight over to the House of Games, a seedy pool hall–bar with a backroom poker game, striding in like she owns the place. (Psychotherapy consumers in the audience will be laughing bitterly into their popcorn, accustomed as we are to the brutal finitude of the fifty-minute hour.) “What the fuck is it?” Mike (Joe Mantegna) demands, strolling onscreen, backlit as a man of mystery should be. When he steps into the light, the first thing you notice is how good he looks in that suit, if maybe a little slick—you can practically smell his aftershave wafting into the theater. “You think you’re a tough guy, I think you’re just a bully!” Ford upbraids him on her patient’s behalf, after telling him why she’s there. Apparently impressed with her mastery of the situation, Mike compliments her on her skills of perception. “How’d you size me up so quick, that I’m not some hard guy who’s going to rough you up or something?”
    â€œWell, in my work…” she begins.
    â€œWhat is your work?” he naturally inquires.
    â€œNone of your business,” she tells him tartly, all business.
    Okay, we’ve been here before: the heiress and the gangster, the lady and the vulgarian she cuts down to size with her classiness and poise. Ford demands that Mike cancel Billy’s debt, which occasions the film’s second exchange, this one initiated by him. He’ll tear up Billy’s IOU if Ford pretends to be his girlfriend and spies on another player in a high stakes poker game. ( Pretend to be his girlfriend? You already know she’s dying to.) What she’s supposed to look for is a “tell” that this player is bluffing. A tell, as Mike explains it, is a behavior that gives something away. Margaret herself has a tell—she gestures with her nose toward the hand in which she conceals a chip, meaning he can read her secret correctly every time, as he proceeds to demonstrate. In other words, he can see her in ways she can’t see herself, which is a sexy quality in a man.
    Now installed in the back room in the role of Mike’s girlfriend and drawn in by her seeming ability to discern the other gambler’s ostentatious tell, she offers to stake his hand with a personal check for six grand at a crucial point in the game. Suddenly things get tense, the other gambler brandishes a gun … which on closer view appears to be leaking water. Whereupon Margaret retrieves her check, whereupon all the players chuckle and break frame—ah, they’d been setting her up, turning her into a mark. The whole poker game had been staged to con her out of her money.
    â€œIt was only business … nothing personal,” says Mike, unperturbed, handing her a chip. “Here’s a souvenir of your escape from the con men.” This elicits an actual smile from Ford—a crack in the façade, finally . When she laughs she’s a different person, like the uptight secretary who suddenly lets her hair down, though Margaret’s hair is too short to either put up or let down. “You’re a lovely woman,” Mike murmurs meaningfully later that night, all oleaginous charm, putting her in a cab. And bidding him goodnight, in the soft glow of the streetlight, she suddenly does look a lot less like an iceberg.
    What a great move: letting Margaret see them trying to con her and failing to; letting her think she’s outsmarted them. Flattering her