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listening to Ginny’s moans.
    “I told you, it’s not here. His wife…he was still married. His wife is inheriting the money, or maybe his…I don’t know. All I know is that I’m not getting a dime.”
    “Where does the wife live?” he asked as he walked over to the trash. Ginny shrugged.
    Clutch felt lightheaded. A buzz started from behind his forehead to travel down, making his inside hum. He watched the man hold the jar of his ashes over the garbage.
    “Noooo!” Ginny screamed. “Please, if I get anything I’ll give it to you. I don’t want anything but Clutch.”
    “Where does the wife live?” he demanded.
    “I don’t know, I told you.”
    Dots swam before Clutch’s eyes as his ashes floated in a graceful arc from the urn to the garbage.
    “I always said Clutch Henderson was trash.”
    Ginny was punched once in the face. A white business card fluttered onto the floor next to her foot.
    “Expect to be contacted. My boss, Victor, will be wanting to speak to you. You,” he said as he pointed to her, his eyes serious. “Be ready for his call.”
    Ginny clutched her cheek, her mascara running down her face like a macabre clown.
    What could the loan shark have to say to me? she wondered. She couldn’t pay Clutch’s debts; she barely had enough to pay her own bills. She hoped they wouldn’t bother Ruby; she worried her bottom lip. The kid had enough on her head, what with rehab and her crazy mother.
    The door slammed behind her. Ginny slid to her knees crying as she crawled to the scatter of ashes on the floor next to the waste bin. With bloody hands she swept them into a pile. Her tooth lay whitely in the middle of the mess.

CHAPTER THREE
    T elly stood outside the Bellagio, the soaring music matching the movement of the fountains. Spouts of water shot up with each rich note sang by Andrea Bocelli, and he wondered, too, if it was indeed time for him to say good-bye. He was miserable at this game. He was always the top player at his weekly game with his buddies and had played online with pretty good results. Yet, somehow in the casino, he felt like the country mouse among the city mice. All his moves, his experience, left his head. They intimidated him with their private poker language. No matter how much he looked it up and studied the verbiage, he always missed the one they used at the table that night. Telly was shy, and sometimes the aggressive behavior stunned him. He had to admit, though, it excited him too. Sitting with the grizzled group of hard-drinking, tough-talking poker players was thrilling. However much he loved the atmosphere, he couldn’t read the other players. Gretchen had said he should get it out of his system, but that was almost a month ago. She wasn’t so generous about the idea anymore. Something was bothering her, and that worried Telly. The poker playing was so different from what he was used to. When Telly sat at the table, he tried not to feel like the skinny kid with nerd glasses, the one all the other kids pushed around. It was mysterious. If he squinted just right, they couldn’t tell he was so new he could barely contain his excitement when he hit a hand. The Bellagio was cool, the fountains were cool, and saying you were a professional poker player was cool. Telly had wanted to be cool his whole life. There was some indefinable thing about certain people that made them cool. The way they answered, the swagger, the clothing they wore. No matter how much Telly tried, he never had the cool factor, except for when he sat at a poker table. Or so he thought, until tonight. The wizened lady poker player tweaked his ego. She saw through him, and soon so did the others. Who was he fooling?—he was a computer nerd who was trying to take a step out of his boring box to live a dream. It wasn’t as though he’d quit his job, he’d told Gretchen. He’d sent out his résumé and gone on interviews, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted more. This was his chance to break the