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he’d even left this barstool.
    “Any particular reason he left?” Gunther asked. “Or you think maybe you just drove him away all by your own charming self?”
    “What are you implying by that?”
    Head in hand, leaning heavily on the bar, Gunther motioned to Kevin — two glasses of anything, just make them strong. “I mean maybe Boyd starts getting the idea he hangs around you much longer, he’ll wind up with a crotch like a Ken doll, watching you barbecue whatever you managed to cut away.”
    Madeline jabbed the cigarette at him. “Don’t you start with me, Gunther, don’t you dare. As far as Boyd Dobbins is concerned, I was the frigging geisha girl he’d always wanted.”
    Gunther snorted. “Not that you see too many geisha girls with stretch marks.”
    “I’m closing my eyes now. And I’m counting to ten. If you say one word before I’m finished — one word — then I swear I will find the sharpest thing in my purse and stick it through your hand.”
    Kevin brought two whiskeys, neat, a welcome diversion. While Madeline counted, Gunther drank and thought how remarkable his forbearance with her had been these past months. It was the rare man who could step aside and let his woman make time with another man. Madeline had opened both her home and legs to Boyd Dobbins, a purely mercenary act, knowing that his rogue dingus was the key to controlling the rest of him. But mercenary motives made them no less naked on those afternoons when Boyd dropped by before their shifts at the Ivory Coast, dealer and pit boss in bed together in more ways than one.
    Gunther had insisted on hiding in the bedroom closet one day, the acid test — could he handle this infidelity for the duration? He found that he could. Amazingly pragmatic about the situation. That Madeline most workday afternoons wrapped her erstwhile showgirl’s legs around Boyd’s frantically bobbing ass and begged for mercy was just a cost of doing business. Still, Gunther did look forward to the day when he would put a bullet through Boyd’s head. Call it Boyd’s cost of doing business.
    And Boyd Dobbins had hoodwinked them both? Somebody at this bar had committed a serious judgmental error.
    Madeline made it to ten, then tipped back her whiskey. “His girlfriend found out about us. I don’t know how — maybe Boyd talks in his sleep. Like I’d know what he does in his sleep? She showed up at my place yesterday afternoon five minutes after he got there and went on a rampage. Corn-fed-looking bitch, you know what she did? She destroyed that big fern out on the deck. Started throwing cactus all over, even tried to hit me with one. I was picking spines out of my foot all day.”
    When Madeline sighed, he could tell the drink was working a calming magic on her.
    “Last night Boyd and I went on like usual. Honestly, Gunther, I didn’t have any idea he was planning on running out. We’ve only skimmed a little over seven hundred thousand — who quits there? State lotteries, nobody even much notices anymore until they get into eight figures.”
    “So let me guess.” Gunther was ready for the bottom line. “Everything’s just peachy, you think, until you get to work this afternoon and there’s a vacancy at Boyd’s table.”
    “I stayed awhile, then told the shift boss I was getting sick — blamed it on oysters from the bar. He bought it. Six people got sick last week from the slimy things.”
    “Boyd go by himself, you think, or you think maybe he took your little cactus-tosser with him?”
    “No, she’s still around, I just came from there. She thinks it was just the sex, she doesn’t have a clue.”
    “Maybe that was an act. Maybe Boyd left her behind to wrap up some business and she’ll meet him later.”
    “My ass. He’s left her as high and dry as he left me. And she didn’t see it coming. Any woman knows that look when she sees it. You wouldn’t understand.”
    Gunther sighed. A man could get tired of hearing that. To hear Madeline