Lost Light

31

On the flight back to Los Angeles I tried to refocus on the case. But it was a fruitless effort. I had spent a good part of the night watching Eleanor win several thousand dollars from five men at a table down in the Bellagio poker room. I had never watched her play at any length before. It is fair to say she embarrassed the other players, cleaning out all but one of them, and even he was left with only a single stack of chips by the time she cashed out five racks of her own. She was a cold, hard player who was as impressive as she was mysterious and beautiful. I spent my life learning to read people. But I never read anything off of her while she was playing. There was not a tell anywhere in her game as far as I could see.

But when she was finished with those men she was also finished with me. Outside the poker room she told me she was tired and had to go. She said I couldn’t go with her. She didn’t even offer me a ride to the airport. It was a short good-bye. We parted with a kiss as lacking in passion as our moments in the suite above had seemingly been full of it. We parted without promises of rejoining or of even calling each other again. We just said good-bye and I watched her walk away through the casino.

I got to the airport on my own. But once on the plane I couldn’t let it go. I tried opening the murder book but it did me no good. I kept thinking about the mysteries. Not the good moments, the smiles and the memories and the making love. I thought about our abrupt departure and how she had skillfully avoided the question when I’d asked if she was with somebody. She’d said she wasn’t in love but that didn’t really answer the question. I thought about why she had wanted me to stay in a hotel room and why she wouldn’t open her car’s trunk. On the front page of the murder book I wrote down her license plate number from memory. After doing it I felt like I had in some way betrayed her and I then crossed it out. But even as I did this I knew I could not cross it out in my memory.