My Stepfather Lost Me in a Poker Game, Then I Cleaned Him Out novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Bail Counter

Aimee learns Russ bet her twice before and won, that Andre holds her mother's house as security, and that she sleeps where Andre says; at 2am Russ is in the waiting room with her mother in her nightgown.

"You were at both games," I said, "and you let him do it?"

Laurent didn't look away.

"Last November a car dealer from Mobile put ninety thousand dollars against you," he said.

"In April it was a man off the high-limit floor, with two hundred thousand. Russ won both hands."

"And nobody said a word."

"Nobody at that table says words, Aimee. That's why it's that table."

The old man in the church suit had forgotten his bail receipt completely.

"What happens to the girl when he wins?" I asked.

"Nothing," Andre said. "He keeps the money. You stay home and sweep up."

So that was what I was.

I wasn't the debt.

I was the bait, the thing on the felt that made rich men bet more than they should.

I put both hands flat on the counter so nobody would see them shake.

"That was the free one," I said. "I want today's."

Andre glanced at Laurent.

Then he reached under the counter and slid a sheet of paper across the stacks of cash.

It was a lien, stamped by the county.

My father's house on East Beach was listed on it, with my mother's name, and Russ's signature over the words attorney in fact.

"He put the house up against what he owes me," Andre said. "Two years ago. Signed for your mama with that paper in his robe."

"She'd never have let him."

"She didn't. He did."

He tapped the address with one thick finger.

"I own the roof your mama sleeps under, sweetheart. Every night he loses, I own a little more of it."

"Then why haven't you taken it?"

"Because I want my money, not a house with a crying woman in it."

He folded the lien and put it in his shirt pocket.

"Now here's my price for your price. Under my roof, you do what I say."

"Is your roof the one over this office?"

"It's the one over you."

He pointed at the ceiling.

"I live upstairs. You'll live upstairs."

Laurent stood and buttoned his jacket.

He had a blue deck in his hand, and he turned it over and over in his long fingers without looking at it.

It was soft at the corners.

He put it in his inside pocket.

"I'll come for you Tuesday," he said to me.

"Tuesday's mine too," Andre said.

"We split the pot, Andre." Laurent didn't raise his voice. "We split the month."

He nodded to the woman in scrubs on his way out.

The bell over the door rang behind him.

Andre's apartment was one long room over the office, with the Howard Avenue sign buzzing red through the blinds.

There was a gun safe, a leather couch, a kitchen with a pot already on the stove, and one bed.

It was big enough for a man his size, and it was made with hospital corners.

"Bed's yours," he said.

"Where do you sleep?"

"Couch. Door stays open."

"So you can watch me?"

"So I can hear the phone downstairs." He looked at me. "And so I can watch you."

At least he was honest about it.

He cooked red beans.

He burned the rice anyway, and swore at it in French, and threw the pot in the sink.

"Don't laugh," he said.

"I'm not laughing."

"You're laughing with your face."

I ate two bowls of beans over burned rice at his counter.

Brandi texted me twice while I ate.

"Russ told the whole break room you went on a vacation. A VACATION. Where are you??"

"Tell you tomorrow," I wrote back. "I'm okay. Don't let him near you."

I called home three times.

Russ didn't answer, and my mother couldn't.

At eleven Andre turned off the lights and lay down on the couch with his boots still on.

The couch was too short for him by a foot.

His feet hung off the end, and the red light from the sign lay in stripes across his chest.

His sheets smelled like cedar and soap and him.

I lay in his bed in my father's grey hoodie and stared at the ceiling.

I thought about his hands on the counter, how big they'd looked next to the stacks of money.

I thought about them a lot longer than I meant to.

He'd stood beside Russ at the wedding.

I reminded myself of that, and kept my eyes on the ceiling.

At two in the morning a buzzer went off under the floor.

Andre was on his feet before I was awake.

There was a small screen by the door that showed the waiting room downstairs.

He looked at it, and then he looked at me.

"Get up," he said. "Your stepdaddy's here."

I came to the screen.

Russ was standing in the waiting room in his golf shirt, smiling up at the camera.

Beside him, under the fluorescent lights, sat my mother in her wheelchair.

She was in her nightgown.

She had no shoes on, and her bare feet were on the cold tile.

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