“I am.” She kept shuffling the cards. “Born and bred.”
“What’s your game?”
“Blackjack.”
“Deal,” he said, gesturing to the cards. “People like country music everywhere, and we’re still below the Mason-Dixon Line.”
“Thewhatline?”
“Well, back in the day Maryland and Pennsylvania were squabbling over their borders, so they called in these two surveyors, Mason and Dixon, to settle it. That line was meant to keep folks from fighting over land, but by the time the Civil War rolled around it had turned into a whole lot more. People started seeing it as the split between the North and the South, especially when it came to slavery. Now, it’s not an official war boundary, but ask anybody from back then and they’d tell you it might as well have been.”
“Oh, I remember reading about that in school.” She felt embarrassed for not knowing what it was, especially since Old Hickory seemed to be some sort of authority on the subject. At least he didn’t rub it in. Derrick would have laughed at her for not knowing what it meant. “Do you have another deck of cards?”
“Don’t think so.” He shrugged. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to beat you if we only use one.”
He chuckled, his dimples nearly hidden by his beard. “I seriously doubt that.”
They played ten rounds of blackjack and she beat him every time. He insisted they play again, but as tempting as it was they’d arrived in DC and she wanted a drink. Somewhere he wasn’t the main attraction, and her ego wasn’t getting crushed.
“Better luck next time,” she said, squaring the deck.
“Oh, hell no.” He picked up the deck and shuffled the cards in his oversized hands. “You ain’t going nowhere until I win.”
“That willneverhappen.” She slithered out of the seat and swooped up Poppy from the couch. “I’m going out.”
“Where you headed?”
She didn’t want to be rude but she also didn’t want to invite him. “Probably just the hotel bar,” she said. “I’m going to drop Poppy off then head down for one.”
At the hotel Jamie pleaded with Ruth to go out for a drink, but her assistant stood firm. “We have an early flight,” she reminded her, voice unwavering. Ruth was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person—responsible and disciplined. Jamie, on the other hand, thrived at night. And besides, Ruth didn’t drink. Not even socially.
So she took a quick shower and got dressed in all black. She didn’t have to pretend to be into country music tonight.
Jamie left Poppy sleeping on the bed and took the elevator down to the lobby, turned left, and spotted the bar near the entrance. It was one of those old-fashioned lounges with high cushioned stools, brass railings, and hundreds of bottles of liquor lined up on backlit glass shelves, ready and waiting.
A martini, perfect.
She made her way to the bar and spotted an open stool in the middle. The room buzzed with chatter but it didn’t bother her. It was the quiet bars you had to watch out for because some guy was always waiting to share his life story.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. He had short dark hair and sported a mustache with curled ends like an old-timey character. He was attractive, but the mustache was a deal-breaker. Besides, she had no clue if he was straight or gay, based on his appearance.
“A martini with Ketel One and dirty, please.”
He nodded and took more orders before starting to make the drinks. She scrolled through her phone and googled “When were curled mustaches popular.” Google told her it was the early 1800s.
A martini arrived with a small dagger holding three olives together. She raised her credit card from her jacket pocket, signaling that she wanted to settle. Tabs were too risky when she was by herself.
“It’s been taken care of,” he said with a wave. “The gentleman at the end of the bar covered it.”
Just my luck.
Now she’d have to engage in small talk with some fan who was here on a sightseeing trip, dying to share his photos of the White House.
She turned her head slowly toward the end of the bar to acknowledge the gesture.
What the fuck?
