Read Any Minute Now for Free Online Page A

let alone drunk. Another of her uncanny abilities.
    Those were bets—high-stakes bets—not one of which she ever lost, as she moved from bar to bar, fleecing novices and know-it-alls alike. He had asked her once where she came by her drinking, to which she had replied, “What can I say? I’m a fucking fluke of nature.”
    â€œYou mean freak of nature.”
    â€œNo, baby, that’s you.”
    He was annoyed with himself for remembering the conversation verbatim. He hated being humiliated.
    Draining the last of her whiskey, she set the glass on the sideboard and, without a word, disappeared down the hallway into her bedroom. Whitman stood and waited. He had a sense of what was coming, or he would have had it been three years ago. But this was now. Did he still know?
    Four minutes and thirty-two seconds later—he was timing her—she returned clad in a pair of skin-tight jeans and a man-tailored checked sports shirt. The jeans showed off her butt, long legs, and powerful thighs, the shirt opened low enough to reveal enough of her cleavage to be distracting. Having exchanged her Louboutin pumps for a pair of powder-puff blue Nike Air Jordans, she crossed to the vestibule closet, took out an oblong case made of hand-stitched stingray skin, which glimmered like liquid in the light.
    â€œGoing out?” he said.
    â€œBravo.”
    â€œTo do what?”
    She snapped open her case, displayed a custom pool cue in two parts that screwed together, drowsing in a bed of midnight-blue velvet.
    He had got it right. His mind relaxed in a mental sigh.
    She reached for the front doorknob. “Come or stay here, makes no difference to me.”
    *   *   *
    In this sense, at least, it was like the old days. How many times had he accompanied her on her nocturnal forays into the lower dens of the city, looking for marks whose money she cheerfully would take? But unlike her drinking bouts, she lost her pool bets as often as she won. Clearly, she was learning the form, feeling her way toward a better ratio. It never came, at least not when Whitman had been with her, and he had at last come to the conclusion that time and again the game rejected her attempts at mastery. This was initially a mystery to Whitman. He knew her sense of geometry and vectors was impeccable. It was some time before he realized her weakness: she would not figure the odds correctly. He sensed she could do it if she wanted, but she clearly did not. She was reckless; she wanted to defy the odds, to rise above them into a kind of goddess-like plane. She never made it. She never crashed and burned, either, which, he supposed, said something just as important about her psyche.
    It was very late when they entered The Right Cue, a divey pool hall and bar in the none-too-savory southeast quadrant of D.C.
    â€œWho are you hoping to take money from tonight?” he asked. “The indigent and the homeless?”
    He was beginning to think she would ignore him, when she abruptly said, “This is where the best players in town congregate.”
    She went not to the double rows of twelve green-topped tables, but to the bar, where she ordered a double Jim Beam. The bartender, a beefy man with a red face and wiry tufts of hair over his ears, complied without comment or interest. He had been watching ESPN when they had walked in, and seemed in no mood to be disturbed. There were two other people at the bar, both men, staring into their drinks as if trying to divine where their lives had made a wrong turn.
    Whitman asked for an aged tequila, of which, the bartender said, there was none. He ordered a tonic water instead.
    Behind them, the soft click of cues against balls was a slow-motion reminder to Whitman of the clack-clack-clack of mah-jongg tiles in Hong Kong dens he had frequented years ago. Being reminded of those days, when he was no more than a green-behind-the-ears field man, was good for him, especially at this moment