“Remember when you were getting all heated,” the cat pries, “when you threw that bottle?” ashing her cigarette, pursing her lips, “it moved.” Dice upon velveteen landscapes rebuff her pause, ones that dodge baccarat paddles. “Midair,” she claims, eyes wide, front lip contorting into a hiss above her wave-etched couple glass. “No fooling. You probably didn’t notice. But next time, if you look, you’ll see it,” like the gambler next to Ø, sweating beneath his bespoke suit, millions of credits in the hole, Dutchie whispers with gravity, “I’m tellin’ ya. Joint’s haunted. It’s that black hole.”

Ø snorts in return. She rarely responds to Dutchie at all, allowing the cat to work for her audience. Lest another crest build, turn into another wave of half-baked Benzedrine nightmares to crash upon anyone within earshot.

The ladies are off. ‘Exploring’ the Casino, as Charlie calls it. The two of them, alone in the crowds of the First Floor, lounge in the gambling hall. They linger, as they’re inclined to do, predators languidly staring past one another, heaving drinks, half-sentences filled with contextless incivility normally shared between women.

Although you see her across the crowded room of gamblers, she’s too far away, her inner mind deafened against the joyous shouts of hot-streak savants. You barely taste the whiskey on her lips, as if you were tasting it dripping through the holes of a dusty wicker basket. The mare sighs, her drink empty.

“So, now that you’ve dragged us here, who’s the meat?”

“Meat?” Dutchie scoffs. An auto-bartender’s sensors notice Ø’s unfilled glass, ice lonely, perspiring. It zips across the flooring, a creamy marble. Like the columns, the walls, or anything on Fontvieille you can’t either eat, drink, or buy. “This guy’s not meat, pear say. You can’t kill this guy,” the cat prods the air, “and I mean it, you can’t kill this guy. ‘Cause I know you and you kill guys.”

Once more, Ø snorts, a brief recognition of conversation. She moves a hoof, away from the track that lines the floor. It’s a thin indent that cuts through the crowds, the ancient tracks upon which the auto-bartenders travel. As she moves, one zips past her, replacing a colleague behind a blackjack table. Its metal, arachnid appendages attach to a wrought-iron ribcage, nearly wings in appearance. The beast shuffles cards, its multitudes of eyes and sensors like those of a slum owner earning bucks off the weak-willed, organizing chips in a whirlwind of industry, its long snout giving the appearance of a humanoid, or a baboon, or an insect. Its pal disappears behind colonnades, into the Casino’s depths, for repair, recharging, who knows.

“Then who’s the guy?” Ø sneers. “And why can’t I space him, exactly?”

“This guy?” Dutchie giggles, “you can’t space him because you’ll love this guy,” she shrugs, “I mean, you’ll probably hate this guy. I know you know it doesn’t matter, you know what I mean?”

Dutchie’s heels click-clack along with the mare’s hooves. The duchesse is loose, dancing through the crowd, avoidant of stray glasses at eye-height, dodging the odd stumbler, his arms locked with his evening’s candy. The cat’s dinner dress hugs at her pelt, stray hair peeking through the bias-cut that hugs her body, save for her tail, whipping with every step above the fishtail hem that nearly touches the top of her shoes.

Her outfit just arrived, she remarked to Ø earlier as they changed, stinking up the sauna with cigarettes at their lips, menthol and eucalyptus assaulting their lungs. A special order from Claude-Victor Deveaux, Comte de la Place de Déroulède. Less stuffy than the mare’s wardrobe, Dutchie claims, design formulated by predictive trend analytics, evoking Neo-Assyrian motifs set to be in fashion three months from now.

The ladies plant atop a railing, overlooking a chasm of slots, organized in rows, the individual silver menhir vibrating with anticipation of a jackpot that may never arrive, attended to by red- or dead-eyed patrons.

“There. Through the doors,” Dutchie gestures. Her head turns left, cigarette holder right. Nondescript. But Dutchie’s flickering appendage points towards the Grand Hall. Its single set of double-doors stretches vertically two stories tall, jaunâtre pilasters framing lacquered mirror paneling that touches the chandeliers, geometric symbols of sunrise and sunset performing a jubilant shim-sham routine. “That’s where the guy’s got his show.”

Ø’s seen a reel. An advertisement. Holograms that play during lulls in conversation, projected into the air by dawdling auto-bartenders, never able to idle, always serving, dealing. Keeping you entertained and spending.

Fervidora showed you, too, Ø recalls. Once. A week ago, during a night with her family. Ø watched you and the ass on the balcony, trawling through advertisements of attractions. In between highlights of can-cans, boas and garters stuttering with speed, Ø watched Fervidora’s batting eyelashes, coquettish smile, while losing hand after hand against the grandfather. Had Ø been betting with something beyond pistachio shells, she’d be bankrupt by now.

Probably like other girlies, ones who have nervously trotted up to those double-doors with empty purses, à sec.

Inside, behind the stage, in the maze of multi-bunked dormitories, staffed by private chefs, trainers, and dieticians with accents innumerable, names unpronounceable, are there they stay within gilded cages. Kept for performance, in-house entertainment. Some buxom, some not. Dolled up, swats of foundation covering scars, their outfits tailored to enhance bust, to cover slave barcodes. Off-worlders, like everyone else forced to work within the Casino’s walls.

A few are contracted, named, their three-dimensional visages grinning in intergalactic advertisements broadcast into the atmosphere. Some probably have bounties and they’re lying low. Others, most of them, their guys stiffed them with a bill too high to pay, or they lost their dough. You have to earn your keep somehow. So they line-dance to brass, earning peanuts.

Better than getting the curtain hook, dragged into the Casino’s depths.

“You can’t miss him. Short. Greasy. Awful laugh. You’ll wanna kick him like a football. I can’t stand the guy.”

“Your fault for hiring a guy you can’t stand. And who you can’t space, either.”

“Hire him? I didn’t hire him. The joint hired him. I wouldn’t hire him if he was the last guy in the galaxy who could clap his hands to a beat,” Dutchie hisses, “but he’s good at what he does, so the bosses keep him around.”

“Well, I didn’t see him dancing in those holograms.”

“No, you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. He’s a trainer, a wrangler. The kind of guy who has the carrot, the stick, and you know if you don’t please him, the black bag to stuff you in. But, hey, I think he’ll make a better patsy than chore-ographer. Just need his handprint, clean enough to pull off of you. Then, I get make copies, we plant them around, and that’s that. Like he was the one ripping off the Somalis.”

“Can’t you get that for me? Shouldn’t he have a file or something?”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be suspicious. Me trawling through every file in the systems before a rip-off. Or, what, you think he’s going to waltz up to the Tenth Floor so I can get his handshake? He’s never leaves the Grand Hall. Got a full suite in there, bed for four, fits eight when he wants it to. Lives and breathes that troupe of his.” Dutchie’s never seen it. She’d spit on girls who have. “You just need to get his hands, both of ‘em, full print, on something. Flat, full-fingers. Anything. Clothes. Even fur, if he gets a good grip.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Sounds like the perfect job for you,” Ø scoffs, “I don’t get my hands dirty, at least like that.”

“Don’t start with me. You’re a pirate, you’ve done worse. And I don’t think that boy toy of yours will mind if you get a job done. At least he won’t do anything, I mean.”

“Oh, but your guy would mind?”

“Sure. He’s got an in-vest-ed in-ter-est in me. And the job, of course.”

“How’s that?”

“Between you and me,” the cat whispers, trilling between her whiskers, “just us girls,” she instinctively looks over a shoulder, “I took a look at his file. I mean, I always look at the files. It’s how I knew you’d be perfect for this action, having dealt with the Somalis before,” she pauses for a drink, heaving a self-satisfied sigh atop her mental promontory, far higher than just the Tenth Floor. “But Chahlie’s running low. Almost out of cash, and the heat that’s on him still? Whoa, its boiling.”

“Well, luckily, he has you to bum off.”

“Not all of us are lucky enough to date Palookaville’s Postmaster General.”

“Least my guy’s got credits.”

“Sure. Baratarian credits. And I’m L’Impératrice d’Lincoln Park, you jamoke.” An auto-bartender lingers nearby. Analyzing, remarking on shoe size and weight, concluding that the girlies have full glasses. Dutchie huffs, already sick and tired of working for the day. “And as such, your Impératrice decrees we should play some craps already.”

---

“It’ll be simple. The girls get the patsy. Then, you and me, we use the same tactic Christ used to raise Lazarus from the dead,” Charlie remarks, drink in hand, “sleight of hand.”

An arpent and a half away, a story above, you and Charlie lurk between on the balcony overlooking the atrium. The first floor is cacophonous, the constant ringing of bells, the buzzing of electronics rattling the glass in your hand. Another auto-bartender whips past to the ground floor, spiders’ legs hustling another bucket of split ice and ginger ales, fit for those unable to drink alcohol. It careens across the atrium’s semi-circle of balconies, stopping at the door in question, Room 1-121, where a disinterested guard lurks. Libaut-brand aviator sunglasses top his head, professional posture askew, his holster empty beneath his well-tailored checkered sport coat.

“First floor. They keep it swanky. You know, I did some math. By volume,” he clicks his lips, “and I’m not fooling here,” with a waggle of a finger, the other picking at the wrought-iron railing, excited, “this atrium’s the real score. Square footage, that’s the real value. Add height? Three stories in here? Forget about it. Volume’s the real gold here.”

“Can’t steal real estate?”

“Not yet. But, hey, I’ll get there.” His laughter is familiar, and you decline a cigarette as one enters his lips. Behind his eyes, he’s in a labyrinth, analyzing the floor plans committed to memory, always running. “You know, they’ve got a whole harem in there. One guy I spoke with last week, you remember, the rancher from Mars, said Saad’s got a girl for every cycle of the week. Said they used to have double, fourteen broads in total, but they’d get too chatty. What a problem, right? I can’t even deal with one at a time.”

“Can’t be that bad,” you join his chuckle. “Dutchie seems like she handles herself.”

“Sure, sure. It’s just… You know, forget it.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, it’s not exactly relevant,” he pouts, foot tapping, “but I think she’s in some trouble. You know, with dough.”

“But she’s royalty.”

“Royalty doesn’t mean anything. Just a name. I mean, she gets her fief, but what else? What’s a fief?”

The protruding and receding balconies are teeth. Below, the swaths clink glasses, celebrating the present. From your promontory, the fauvist display of green tables and multicolored patrons dissipates and churns. A set of hand-blown light fixtures fire off a specific ochre frequency that makes you subconsciously yearn for another drink.

“You know how it is. Debts, payoffs, shiny things. Adds up,” he licks his lips, “but last month, she asked me how I was doing on cash. Me? I pay my own way. We both pay our own ways. Why would she ask me how much cash I’ve got? She’s got a file on me, but she thinks I’m holding out? Then comes at me with the ‘this job’s real important’ when we talked about our plan. I mean look at her, running around the floor. Actually doing something, not just drinking and smoking. Something’s not right with her.” His pause gives way to a distant shout of anger, another lucky beaten, millions of credits lost. “And if you mention a ghost or something, her great-dead-Aunt staring through a mirror, I’ll lose it, I swear on my mother.”

“Maybe she just likes the company,” you contend.

“I doubt it,” he scoffs, “but who knows.” Charlie, commanding the shell game of conversation, nods downwards. Enough to get your attention, but nothing more than a tremor, unnoticeable. “Down near the guy in the fez. Baccarat table. You see him?”

You do. Two meters tall, blazer oversized, a soft cornflower blue, atop neo-cashmere roll neck and pseudo-linen slacks, entire outfit out of place, not fit for Fontvieille, mass produced. Meaning he can afford the Casino’s daily dress-down fines. Skin dark, face cycling through hundreds of emotion within a minute, from weaselly grin to disgusted scowl. But, he’s human by the looks of it, organic save for his left forearm, which ends in an ergonomic hook.

“That’s Saad’s right-hand man. And that’s not meant to be disrespectful, by the way. I mean look at him. If you’re looking like that, nobody’ll hire you except a warlord.”

“So he’s the target?”

“For conversation, yeah. Not like you’d throw a punch at a guy. Just get him to move his man, the sloucher, away from the door. Just for a second, it’s all I’ll need,” he assures. “Sleight of hand, that’s all it takes. That’s all it ever takes.”

“Then what?”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s Dutchie and me. You and Ø work the floor, Dutchie and I work everything else. Before you know it, we’ll be off-planet fencing the jacket or cloak, or shawl, or whatever. Already got a buyer lined up. Some guy with a grudge, obviously.”

His confidence is contagious. Every word is frankincense, therapeutic when applied to Ø’s skepticism. It’s nice to choose a partnership, for once.

“It’s nice to have a break from the girls.”

“You said it. Especially during the action. That’s why you two need to be separate,” he smiles. “Too suspicious, otherwise.”

“Really? That’s tough. We’ve been working together lately. On everything, normally.”

“We? The same ‘we’ that almost snuffed you today?” he snorts with disdain. “You two have a tough time working together, if that’s what you call it.”

“Yeah, I do,” you begrudgingly reply. “Speaking of, is there any reason you let Dutchie stick around if she’s not a mark?”

---

The roulette wheel spins. Its base, a single mahogany slab of wood, is sanded, polished to perfection. The cat barely notices, focused on the ball’s path, whether pockets are moving, or velocity is changing, on the lookout for some disturbance in space-time.

“I dunno,” she whispers, pursing her lips. “Chahlie’s cute. Makes me laugh. Why else do you stick with a guy?” The ball clatters into its predestined pocket, bettors on red whooping with glee. Dutchie’s eyes light up once more, her inspection fruitless. “Unless, you know, you’ve got a gun to your head.”

Ø scowls at the suggestion, waiting impatiently for the auto-bartender’s imminent arrival. She’s too sober for the tirade. Every brush of a shoulder against a fellow patron, apologies exchanged with mutual disdain, makes the mare grind her teeth.

“See, a guy’s got to have value. Maybe it’s money. Jokes. Booze. Something to brag to the girlies at the buffet,” she yowls. “Sometimes, sure, I think Chahlie’s dead weight. I mean, look at me, I’m a duchesse, he’s the hoi polloi, but then he talks about the jobs he’s ran. Rip-offs that make me blush. ‘These jewels are from planet you-don’t-know, yanked off the consort of what’s-his-name,’ he says and puts them around my neck. He’s got gravitas. Moxie. And I didn’t want to say nothin’, but what’s your guy got?”

“I didn’t say he has anything,” Ø spits from atop another whiskey.

“Yeah, you didn’t. Ever see the fink’s uplink history? It’s in his file. Yuck.” Another Red, another loss for Dutchie before she looks up to Ø, vertical pupils piercing. “Look at me. I mean it. Girly talk, just you and me,” she says with a murderous sincerity. “Your guy’s dead weight. Holds you back, dens-a-grades you from reaching your full potential.”

“Plus,” Dutchie hisses, “the way he looks at that Fervidora…”

---

“But, hey, that’s just my opinion,” Charlie chides. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but today you’re dodging bottles, tomorrow knives. For what? A filly that can’t fly? I wouldn’t.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” you lie.

“You should, because I’m serious. A girl like that will get you killed. And she’s gotten close already. You’re better off alone.”

“That’s not what the old man said when he started giving us jobs.”

“Well, who do you want at your throat, a mare who carves through stooges for fun, or some old geezer? I don’t have to think too long about my decision if I were in your shoes, which I’m not, thankfully,” he prods. “Plus, hey, when we pull this off, you’ll have enough credits for an upgrade. Maybe buy her sister, or something. Younger. Without the whole ‘murderous’ baggage.”