Hernandez's having dropped Grimaldi's name did not seem unusual to Cassie. It seemed legit for a high-rolling, comped guest of the casino to know the casino's director by name. Cassie tried to dismiss the whole thing but remained troubled by the memories the name Vincent Grimaldi conjured in her mind.

Needing a distraction, she put the receiver/recorder on the floor next to the chair where she sat, then opened the front pocket of her backpack and took out the deck of cards she had bought at the Flamingo. She removed the jokers from the deck and put them back into the box and off to the side.

She began running through her old warm-up routine – one-handed deck cuts followed by spread and rolls and then up-and-down shuffling. The shuffling felt clumsy through the latex gloves and at one point the cards exploded in her hands, several falling to the floor. She stripped off the gloves and picked the cards up. She then began dealing blackjack to five nonexistent players at the table and to herself, the house.

As she played she went through the dealer's patter in her head as she turned cards over. Man with an axe, boy meets girl, jack takes five…

But soon her mind traveled and she remembered the first time she met Max. She would always remember it as the random collision of matching souls. Something that didn't happen often in the world, something that surely would never happen to her again.

She had been dealing Caribbean poker at the Trop on a slow midnight shift and he had taken the number two seat. She had one other player, an old Asian man in the seven seat. Max was a beautiful man. He had a presence and Cassie couldn't help watch the way he handled his cards, cupping them and opening them in a tight spread, then quickly laying them flat and making his bet.

But he bet recklessly and soon it became apparent that he wasn't a schooled gambler. He lost money but didn't seem to mind. After a dozen hands Cassie surmised that he wasn't at the table to gamble. He was there to watch the other player. Max was on a con of some sort and that made him all the more intriguing.

When she went on break she waited near the cashier's window and watched Max watch the Asian gambler. Eventually, the mark slid off his stool and called it a night. After a few moments, Max followed suit and started trailing the Asian. He turned off after watching the Asian step onto an elevator.

And that's when Cassie made her move. She walked right up to him.

"I want in," she said.

Nonplussed, Max just looked at her.

"I don't know what it is you're doing but I want to learn it. I want you to teach me. I want in."

He looked at her for a few more minutes and then a small smile curved his mouth.

"My name's Max. You want to get a drink or is that against the rules for the dealers here?"

"It's against the rules but I just quit the rules."

Now his smile widened into a grin.

As she dealt the cards on the table Cassie periodically checked the screen on the receiver/recorder. When she checked at one o'clock the glow of the television still lit the room. But Hernandez was sprawled across the bed and under the covers with his face turned away from the screen. She noticed that the light from the screen was steady. There was no flickering from changing images. She knew that he was asleep and the pay movie he had been watching was over. On the television screen was probably just a blue screen or the unchanging movie menu.

She checked her watch. She figured that by two forty-five Hernandez would be in the deepest part of the sleep cycle. She decided she would go in at three. That would leave plenty of time for her to be in and out before Leo's void moon began.

She slid the playing cards back into their box and returned it to her bag. She decided to do something she knew put her at unneeded risk and that Max would have never done. But she felt she needed to do it. For Max and for herself.

CASSIE made her way through the still crowded casino to the cocktail lounge off the hotel lobby. It was crowded here as well but the table she wanted was empty. She sat down and looked out across the gaming room but no longer was really seeing it. She was remembering Max and the run they had had, how the Sun and the Review-Journal had called them the "high-roller robbers" and the Las Vegas Casino Association had put a reward up for their arrest and conviction. She remembered how after a while it hadn't even been about the money. It was about the charge it put in their blood. She remembered how they could stay up the rest of the night making love after a job was finished.

"Can I help you?"

Cassie looked up at the cocktail waitress.

"Yes. A Coke with a cherry in it and whatever you have on draft."

The waitress put down napkins, one in front of Cassie and the other opposite her spot at the small round table. She smiled in a world-weary sort of way.

"Is somebody coming or is the second drink to keep the hitters away?"

Cassie smiled back and nodded.

"I just want to be alone tonight."

"I don't blame you. It's a mean crowd tonight. Must be the moon."

Cassie looked up at her.

"The moon?"

"It's full. Didn't you see it? It's burning brighter than any of the neon they've got around here. A full moon always adds an edge to things around here. I've been here long enough. I've seen it."

She nodded as if to cut off any debate on the subject. Cassie nodded back. The waitress left then and Cassie tried to ignore what she had said and concentrate her thoughts on remembering the night six years before when she had sat in the same spot at the same bar. But no matter how hard she thought of Max's beautiful face she could only focus on the bad that followed. She still marveled at how a moment of wonderful joy then could be the same moment that incited so much pain and dread and guilt now.

She was pulled out of her reverie by the cocktail waitress, who was putting the drinks down on the napkins. The woman put down a piece of paper and left. Cassie turned it over and saw she owed four dollars. She pulled a ten from her pocket and put it down.

Cassie watched the bubbles floating up through the beer and forming a half-inch layer of foam at the top of the glass. She remembered the foam in Max's mustache that night. She knew deep inside that what she was going to do this night was as much about Max as about anything else. She had come to believe that somehow there would be a lightening of her guilt, a redemption for all that had gone before if she did this thing right. It was a crazy thought but it was one she had secretly grabbed on to and now seemed to have placed as high as all others. The thought was that if she did this right she could reach back across the tide of time and make up for things, even for just a moment.

She picked up her Coke and looked around to make sure no one was watching. She caught a woman staring at her but then quickly realized that she was looking at her own face in the mirrored wall at the back of the lounge. Because of the wig and the hat and the glasses she had momentarily not realized who she was looking at.

She quickly looked away. She picked up her glass, reached across the table and tapped it lightly on Max's glass of beer.

"To the end," she said quietly. "To the place where the desert is ocean."

She took a sip and tasted the small hint of cherry. She then put her drink down and got up from the table. She left the lounge and walked back through the casino to the elevators.

She followed the ritual. She didn't look back.