CHAPTER NINETEEN

The men were in their bedroom and appeared to be just as defeated as the ladies. Nobody expected it to go so far off the rails the way it had gone. Mick was at the window, his hands in his pants pockets as he stared out at a landscape that felt foreign to him. That look in Roz’s eyes were new territory for him. He was losing his wife. He was losing the love of his life and he didn’t know how to make it right. Or even if he wanted to make it right, which was scaring the shit out of him. It felt as if he was at a crossroads, and he didn’t know which road to take.

Sal and Teddy sat on their beds like two very wounded men attempting to figure out next moves and if their marriages could withstand much more drama than what they already have. They were at a crossroads too. But unlike Mick, it wasn’t about whether or not they wanted their marriages to last, it was about how in the world were they going to make their marriages last. There was no ambiguity with the two of them. They just didn’t know how to get back on track.

But Reno...

Unlike all the men in the room, he was mobile. He was on his feet, pacing the floor with his hands in his pants pockets as if that floor held all the answers. He was already viewing what happened in that dining hall, not as the great defeat that it was, but as a miscalculation. Not as a chance to change their ways, but as a chance to double down on their ways. He owned the largest casino on the Vegas Strip. He was a gambler. And in the gambler’s world, you had to make it work even if it seemed unworkable. “We got the problem wrong,” he said to the others.

“Here we go,” Sal said like a man that knew Reno was going to propose many things, but at the end of the day he would have no answers at all.

“The problem isn't that our women are being ridiculous,” said Reno. “Although they are. But that's not the problem.”

“What's the problem, Reno?” Teddy asked him.

Sal frowned. “What you asking him that for? Nobody wants to hear his nonsense.”

“The problem isn't the women,” Reno continued, ignoring Sal. “It’s us men. We're punk-ass men. That's the problem!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sal.

Reno looked at his nemesis and, in many ways, best friend. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Speak for yourself. Calling us punk-ass. You're the punk. Not us. Our women didn't grab us like we were rag dolls and beat the shit out of us. Your woman did that.”

Teddy tried to stifle a grin, but he couldn’t.

“Who beat the shit out of me?” asked a now baffled Reno. “Trina didn't beat me.”

“Like hell she didn’t, Reno,” Teddy said, agreeing with Sal. “She beat your ass.”

“Like she was a championship boxer she rained those blows down on you,” Sal added.

“That’s bullshit.”

“She put a whooping on you, Reno,” Sal said with pleasure in his voice. “Look at all them bumps and bruises on your face. She tore that ass up.”

“Bullshit!” Reno was frowning now. “I tore her ass up was the problem.”

“So it was you that beat, Trina?” asked a disbelieving Teddy.

“Hell yeah I beat her ass! Shoot! Anybody ass got beat, it was hers.”

Sal was having none of his revisionist history. “Then how come you were standing up here just ten seconds ago ragging on and on about you being a punk ass man?”

“I didn't say me, you idiot! I said us. We’re punk-ass men. Not just me! And if we don’t change, our women are gonna run all over us.”

“Not you,” said Sal. “You're too busy beating yours down, let you tell it.”

Teddy grinned. “Although our eyes told us something different.”

“Okay hot shots, what you got?” Reno was livid now. “What do you two men about town suggest we do?”

“What the fuck we know what to do?” asked a now-agitated Sal. “If we knew what to do we wouldn’t be here. You’re the man with the plan. You’re the man with all the answers. You tell us what to do since that’s what you live for. You tell us. Because so far you’re just blowing smoke up our asses. Tell us what we should do, Reno. Our dear leader. Tell us.”

Teddy suppressed another grin.

But Reno stopped pacing. And it was clear that he wasn’t kidding anymore. “We should do everything in our power to win them back once and for all. Because I don't know about you guys, but I'm not ready to lose my bag of bones just yet. Or ever. And I won't lose her. We beg if we have to. That's what I suggest.”

It wasn't lost on anybody in the room that Reno was a bag of contradictions. But they understood him. And agreed with him. Including Mick, although you wouldn't know it with his back to them all.

But as they all realized the unthinkable could actually become the probable, and they might just lose their wives, an eerie silence fell over the room. As if they didn’t know before, but they knew it now. This was serious. That dining hall brawl proved just how serious it was.