Author: Regency

Title: The Die Lands

Characters: Tracy, minor Luke & Laura

Summary: It’s come to her attention that she had a one-in-two chance of winning, and that she didn’t.

~~~

And time rolls on. The dice is light and playful in her hands and she feels adventurous. She’s put down too much on the table, money she can’t afford to lose these days. But she won’t pick it up. Reckless would be the best descriptor of her mood and she can’t seem to care.

The crowd ooh’s at a particularly nasty loss and she rolls her eyes. It’s a movie, her damn life has become a movie. She opens her purse and tosses five hundred-dollar bills on the table. She hears muttering and it makes her feel brave--and a little foolish as the rich of Port Charles shake their heads. It isn’t her night, they say. She should give it up, they mumble, cut her losses. She won’t quit, though, because the very spirits of her bloodline would raise up against her if she tried.

Suddenly, she has a reversal of fortune and begins to win. Her fingers are hot and her sight absolutely keen. She knows how to roll dice with the best. After not more than fifteen minutes, she’s recouped her bet and more. The dealer offers her another go. She looks at what a virile young thing he is and smiles. He’s the way she used to like them.

She prudently shakes her head in the negative and he calls over someone to carry her chips to the cashier. The funniest part is that she’s cashing chips for money that’s already hers. She owns this damn casino. It belongs to her and every dollar that comes into it is hers. That knowledge doesn’t make the pleasure she takes in counting every crisp bill any less sweet.

She wishes the patrons she left behind a fine streak of luck and as she passes, she thinks the dealer winks at her, but she can’t be sure. There’s a bit more spring in her step for the very idea. She disembarks the old girl, gently patting the handrail as she goes. She will say this, this boat’s been good to her.

She drives down the night streets back to the mansion, thinking of how impressed Luke will be, of how she will spend what she won from herself shopping at Hettie Hofshtetter’s Hot House of Exotic Lingerie, that place Luke covets for reasons unknown. She will buy things she’d be embarrassed to show to her granddaughter and she will secretly love them. She bites her lower lip, thinking of how she will wait for Luke in their bed until he returns home from the Haunted Star. Then, she will lure him and entrap him the way a wife does her husband, her eternally devoted lover.

She has formulated this plan to the most miniscule detail by the time she pulls the car around to the front of the Quartermaine Mansion. She steps out of the driver seat, handing off her keys spryly and striding up the walkway to the house. She’s high on victory and it’s been so long since the last time that she forgot just how high it carried her.

Alice actually opens the door on command and Tracy fails to note the dower tension in the air. She is happier than she’s felt in a while and she wants to gloat to her husband, her future eternally devoted lover. She calls for him and, hesitantly, he responds. She has that disorienting sense that someone has grasped the edge of the rug she’s standing on and is readying to for a pull.

She slows in her approach to the den, because it’s coming back to her--the reality of things and the way they’ll always be. She stops in the doorway, recognizing immediately the crown of blond hair, gray all gone. More than that, she knows the man at the woman’s side, the spiky cap of hair his identifying mark. What she’s never seen is the guilt and now she wishes she never had.

There had been a one-in-two chance that he would someday fall in love with her, today’s wife, but the odds were never on her side. Laura already had his heart, a roll of the die ago. The best out of two, all Tracy could’ve hoped for was a tie.

She thinks she should’ve cut her losses.