Slot Attendant

by Jack Engelhard

  But I do dial the number and she does pick up. Yes, she remembers me, but the voice is cold. No, she’s not interested. Why? “I’ve been following your writing and you’re an excellent writer but we have no place for writers who objectify women as you do.” I do? I objectify women? “I write it as straight as it comes.” Now I remember. She once read a column of mine (a piece of humor that obviously “objectified” women) and had her assistant e-mail me this: GIVE HIM THE AX.

  Yes, now I remember.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong party,” I say. “Bukowski objectified women.”

  “Bukowski was a beast. We never would have published Bukowski. This is your hero?”

  “Any writer who gives himself up without fear and expresses himself honestly – those are my heroes. Like Henry Miller.”

  “I found him unreadable. Will that be all?”

  “Don’t you OBJECTIFY men? Seems to me that you do.”

  “As you wish.”

  How did it get to this? I had no intention of getting into a brawl.

  “Some world,” I say, “when novelists are forced to adhere to rules and regulations and the dogmas set down by editors. You’re running a tyranny, a dictatorship.”

  “Too bad,” she says – and click.

  This was a mistake.

  Melanie drives me to the station to catch the 5:50. That’ll get me there 6:50, and to the casino around seven. My shift doesn’t start until 10 p.m., but I need those hours to unwind, or rather to wind up, or rather to edge into the job. I can’t just jump in. So I’ll take the escalator and then the back stairs up to the employee cafeteria, eat, watch some TV with the rest of them, and doodle on my note pad, and make plans.

  We wait for the train and say nothing. Melanie has already had her day – she’s written a movie review, she’s expanding into that – so she’s already had her day. I’m just starting mine, my night, that is. So we sit waiting for the train, not saying much. There used to be so much to talk about. You never want to end up like one of those married couples, in restaurants, who sit there glumly and won’t even gaze at each other, like they’re simmering from grudges that go back days, weeks or even years. Between them, everything’s been said and done and there is nothing more to say and do.

  I hope that doesn’t happen to us. I don’t think it will. We have a dream. Sometimes on the Boardwalk you see old couples, people in their 80s, holding hands and snuggling up and whispering, as if they were still dancing on the night they were wed, and that is so blissful to behold and so sad. They survived it all as a couple. They lived it together and they will die together. Sometimes that’s my only dream.

  As the train pulls up, Melanie hands me a surprise; a chocolate bar, that Hershey’s Special Dark that I like so much. We are both chocoholics.

  Melanie posted a sign on our refrigerator door that says, Just Give Me Chocolate and Nobody Gets Hurt.

  “I got it on sale,” she says, “two for one at Rite Aid.” She is smiling like it’s Christmas. She knows she’s given me a thrill, and this thrills her in return.

  (Melanie clips all the coupons and goes for all the sales. She’ll drive 10 miles for a 10 cent bargain, never mind the cost of gas.)

  We’re not asking for much, as we always say.

  Just that, a bar of chocolate, and it’s a different world.

  Chapter 5

  Omar is a supervisor I don’t care for at all. He sticks me in Zone 12, second only to Zone 14 for claims to Slum City. It’s mostly row after row of 25-cent video poker and it’s almost all bus people. You won’t find Bill Gates at these games. I walk the aisles, back and forth, as I’m supposed to, to be of service. It’s not all that busy tonight. I sneak over to the table games, for a second, where it’s so much more lively, and here’s a man, at the craps and he’s got more chips along his rack and more money on the table, waiting for the next roll, than most people have in the bank. This is a game of wild swings, ups and downs, but real gambling, old gambling, back room, before it got corporate. At the same table there’s a man in Chasidic garb and a man in Islamic garb and they’re cheering and rooting for the same toss of the dice, the same point. Maybe that’s the solution to the whole thing.

  I rush back to my zone, to the slots in Zone 12.

  I notice a certain woman at one of the joker poker games and she’s easy to notice because of a shock of flaming red hair that she wears tussled and curled all over her head and face so that there’s hardly any face, though from a view up close there’s craziness in those eyes. She’s a regular. We’ve never talked. You do get to know the players, even make friends and even develop a following, something like a fan club.

  But this redhead, for some reason we never got to talking. I’m told she works in one of the other casinos and comes here after hours and that’s something nobody knows, that casino employees account for a good percentage of the drop when they go next door, as many of them so often do. It’s tough not to gamble when it’s all around, though it’s even tougher taking the plunge knowing what you know, that most people get skinned. They don’t build casinos to make you rich.

  So this redhead is in the middle of a row of players and as I’m making my rounds, she calls me over.

  You never know what to expect. To them, you’re the casino, you’re the House. They blame you for everything.

  You don’t see our president, Bob Foster, walking the floor. He’s up in his office. He knows where it’s safe.

  So I dash over to this redhead and she says, “Why are you staring at me?”

  I say I’m not.

  “Yes you are. You’re jinxing me.”

  “I’m only doing my job, making my rounds.”

  “Well stop staring at me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You make me nervous.”

  Omar swoops down about an hour later. That’s how they do it, the nasty ones; they come at you from behind, gotcha-style. He’s got that flushed up fiery look in his eyes, which is about normal, but I know there’s something. He’s from one of those Middle Eastern countries where they’re all so hot-tempered. He says there’s been a complaint against me. What did I do? You’re disturbing the players. Who? That’s not for you to know, he says.

  But he’s not going to write me up. Have I ever been written up? he wants to know. No, I’ve been good. I’ve been a good slot attendant. I’ve never been written up. Okay, says Omar, I’ll let it go this time and won’t ruin your record, but I do have to report it as a warning. I shrug and say, “Whatever.” He doesn’t like that (existential) answer and advises me not to be smart. He keeps staring at me. I know he wants to fire me. I think he wants to fire everybody.

  He has no choice, Omar says, about the warning. But a warning is not as bad as a write-up. So he’s doing me a favor, although it will be part of my record when it comes time for my performance evaluation. That’s due pretty soon. They usually score you low anyway, the supervisors do, because if you score high they’re compelled to give you a raise. Company policy. Generally speaking, there is nothing more humbling than a performance review. That, too, is company policy all over the place – Corporate Inquisition.

  I think this will be my next novel, about performance evaluations, how they can ruin people and destroy friendships and create hostilities within the workplace. I once wrote a column about this and it was published in The New York Times, which is good but not good enough. This needs to be addressed on a larger scale. But will I ever find the time? This job as a slot attendant is so time-consuming and exhausting. Will I ever find the inspiration? No writing, no true writing can be done without that inner voice, or perhaps it is an outer voice and this too I have considered as being altogether divine and mystical.

  “I caught that action,” says Flint, dashing over from Zone 10, where he rules over the customers playing the Hot Sevens.

  You need Flint Odesso at a time like this. Jovial Flint, from Da Bronx, is always good for comic relief. He’s been at this business, as a slot attendant,
for some 10 years, and nothing bothers him, nothing touches him, on the surface, on the inside, who knows, but outside, you’ll never catch him without a big smile or a big laugh and sometimes even a hug.

  “Oooooh,” he says, doubling over as if someone sucker punched him in the ribs, “it’s almost time for your evaluation, Jay. Omar knows if you’ve been naughty or nice.”

  “If it’s Omar I’m sunk.”

  This cracks him up as if I were Jon Stewart.

  He says, “I’ll bet it is.”

  He passed his own evaluation with flying colors, he tells me, but he got lucky, he got Roger Price, a good guy, a dream supervisor.

  “Now it’s my wife’s turn,” says Flint, laughing so loud you can even hear him above all the clanking coins. “I evaluate my wife every six months, just like they do here.”

  For a second I think he’s serious because Flint married the old-fashioned way. He is wed to a mail-order bride from Russia. He got her off some magazine or website or off the rack. Until Flint wised me on this, months back, during one of our breaks up in the employee cafeteria, I did not know such things were still done. I thought mail-order brides disappeared with the stagecoach.

  Flint says, “What about you?”

  “With me it’s the other way round. I get evaluated every day. I’m married to an American girl, remember?”

  We agree that foreign women are the best, especially when they come from countries where they’re trained, from birth, to wash your feet.

  This is Flint’s second time, and he made the right choice. His first marriage was a bust (an American woman, of course), and she must have been a first-rate bitch to get on Flint’s bad side. He’s so easy-going, though it’s true you never know how people are at home. But I’d be amazed if Flint had a secret personality. He does flare, now, when Omar spots him backsliding, and motions him back to where he belongs, in Zone 10, where jackpot bells are ringing. Flint says: “Free country? Says who? Eight hours a day you’re chained to a job, rest of the time you’re chained to a family. That Omar. Let’s get him fired.”

  Franco DeLima is over at Zone 5, which is also low-rent, featuring Jackpot Party machines, and I amble on by now and then, when I’m all caught up in 12, and really, what I’m doing is trying to stay clear of that crazy redhead who thinks I’m giving her the kibosh. You really have to be crazy to believe that, or massively superstitious, which most gamblers are, overly superstitious. Some players cross themselves before each pull and some place crucifixes above the knobs, as if it’s not them against the House, but them against the Lord God. Maybe they’re right. Maybe it is. It is amazing why some people always seem to win and why others always seem to lose. There’s one lady, sweet Mrs. Paula Mason, who’s here every day and NEVER hits. What’s more amazing is how it’s usually the wrong people who hit the million dollar jackpots, bad people or people who are rich already.

  So anyway, here comes Franco DeLima and I can tell he’s got a beef, the way he’s thumping the ground with those wrestler legs. He’s a big double-sized kid of around 26, wide heavy features, the word bully stamped all over him. He accuses me of poaching his zone, of pocketing a tip that belongs to him. This is a serious charge. This kid’s been on me before.

  I explain that Omar asked me, ordered me to go over and help him out, over in Zone 5, because hopper jams and jackpots were happening all over the place, and he, Franco, was falling behind. I wasn’t even around when the payoffs came for those jackpots and certainly never pocketed any tips; not to say that poaching doesn’t happen. We all do it when the timing is right and I do it when Melanie says we’ve got to pay a certain bill at high noon or else, and that’s when I go on the warpath, so I’m not altogether clean, only in this instance I am.

  “I was just helping out,” I tell Franco. “No tips.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Of course, moments like this I wonder how it’s come to this. I wonder who it’s going to be on Book Talk this coming Sunday. Won’t be me. Hey, let’s not start feeling sorry for ourselves, okay? Many people have it worse and this is not so bad, not really. It is a job, for crying out loud! I watch C-Span regularly, whenever I can, to hear what other writers are saying, the successful ones, and it is all quite sickening. Who is their god? I even watch it when an award show comes on, like the National Book Awards, and listen in as they profusely and “humbly” thank their agents and their publishers, so humble these frauds, though once in a while a good book may be the result if only one had the time to sort them out, one smug writer from another.

  How ridiculous to speak this way, on my part. They probably sweat bitter tears as much as I do. But really, why parcel out the luck so miserly?

  “It’s the truth,” I hear myself saying, trading schoolyard language. “Ask him. Ask Omar.”

  Franco stomps off.

  I’m near the craps tables again and a guy, dressed as conservatively as an accountant, no high roller this, I’m thinking, asks me which table is hot and I say they’re all cold, or if they’re hot, they’re hot for the House. He stands there distractedly, saying nothing, and then says he’s down to his last thousand dollar chip. He calls me pal. He says, “Pal, except for people like Donald Trump and Bill Gates, life sucks.” I don’t know if he means his last thousand of the day or last thousand of his life.

  Either way, he steps up to the nearest table, throws down his single and last thousand dollar chip and says, “Eleven.” The shooter throws the dice and they roll over to ten. I’m watching this. That’s the thing about gambling, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. Where else do we find this? Most of life is so vague. My pal turns and part resolutely, part nonchalantly walks toward the exit. Where is he going? Where do you go? Will I be reading about this in the papers?

  People jump out of windows quite regularly in Atlantic City. Einstein (supposedly) said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. This, the casino, is a good place to find out whether this is true or not – does seem, though, that life teeters on the roll of the dice and that the tumble between a 10 and an 11, one digit, can make all the difference.

  Around four in the morning it starts to taper off and it’s almost me alone – it is a weekday – on this side of the casino floor, and so I make a quick dash to the candy and news shop in the lobby where I buy that hard red candy that bursts in your mouth and helps keep you up when you’ve got two more hours to kill, and while I’m there I browse around the magazine racks and check out The New Yorker just to see who’s in, who’s not, who’s cold, who’s hot, and then I happen to glance at the paperback shelves and behold, there’s my book, The Ice King.

  What?

  I can’t believe this. The hardcover is out of print, I know that, and the paperback is still in print but out of circulation, or so I thought, but here it is.

  The royalties had stopped coming ages ago. I’m stumped, don’t quite know how to take this in.

  I’m tempted to rejoice, but doesn’t this make it worse? Your novel – here in a place where you work as a slot attendant? Who would understand?

  I tell the clerk, hey, that’s my book. It’s a spur of the moment thing. He has no idea what I’m talking about. He’s Indian. Can’t speak English.

  I rush back to my zone before Omar has a chance to nail me, but he’s probably upstairs goofing off himself. It’s that part of the night. I edge over to Zone 14. That’s also the bus entrance where I find my buddy, Mark Pleszak, posted on guard duty. He’s carding a couple of late-arriving kids and sends them back out past those big glass doors.

  “Hey, Mark.”

  “Hey, Jay.”

  Mark has been in casino security for some 20 years, right here, same place. He wears a snappy blue uniform that is impressive, though casino guards are not even rent-a-cops. They get a week’s training, carry no firearms and have no authority to make arrests. When it comes to that they have to summon the real cops. But they are impressive and they don’t get hassled much, except by their own supervisors. />
  “I just saw my book in the lobby.”

  He knows part of my story. I know part of his.

  “Oh yeah?”

  Mark used to be in business for himself, but then it fell apart. Long story, but something about a family rift that got real ugly. Mark’s motto is – Trust Nobody.

  “Which book,” he says, “the one they made into a movie?”

  “Aha.”

  “Way to go.”

  “Yup.”

  Despite it all, that family contretemps, Mark carries no chip on his shoulder, no grievance, unless you really get him talking. His job is to keep undesirables from getting in, including drunks, pickpockets and underage kids. Depending on the day’s assignment, his unit is also responsible for checking doors, fire escapes, bathrooms and separating two women when they get to scuffling over the same machine. They know every inch of the casino, these guards do.

  “Was it a thrill?”

  “Like sex.”

  “But masturbating, huh?”

  I’m wondering if I’ll be here 20 years, like Mark, which is one trick, the other is to accept it with the same compliant disposition.

  I envy Mark’s surrender. It is admirable. He’s made peace.

  “When’s your next movie coming out?”

  People seldom ask about your next book. They ask about your next movie.

  “In my dreams.”

  That’s a pact we have, Mark and I, downplaying everything. He likes my motto – I am nothing. I like his – Trust nobody.

  He’s probably my best friend in the place. He’s an intelligent man. Like me, he still makes $8.25 an hour, even after 20 years.

  Mark is pretty much my Algonquin Roundtable. He understands what it means when I say that writers die early and often.

  I tell him, “Maggi Holt hit on me again.”

  He smiles. “Can a woman be that horny?”

  “I figure it’s my charm.”

  “Guess what? She’s hit on me, too.”

  I spot Omar, so I make a quick check of the floor, and anyhow, Omar has pretty much called it a shift.