Slot Attendant

by Jack Engelhard

  “Over my head,” says Felix.

  What a prick!

  Felix is Felix and there is nothing to be done. He has turned quite political and his commentaries appear in numerous scholarly magazines and web sites. I know where he’s going in his politics and it is not my direction and I know that I would never be published, or posted, in his magazines or web sites because of my views. I keep changing my views on politics anyway, though politics seems to be our new culture, our rock and roll. Those are the books that are published and those are the books that sell. Anyway, as a slot attendant, politics is distant, something that happens far away, especially when you’re working graveyard and all you want to do is sleep.

  On C-Span you are warned that only non-fiction writers and viewers are wanted. If you’re fiction, go away.

  “Is one book enough to make a reputation?” someone says.

  The one-book-wonder knock. I know the routine. I’m tired of it, but I do suggest that I’ll take Salinger’s one book over what’s her name’s 200. Literature, I go on, is not based on quantity. James Jones’ reputation (though he wrote several) is based on one book and a fine reputation it is, and James Joyce’s reputation is likewise based on one book, and go argue with James Joyce, and altogether, I’ll take Brahms’ four symphonies over Mozart’s 280, or whatever Kirchel’s final count.

  “I seem to have a knack,” says Felix, “for combining scholarship with commercial appeal.”

  Yes he does, people agree.

  Says Melanie, and this is getting ridiculous, “You know, Jay’s been favorably compared to Hemingway and I.B. Singer.”

  She is starting to sound more like my mother than my wife.

  Someone – must be from my side of the aisle – says I write in the absurdist tradition of Beckett and Ionesco.

  “Never cared much for Hemingway,” says Felix.

  “Possibly he wouldn’t care much for you,” is all I can add.

  This leads someone to ask how writers like to be addressed…author, writer, novelist?

  “I go by writer and commentator,” says Felix.

  “How about you?” says Gladdy.

  “Me? I go by slot attendant.”

  Melanie spills her drink. “He’s joking, you know.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m serious. Slot attendant.”

  “Jay, stop this,” Melanie whispers.

  “You mean,” Gladdy says, “casinos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those people who run around…”

  “That’s me.”

  “He’s only doing it for research,” says Mel.

  “Of course,” says Gladdy.

  “No. I’m a slot attendant.”

  “What about your next book?” asks Felix.

  The worst part about Felix is that in a perfect world we would be friends. Meanwhile, though, there is no one to talk to, not about writing.

  “There is no next book.”

  “Oh please,” says Gladdy.

  “Yes, oh please,” says Melanie, “and please stop this.”

  But I am enjoying this. Because it is the truth and if the truth hurts, so be it.

  “We’ll probably be reading all about it in The New Yorker.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Isn’t he funny?” says Mel.

  “No he isn’t,” says Felix.

  Felix is like a dog. He can smell defeat. I have been sent to him for an offering. His time has come. My time has come and gone.

  “What exactly does a slot attendant do?” asks Gladdy.

  “Well…”

  “Oh, Jay, stop pulling people’s legs.”

  “I don’t think he’s pulling anyone’s leg,” says Felix, getting his comeuppance over that original sin.

  People dance at your failure even more than they dance at their own success. This too I have learned.

  “You probably are doing research,” says Gladdy to smooth it all over.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yes he is.”

  “What we want to know,” says Gladdy, “I mean after your big success, and you made us all so proud, you certainly made Melanie proud…”

  “Yes he did.”

  “What we want to know is what’s taking so long and what’s coming next.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re a slot attendant?”

  “I’m a slot attendant. That’s all I do. There’s nothing next.”

  “They get the picture,” says Mel. “They get the picture.”

  On the drive back home I’m in for the silent treatment.

  Finally, back home, she does say: “He is a buffoon.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But what can be said about you?”

  “Okay, I was…”

  “Yes you were. You were awful.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Who were you trying to hurt? Me? Yourself?”

  “Let’s talk more about Felix.”

  “No, that’s done.”

  “That’s agreed, right?”

  “Felix is a buffoon but they’re not all buffoons. They’re good people.”

  “I agree.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Let’s talk about Felix, about what kind of a buffoon he is. He doesn’t listen. How can a writer not listen? How can he know what to write?”

  “What were you trying to prove?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “You kept rubbing it in, rubbing it in, rubbing…”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Weren’t you thinking about me? Just for a minute?”

  “I got all wrapped up, I guess. Let’s get back to Felix.”

  “You wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t get you to stop.”

  “He’s such a fraud, Felix.”

  “Just because people don’t work graveyard shift, that doesn’t make them frauds.”

  “Now you’re defending him?”

  “I’m defending artists.”

  “You mean people who don’t work.”

  “I mean people who work with their minds, their hearts and minds, like you.”

  “But I’m a slot attendant.”

  That’s good for another hour’s worth of silent treatment. She showers, then sits by the edge of the bed, then drying and combing out her hair.

  She doesn’t understand, and she never will. There is some pride in the work that I do. Weeks before I took her on a busman’s holiday, I mean we went to another casino so she could play some slots and I could play some horses. As we’re walking around there’s a jam-up at a dollar machine and the slot attendant, I can tell he doesn’t know what to do. So I give him some advice, as sometimes all it takes is opening and shutting the door, and it works.

  I’m smiling. She asks why, and I explain that I’m proud of what I just did. I contributed something. I made a difference.

  You’re proud of that? she said. You’re proud?

  She will never understand.

  “I like your new haircut,” I say to make amends for the Haddonfield party I left, we left, in ruins.

  That almost gets a smile.

  “You have no idea how you humiliated me. How you humiliated yourself.”

  “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Right, it just worked out that way.”

  “They kept coming at me…your next book…your next book…”

  “Well you do have a next book.”

  “You didn’t bring it up, either.”

  “Who had the chance? You were so busy.”

  “Just trying to come clean.”

  “Did you forget that Sylvio still has things going?”

  “Yes, I forgot.”

  “How could you forget? Our life depends on it,” she says with terrible emphasis.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  How do I tell her that I’m not sure about anything anymore? How do I tell her that part of me is gone
?

  “It means that I am a slot attendant.”

  “Stop saying that, please!”

  “But I am.”

  “You mean that’s it, this is the end, this is all we have to look forward to?”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”

  “This can’t be you talking. What’s happened to our dreams?”

  “They’re dreams.”

  Later, we’re in bed, together. This is a treat. Our hours keep us apart for bedroom business. I’ve taken three sick days from work. I’ve got two left.

  So we’re in bed together and I sense her pillow moistening up. I snuggle. She snuggles back.

  I have got to figure a way to make her happy, at least get the panic out of our lives. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll go back to filling out that paperwork for all those grants. Everybody gets grants. Felix gets grants. People with money get grants. People with more money get more grants. I’ve tried a thousand. They’re so specific. Sorry, we only provide funds for writers focused on tomato growing in Vermont, and only green tomatoes, not red. Like that.

  “We do have dreams, don’t we?” she says, still snuggled into her pillow.

  “Yes,” I say. “We do. We do have dreams.”

  Chapter 10

  Figures to be a millionaire to win the million dollar jackpot. Those new $10 “Who Wants To Be A Hero?” machines had just been installed about three weeks ago with a jackpot worth a straight million and Mrs. Hazel Beckman decided that it was hers to win, and so she was at it from one shift to the next every day, practically non-stop. She had the clout, so when she had to take a breather, maybe a nap up in her room, she had the okay from any supervisor to close the machine down until she returned. She was not going to let anyone else get that million.

  Not Hazel, a widow in her mid-70s who had inherited a fortune and a terrible disposition. People did snap to her, though she was no tipper…but she was a high roller and high rollers are “valued” customers. When she wanted something, she wanted it not now, BEFORE. She was a bitch. No cocktail server, no slot attendant, no supervisor, wanted to be anywhere near her. She’d already had three of us (slot attendants) fired, plus one supervisor and even one shift manager; the shift manager, Matilda Sheffi, long gone when she refused to take Hazel’s word that she had played two hundred dollar coins instead of one, thus depriving Hazel of the full payout. Down goes Matilda.

  When Hazel is unhappy, everyone’s unhappy. In the case of Matilda, for example, when the difference was $20,000, Hazel went right to the top; got on the House phone, got connected straight to Bob Foster, our president, who came rushing down with effusive apologizes and the proper check. Hazel wanted the shift manager fired right on the spot, and Bob Foster, our president, did as ordered.

  The casino drop cannot afford to lose her kind of business. Usually, about a dozen high rollers (losing of course) account for a casino’s daily profit.

  She’s in Zone 5, where those new games were set up, when the bells go off around midnight. She’s hit. Is she thrilled? They seldom are, the pros, Hazel in particular. She’s a pro. She’s hit hundreds of thousands in the past (lost an equal amount for sure, or maybe not) so this is another day at the office. She sits there, grim as ever, and wants her money fast. By check, of course. Toledo Vasquez is the slot attendant on duty.

  He gets busy. There’s much to do.

  First, as is obligatory, he congratulates her. She tells him to forget all that, you jerk, just bring the money.

  For that amount, it gets complicated. Everybody gets summoned; the slot host, the supervisor, the shift manager, the casino manager, the public relations vice president, surveillance, and even Bob Foster, the president of the whole shebang. They all have to get into the act and they all have a role. But Toledo’s first task is to get Hazel’s drivers’ license, standard practice for any win $1,200 or more. The I.R.S. is watching.

  So it’s not just a formality, it’s a legality. So Toledo is only doing his job when he asks for it, and Hazel…Hazel throws a fit. She’s insulted. She’s been coming here, to the same casino, for 20 years, and still has to prove whom she is? Her identity is in doubt? What is this? This is ridiculous!

  But it’s not the routine that has her riled, she knows it has to be done; it’s that someone as lowly as a slot attendant has the gumption. The slot host arrives and apologizes. The shift manager arrives and apologizes. The casino manager arrives and apologizes. They all congratulate her and apologize as meanwhile, Toledo does his job, writes up the jackpot, then, only then, steps aside.

  As she waits for her check she leans over to play the next machine and hits for $10,000, peanuts, but a whole new procedure.

  Toledo writes this up and she says, “Aren’t you supposed to congratulate me?”

  Forty minutes later both checks arrive, minus state and federal taxes. For a hit like this, a slot attendant should expect a $200 reward, minimum. There have been winners of far less who’ve tipped a thousand dollars. Marty Glick, over at Zone 1, knows all about this. They tip him even before they sit down, some do.

  Toledo makes himself scarce because you don’t want to be obvious.

  Hazel Beckman nods him over and hands him a five dollar bill.

  I’m watching all this from an adjoining zone and it is laughable. That’s life. That’s all you can say. That’s people. That’s all. Toledo strolls over to me and he is laughing.

  “What the hell,” he says. I warn him not to spend it all in one place.

  “Forget about it,” he says, and then asks how it went over with those investigators. I tell him nothing happened. There was nothing to say.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says.

  “Any time, Toledo. But about what?”

  His girl, again? Maria?

  “About something.”

  The way he says it, it’s not so simple, not about Maria. You get to know in advance what people have on their minds, especially when it’s money, and this is money, I just know, I can tell, and it’s not good money, I mean kosher money, I can tell that, too. I can’t be sure. But it is a hunch and that is always the best bet, the hunch. He would not be whispering or taking me aside, next to Coin Redemption, if it were about girls. We talk women all the time, openly.

  So I am wary and am not sure I want this to go the next step.

  “Can it wait?”

  “I don’t know. I think you’re the only one I can talk to about this.”

  I give him a hard look. “Do I really have to know?”

  “You’re the only one I can trust.”

  “I don’t think I want to know, Toledo. I think it best you keep it to yourself.”

  “You don’t want to know?”

  “I really don’t.”

  “We’re friends, right?” he says pathetically.

  “That’s the point.”

  But, he says, it’s something I should know.

  “Some things,” I tell him, “are best left unsaid, especially between friends.”

  “I think you know what it is,” he says.

  “No I don’t.”

  No I don’t know that it’s about theft and whether he is or he isn’t part of that trade.

  He informs me that Hazel did shower some of the others. She passed around hundred dollar bills, even slipped the cocktail server a crisp hundred, and even Mark the guard walked off with the same. As she did so, going in secret from palm to palm, she said something like this, according to what Toledo could pick up: “Nothing for that Puerto Rican scum.”

  I shrug when Toledo confides this. Takes all kinds. He’s been around, I’ve been around. We know the score.

  Roger Price, the supervisor on duty, easygoing and one of our favorites, ambles over and asks Toledo what he got. Toledo shows him.

  “That bitch,” says Roger. Then he says: “We’re the foot soldiers and the generals upstairs don’t even know we’re fighting a war.”

  Then he says, “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Roger is
college educated (Temple) but he got his learning on the casino floor. He’s been at this 14 years and just wants to be left alone. You don’t bother me, I don’t bother you. That’s his motto. So we don’t bother him. He started off a nice guy (you can just tell) and he’s still a nice guy, but the human condition, whatever that is, finally got to him. He walks around with a scowl.

  He’s seen everything and it’s disgusting.

  That’s pretty much a trick we all adopt, those of us who serve the public. Keep that scowl and people stay clear.

  Roger asks Toledo if Bob Foster, our president, said anything after he came rushing down from his suite of offices.

  “Nothing to me,” says Toledo.

  “Figures.”

  Our director of marketing, Shelly King, did she?

  “Nada.”

  Roger pats Toledo on the shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard.”

  “I’m okay, man.”

  This leaves me standing uncomfortably with Toledo, as Roger moves on.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he says. “Better you stay cool.”

  “That’s the smart thing.”

  I wonder if I’m being too adult. That’s been my ticket, acting neither high nor low, but just right, or just straight, yes, straight. No airs about being a bit older. Not airs, certainly no airs, about being an author. I’m one of the guys. That’s been the ticket, and no act, either. It’s all come about naturally and routinely.

  I’d hate to admit this to Melanie (though I already have), but I feel more comfortable around this crowd than her crowd, and more at ease, and more desired and desirable, down here around Toledo and Mark Pleszak, certainly Mark, and Maggi Holt and Bob Michaelson and Roger Price and Hitesh and Flint Odesso, certainly Flint, and Carmella, certainly Carmella, than I do around Roe Morgan and the rest of that highfalutin gang.

  These are real people. They are not all good. But they are real. Actually they are pretty good.

  Hobnobbing among the elite is never safe. You wonder, later, if you’ve said something stupid, and you probably have. You’re always being judged, or so it seems, or even worse, or perhaps just the same, you’re not being given a second thought. You are disposable, non-essential personnel. Nobody cares.

  This is not the case on the floor, down here on the floor. It can be terrible but it is always authentic.