by John O'Brien
“Sera,” she says. “Where are you visiting from?” San Diego.
They both stand against the dealer’s four and lose to his drawn seven.
“Damn!” says Stephen. “I hate those damn unfair twenty-ones. Phoenix, Sarah. You?” He puts another ten dollars in his betting circle.
“They do seem unfair. Here,” she says. She decides to bet ten also and notices that when she does he raises his bet to fifteen. “You can’t bluff me, you know.”—indicating with a nod his bet—“This isn’t poker.” She smiles.
“No,” he says, smiling back at her smile, “really, Phoenix.”
Nodding, this time to his response, she drops it and increases her bet to fifteen before the deal. He quickly raises his to twenty.
“What are you doing?” she says, indicating his bet.
“Just playing the game, Sarah,” he says, and rubs the back of his neck with his left hand.
The dealer busts and they both win. Stephen watches Sera’s bet before removing any of his own from the circle. She leaves her thirty dollars at risk. He adds ten to the forty already in front of him and then wipes his left hand on his pant leg. He is dealt a pair of fives against the dealer’s ace: a good start, for it is a total of ten.
“It can’t get much worse. Split ’em,” he says, pulling out a fifty dollar bill from a large roll. He winks at her.
It just did, she thinks to herself without looking at his draw, knowing that his ineptitude has turned a solid hand into two bust cards.
“Money plays,” says the dealer, placing the fifty next to Stephen’s chips. For the first time he is attentive and almost enthused; he’s eating this up.
“Why did you do that, Stephen?” she says when he loses both bets. “Hell, if you had to lose some money you would have at least been better off doubling!”
He mutters something about taking a chance and excuses himself from the table. He probably would have preferred losing ten times that amount to looking foolish in the eyes of a woman. Sera realizes that he committed no crime, feels bad, wishes she had kept quiet, wishes she would get better at identifying the moment.
(“Maybe I didn’t think that was so great… mmmebbie I want my money back,” he said, making his hand into a fist theatrically up in the air so she could surely see it.
She watched him closely for a clue, but found none. Cursing her own indecision, she suddenly realized that his penis, still inside of her, was shrinking.
“Maybe you should fuck yourself next time. Get off me,” she said. Though her heart was beating hard, pushing her better judgment frantically to her head, she kept her tone and manner solid, even a little bit bored and sounding aloof.
His gaze dropped an inch, then even he knew that he had lost, had betrayed himself. He thought about killing her but decided to let it go, for there would be others. He stood up, releasing her. Keeping up the front, she walked unhurriedly to the bathroom, where she busied herself, always watching him in the mirror, watching his glassy eyes. But he now felt that he had walked through this particular scene before, and was compelled to pay very little attention as he dressed, left the room and hit the street. Sunset, unctuous and alive, fertilized him again, sprayed a peculiar, twitchy laughter on him. He walked down the street; his dick got hard.
Watching through a dirty windowpane, Sera, though instinctively proud to have survived this wrinkle in the bed of a Hollywood motel, wished that she had someone to tell the story to… no… that wasn’t it. She wished that someone would listen to her tell the story.)
She soon discovers that she’s on a good streak, winning about two out of every three hands. With her aggressive splits and doubles she can win a few hundred dollars in no time, even though her bets are relatively modest. She sticks around and plays it through, mostly head to head with the dealer, as no one else has gotten comfortable enough to remain in any of the other seats. They remain mostly empty, occupied only temporarily by the players who lack either the capital or sincerity to endure prolonged play, who orbit the clusters of tables in any casino, fidgeting endlessly with their ever diminishing silver and red stacks of one and five dollar chips—never green or black, these players—sitting abruptly at a table as though they were plunging into a pool, and losing their nerve along with their money when the half-life of their stack is reached; then rising, they fight their way out of the tangle of too many chairs and back into the periphery, roaming again the aisles or, tiring of that, the larger scale territory of the gambling districts themselves. Sometimes briefly the seats around her are semi-occupied by the desperate tragedies who stand behind them with momentary resolve, putting at risk the last third, fourth, or fiftieth of the grocery money or the rent, next week’s paycheck or the remnants of a pawned wedding band. They are not shaking or sweating, but they create a tension thick with guilt and persecution. Their luck being inversely proportionate to their need, they always lose. Sera is disturbed when they appear, and turns away, not from the hopelessness of their situation, which they take far too seriously, but from the intensity of their suffering, which will forever make them victims in their own minds. Eventually her own luck turns, her newly created little stockpile of green, twenty-five dollar chips is now in jeopardy. She has already made and lost two bets on the dealer’s behalf, so when she stands and he sneers, she simply thanks him and leaves.
At the cashier’s cage she exchanges her chips for money and finds that she has won almost, but not quite, three hundred dollars; proving, she thinks grimly to herself, that tricking is still, for her at least, a more profitable gamble. She knows, though, that this money is different from that money. This money was once, and therefore will be again, chips. She and the casinos both know that chips are a wonderful, pretty tool, and possess none of the stigma of dollars. Dollars translate too easily into hours or houses or cars or sex or food or everything, and so losing a dollar is a much more tangible experience than parting with a chip, an object that looks more like a midway consolation token than a medium of exchange. To Sera, chips are the perfect symbol, symbolizing other symbols. It is this extra generation, the picture of a picture, that lets one become totally abstract about wealth in any degree; rendering it without meaning at first cursory glance, and inevitably, upon closer examination, with its most profound meaning; tying itself not to nothing, but to everything at once. She puts the cash, the once and future chips, into her wallet, interleaving it with her trick money as she arranges her bills. She is meticulous: all bills facing forward, right side up; new bills in back to be spent last, old in front—naturally; singles ahead of hundreds, and so on. She is so wrapped up in this familiar procedure that she bumps into a fellow cashee, who only glares at her as he places two small multicolored stacks of chips on the counter, one from each fist. He asks the cashier to count them separately. Sera hopes that when she loses money tonight it will be the money from the three boys, but now she’ll never know for sure.
(“Maybe you should get in. It will be best on you.”
The voice—some sort of accent—was emanating spectrally from the backseat of the car. She’d heard about this stuff and knew that sooner or later she’d have to deal with it.
It was all she could do to resist bending down and looking into the car, but she was afraid that if she did she would be lost. Instead she said, “Look, I didn’t know, okay? I’ll work somewhere else tomorrow.”
A woman’s whisper, then: “I’m not here to… Look at me! I’m not here to tell you where to work.”
Sera felt the hands on the back of her shoulders, and then she knew that she would be in the car soon.)
“Time to take a walk, honey.”
She feels an authoritative hand gripping the back of her arm. She tries to pull away but the grip tightens. Turning, she sees the long arm of a casino security guard.
“What’s the problem? Let go of me,” she says.
“We don’t want you in here. That’s the fucking problem,” he says, “and you know it.”
“I don’t know w
hat you’re talking about. I don’t know anything,” she says. She tries painfully to free her arm with a fast downward jerk. “Don’t worry. If you don’t want me in here then I don’t want to be in here. Just let go of my arm and I’ll walk out.”
“Yeah, we’ll walk out right now, then we’ll both be happy.” He pushes her arm, forcing her forward very fast. His rigid march has her practically running to keep from falling. They reach the sidewalk and, without relaxing his grip on her arm, he grabs between her legs with his free hand and says in her ear, “Next time it won’t be so fuckin’ easy.” He pushes her towards the street and turns back inside.
She is stunned. She looks around at the crowd of spectators. Baffled, their faces fixed in disapproval and apprehension, they look away from her and mumble nervously to each other. They move along. They have no time for people that get thrown out of places. They don’t get thrown out of places. This scene, punctuated with that thought, makes everyone happy with themselves. They’re glad that they don’t get thrown out of places. They move along.
(A roller-coaster thundered overhead, then rattled down the track. The noise had frightened Sera, sending ice-cream down the front of her sundress; it quickly turned into a gooey, rainbow river, running down her chest, tummy and legs. Her father laughed and bent to clean her with his handkerchief. She looked about reflexively for her mother, a woman tormented by jealousy, and finding her nowhere in sight, embraced him.)
Sera looks for a cab. Momentarily forgetting about her facial bruises, she wishes she were dressed for work. She’d like to turn a good trick. She heads for the Strip anyway: better drinks, a more well-behaved class of security guard.
“Closed for remodeling. Try again,” says the cab driver.
“No way. Since when?” she says, shutting the cab door and rolling down the window.
“Last week.” He eyes her in the mirror. “You don’t want to go there anyway. How ’bout the Sands?”
“How about the Trop,” she says.
“All the way, the Trop. Mind if I play the radio?” He turns on the meter.
“Go ahead,” she says.
Turning down his dispatch radio, the driver clicks on a small AM portable hanging on a chain from the rearview mirror. It spits static and fragmented music as he tunes in a station. “I don’t usually do this, but you look like you wouldn’t tell anyone,” he explains.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” she says.
“…Thank you, John, and God bless you,” trebles the radio. “We have time for one more caller. You’re on the air. Hello? Reverend Phil? Can you hear me? Yes, you’re on the air. Go ahead. Reverend, I just don’t know what to think anymore. I mean, what exactly is happening in this city? You can’t walk down the Strip without seeing those filthy newspapers, you know the ones with those naked girls all over them. The casinos are all showing those topless shows, those French shows. Everyone is drinking on the street. Reverend Phil, you talk about God but where is he? These people are all tourists. What’s your name, dear. Jo. Well, Jo, sister—and isn’t that a lovely name that Jesus gave to you, Jo—You know that Jesus is everywhere. We need to remember that the only way to fight the evil is to lose it from your mind, Jo. Look away from that devil. Look away from that pornographer. Look away from that robber. Look away from that murderer. The Lord will deal with them. Have faith, Jo, that they will be swept from this city. The drunk, the prostitute, the will not, live not suicides, will be swept away from our clean floor and into the pit to burn. Then you, Jo, and I and our sisters and brothers will walk again without the tainted presence of those that embrace the evil. Yes, Reverend, I know, but I don’t understand. You don’t understand, Jo. You don’t have to. That’s his glory. It’s good or bad, us or them, black or white. Believe or burn, Jo. These books are written by the righteous. Do not dare to question that which can never need correction. This ark is long afloat, Jo. Come aboard and be safe. It takes no thinking. Pause not, and give only faith! Thank you, Jo, and God bless you…”
“What happened to your face?” asks the driver.
“My husband beats me,” she lies, “but it’s not really his fault. He just doesn’t know any better. We love each other, so I stick around. Anyway, it’s the only game in town.”
“That’s a shame, sister. You should lose that bum. Pretty girl like you could have any guy she wanted,” he says.
She doesn’t answer and they drive the rest of the way to the Tropicana easily, listening to easy-listening country-rock gospel songs.
Arriving there, she pays the driver and approaches the multitudinous glass doors which serve as an effective barrier against only the hot desert itself, and nothing else. Penetration of the first bank lands her in a half-ass air lock, in which she hears the muffled bells and buzzers from an army of gaming machines along with the faint remnants of the sound of traffic on the street, all led by the uneven thuw-wumping beat of the rotating revolving doors. Here the air has no temperature, or every temperature. So pausing only briefly to acclimate herself, she pushes onward through the second bank of doors and enters the casino proper, where it’s always really loud.
She heads for the bar, choosing the side that gives her a spectators’ view of the tables and machines. Waiting for the bartender, savoring the delicious complimentary goldfish-shaped crackers—so generously provided by this and many other attentive establishments throughout Las Vegas—she spots a well-appointed drunk at one of the blackjack tables who seems to be attracting some attention.
The fiftyish man is gaudily adorned with gold in every conservatively customary place on his person. He has that air of one who has and will spend too much of the evening teetering on the edge of consciousness but never quite passing out, and it is obvious that, in the morning, it will take the waxing collection of no-carbon-required markers, being generated even now by the floorman and initialed by both the dealer and the player, to help build a picture for his no longer self-sufficient memory. The nervous manner of the casino staff that is present indicates that this is a player with both the means and the inclination to lose a lot of money—a lot more money—tonight, here. The man is making barely intelligible bets of five hundred to two thousand dollars each on two simultaneously played hands, and losing almost all of them before he has even signed the markers for chips lost two bets ago. The floorman is desperately trying to keep straight his accounting procedure while patiently maintaining his most polite facade for the bleary-eyed player, whose sagging head seems on the verge of knocking over each new stack of chips. The man is far too drunk to remember his usual generous tip for the cocktail waitress, who does remember the last one and is feeling pity for him as he drops his empty glass into her hand and tells her he wants another J&B.
“J&B with a coffee back,” she says hopefully, writing the order on a napkin on her tray as if she might forget it.
“Jayenbee with a Jayenbee back,” he says to her, ignoring her.
Sera looks around for something better to watch; she doesn’t want to watch this anymore. She once knew a man capable of such behavior. Almost self-destructive, it was in his case a way to prove his masculinity to—whom? Himself, is what Sera assumed, for all facets of his life were likewise overdone.
(He envisaged himself lusty and strong, vital and reckless, and indeed, in many superficial ways he was.
“I am an Arab pirate!” he confided in her, only moments before he ejaculated.
Sera, though touched by his attempt at openness, doubted the plausibility of such a notion.)
The bartender appears before her. “Yessssssss,” he croons, dropping a napkin on the bar. He’s a happy camper.
“Hi,” she says. “I’d like a double shot of Herradura Silver tequila, please, and any bottled beer.”
“Lime and salt?” he asks.
“Two double J&B rocks!” hollers the cocktail waitress from the service well.
“No thanks,” says Sera.
“I didn’t think so,” he says. He gets the tequila and beer then
goes over to tend to the waitress.
Sera downs all the liquor and half the beer almost immediately. She pushes her glass forward to indicate that she’s ready for another. In lieu of working she has decided to drink a lot tonight. This is one of those rare times when everything seems to be getting to her. The normally undefined craving for companionship is making itself known to her and she doesn’t like it. She feels strange, older. The incident with the security guard has disturbed her more than she can admit to herself. She cannot accept that she needs to be, at least at some deeply hidden level, or even in some insignificant way, accepted, validated like a parking ticket, punched.
Now the thoughts are raining, anxiety beginning to simmer. She wishes her fucking face wasn’t bruised; there are at least four men at the bar who would pay to fuck her. One of them surely has a room here. It would be so easy. She thinks about what a great parking ticket she is, about the time spent before they come, when they are full of desire and, whether they know it or not, affection. She’s okay with them then, okay enough to pay for, anyway. They squeeze their life into her, all they are, all they don’t even know about themselves. Their biology stands at the helm of their bodies. That’s a real fact, true on any level. Then and there, absolutely, though perhaps exclusively, she has value.
She feels the tequila in her blood, her veins. Her lungs fill with air, and again. The room is noisy, the seat hard. She is hungry, tired, sore, tipsy, self-sufficient, pretty, bruised, young, intelligent, unhappy, thirsty from salty goldfish, cognizant that that’s the idea. She can get water. She has an apartment, a gynecologist, mail, cookies, and the means to bake or buy more. There is a government agency that makes sure that the cookies she buys will not harm her, and it works, she trusts in that. She is a part of her environment. She is still alive, an accomplishment that puts her in the ninety-ninth percentile, way, way ahead of most of her class. Her bruises, the security guard—these are the smallest of potatoes, an aberration. Nothing about this can put her down. There was never any question.