We get to my car. I open my door. I am thinking, Her mouth is really ugly—I don’t want a blowjob. I don’t want to see her ugly breasts. I don’t want anything from her. That fake hair. What am I getting myself into?
Against my better judgment, I get in the car and pop the button for E.V., who climbs in on the passenger side, hugging her purse the way hookers do. The early-morning sun is blinding us. We reach up and pull down our sun visors at the same time. E.V. laughs at that. I don’t. I’m all business.
“Okay, E.V., what do you want to show me?”
She pulls a slip of paper from her purse. “Read this,” she says, passing it to me.
It is written in pencil. It’s some kind of poem. I read it out loud:
A Poem for P
There is only one man I love
And it is you
On the weekends when you don’t drive me
I am blue
I know my parents may not agree
They’ll say you’re too old for me
But I love you
I love you my sweet bus driver, P
“What is this, E.V.?”
“You know what it is,” she breathes. She pushes the fallen hair back from her face and looks at me with those pretty eyes. “It’s a love poem I wrote when I was a kid. I’ve been carrying it around for 12 years. Sometimes when people are different the world frowns on their love. I was too shy to tell you when I was a kid, but it’s all true. I loved you then and I love you now.”
“Wow.” I am almost touched. Not because of this ugly E.V. in the car with me, but because of who E.V. used to be—not, I repeat, because of who she is now, this desperate, smelly woman too far gone to hide the pencil she wrote this fraudulent note with when she went into the bathroom a few minutes ago. Not because of this woman too far gone to notice, or to care, that she has written the note on the back of an ATM receipt dated today. “Wow,” I say for the sake of the E.V. that used to be, “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Her eyes are still bluer than this morning’s sky. “You can keep it,” she says, cuddling close, caressing my face. “I don’t need it anymore. I’ve got you.”
I lean away from her smell, pull out my wallet, and pass two hundred-dollar bills into her hand. She kisses me on the neck and exits the car in such a hurry to get back inside the casino that she almost forgets her manners. Almost.
She darts around to my side of the car and says with a little curtsy, “Goodbye and thank you so much. Thank you, my love.”
She blows a kiss.
I watch her backside get smaller as she scurries into the casino. She is wearing a short white skirt. I have watched her becomes this. I have watched E.V. grow up. I have watched E.V. decline.
But from behind, she almost looks like the girl she used to be.
Ah, E.V.
I’m so messed up I swear I don’t gamble for like a week.
21.
It is easy to lie to my wife.
She expects everything to be all right, and that is exactly what I tell her. I tell her that everything is all right. It is easier than telling her the truth. Telling her how it really is. If she knew how it really was, I hate to think what she would do. Thank God her nature is to accept rosy, optimistic pictures of ugly truths.
Can she not see what I really am? Can she not see what I am doing to her and our children?
My wife comes from a family of Caribbean elites. In the part of Guyana where she comes from, she has relatives who are judges, lawyers, public officials, and things like that. The part of the country where she comes from is named after her great-great-grandfather, a white man, a British lord, who was once the country’s prime minister. Her great-great-grandfather’s last name is famous in her country. It is associated with power and money.
Her parents were refugees to America—not the political kind, but they were fleeing the wrath and scorn of her mother’s white family. While race-mixing was common and considered for the most part unremarkable during the ’60s in Guyana, it set her mother apart in her family, especially since the black man she loved had gotten her with child before wooing, as they say.
So my wife grew up in relative comfort in an affluent Miami suburb with her interracial parents because they had a little money, and they were wise with it. I, on the other hand, grew up in a working-class suburb of Miami called Carol City. I met her because we were bused to the same school during the busing craze of the early ’70s.
My wife’s mother and father cut a striking figure. He is tall, thick-limbed, and brown as tree bark. Her mom is short, stout, sandy-haired, and freckle-faced. My wife is their second child, the dark-skinned one. Ahead of her, there is an older brother; and after her there are two more boys, a girl, a boy, and then another girl. In all, there are seven children, six of them caramel-colored, one of them dark chocolate. My wife has always had an inferiority complex because of how dark she is compared to her siblings. Maybe that’s what made her so different from the rest.
Her brothers and sisters all hold degrees in things like law and medicine. My wife’s degree is in political science, though she has never spoken of wanting to go back to school to study law or to become an attorney. She is content to work at the museum in the acquisitions office, where she does not make much money, only a few thousand dollars a year more than me, but is happy doing what she loves and being around what she loves, which is art. Our home, you could say, is a museum. She has an eye for color and arrangement. She has filled our house with pretty things.
I am no fool. I know that in her family, my wife is considered a major disappointment for marrying beneath her station for love rather than to better herself. She is a disappointment because she married a bus driver.
But she likes the rosy picture. She likes to believe. She’s got as much faith in me as she has in her church. You should have heard her on the phone with them after I hit that big one. She was putting them in their place. They may have these great careers and whatnot, but how many of them could say that they actually had $100,000 in their bank account? I’m not talking about tied up in investments. I’m talking about hard cash.
She was so convinced that we had finally made it.
Then I had to go and blow it all.
It is easy to make her believe that the money is still there. She has never asked to see the bank statements. I am the man of the house. She is a Caribbean woman. She lets me run things. It is hard to tell her these lies, but it is so easy to make her believe. I am afraid to think what she will do when she finally finds out.
I am so afraid.
I need to win and put that money back.
I don’t want to have to steal and pawn my wife’s pretty things.
22.
The people at the casinos know me by name.
The people at the CashMyCheck store know me by name.
My bill collectors—I wish they didn’t, but they know me by name.
They cut off the water because I had to gamble. They cut off the cable because I had to gamble. They cut off the cell phones because I had to gamble. I had to gamble, I had to gamble, I had to gamble, so I missed taking the boys to see Spider-Man 2, which had just come out in the theaters. See, I was on a roll. I had eaten through that big MAX PAY, but I was pretending to my wife that I still had it. The only way to make the bills was to visit the CashMyCheck store twice a month and then delay things as long as I could until I hit a few bucks to pay. Now I really had to gamble. My life and my secret depended on it. Meanwhile, she is shopping and shopping, God bless her, like she’s married to a lucky gambler. But I’m the broke kind now.
Today I’m on a roll, and the movie starts at 7:00, but I’m on a roll. I stretch it to 2:00, 3:00, then 4:00, and she finally rings me at 4:30. “Remember the movie?” she says. “Are you gambling?”
“No. I’m here working at the depot getting ready for that field trip tomorrow.”
Really, I’m in the bathroom of the casino taking this call so she can’t hear the noise of
the machines. You know how it is.
I tell her: “I’m leaving the depot right now. I promise.”
And the question again is, why not leave now? I’ve made over a grand, which should be good enough for another week of pretending. But right after hanging up the phone, I lose some of it. I am determined to get it all back, so here I am at the table ignoring the ringing cell phone until like 9 p.m.
Yes, I am fully aware that the movie was at 7 and it is now 9. Yes, I am fully aware that I have stood up my boys. Again.
But damnit, I was on a roll.
I get home. She is pissed, cursing and accusing of affairs. Affairs? If not gambling, then it must be affairs. This is how a woman’s mind works. The long-suffering wife. It has to be another woman. Affairs, affairs, affairs. Yes, yes, yes. My other woman is the casino, hon.
I swear, sometimes I wish I were having an affair with a woman who would take a couple hundred bucks a month to love me up and leave the rest of my goddamned money alone. Pussy means nothing to me. I wish I did love pussy like I used to. Gambling is fun. That’s what people don’t understand about gamblers. We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don’t play to win. If we did, I would have given up after I hit more than triple my annual income instead of giving all of it back in less than six months.
It is July. See, when I hit that big wad last October I was thinking, Man oh man, I have enough money here to keep everybody happy and to go gamble, too. I was thinking, Man, I am set for life. I can take care of things at home and go gamble, too. See? It’s always about the gamble. Everything else is secondary. Okay, I miss Spider-Man 2. So I get cursed out by my wife as usual and go to bed high on the grand I won tonight.
It is one-one-hundredth of what I need to get back on top. If I’m lucky like this for 100 more days, I’ll be back on top in three months. The next day when I get home from work, my wife informs me that my neighbor has taken the boys to see Spider-Man 2 with his family. The neighbor is a good man, a family man, who does not gamble.
“But I wanted to take them.”
She doesn’t even dignify my statement with a response. We both know I’m lying. Somewhere deep inside I am still that good father who wanted to take his sons to see Spider-Man 2.
It’s too sad. I can’t focus on it. When I focus on sadness, I get an overwhelming urge to gamble.
So now I am sad. So now I have the urge. Since the boys are at the movies anyway, I am free. I am off the hook. I take a quick shower, then hop in the car and go gamble.
I have a bad night.
I give back $800 from last night’s winnings.
When I come home and check that night’s Cash-3, my area code has played.
3-0-5.
And the Play-4? The last four digits of my cell phone.
1-1-7-7.
Now even God is playing mind games with me.
Or maybe He’s trying to tell me something.
Tell me something I don’t know, Lord. Tell me the numbers before they hit, not after.
23.
My first child was a beautiful little girl I had by this other woman I dated before I married my wife and had the three boys.
Four, it used to be, but one of them is dead.
So this woman, who had grown to be a pain in the butt, finally moved herself and my daughter up to Maryland a few years ago, which is okay because she is less of a pain in the butt when she is far away, but here’s the thing: I am a good father and I love my daughter, who is enrolled up there in junior college now. So tell me this, why is it that when my ex called and said they were falling on hard times up there and could I send her a few hundred, I said okay, then went out and gambled away half of my paycheck, then went to the CashMyCheck store for this high interest (10 percent), short-term (two weeks) loan to pay the rest of my bills, then ignored the bills and my constantly ringing cell phone, too, because I couldn’t believe that my daughter and her mother could be getting kicked out of their house up there, and instead of helping out, I was blowing what little extra I had?
I could get kicked out of my house, too.
Foreclosure and divorce loom.
The IRS is no fun.
I wish I had that hundred grand back.
Make me lucky again, Lord, so that I may be great again in my daughter’s eyes.
24.
I have like three grand left from a jackpot of $100,000.
Then I discover this new machine, the diamond game.
It’s just like the regular machine, except it sends you these diamonds every once in a while that are wild cards. It doesn’t pay big, but it pays often. I hit a little jackpot right off for $5,000. So now I’m back up to eight grand. Thank God. I can survive on that if I stop gambling.
Yup.
Then I hit another little one for $2,300. Thank God. Then I hit a couple really small ones for $800, $700, $1,100, like that on this generous machine. I’m doing okay again. Close to 13 grand in the bank. Only $87,000 more to go and I’ll be back on top. We take a trip to the Keys. The whole family. I resist the urge to get on the gambling boat. We fish all day and night. My boys are great company. I can’t believe how they’ve grown. They are so funny. They make me laugh. The one who used to be allergic to strawberries and dust and pet hair has outgrown it completely and now he’s always befriending stray dogs and cats, and strawberries are his favorite fruit (though it still worries us). The quiet one has a girlfriend that the other two keep teasing him about. The oldest one has snuck and pierced his ear, and I’m trying to decide how I feel about it—his mother hates it, but I think it makes him look fierce, and I think maybe the girls go for that these days. Maybe … maybe I can do it. Maybe I can make it.
I get back up to Miami. I don’t go to the casinos for three weeks. I actually deposit two consecutive paychecks without going to the casinos. It is good not smelling like smoke. It is good not lying to my wife. It is good being home early. It is good helping my children with their homework. It is good making love. I make love to my wife two nights in a row. I make love to her three times in one night. I fly up to Maryland to see my daughter. I give her mother two grand.
She tells me in private: “They were going to take our house. We were living off her scholarship money. I prayed that something would happen. I prayed to God, and God always delivers. I didn’t think it would come from you because I know like you told me you are having financial problems. But God is a miracle worker. This money is blessed money. This is exactly how much I prayed for. I can give $800 to the mortgage. I can use another $500 to pay the rest of the bills. I still have $700 left over to add to my paycheck and your child support, which just came in the mail from the state.”
Then she kisses me, which creeps me out. My dislike of her is tremendous. We don’t get along at all. But it’s okay. I understand how she feels. But what I find amazing is that she thinks $2,000 is a lot of money.
Two grand?
I can blow that in two hours in a casino.
I do blow that in two hours in a casino.
Then I fly back down to Miami and have five bad days. I lose $1,100, $1,100, $700, $800, $1,100. I am in shock. Where has the luck gone? It’s that damned woman. I shouldn’t have let her kiss me. She’s bad luck. She stole my daughter from me and now she’s given me bad luck. Look at all this money I have lost. I am right back where I was. Worse. Because now I really want to gamble. I don’t want to do anything else but gamble. I’m not going to let anything stand in my way. I will call in sick to work. I will lie to my wife, whom I love. I will take money from the children’s accounts. I will sell the junk I have in the garage. I will borrow from two CashMyCheck stores. I will borrow from friends. I will borrow from strangers. I will steal from my wife. I will have money to gamble.
I will win it all back.
25.
I am losing with pocket aces.
I am losing with Big Slick.
The machines are laughing at me. The machines are sucking money like reverse ATMs. I have never been in a slump
like this. Get that camera off my back, you damned Indians. Play fair.
I meet this woman, C.L., outside the casino one Saturday afternoon. I am beating a hasty retreat to my car. As usual. I am muttering loudly that I have just blown $2,000. Again. She passes me, this stringy-haired, skinny white woman, and says, “I know what you mean.”
I tell her, “This is never going to happen again.”
She says, looking straight at me, “Oh yes it will.”
With the intimacy of kindred strangers, we start comparing notes. She is sneaking money from the man she loves.
She says, “The sad thing is that he trusts me with his money. If he only knew. I have to borrow from my mother to cover all his money I’m losing here at the casino. The way I figure it, though, once I hit it big, I’ll pay him back and tell him all about it. It’ll be like I invested his money for him.”
“I know what you mean,” I say. “My wife thinks we’re well off because I hit last year. She doesn’t know that I pretty much blew in seven months maybe $100,000, and then some. Of course, it’s more than that. Where the hell is my salary? I do have a job. I do receive a paycheck every two weeks. That’s gone, too.”
“Tell me about it. I hit for 20 grand last year. Where is it?”
“How would I know? I’m still looking for my hundred.”
“I’ll tell you where it is—it’s in there,” she says, pointing at the casino entrance.
“In there. Yes.”
“When I hit, I paid a few bills, I gave my mom some expensive gifts. Then I came back here and pretty much blew the rest.”
“It goes fast.”
“Doesn’t it, though?”
“We tip big when we win.”
“I was passing out hundreds like dimes.”
“I bought a new car.”
“That’s what I should have done. At least you bought a car. I hit for 20 grand and I’m driving a car falling apart.”
“I can’t put gas in mine.”
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