All or Nothing

by Preston L. Allen

  O.C.’s walking out the door. I can’t believe it. I wait until he’s completely gone before I say to the others: “Can you believe that guy? What an ass. He’s so full of himself. Who does he think he is?”

  But they’re walking out the door, too. No one takes me on.

  29.

  I am full of air now wherever I am.

  At home, that is where I feel it the most. My wife and I are not together since court. The IRS had no right to arrest her, too, but everything we owned was joint. I tried to explain to them that it was all my doing, that she had no idea what was going on, but they did not care. So we got a quickie divorce. She is suing me, but not for real. Just on paper. It is only to protect her assets, her art things and the things her parents gave her. I am okay with that. If I go down, I want to go down alone. Now our accounts are separate. I don’t have access to the direct deposit from her job anymore. It used to come in handy. Sometimes I would steal a few dollars from it when things were being turned off, sneak over to the casino, turn that into enough to get things turned back on, then sneak the money back into her account so she could continue the dream about the good life she was having with me. Sometimes she would say, Why did they turn off the water? And I would answer, Yeah. That. I went down there and had to cuss them out. There was a mix-up in their computer again. She was so trusting. She never asked to see the bank statements. Now she knows what was really going on. Those days are over now, and the lies, too. We still sleep in the same bedroom, but not in the same bed. I am on the floor. In front of the boys, we are still husband and wife, Mommy and Daddy. The boys are at funny ages: 15, 14, and 11. Neither of us wants another dead son. We have agreed it’s good to have me around just for show. I sleep on the floor. There is no sex.

  This is your punishment, she says. You did this to yourself.

  These days she has taken to wearing sexy underwear to bed. She wants me to want her. This is supposed to be torture. If I wanted her, this would be torture—seeing her like that. What she doesn’t understand is that to me sex is … well, if she came right out and told me to take it, I guess I would have to, but making love to her is not something I’m really interested in doing. She is not my type anymore.

  She doesn’t gamble.

  30.

  I am learning to tell time outside a casino’s walls—time with clocks and natural light, time not measured in antes and flops, and trips to the ATM, and grinning, winning Chinese—a different kind of time than what I’m used to. It seems like weeks when only a day has passed if I am not gambling. How can I make it to the next day? Everything is dull to me. I am distracted. I am only half here. I am full of air it feels like. Something used to be in there, but now it is gone.

  The days seem to drag on and drag on.

  I am at home, I am at work, and it is all the same to me. At work, the children get rowdy on the bus, but that is not real to me. At work, they have found out about my permanent part-time jobs, which is both not against county policy and against it at the same time. Yes, we can do it, but we have to have it approved by our supervisor, who will say yes or no based upon our most recent evaluations. My supervisor tells me the new rules: No more moonlighting—if you don’t like it, you can hit the road.

  He has never liked me. His words are air. Before I got demoted back to bus driver five years ago, I used to be his supervisor. Why was I demoted?

  Too many days off.

  Why so many days off?

  Let’s see, it was the year the Rams won the Super Bowl.

  It was a very good year.

  31.

  All the time I am assessing and devising.

  Where did I go wrong?

  I had lacked discipline. I would be winning at poker, then lose focus and start giving it back. I would be banging a losing machine, and then double or triple my bet and lose more. How illogical. At my worst, I would play two or three machines at the same time. Losing even more money. And even on those days—almost every one of those losing days, at some point in the losing, I would start to win again. True, I wouldn’t always get all of my money back, but I would get a good portion of it, only to lose it again. Now my memory is crystal. I remember being down $800, then hitting $500. A little resurgence money. But instead of walking away down $300, I would give it all back. If I could get back even half of that resurgence money they gave me, I would be a very wealthy man right now. I remember being down a grand and getting back $1,100. I am up $100 after losing! But I would give it all back. Can you believe it? Can you believe how crazy I was?

  In the old days before I was a gambler, I would go into a casino and hit $20 and walk out screaming Hallelujah! I remember hitting $100 before I was a gambler and running straight to the bank to deposit it. These days $100 is nothing to me. What am I going to do with that? A hundred? You might as well put three pennies in my hand.

  My poor mother.

  She says, “I will give you an allowance every month from your father’s pension. He would have wanted you to have it.”

  “Mom, you don’t have enough for yourself.”

  “I will give it and you will take it.”

  “Mom, but you need it.”

  “Take the money. I am old and you are young. The only reason you started gambling in the first place is that times were hard and bosses weren’t paying people what they should have. You had no other choice.

  You were trying to do well by your family. I’m not ashamed of you at all.

  I hate the IRS.”

  “Mom.”

  “Take the money. Take it.”

  And I do.

  It’s $15—.

  Ah, Mom.

  Both her kidneys have failed. She is on dialysis. There are other complications. My mother will be following my father soon.

  But I take the money.

  32.

  When my mother dies, I am nearly inconsolable.

  There is only one cure.

  The only way out of this is to go on a gambling binge.

  But I am barred.

  Oh my God, no. Mama. Oh, Mama. What am I going to do without you?

  Mama! Mama! Mommy!

  33.

  C.L. calls me once in a while, and we talk in whispers over our cell phones, kinda like an affair, though we don’t really have to do that because I am not really married anymore. C.L. says, “Are you being strong?”

  “I’m trying. Are you?”

  “It’s hard.”

  “It is hard.”

  “My man found out.”

  “Mmm. How did he take it?”

  “He got … rough.”

  “No!”

  “I had no choice but to take it.”

  “No, no.”

  “I had to let him do it, or lose him,” she says. “He found out that I had eaten through his life’s savings. I was in charge of it. He trusted me unconditionally—I ate right through it. The look on his face when he found out how little was left. He kept saying, You gambled it away? He couldn’t grasp the concept. Gambled? He kept saying it, like maybe he wanted me to say I had given it to a man. He would have been happier if I had said that. Gambled? he said over and over. He’s never been to a casino in his life.”

  “They don’t understand us. Damnit, nobody understands us. But are you okay now?”

  “You mean physically or gamblically?”

  I laugh. She laughs.

  “He’s a softy. I had the black eye for a few weeks. No lovey-dovey for a few months. He even moved out for a while, but he’s back now. Things are still tense,” she says. “As far as gambling is concerned, I’ve had better weeks. This week has been bad. That damn diamond machine. A Chinese man hit a jackpot right next to me two times in three hours, can you believe it? They always pay the Chinese. I wish I was Chinese. But to me it’s paying nothing. Nothing.” She sighs for both of us. Yeah. I know what she means. She says, “You want to get together for a bit?”

  “I didn’t tell you I’m barred from the casinos?”

  “Oh
no.”

  “Oh yeah. Uncle Sam don’t play.”

  “Oh no, no. You poor thing,” she says. There is a peacefulness now as we hold the phones to our ears without speaking. We take comfort in the sound of each other’s breathing. It’s almost like love, this honesty, but without the sadness or the guilt. There is another one out there.

  There is another one out there like me. She says tenderly, “You still carrying those Super Bowl losers around in your pocket?”

  “You know it.”

  “Very, very close losers,” she says. “I’d like to see them again.”

  “I’d like to show them to you again.”

  “I’d like to see more than those tickets.”

  “I’d like to show you more than those tickets.”

  Her voice brightens. “Are you flirting with me, P?”

  “Are you flirting with me, C.L.?”

  “Yes, I am. Yes, indeedy, I am.”

  “I am too, C.L. I’m flirting with you.”

  “But do you mean it?”

  “Do you?”

  “To tell you the truth,” she says, “I like you just fine, but I’d rather have a good day at the casino.”

  “I know where you’re coming from. There’s nothing I would like more than to see you naked, except of course to play the 7s and 3s I’ve been dreaming about on that diamond machine.”

  She had been my pusher. And I hers. This was during the couple of times we got together at the casino. When she hit a decent bump on the machines and it looked like she was losing it back, I would push her off the seat and print her ticket before she could lose it all. Sometimes I would grab her purse and exit the casino with it before she could reach for her ATM card again. She did the same for me, pushing me off the seat or grabbing my wallet. We watched each other’s backs. We were a team, but now all that was over.

  “Barred for life,” she says. “Ow. That must really suck, P.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Then I guess that means you’re never going to see me naked,” she says.

  34.

  There is not one waking moment when I am not devising.

  If I can’t work part-time, I reason, then there is no way to pay the bills and pay the IRS, except by gambling.

  It has been three months, and I have been going back in disguise for about two weeks. The wide-brimmed hat, the dark shades.

  Caution has made me a better gambler. I don’t stay too long. I never try for the big jackpots anymore, the ones over $1,199, because then it has to be reported to Uncle Sam. I never use anything associated with my bank—no ATMs, no credit cards, no checks. My bank is being monitored. It is strictly cash these days. But no one monitors the cash in the seats of a school bus, so at least I have that to fall back on. Also, my extended family now knows about my situation, and they have shown surprising compassion. I wonder if it has anything to do with the unselfish bounty I used to share with them when I was lucky. Secretly, they want me to win like that again. I am always good for $20 here and there from the cuzzes and the aunties. It always, always, always comes with a lecture, but then I am on my way in my hat and shades to the side doors of the casino. I play the cheapo poker tables, 50 cents mostly, and sometimes the dollar game. I am on a roll. I have won every time I have been there these past two weeks. Sometimes when I leave, I have over $60 in my wallet. I am multiplying my initial investment by three. I am earning close to $40 a day, which works out to $1,200 a month. I am earning $40 in about an hour, which is how long I allow myself to sit at the table. When I am done, I get up and sprint past the machines, which still beckon.

  I go home and put the money in a shoebox under the bed. I help the boys with their homework. I watch the insipid program or two on TV until I hear my ex-wife snoring in her pretty underwear. I count the money in the box in the dark. It is $600 now. I am laden with regret. If I had been this disciplined back when I was starting out, I could have made $100,000 without ever having to hit it big on a machine.

  These are my new rules: Take only a small amount of money into the casino with you. Do not carry ATM cards, credit cards, or a checkbook. Don’t make friends with luck. Make friends with God. God is real. God is on your side. If you are losing, say Thank you, Lord, I will live to gamble another day, and take what’s left of your money off the table. There is no shame in losing. Learn to be a good loser. Lose with a smile and a prayer. Always leave with money, even if it is a quarter. Set a time limit. Abide by the limit you have set. When it is time to leave, leave quickly. When it is time to leave, run. Run fast. Finally, do not fall in love with the casino. The casino is a selfish, stingy, jealous bitch. The casino is the most beautiful bitch in the world.

  At any rate, I am on a two-week roll. I’m going to try to make it last forever. Tomorrow night I will go to GA. I will take my blows from O.C. It’s okay. He means well. I will focus on my dead mother and son to ease the pain. How happy they made me. How much I loved them. How badly I let them down.

  When GA is over, I will sneak up to the casino, and I will earn another $40 or leave with at least a dollar in my pocket.

  Now that the issue is settled in my mind, I push my shoebox full of cash and the loaded gun (for just in case) back under my ex-wife’s bed. I stretch out on the bedding she has spread on the floor for me.

  I do not feel like crying tonight over my mother’s cheap, shitty-ass funeral.

  I do not feel like suicide tonight.

  I feel like I’m holding aces.

  I feel … sexual excitement. I am surprised to find myself excited.

  Now what do I do with this? How do I cash this in?

  I sit up and peep at my ex-wife’s prone body above the covers, her beautiful body bathed in the moonlight streaming in from outside. On that bed in this room in this house that we may yet lose, she is snoring peacefully. Good for her. Good for her. It is good that she can sleep. I can’t. I still can’t, not on a mere one hour of gambling per day. Not when there’s all that free money in the casino and I can’t even take a shot at it. But she looks good, and she can sleep.

  Let her sleep.

  My excitement is gone. It was all an illusion. I have no pocket aces. No Big Slick. I lay myself down on the bedding on the floor. My eyes are wide open. They will remain open most of the night, as they do every night. They will see visions. They will see numbers.

  I can’t believe I did this to myself.

  I shake my head from side to side.

  I can’t believe I did this.

  I MUST MAKE AMENDS

  35.

  (A Second Definition of Insanity)

  I can’t sleep.

  I want that shoebox.

  36.

  I see my dead mother. I see my dead son. I see numbers. I see my dead mother and son and numbers. These are their Social Security numbers and the numbers on the fraudulent credit cards I made in their names so that I could have money to gamble. I can’t sleep. I am a degenerate. I am shit. I am shit.

  I want to die.

  37.

  There’s a fairy tale they tell sometimes.

  Once upon a time, there was this son of a gambler who decided that he would not become a gambler because he saw how gambling had destroyed his father’s life. So he refused to become addicted to the casino. He would spend only a dollar a day in the casino and then leave right away, and thus he came to be called Dollar Danny.

  So Dollar Danny went to the casino every day and put his dollar in the machine. Usually it lost, and he would leave right away. Sometimes it won—small stuff, $20, $30, $50—and still he would cash out after that one single push and leave right away. They should have called him One-Push Danny, the way he played. He had such discipline.

  So this went on for like 20 years, until one day when Dollar Danny pushed his push and the machine began to sing the jackpot song. Ping-ping! Ping-ping-ping! He had won $20,000!

  Everybody began to slap Dollar Danny on the back. Some of them joked, Now you will surely become a degenerat
e like us. That’s all it takes is one big win and then you’re sucked in. You’ll see. You’ll spend that 20 grand so fast it’ll be like you never won it at all. Ha-ha. We’ll give you a year, Danny. One year. You’ll see.

  But the next day, they all watched in awe as Dollar Danny came into the casino, put his dollar in, pushed the machine one single time, and then walked out.

  He did it just like that—one dollar a day—for the next 20 years, until he won 20 grand again.

  And that’s the end of the tale.

  The way it was explained to me, Dollar Danny had a secret that none of the other gamblers knew about. They never asked where he went after he had pushed his single push. Where did he go? He went straight to the bank and deposited one single dollar. He put one dollar in the bank in an interest-bearing account for every dollar he put in the machine. Of course, whenever he hit the small stuff, he put that in the bank, too. So before he had hit his first jackpot, Dollar Danny had banked well over 20 grand in single dollars and “small stuff,” and it had grown, with interest, to well over $35,000.

  Dollar Danny’s secret that the other gamblers did not know was that when he hit that $20,000 the first time, to him it was just more “small stuff.”

  I never did like that fairy tale. I never did understand it.

  I still don’t.

  In my book, Dollar Danny is a pussy.

  O.C. told me this story.

  O.C. is a pussy. I hate GA. GA is like a religion. GA is like a really stifling religion. There are too many steps to climb. I can’t climb 12 steps. Why can’t there be a one-step program? Why can’t there be a no-step program? That’s the program for me. No steps. Just snap your fingers and you’re normal again.

  But life is no fairy tale.

  You’ve got to be in it to win it.

  I want my shoebox.

  38.

  (A Third Definition of Insanity)

  “… Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

  “Shut up, O.C. I know that one already.”

  “It’s the truth, P.”

  “Shut up, O.C.! Leave me alone! Why don’t you all just leave me alone? I’m losing my mind. I need to gamble! I need to gamble! Don’t you understand? It’s my life!”