by Tobias Hill
‘Now here’s a tip from your new boss just for free, son.’
His breath smells of hot-dogs. Meaty sour-sweet. We’re in the Eiffel Lounge, seventeenth floor. Croupier interviews. Croupier means dealer. This is back in April.
‘People lose two things in Vegas, three if you count cherries, but mostly our customers have only two things left to lose and they’re both the same thing. Take their time, you take their money. Take their money, you take their time.’
He leans across the table. ‘But you take care of your time, Calvin, and you shit green presidents. Like me. Let them lose track, yes? And never lose track yourself. This is the Palace. There’s always money to be made. You like money, right?’
The Palace of Versailles. I like it here. I work on Plaza Five. There are no clocks, but I got used to that. I got used to the noise too, the slots and crowds and big-win bells. There are clock radios in the four-poster bedrooms, alongside the checkout times, and from the stained-glass arcade on first floor you can see the giant digital over the Midnight Hour wedding chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard. That’s all.
There’s this poem called ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ by an English Poet Laureate, where people eat fruit and the world goes plain out of their minds. That’s what the Palace is. Lotos fruits, all different kinds. Lemons, cherries, plums and bars. It’s from the Greek. When I get off work I always read a poem. It’s a sign of worth. Then I sleep. I got a place with a view near the Golden Nugget. Mostly I just work, though.
I got a black Casio I keep zippered in my waistcoat pocket. Fifty metres water-resist. I won it on the Trawler-Crawlers in basement three. I check the time whenever I go to the men’s room. I keep track.
I do cards, triple-shifts. My eyes are twenty-twenty for long periods. I got potential.
Sebastian is from Culiacán, that’s Mexico. He doesn’t talk about that much. Him being a foreigner, he doesn’t talk about that. One time he told me. We were drinking. He probably forgot now. Back then he used to take me out drinking uptown. He drank silver tequila chasers. He said, Money in the desert. This is where we live, Calvin. Only we don’t get it. The money. We get green baize and burger bars. If I could turn it all back. Make it liquid. Liquid money. You like money, Calvin? Sure you do.
Once I’m walking home, late night. The stoplights outside my place, someone’s stolen the colour filters off of them. It goes green, white, white. It makes me think of Sebastian. Making it liquid. I stay away from him.
Then it’s four months later and there’s this woman.
Midnight Hour is two elevators away and she isn’t wearing a wrist-watch. I’ve been checking on her between deals. I’m on blackjack, table E14, E is the row, fourteen’s the aisle. Today I was on baccarat shift but I changed with Sevvy, I always do because Sev says baccarat muff has got class. That’s what he says.
I checked the time too. On the Casio, just now in the locker room. This woman, she’s been losing a lot of time but not much money. That’s smart. No big wins, just give and take. I guess I didn’t start counting until she took off her hat and I saw her hair. For definite, she’s been playing that same slot for seven hours and just gone ten minutes.
The hat’s a panama. Not real panama. The kind of thing they give away with Chicken à la Colon at the Dunes. Her raincoat’s army surplus. That’s how I know she’s from out of town. Wearing a raincoat.
She comes out from the elevators and stops when the noise hits her. Wheels and dice and the three thousand slot-machines. She looks at it like she was only going to the mall and took a wrong turn someplace. Wrinkles her nose at the smell. The tang of static and electric motors, like pennies and oysters. A carnival ground with no sky is what she sees. The inside of Las Vegas. In the first alley of slots she stops again.
She touches-one of the machines. A Desert Bandit, hubcap chrome painted with red and green diamonds. An accumulator, that’s when the money goes up and up the longer it waits. Tokens come crashing down somewhere, over on the Cashcades. Her hands snap shut.
Two young girls trail away from the third slot on the left. She walks up to it and takes off her hat. She runs her fingers across the arm and doesn’t jump at the little tug of static. Just smiles. I smile too.
I lived in trailer parks with my Ma when I was young, and that’s why I have good vision. Looking at the world through moving windows. It was practice. I see everything mostly. Gas station faces, WELCOME TO, rain coming beyond porch windows. Faces turning a winning card, private Fourth-of-Julys, lips moving when they need to pray.
This is all wrong. This isn’t what I want to say. I’m walking up a desert ridge away from Las Vegas. The man behind me shouts Keep going Calvin, good boy. This is the place where no one hears. There’s not enough time. What I want to say is
Before the hair, I see the way she stands. Ankles touching, like a woman waiting on a cold street. Lipstick too. Gloss. She looks like the street-people, one of the young ones who hang out down by the dog station. The Greyhounds I mean. The ones who call up for pizza and steal it from right out of the trashcans when nobody collects it.
That’s what she looks like. Hungry. She looks up at the chrome ball of a security camera and smiles. Then she takes off her hat and I see her hair.
It’s ginger. Not ginger like the word. Ginger like ginger: the lion-fur of the root when you cut against its grain. I can’t take my eyes off of her. Sometimes I feel this way with women I can never meet. At a window. In a photo. On a subway train. She’s very beautiful.
I’m not a dozen feet from her. Her coat pockets are full of silver dollars, she’s running one hand through them while she plays. So I guess she didn’t walk in by accident after all. She plays well, too. I keep watching while the blackjack players burn and bust. I can tell the time just from their drinks. GTs and Marys in the afternoon, rocks and straights as evening comes in. After an hour she changes arms, starts pulling with her left. Milking the slot while she flexes blood back into her right hand.
Then Hutch the floorman is behind me with his hand on my shoulder. Just too tight.
‘Everything all right here, Mister Halliday?’
That’s me. Calvin Halliday. ‘Yes, sir!’
I don’t say nothing else and Hutch’s hand loosens up, so nothing else was the right thing to say. Hutch is like Sebastian’s Rottweiler. They drink uptown a lot, I guess. Hutch is built like a wall but if his head wasn’t tucked into the neck of his tuxedo, he’d lose it and not even worry. Like them lizards with their tails.
‘Make sure you give our customers your undivided service and attention. Make their stay a happy one.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I don’t talk too much as a rule anyway. I don’t do patter like some dealers. I ridge the cards, cut them, deal. There’s only two players but I couldn’t tell you their faces. I win a hand. Take bets. Look up.
Hutch is with her. Not standing too close, not close enough to scare her. Touching her when he can. Her arm to guide her to the slot, her hand to the lever. The light shines off his dress shirt and his teeth and for a moment it looks like they’re dancing.
Then she moves back from him, stands with her arms wrapped across her belly while he grins. He spins the slots for her. He gives her his personal demonstration. Now he’s telling her his joke about jerking off the slots.
She waits for him to go. Just standing, head down. She looks tired, her arms must be hurting by now. She just lets them hang.
He goes. She never smiled, not even when Hutch was telling his jerk joke. I watch her for hours as the Palace fills and empties. Lipstick and light all the colours of carnival-glass. I see her mouth move when she prays and loses, hear the bells when she wins a hundred.
Once she looks over at the mirrored glass that’s Management. Sebastian is there, leaning against the glass. Watching her with his arms folded sharp against his tux. She looks away then. There’s some kind of feeling in her face. Just a twist of muscles, it could mean anything strong. I see that. I keep track. My eyes are good.
A truck goes crashing past on the 115. It’s a long way back now. It just makes the desert seem quieter. A place emptied out of life. I can hear the man breathing as he climbs. Soon it’ll be time to stop walking.
Not yet. Not yet. Wait.
She’s very beautiful.
One time I saw Madonna in the Flamingo Café and this woman, she’s beautiful like Madonna. The way people watch her. They want to be with her, a part of her. Like the waitress at that café will tell her grandchildren how she met Madonna, and when she gets Alzheimer’s, she’ll tell them nothing else all day, how Madonna took extra sugar and cream and how she licked her spoon. A part of her.
I wish I could be with her. Someone this beautiful, the world must be different for her. I try and imagine it. Maybe she gets used to it. She looks cold.
Seven hours, ten minutes. There’s shadows under her eyes the colour of new bruises. When she pulls the bandit’s arm she grins. It’s not a smile. It’s her teeth coming together with pain.
A working day she’s been here. All that time on the same slot. Never coming over to the five-dollar tables, not even trying a different bandit. She’s fed a lot of silver into that one machine, and milked some of it back out. Third Desert Bandit on the left. Maybe she saw it in a dream.
The eye-shadows make her look like that boy in the Charlie Chaplin movie. The Kid. She’s so young. I want to know where she ought to be, a whole working day and all that cash gone by.
I have to keep track of the table. There are cards in my hand and I don’t know what they are. This is what I’m good at, but I’m not doing it good. I don’t like that.
There’s an old guy in blue jeans with four cards, he’s got numbers written all over the backs of his hands. Another man standing behind, drinking Long Islands, sometimes sitting to play and sometimes not. A couple with East Coast haircuts, Jesus, I’m not even watching them. The wife clicks another red disc down and drinks her sweet martini. Lipstick on her teeth and glass.
Couples you got to watch because they slip up together for a kiss and then maybe slip cards. I lose the hand too. The East Coast lady kisses her man on his bald spot. The Marlboro Man swears, crosses out the numbers on his knuckles with a ten-dollar Palace fountain-pen.
I keep watching her, though. The woman. She could be gone each time, and that’s why I have to keep looking; I might never see her again. She doesn’t take her eyes off the machine. Chews the insides of her mouth. I do that, when I’m thinking. I want to know what she’s thinking. One time when I look up I can see Sebastian in the floor-to-ceiling cut mirrors. He could be watching me, or just looking through me. It’s hard to tell from his eyes. He looks bored.
I deal. Cut. Play the cards. Head down. There’s a rhythm to it. If I get the rhythm right, I can keep track without ever looking at the Casio.
‘Any more bets?’
I try not to watch her. I try hard to keep my eyes on the baize. Red chips stacked up in their black rings. Small-time gambling, five dollars a hand. The systems man works with one-dollar silver discs, clicking them together in his hands. All nerves and addiction. The green table is everything.
I stop hearing the noise of the gambling halls. For a while I stop thinking of the beautiful girl who dreams of one slot-machine. There’s just me and the players now. I go for unsafe hands; five card tricks or splitting fives. If I win I don’t smile. My face don’t show nothing at all. I bust a six-card hand and deal again. The haze of smoke hurts my eyes and I blink. Once, twice.
‘Deuce and nine is eleven showing, ladies and gentlemen. House shows one queen and holds. Standard bet is five, House wins draws. Does anyone wish to raise the bet?’
‘Can I play?’
She’s standing right next to me. I never heard her come up. I can smell something on her, perfume or her hair. Her voice is hard and nervous, teenaged. Nevada accent, and mostly Nevada means Vegas. I keep getting her wrong.
Her nails are bitten short. No paint, no gloss. They don’t go with her lipstick. She’s wearing no socks. Just sneakers. The rubber peeling off of them. She’s talking again. I have to talk back.
‘You’re welcome to play, ma’am, soon as the next game starts.’
‘Oh, sure. I’m sorry.’
She watches while the House wins and the man with systems on his hands gets up and swears and walks away. She smiles at the East Coasters as she takes the empty seat. The husband won’t look at her. He sort of nods at the space around her. I can understand that.
‘Just a couple of hands. Then I have to take five.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Good luck.’
I’m not supposed to say that. I say it quiet, so maybe she won’t hear with the casino background noise. But she smiles at me. There’s gaps between her teeth. I’m surprised because it doesn’t make her less beautiful. Only less perfect.
‘Thanks. But this is no big deal. Just a chaser.’
She sits back. She talks fast, her voice going up a little at the end of every sentence. It’s her accent. It makes everything a question I want to answer. I deal the cards. Ace showing, eight down.
‘To go with the slots.’ I don’t plan to say that. It just comes out. I look up.
She’s not smiling. Her pupils have gone small in their green irises. When she smiles again the pupils stay small.
‘Excuse me?’
‘A chaser, you said. To go with the slots.’
She starts to look behind her at the Desert Bandits, then stops. ‘You were watching me?’
The way she says it, it’s something bad. Like she was naked. I try to smile but it’s hard, I want her to stay, I know it shows now. ‘It’s my job.’
‘To watch me playing slots?’
‘Well, just to watch all the players. Ma’am.’
‘Hey. Speaking of jobs.’ It’s the East Coast wife, tapping a red disc on the baize.
I start to apologise again. Then Sev is behind me, down from the baccarat gallery, whispering garlic breath in my ear. It’s the end of my shift and I didn’t even know.
‘Chow time, Cal.’ He clucks his tongue against his teeth like the ranchers out in Clark County. Lowers his voice. ‘Hutch says go get changed, you look like a ‘coon in heat, you’re disturbing the customers.’
I follow his eye and she’s watching me. I want to say something. Just so she remembers me. But there’s no time. I pick up the cards. When I talk I’m looking at her.
‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ve enjoyed your time with me, and I’ll be handing you over now to another of our highly trained croupiers, Sevvy. I hope you have a good evening.’
And then I just stand there, looking at her. I can’t stop myself. Hutch the floorman comes up, he’s saying something, laughing, pulling me out of the way. I want to tell him he’s hurting me, but it sounds so weak. I don’t want to sound weak with her there. I catch my footing and don’t fall.
When I look up she’s still sitting there, watching me. She shakes her head. Then she puts down her cards and goes. She just goes. She doesn’t look back.
‘That’s it, Calvin. You can stop now. Turn around so I can see you.’
I lost my breath a little, coming up the ridge. The desert is out ahead of me, I know that. But in the dark there’s nothing. Only wind coming with the smell of rock dust and cactus pears. I could be on the edge of the Grand Canyon, it’s that dark.
‘Turn around, Calvin.’
I could do that. Look back at Las Vegas. The Strip laid out in neon from the Tropicana on in. I’d like that. But I want to be sure. If I hear it first, or if I feel it. If I look, I’ll never be sure.
I keep walking.
I lied. That bit about what I do, work and sleep. I write too. That’s what I do, like what I want to do is what I mean. Like this, writing in my head. It’s instead of talking.
I do poetry. You can probably tell from my style. I’m not so good, I don’t really know why. My Ma taught me. We used to do poems when she was driving.
When the moonlight’s de
ep,
banked up against walls,
you can skate on it
or pack moonballs.
That’s what I wrote last night. Lying on the worn-down bed in my rented room, thinking of her. I’ve never seen snow, only sand which might be the same sometimes. On TV I have. Seen snow.
I lie in my room, thinking of her. I’ve never seen someone so beautiful. Not up close. She’s like snow. I think of her hands, running through pockets of silver. That’s how I’d touch her. If I could ever.
I think of it all night, half-dreaming. Sebastian in the mirrors, the third slot on the left, silver dollars streaming out like liquid. Making it liquid. I think of the way he watched her. Bored. Intent. There’s light on the ceiling coming in off the Golden Nugget and game arcades. Red and gold. Like her hair when she walks under the striplights and chrome.
Then it’s today. I’m still waiting to sleep. I can tell when it starts to get light without moving. The neon fades against the ceiling, thinned with sun. I go down to the public phone outside and ring Lakeisha at the Palace to change my hours.
It should be Sebastian I call. I don’t want to talk to him now. I get Lakeisha to put me on blackjack again. Table E14. She doesn’t ask why. One time she called Sebastian a pimped-up bumfuck hick. Only once, though. She told me since then she’s never been alone with him, not anywhere. She makes sure. I like her.
I eat a hamburger breakfast and walk to the Palace. The stoplights are mended now, but it’s early, there isn’t much traffic. The lights click through patterns by themselves. Red-amber, green, amber. I try and think what I’m going to do. I can’t think. Like I’m hiding it from myself.
I knew she’d still be there. I’m not talking smart. I think slow, I need time. But I thought all last night and I see mostly everything. At the Palace I check the jackpot updates outside Plaza five. The Desert Bandits are up to three million three hundred twenty seven thousand dollars seventy-seven cents. The Cashcades and the Louis XV are higher, nearer four.
Lakeisha lets me check her file copy and it says the same. But there’s a note on the Bandits, faded-out with photocopying: URGENT AUG. SEE % slot ref. 212. Percentages are odds. Lakeisha doesn’t have odds records. That’s different from jackpots, only top management sees those. Sebastian could get them, I guess. If he wanted them bad.