Cha-Ching! (12 page)

“Hang on a second,” she said, standing up. She pulled a hundred-dollar bill from the envelope in her coat and handed it to the waitress, “Merry Christmas.”

The waitress looked at her a second, said, “Thanks,” and walked off with a tray full of drinks.

Theo felt pissed. The waitress could've been more grateful. Maybe she thought Theo was pathetic and trying to hit on her or she hated gay people. She cashed out her machine and decided to follow the waitress, who had a couple of non-alcoholic beers on her tray. She'd drunk them too when she first got sober, and remembered someone telling her, “non-alcoholic beer is for non-alcoholics.” She didn't quite understand what that meant, but back when she was trying to stay out of the bars, she'd sit home and drink a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer each night. She didn't need an addiction specialist to tell her there was something fucked up about that. The cocktail waitress disappeared into a VIP blackjack area.

Theo downed her gin and tonic as she walked and searched the blackjack tables for Big Vic. When she couldn't find him she sat down at a dollar slot machine and removed another hundred-dollar bill from her envelope. The first time Theo saw someone feed a hundred-dollar bill into a slot machine she'd thought she would die. It was like the first time she saw someone step over a sleeping homeless person while holding a Frappuccino and giggling indifferently with a friend, or the first time she learned that a senior citizen would sign over their entire monthly Social Security check to a bar and draw upon it as the month went by, or the first time she found out people got paid fifty dollars an hour to do nothing in offices while the rest of the world scrubbed toilets for pennies. At that point Theo had never put a hundred-dollar bill into a slot machine, but she'd put five twenty-dollar bills in such quick succession she might as well have. And when she realized that, she thought
why split hairs
.

The next slot machine was old-fashioned, with lucky sevens and a variety of fruit. Theo pulled the handle again and again, trying to get three sevens. She was numb, winning nothing, her tongue thick with gin and tonic. The red numbers that displayed her credits were dwindling. She pulled and she pulled and she pulled, and each time she pulled it cost her three dollars. When she'd depleted her credits down to two, she pulled the handle one more time, and when she did she prayed, “Please, please, please God, I'll quit drinking again tomorrow if you let me win this right now,” and just then three red sevens fell into perfect place. Her heart leapt and she grabbed the elbow of the woman sitting next to her, out of impulse, like one might grab the arm of a seatmate on a bumpy airplane flight, and she waited to hear the mad dinging of a victory, but nothing happened.

The woman looked at Theo's machine while still playing her own and said, “Why did you do that? Why weren't you playing the maximum amount of credits?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to play three credits to win on three sevens. Otherwise you get nothing.”

“It was my last two credits,” Theo defended.

“You don't win anything when you're only playing two credits. You can't do that. You'll kill yourself doing that,” the woman said. “That's the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night.”

Theo stared at the three sevens, stunned, and kept pushing the
spin
button even though there was no money left. When she finally got up to leave, the woman told her one more time, “You can't do that,” shaking her head.

Theo wandered over to the pay phones and stood in front of one for a long time holding the cigarette with Marisol's phone number. She'd just call her and say hi even though it was late. She had no idea what time it was, but she knew it had to be at least 2
am
. She dialed the number and hung up when she realized she didn't have any change. She considered breaking another hundred and getting some rolls of quarters from the change girl, but felt impatient. She dialed the operator and asked to place a collect call. While the operator dialed Theo's heart pounded. She wanted to hear Marisol's voice. She regretted having come to Atlantic City.

Marisol's sleepy voice answered.

“Will you accept a collect call from Theo?” the operator said.

Marisol paused a second and gave out a little chuckle, “Uh, okay.”

“You are connected,” the operator said, hanging up.

“Hi,” Theo said.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm sleeping. What are you doing?”

“I'm in Atlantic City.”

“Really?”

Theo couldn't tell if there was the slight sound of disgust in her voice.

“I just wanted to call because I wanted to call you all day and, uh, I didn't.”

“That's nice.”

“So, maybe we can do something again soon?”

“Yeah,” Marisol said, “why don't you call me when you're back from Atlantic City.”

“Okay. And I'll give you money for this collect call. I just didn't have any change.”

“Sounds good. I'm going to go back to sleep now because I have to work in the morning.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Theo felt injured walking away from the pay phones. She didn't know what she had expected, but that wasn't it. She wandered through the casino slightly depressed until she found Big Vic at a blackjack table looking pissed. She stood back watching him bust a few hands, throwing his cards down in disgust and occasionally taking a sip of a Coke. She couldn't understand how he could refuse free drinks from a casino that was so obviously kicking his ass. Theo had never been too proud to refuse a free four-hundred-dollar gin and tonic. While she stood behind him, his losing streak continued. Bust. Bust. Bust. Even the dealer was disgusted. Nobody tips the dealer when they're losing. Theo watched the dealer's face and saw that she was afraid to turn over her own cards because she couldn't stop winning. After Big Vic was out of chips he opened his wallet to buy more, but the only thing inside was a condom. Then he reached into his pockets and rummaged around, confirming the fact that he was a broke-ass joke.

“Let's go,” he said to Theo, and they left the casino.

On the walk to the truck Big Vic confessed he'd lost eighteen hundred dollars. She didn't say anything because she knew there's nothing to say to a person who's lost that much.

“That was the money I was going to use to buy my mom a minivan tomorrow,” he said in the very, very, very low voice of someone who has lost a lot of money.

“You have to work tomorrow?” Theo asked.

He shook his head no.

“Let's get a room, take a shower. Maybe eat something. I'll loan you two hundred dollars and we'll win that money back. It's lucky money,” Theo said, patting her jacket pocket where the envelope of Buttermilk winnings remained.

“No,” Big Vic said, but she could see he was considering it.

•

Theo realized it was 4
am
and they would have to check out of a room by noon, so they decided to try plan B, which was get some pizza and use the money they would have spent on a room to recoup their losses at the roulette wheel. Big Vic sat in angry silence next to Theo on the ride to the pizza shop. It was the last bit of night where it meets up with morning, the sun about to push up against black sky. Theo felt crazy from exhaustion and cigarettes and alcohol and the casino. But the biggest disappointment was her conversation with Marisol.

What had she wanted, for Marisol to beg her to come over right then and marry her? She thought about it for a second and, embarrassed, acknowledged yes. Maybe she should have sex with Big Vic and that would make her less attached to Marisol. She'd had sex with a few guys in high school, but mostly during alcoholic blackouts. Now that she was drinking again anything could be normal. She had become a ghost walking beside her ghost self; when you're a ghost you can be anything. She could be in love with Big Vic and help him care for his mother. She could be a professional gambler or a day trader. Someone could surely teach her how to be a day trader. Plus, maybe Big Vic just needed sex to quell his post-gambling rage. She had no idea how men operated, she just figured they were willing to have sex anytime anywhere, especially after she'd seen the inexplicable desires of men at The Looney Bin
.

The farther away from the casino they got, the more real became the fact that Big Vic had lost the eighteen hundred dollars he was going to use to buy his mother a van. Theo knew from her own experience of losing large sums of money that there were no words to console him. It would take him a long time schlepping dead lobsters at the restaurant to recoup those losses. But money stops being money in casinos and becomes this weird other currency of easy come/easy go credits.

The first time Theo lost eighteen hundred dollars she felt like she would kill herself. Tonight, the combination of losing four hundred dollars plus her shitty phone call with Marisol and her botched sobriety made her only
consider
suicide, eyeing the ditches on the side of the road. She absorbed Big Vic's despair, and the trees flew past the windows. She wondered if everyone in the long line of cars heading away from the casino at 4
am
was considering the same thing. Finally, they reached the 24-hour pizza place.

Theo gave Big Vic a hundred-dollar bill and asked him to go in while she stood against her truck smoking her ten millionth cigarette of the night. He emerged holding two white paper bags, and half tossed/half flung Theo's on the hood of the truck. Inside was a giant, greasy slice of pizza.

“If he asks me, I'll have sex with him,” she thought, interpreting the toss of the pizza as some kind of mating call.

They ate their pizza and downed some soda and then Theo turned to Big Vic and said, “Scared money don't win.”

•

Every casino smells the same: cigarette smoke and carpet glue and doom. Theo knew it was a lie when Big Vic said he was trying to win money to help support his mother or girlfriend. She also knew she was lying when she said the reason she was returning to the casino was to help Big Vic. Gambling is not about getting money; it's about shoving adrenaline into the brain receptor that eats it up like birthday cake.

“We're going right to the roulette wheel,” Theo said. “That's the only way to do this.”

Because it was so early in the morning there was only one roulette wheel in operation. An older Asian man sat on a stool and chain-smoked next to a tray with an untouched steak dinner on it. Theo took a hundred-dollar bill out of her envelope and bought four twenty-five dollar chips, placing them all on black.

“Oh man,” Big Vic said.

“Scared money don't win,” Theo said, looking him in the eye.

“Okay, okay. Come on baby,” Big Vic said.

If they still had money then they still had hope. The croupier spun the wheel and they all watched the silver ball bounce around inside it.

“Black, black, black,” Theo whispered, trying to will the ball to settle into the black slot.

“Black twenty-eight,” the croupier sang.

“Yes!” Big Vic cried.

The croupier slid two matching towers of chips over to Theo's pile and then spun the wheel again.

“You gonna let all that ride?” Big Vic asked.

Theo didn't answer him, just watched the wheel turn and in her mind repeated,
black, black, black.

“Black fifteen.”

“Oh shit,” Big Vic said.

The Asian man got a big payout because he had a lot of money on fifteen. Theo and Big Vic watched the croupier measure stacks and push them over to him. Theo's low back was sweating. She left the chips where they were, and the croupier spun the wheel again, and as it slowed Theo could see the ball settling in the red seven.
Black, black, black,
she thought, closing her eyes.

“Black eleven,” the croupier called out.

Big Vic slapped Theo's shoulder.

Theo resisted breaking the streak but she really wanted to put a hundred-dollar chip on eight. The croupier spun the wheel again and she watched the ball bounce around, and then right before it was too late to place anymore bets, she put a hundred-dollar chip on the number eight. She watched the ball bounce around. She was so high, endorphins were racing through her brain like a bunch of elementary school kids during recess.

“Black eight!”

“Fucking shit! That's thirty-five hundred dollars,” Theo said to Big Vic, “just for the eight!”

Big Vic was so high that he turned around in a small circle of disbelief, flashing the gap in his teeth.

“Cash out,” he told Theo. “Cash out.”

“Are you kidding? Let's do one more.”

“No. We gotta get out of here before we lose it.”

The Asian man used the delay in action to saw off a piece of his cold, untouched steak and numbly chew it. When a cocktail waitress came by, he signaled for her to take it away.

“Cash out,” Theo told the croupier.

Her body buzzed with adrenaline as she watched the croupier push a tower of black chips toward her. She pulled two hundred-dollar chips off the top, tapped them twice on the felt and rolled them to the side for him.

“Thank you,” the croupier said.

Then she picked up the rest of her chips and stepped back from the table.

“How much is there?” Big Vic asked.

“I don't know. I just want to watch and see if black comes up again.”

She could see the relief in his face and they waited to see where the ball would fall next. The Asian man glanced at Theo and then put a hundred-dollar chip on her eight that just won.

“That eight better not hit again,” Theo said to Big Vic.

The croupier spun the wheel and they all watched the silver ball bounce around.

“Black twenty-eight,” the croupier sang.