Short Story / Unfinished Novel - Casino Girl

 

I have ideas.  I write them down.  And then I do nothing.  Because it takes too much self-discipline and time to write a book.  So here it is...

Maybe it's a story.  Maybe it's part of a novel I won't write. 

"Table 17," Chad said, zooming in.

"Who?" she asked.

"The woman in the sequined jacket thing."

"It's a bolero."

He ignored her fashion tip and tapped the screen to the right, which had wider angle shot.

"There's Larry."

The Pit Boss was standing on the far side of the Roulette table, discretely keeping an eye on the woman who was winning.

Susan sighed.  "It's hardly like she's struck gold, the poor woman," she thought.  This wasn't a high end Vegas joint.  It only took $500 in consecutive winnings at a $5 table for the dealer to quickly and quietly press the button that alerted the control room.

No, this really, really wasn't Vegas.

Susan knew her old gang would laugh if they saw the equipment here.  Hell, they' wouldn't even get that far - they'd be sniggering at the carpet when they hit the lobby.  And none of them would eat in that pathetic excuse for a restaurant upstairs.

"Focus!" she chided herself, leaning into the screens.

 "So, uh, how's your mom?" Chad asked.

"Fine," Susan said, her voice flat, signalling that she'd wouldn't elaborate if asked.  

Her mother wasn't fine and everyone knew it.  

This was a shitbag casino on a highway and everyone who worked here came from the same goddamn pissant little town.  They all knew how her mother was, they all knew Susan didn't want to be here and they sure as hell all knew that 30 seconds after her mother's funeral, she'd be putting her Porsche into Flight Mode and hurtling back to the Strip.  Before they could say "Buh-bye" she'd be back at her old job where, if she was watching a woman on an unusual winning streak at a Roulette table, that woman would've won at least ten grand by now.

Susan ran through all the standard checks.  Servers sent to walk past the table signalled there was no cellphone, nothing visible in the woman's ears.  The woman's purse was one of those tiny things you bring to a fancy party, and hung on a long silver chain from her shoulder down to her hip.  The dealer had already been swapped out. 

"The report says she's here with her husband and two friends," Chad said, reading from a third screen.  "They had dinner upstairs, ordered pretty fancy wine.  All four of them are very dressed up.  They told the server it was a celebration for the husband."

"Well," Susan said, "I've seen cheaters use all sorts of ways of looking innocent."

"Yeah," Chad said, "but the server said they bought a wine called Malbuck, and hardly anyone does that."

"Malbec," Susan sighed.

"Whatever."

Susan knew she shouldn't have done that.  The bolero thing was OK, because it was a woman explaining the name of a garment to a man.  But correcting Chad's pronounciation of a type of wine was taking it too far.  His tone said the same thing she heard from everyone in town: "Don't think you're so fancy now, Missy, just 'cos you left to go live in Vegas and drive a sportscar.  You were born here.  You were raised here, just like us."

Distractions!  Focus!

"How much did she start out with?" she asked.

"I told you already," snapped Chad.  "A hundred."

The woman at the Roulette table was definitely not behaving like your average gambler.  She wasn't leaning in or watching what other players were doing or even looking at the table to choose where to put her bet.  She stood, breathing very slowly, eyes closed, all her chips in her hands and, when the wheel was already spinning, she'd lay down a bet on either black or red, a little before No More Bets was called.  Then she'd close her eyes again and breathe, waiting.  When the dealer called the win, she'd open her eyes and watch him add to her pile of chips, then pick them all up.  She'd close her eyes again, take deep slow breaths, and the whole process would restart.

Except... Susan leaned in a little further.

Every now and then, she didn't bet at all.

"How long? she asked.

"Only the last twenty minutes," replied Chad.

"I really don't see anything, apart from she's just a bit weird," she said, pressing the button on the console so that Larry, the Pit Boss, and the Spotters could hear her.

Susan saw Larry shrug his right shoulder, ever so slightly, on the monitor.  He didn't see anything either, then.  Same move from both Spotters, one pretending to play at the same table, and another standing behind the woman, a little to the right, holding a fake Whiskey Sour.

The woman didn't play for three rounds.  The slow, deliberate breathing, the closed eyes... more than a few of the other players at the table had noticed her strange behavior.  Only two of them were following her bets - the rest were too freaked out by her.

The wheel spun, the ball was spun in the opposite direction.  The woman put everything on Red.  She closed her eyes and put her palms together, as if she was praying.

Again, she won. 

But she also completely lost her composure.  Her shoulders started to heave, she took her winnings and turned to leave the table.

Susan quickly pushed the button to talk to Larry.

"Is she going to throw up?" she asked.

"Crying," said Larry quietly, into his mike.

"I'm coming down there," said Susan.  "Let me know where she goes."

Susan ignored the fact that Chad was whispering directions into her earpiece, pretending to be James Bond, and soon found the woman cashing in her chips.  Susan followed her to one of the sofas just off the North side of the casino floor.

The woman was still crying.  She was holding her little purse tightly to her chest.  "They always do that," thought Susan.  "Makes no sense.  As if we'd let anyone steal from anyone else in here."

Susan sat down next to the woman on the sofa, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"My name is Susan," she said softly, "and I work for the casino.  Are you OK?  Can I help with anything?"

"No."  The woman sniffed, blotting her nostrils with the back of her hand.

"Are you sure?  You seem very upset.  Did you have an argument with someone?  Lost a lot of money?"

"I won," the woman said, launching into a fresh flood of tears.

"Isn't that a happy thing?" asked Susan, taking some Kleenex from a helpful server, and handing them to the woman.

"Yes, yes." said the woman, her voice husky from the tears.  "It is."

"Congratulations..." Susan kept her voice moderated.  "How much?"

"$6,400.  I know it doesn't sound like a lot --" the woman blew her nose a little, took a few shaky breaths, "but my husband hasn't worked for eight months and he got a job two weeks ago and we're here to celebrate with our friends but we still have so many credit card bills and medical bills and they almost repossesed our car.  We're twenty grand in the hole."

"I'm so happy this is going to help you."  Susan rubbed the woman's back.  "But you still seem so very upset.  These don't seem like tears of happiness."

From the corner of her eye, Susan saw Larry on the casino floor escorting the woman's husband through the tables, coming over to meet them.  Larry kept looking over to check with Susan, but he also had his hand on the husband's arm and seemed to be reassuring him.

Susan gave an almost imperceptible wave, and Larry directed the husband round a table at a 90 degree angle, taking him on a detour to give the two women more time alone together.

"I closed my eyes," said the woman, starting to cry again "and then a voice told me what to bet."

"It's OK," said Susan, "a lot of people here bet by gut instinct or take time to get in touch with their inner voice."  

The woman snorted - half laugh, half sob - and blew her nose.  She dabbed her eyes, smudging her mascara even more.  

She turned on the couch to face Susan, looking her in the eye.  The woman placed her hand on Susan's arm, and squeezed it.

"You don't understand," she said.  "It was my mother.  She said red.  She said black.  She said when not to play."  

Susan flinched, but she had to push a little more.  She'd need to have the detail for her report.

"Why did you stop?  Two more bets and you would've been able to pay off almost all your debt." 

"My mother always said the same thing," the woman answered, starting to cry harder again. " Same thing.  When I sewed my wedding dress, when I had my first baby.  Even when I was a kid doing my homework.  She said: 'I'll help you, but I won't do it all for you'."

Susan started to cry.

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