Atlantic City
Some sick sonofabitch decapitated the guy next to him on a Greyhound to Winnipeg. Couldn’t help himself. It’s in the paper beside my bloody mary this morning. I try and ignore the news, but everyone gets distracted. Guess he wore sunglasses, upped the ante and ate the eyes. Bet he plays poker. Me, I stay away from cards. It’s too hard to keep a straight face.
Most the day I sit at the bar playing twenty-five cent touch-screen slot machines and smoking. I remember Dad’s asscrack like a plumber’s on the stool, so I mind mine. When I’m ready, I move to the wheel.
I grew up in the Catskills. My old man couldn’t farm, so when Pappy died he sold the land to buy a truck. After each month’s haul, we drove to Atlantic City. Took us five hours, then I ruled the arcades as the king of air hockey, proud to kick the ass of every older kid and drunk who came my way. No matter what time we pulled in, Mom handed me a cup of quarters as she headed to the slots, ash on her blouse, lipstick thick. Dad went straight to the bar.
I’ve seen every city on the East Coast and worked in close to half. I can’t stand tight places, so whenever I finish a job I get the hell out of town and drive — always through Caeser’s to try and win enough to take me as far away as possible — then, strungout and broke, I head back to find work in some place I’ve left behind.
# # #
Since Rodney’s in Newark for the holiday, he set me up with this guy, said his shit’s just as good. By eight, I should be on the floor. I’m trying to be patient, so when he’s a half-hour late, I switch to Jack and Coke.
Three pros hustle across the bar, spread out like a buffet with their tits glittered. I watch one rub up on the guy opposite me. Another follows. They’ve got him on both sides, as the big black girl in the tight white dress smiles my way.
I hear my name and turn around.
“Wonderful!” Rubbing his hand across my back, a greasy fag in a small suit hides his teeth and sits beside me.
My eyes shoot from my drink to the holes in his face. “You know Rodney?”
“Course I do.” He opens his legs, wide. “How much you want?”
I tell him a hundred. He says a buck twenty.
“What can I get you?” Interrupting, the bartender eyes us.
The sleaze leans in. “Gimme a Red Bull, handsome.”
I order another Jack and Coke and push. “A buck twenty? Rodney — ”
“Rodney’s in Newark.” He winks. “But you don’t have to pay in cash.”
I pull out six twenties and put them on the bar between us.
He takes the money, fusses in his pockets ’til our drinks arrive, then sets his hand on my thigh. “Thanks for the cock juice, baby.”
“Look,” I tell him. Standing up, a baggie falls from my lap as he walks away, blowing a kiss.
# # #
Dad took me out in the tractor on his lap one day when I was six. It just rained, so the air was thick. Mom was away at a friend’s. She stayed there while Pappy died.
When we hit the tree line, Dad turned us around and killed the engine. Facing our sheep at pasture, he lifted me off his lap and sat me beside him. We could still hear Pappy screaming in the distance.
“I grew up in that house, Squirt.” He lit a cigarette, sat back and smoked.
From where I sat I could see my bedroom window over the patch of dirt worn down by years of playing catch.
“So did I.”
I remember him laughing, taking a drag and telling me how when he was my age his old man took him out like this and taught him how to drive a tractor.
“But I’m not gonna do that.” Staring at a lamb chewing in the dusk, he said, “Don’t tell your mother, but I’m no farmer. And neither are you.”
I watched him smoke, cigarette small against his fingers. Staring down at mine, I wondered if my hands would ever look like his — like a man’s — howls of his father dying through the silence between us.
# # #
I’m at home at the wheel. The sound of the ball, straight up double zeros, splits, trios, streets and corners — everything sings. Two bumps in the bathroom and I find my way to an open table, settle in and stack-up nice on five spins. Good bets. Came straight in. Sometimes I ease my way, but not tonight. I’m throwing chips left and right and hitting ’em all. It’s unbelievable.
I spot the big girl from earlier when the waitress brings my Scotch and water. Catching me staring, she squeezes between me and the guy to my left.
“Hey lucky.” She leans in. “Want some company?”
I’d love some.
As she speaks I watch her tits spill a double-chin up her throat I wanna drown in. The dealer asks my bet. I have to focus. $500. Straight up 27.
She presses against me, it hits, and with her tongue in my ear, she puts my hand up her dress. I cash out, upgrade to a penthouse suite and order two bottles of Cristal.
# # #
We made our first trip two months after Pappy died. Since Dad was hardly home, he and Mom got along better out here. We all did. I’ll never forget picking up her cigarette butts around the house, crusted with more lipstick than she ever kissed off on me. Twelve years later, Dad and I drove out the day after we put her in the ground. Stayed in the room mostly, drinking over lessons of craps and roulette. His games, he called ’em.
“Trick is, you wanna ease your way in — watch where things are fallin — then bet off that. You understand?”
He was drawing on a napkin and I could hardly make it out.
“How do you know where it’s gonna land next?”
He never taught me on the wheel. A heart attack dropped him six months later. Dug a helluva hole in his last stretch and the bank took more.
I hit the road after that, looking for work. No matter where, someone always needs help with something, even if I’m the one who needs it most.
# # #
Still up six grand, I finally feel relaxed. But I can’t sleep, so instead of risking my drunk luck at a table, I feed a twenty into a coin machine and fill my quarter cup.
Through the window of the restaurant across the hall I watch a family of five wash their hands with small towels the server gives them in tongs. They’re overdressed, laughing at the little boy hiding behind his.
Truth is, I have a problem. It’s not the drink or the drugs or the wheel — it’s them.
First thing I do is pick up a gun and start hunting. Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Pong — place never changes. Few bucks in I make the top ten, enter my initials SOS, then hear the puck smack plastic and round the corner.
“What the fuck, bitch? You hustlin’ me?” Some pimple-faced punk with his hat on sideways drills a skinny kid across the room.
“That’s three in a row.” Skinny’s voice cracks. “Pay up.”
“Fuck you.” Pimples shoves him into the Coke machine. His buddies laugh.
I’m thirsty, so I walk over and they scatter, all but Skinny by his table. Opening a root beer, I pick up my mallet. “Five bucks says I got you, kid. Two out of three.”
