“Got news,” says Mark. “Big investigation going on.”
That theft ring, if it is a ring and not just one person, is all the buzz.
“Have they called you in yet?”
“No,” I say.
“Everybody who’s got a key is under suspicion. Watch your back.”
“I’m clean.”
“But not everybody’s your friend. Trust nobody.”
We drift back to women. He and his wife aren’t getting along. Nothing serious. They’re just not getting along.
“Mind if I tell you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Top secret.”
“Oooh.”
“You know that Clara?”
“That hot dealer?”
“That’s the one,” he says.
“The one what?”
“She’s got the hots for me.”
“Who can blame her.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You know how you know.”
“I know how you know. How do you know?”
“She’s always finding reasons to ask me questions, steps up real close, gives me that smile. Trust me, I know.”
“You gonna do something?”
“Just might.”
“Go for it,” I say.
“Just might do that,” he says.
This Clara is our Miss America.
I make another round of checks – the place is utterly deserted – and when I come back we resume our discussion that started when we first became friends, which is that he believes in reincarnation, and that he himself, personally, has been reincarnated. In another life, he used to be a man named George Bendix who helped Ford build an automobile. In short, Mark used to be George, an auto engineer, or mechanic.
“Why pick that?” I say. “Most people pick Napoleon.”
He’s never taken off stride with that jest. “I’m not kidding. I was an engineer in Detroit, and my name was George.”
“Your name was George.”
“I always turn my head and answer to that name. Ever wonder why?”
“Come to think of it, you’re right, George.”
“It’s true.”
“You really believe this.”
“I really believe this. I’ve got a real aptitude for cars. Why? Where did that come from?”
“That would mean every car engineer, or mechanic, is a reincarnation.”
“Weren’t you once somebody else?”
“In told you. Napoleon.”
“I thought it would be Hemingway.”
We both spot Omar lurking. “I’d better go.”
“I’m glad about your book. You’ll be back.”
“I’m nothing. Just remember that, Mark.”
“Not true,” he says and being a horse player he adds: “Back class is always dangerous.”
Chapter 6
Melanie is especially silent as she’s driving me home from the train. She is actually quite grim. I know something’s coming. Bad news, of course. Sylvio called, right?
“That, too,” she says.
“That, too? There’s worse?”
The bad news, from Sylvio, is that two more rejections came in for Smooth Operator. Which means one to go. (Or maybe two. I’m never sure.)
But it gets worse, yes it does. Casino law enforcement investigators phoned to set up an appointment with me.
“What’s this all about?” says Melanie.
I tell her it’s nothing. Routine. There’s been theft. There’s always theft. We’re talking casinos. That’s where the money is.
I notice she got her hair cut, short, or shorter. She’s a natural blonde and I like her hair longer, but short is okay, too. I’ve been neglectful. Been a while since I’ve checked her out. There’s been so much going on or maybe I mean that nothing’s been going on. We’ve been so busy giving purpose to our days that there hasn’t been much time for, well, romance.
“It’s just a process.”
“But why do they want you?”
“They want everybody. They want anybody with a key.”
“What key?”
I explain about the keys that only we have as slot attendants; keys that unlock all the machines and all that money in them.
Even when I mention the words “slot attendant” she shivers from a chill of disgust.
She says she sometimes wonders why I bring home such large tips. Sometimes I bring home a hundred dollars in quarters.
“Well they are tips, Mel.”
“I know we’re desperate and that you’re disgusted with the whole thing, but…”
“I am not desperate.”
“Neither am I,” she says. “But you know what I mean.”
“I’m resigned. That’s different from desperate.”
“Well don’t get too resigned.”
“I wish you hadn’t said desperate.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about,” she says.
“I thought it was.”
“We’re talking about that phone call I got from some sergeant. He sounded so…”
“It’s not me, Mel. It’s not me.”
“It’s not your way of getting even?”
“With whom?”
“The casino.”
“No. The casino is what’s saving us.”
“The world?”
“There’s no getting even with the world. The world always wins.”
“I don’t like that attitude.”
“What attitude?”
“The world always wins. That’s defeatism. That’s not us.”
I think she’s beginning to cry, and I don’t like this.
“What about our motto?” she says.
Yes, our motto – we’re right and the rest of the world is wrong.
“Not that I blame you,” she says.
“You got your hair cut.”
“I wouldn’t blame you.”
“You wouldn’t blame me if I stole?”
“I don’t think I would. It’s against type, against character, but people change, or rather, conditions change. Yes, I would understand.”
Then she says, “That green uniform, it’s such a symbol of everything,” and she does start to cry, and I feel like crying, too.
“Tell me about Sylvio,” I say after we’re both okay.
He’d asked for me, but she took the message. He does not know that I work all night, of course, or where I work, of course.
“You want the details?”
“Spare me.”
I’d read enough rejections. I knew the drill. There is a format. When they start off good, they end badly. “Best wishes elsewhere.” When they start off negatively, they sometimes end with an offer. I once got such a letter and was so insulted that I never read the last paragraph, and missed a big chance. I only read the last paragraph a year later, and by that time the editor, McCormick, had died.
“So is Sylvio giving up?” I ask.
“No, not at all. In fact, he was very encouraging.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it, Mel?”
“Yes, that’s very good.”
“So he sounded encouraging.”
“Yes he did.”
“But he didn’t say…”
“You know how quickly they get you off the phone.”
“But he was encouraging.”
“Yes.”
“Did he use that word?”
She’s thinking. “I don’t think so.”
“But something like that, right?”
“Maybe he did say encouraging.”
“Maybe he’s got a bite, I mean despite those two rejections.”
“That may well be,” she says.
“Maybe he’s got an offer and we’re just talking price.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she says.
I wonder if I should tell her abou
t finding my book, The Ice King, in the casino’s gift shop. This could go either way with her, bloom her up or gloom her down. Maybe it’s a good sign. Though we’ve stopped believing in signs, or at least I have. I don’t think it’s wise to tell her. So I won’t tell her. I find that most times it’s best to say nothing and do nothing about certain things, let it slide, and when you do, it sorts itself out, most times. No, she’ll take it darkly.
After a shower, I take my first Valium. This could be my first triple Valium day. I take a broom and smash it against the bedroom window to disperse the pigeons. I hear them flapping away. But they’ll be back. Oh they’ll be back all right. They’re very intelligent. They’re even getting immune to my banging. They know it’s fake, that I can’t back it up. They’re on to me. Why they’ve picked on me, I don’t know. But like the man said, they were here before us. I actually think they’re laughing at me, the pigeons. They’re taunting me.
Melanie draws the shades. She knows it’s a lost cause between me and the pigeons. She reconciles it to nature.
I protest. We’re also nature, aren’t we? We’re a species. We’re part of the scheme.
I’m in bed and she gives me a tender backrub. I know I’m taking up her time. This is her workday at the computer. She’s got reviews to get out. She asks if I want the TV on or off. I say off. At least the sound. The mute button is the greatest invention since the wheel. I haven’t listened to a commercial in five years. Don’t they know that when they pay the networks a million dollars for a 20-second spot? Nobody’s watching. For sure nobody is listening.
Melanie says, “When I think of all the crap that’s being published and produced…”
She should know, being a book and now a movie reviewer as well.
“Maybe…”
“No! You’re a fantastic writer. They just haven’t caught up to you yet…and yes, I know what Hemingway said.”
When he was told that he was far ahead of his time, Hemingway said he wouldn’t mind if they caught up to him just a bit.
“We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again,” she whispers as a means to lullaby me to sleep. “Our luck is bound to change.”
“For the better.”
“Well of course.”
Always be careful how you phrase your dreams and wishes. God can be crafty.
Melanie has a friend whose husband was in a terrible car crash. This friend prayed that her husband might live, and he did, as a vegetable.
So you’ve got to phrase it just right.
An hour later she hands me my third Valium. Maybe I’ll get in an hour’s sleep. I try the TV and it’s about that hurricane in Florida. All non-essential personnel are ordered to evacuate immediately. Hey, that’s me. Non-essential personnel. I take this as an epiphany. Writers are non-essential personnel. Evacuate immediately! Another epiphany is that slot attendants ARE essential personnel. Where would the casinos and all those players be without us? We are essential personnel, slot attendants. Not so writers. One writer more, one writer less, and it’s a sure bet that nobody will know the difference.
I am tempted to share this new-found wisdom with Melanie. Better not. Sleep is more important, more important than anything.
Chapter 7
They’re all sitting together at the same table in the cafeteria, or standing around, all of it loud and mirthful; Toledo Vasquez, Mini Gonzalez, Bob Michaelson, Franco DeLima, Flint Odesso, Hitesh Patel, Rakish Panchal, Pini Cleopatrus, Omar, Maggi Holt, Carmella Sanchez – a mix of slot attendants and supervisors whooping it up. They’re talking cars, how some cars are masculine, some feminine. It’s gotten pretty raunchy.
I’m secluded at a separate table, ready for inspiration with my pen and notepad. I’m a recluse, which is tough to do before an audience. Maybe I’m just shy. Maybe I don’t want any part of this. They don’t know. I don’t know. They keep checking on me. Someone, Carmella actually, yells out and asks what kind of car I drive. I say Toyota. In unison they ooh and aah, as if I said something outrageous.
Carmella, in that sultry Spanish tone of hers, declares, “That is a real feminine car.” Do I make love to it? They’re all laughing.
“Come on, join in,” says Flint.
I move in and become part of the game. After all the goofing it gets serious and I find out that some of them are aiming for an executive career in the casino industry, some are saving up to finish college – there’s even a fledgling doctor in the house – and some are just a year or so short of becoming lawyers, accountants and engineers. All this is news to me.
Back to cars, I submit that my Toyota failed to pass inspection. They all jump in with advice. They all know a particular gas station that’ll pass anything on four wheels, even faulty emissions. It’s a place in Ventnor. Hitesh even hands me a business card of that pliable service station. “You don’t even need an appointment,” says Toledo Vasquez. “Just drive in, drive out,” adds Bob Michaelson, who does business on the side, perhaps shady.
“Just don’t get stopped,” says Bob, who’s in training as a State Trooper. “They do spot checks.”
“No they don’t,” says Flint.
“Yes they do,” says Bob, who used to be a front desk clerk at the hotel next door.
I did not know this about Bob. The crew cut should have been a tip-off that he’s angling to become a New Jersey State Trooper.
At least that’s his plan, his dream. They all aspire. They all have a dream. All this time I thought I was the only one.
Carmella Sanchez is a world-class Spanish beauty. She keeps giving me the eye, or so it seems. No, I’m right. You can’t be mistaken about something so obvious, the way she sparkles and tilts her head to a side when she’s talking to me. She’s got long pitch-black hair that’s combed back aristocratically tight. She carries herself accessible but dignified. Down on the casino floor, after the break upstairs in the cafeteria, we find ourselves sharing zones side by side. She has Zone 6; I have Zone 5. Both are near the Coin Redemption Cages. That’s what the signs say. Some only say “Redemption,” which I once took to be a religious message.
We keep bumping into each other, and there’s that one moment when we’re together and she swivels her hips and gives me that naughty sideward glance.
I tell her that she’s more beautiful than Jennifer Lopez.
“Oh,” she says. “Are you flirting with me?”
“Are you?”
“Maybe,” she says.
Our supervisor is horny Maggi Holt, who is so easy to maneuver. They’re whispering, Maggi and Carmella, and I wonder if it’s about me, and I wonder if I’m about to be brought up on charges of sexual harassment because it’s a new world and you never know. They keep changing the rules and guys don’t know what the rules are day to day; we can’t keep up with the changes. You can get fired, even prosecuted, for making a fellow employee “uncomfortable.” What used to be flirting, or a pass, or a compliment, or teasing, or stealing a kiss, is now harassment and punishable. Just the other day it was different. It was okay. We just can’t keep up.
Carmella slips over to me and says she got permission for both of us to take 20 minutes together. She needs something from her purse in the cloak room (something feminine, I imagine) and doesn’t like to move across the casino floor by herself. She’s been frisked and manhandled by prowlers on the floor and there are no security guards available to provide escort.
“No elevator,” I say.
So we take the back staircase, and she takes my hand as we walk up. There are three floors to go and she moves my hand lightly over her breasts and this is a surprise and no accident. In the cloak room she falls into my arms. “We must not kiss,” she says. “This can’t go on.” I did not know anything was going on, but it turns out that she has a terribly jealous (and violent) husband who suspects us. “Who me? You and me?”
“You and everybody.”
He works in the Banquet Department, or did, until he got fired for getting into a fight, a fist fight, with his
supervisor.
“He never touched me.”
“Who?”
“Bernard, the Banquet manager.”
“So your husband is out of a job?”
“You did not know he worked here?” she says.
“I don’t know you, Carmella.”
Her eyes light up with a smile. “Oh, Jay,” she says, “you know what I’m talking about.”
My arms are limp and at my sides. She takes my right arm, lifts it, and presses it against her breasts. I help myself to a handful, grow with the sensation, and then reach down for more and there’s action here in the coat room. (The editor who lorded me with the news that temptation in life and in literature only happens to people who are unhappily married had it all wrong. Temptation can happen anywhere, any time, to anyone.)
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she says, still radiating.
I say, “I guess I do.”
“I look at you. You look at me. You know. People have eyes.”
“Okay.”
“But nothing has happened,” she says, now gripping my palm for assurance. (Right. THAT didn’t happen. Close – but no cigarette.)
“Of course not.”
“He’s very jealous. We must be careful.”
“Sure.”
“He has friends who watch for him.” As she’s saying all this, I’m not so sure she’s all that worried. Her eyes keep telling a different story.
“We don’t want to get caught,” she says.
“Anything you say, Carmella.”
“Oh?” she says, smiling a certain smile. “Anything?”
“I’m behaving. I always behave.”
“Hmm. Is this fun – to behave?”
“Safe sex is no sex.”
She laughs, but then turns sad.
I ask if he hits her. Her eyes turn moist.
“Only once.”
“That’s once too much.”
“But he’s my husband.”
“That doesn’t mean he owns you.”
She gives me a look that seems to say I don’t know what I’m talking about. “Where I come from,” she says, “girls are property.”
“If he touches you again, leave him.”
“That’s not how it works with my people.”
I offer to protect her. She smiles, pats me sweetly on the cheek, and says there’s nothing to do. This is her life. I wonder what she wants, or rather how far she wants this to go. I’m wondering the same thing about myself. I cannot get mixed up in this for a thousand reasons, and one reason in particular. She extends her lips for kissing but then changes her mind at the same time that I change mine, and it’s as if we share the same thought, that someone, something, is always watching. If it’s not your conscience it’s that Eye In The Sky which follows you wherever you go. To know this you don’t have to be religious; you only have to work in a casino.
Slot Attendant Page 6
