Slot Attendant

by Jack Engelhard

  Or when it was nominated for a Pulitzer.

  I did phone him once, somewhere between The Ice King and now this, Smooth Operator, which would be about three years back. So I did swallow some pride, picked up the phone just to congratulate him on his new position and hoping that maybe he’d ask what’s next from me. He took the call and thanked me but said nothing else, except that all they’re publishing, at this new company, are high concept bestsellers. But he never asked if…oh that’s the past.

  I say, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Here he comes and says, “Jay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, Roe Morgan.”

  We had met only once, face to face.

  “Sorry,” he says, “everybody’s out to lunch. You know how it is.”

  Yes, I know how it is.

  He does not offer a handshake, but leads me to his office the way they lead you to your table at the diner.

  His features are generic, opaque. The face tells nothing. He is not fat but not thin either.

  There is nothing about him that is pleasant or unpleasant. He is not polite or impolite. He certainly is not rude, and he certainly is not charming.

  “So,” he says as we settle in, “what brings you to New York?”

  He doesn’t know?

  “You,” I say.

  I intend to be direct, but I also meant that as a joke, an ice-breaker.

  “If it’s about your novel,” he says, “the decision’s already been made.”

  (The passive we. “Mistakes were made.”)

  I say decisions change. He says not very often. I ask why the book was turned down so fast. He says it wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t turned down, it just isn’t right for us. That’s no knock on the book. The book was given serious consideration, especially given my past. After all, I’m one for one, batting a thousand. The trouble with it, is that – and about here I begin to tune out, I know it’s over – that it’s too long here, too short there, too much of this, not enough of that, “and at the end of the day, we decided to pass.”

  This cannot go anywhere with a man, an editor, who says “at the end of the day.”

  But…I must go on. Find an opening, any opening. Failure…okay, failure is not an option. Remember who you are. Yes I will, Melanie.

  I will remember who I am.

  I will dominate.

  I must dominate.

  “Why can’t we work together and fix up what’s wrong?”

  “The decision’s been made.”

  “Isn’t that what editors are for?”

  This does not score.

  “I know my job,” he says. “Anything else?”

  Now he’s walking me to the elevator. Neither of us is smiling.

  “Good luck,” he says. “You’re a damn good writer. The door here is always open to you.”

  It is? That is unexpected and encouraging. It’s something, or rather, I’ll take anything. As the elevator approaches, I ask if there’s one thing in particular that could use fixing. Give me, I say, a clue, something to go on. He says, “The ending. It’s too down.” I do a quick “search” and bring up, in my mind, all the novels, great and small, that have endured with down endings. What is so cheerful about The Old Man and the Sea, or…there’s thousands. Virtually all of literature, from the Greeks onward, is tragedy from beginning to End. I am astonished by this critique since I do not remember Smooth Operator as ending down. Sure it is not neatly tied up at the finish, as no decent novel should be. But it is not down. It ends up vague, for the reader to imagine what’s next. You never want to finish off a novel cute.

  “You want happy endings?” I say to Roe Morgan.

  “Yup.”

  “Like Moby Dick, The Postman Always Rings Twice…”

  “That’s old news.”

  “I wouldn’t mind old news like that, would you?”

  “High concept,” he says. “It’s policy. Bestsellers.”

  “I thought I once gave you one.”

  “I really have to go. Thanks for coming.”

  Then he says…this is what he says…“You live in New Jersey, right?”

  That’s what he says. He says: “You live in New Jersey, right?”

  I get the drift.

  New Jersey, of course, is not a flyover state. It’s a drive-over state. It is a turnpike state.

  What exit do you come from? That’s the joke.

  Who comes from New Jersey? Well, try Walt Whitman.

  But I get the message.

  You live in New Jersey, right?

  One more shot.

  “Suppose I rewrite the ending. Will you…”

  “No thanks.”

  That’s what he says as the elevator arrives for the next trauma. That’s what he says, “No thanks.”

  No thanks means no thanks. That’s what it means. No thanks.

  On leaving the building, I find Manhattan to be different. It’s not the same. It’s all a blur, and I don’t care to take a cab down to the Village.

  I just want to go home. I make it a quick walk back to the buses and catch the 5:26 and everybody else seems wiped out as well. We are not dominating anymore. I’m wondering if anyone else is coming back with “no thanks” and I’m wondering, as we travel in the dark, how to break this to Melanie, how to give it a spin. Well, he did say the door is always open. That is something to bring home. Also, there are other publishers.

  The worst part about bad news is having to split it with somebody, especially somebody you love.

  So happens that on this bus I am seated next to an actress and I know this from a cell phone conversation she is having and after she hangs up we get to talking. She’s excited about a part in a movie she may be getting. I offer her my best wishes. She’s in her mid-thirties and says, yes, it’s a tough business and she still has not succeeded but won’t give up. She asks if I have just returned from that Book Fair at the Javits Center where all the famous authors were gathered with their publishers to push their books. She says, “You look like an author,” and I say, no, I am a slot attendant and that ends the conversation.

  I felt like saying that I am a recovering novelist but it was too late and I was too tired to get cute and besides, we would have begun exchanging artistic stories, her troubles and mine about making it, up against the odds, but I have covered this territory too many times. There is no more talking to do about this. We would only be commiserating and I am tired of this, too.

  There is no comfort in the knowledge that we are all alike in suffering. So what!

  Melanie is waiting in the car at Mount Laurel and she knows right away. I don’t have to tell her. Women know, wives particularly, Melanie first of all. The smell of success this isn’t. I shut my eyes as she drives us home to Voorhees, about 20 minutes away. I don’t feel like spinning and there is not much spinning to do. She asks what I had for lunch and I tell her popcorn. No, I don’t remember what movie I saw. Maybe later, it’ll all come back later.

  “So there was no lunch.”

  “There was no lunch.”

  “Those bastards.”

  Then there is this, and I am not sure whose news is worse, hers or mine – the drains in both showers are clogged up. The water won’t go down, just stays. She had already tried some Drano and that made it even worse. Things come up and won’t go down. So I try the plunger and it helps, but not much. We will have no choice but to get extravagant and get the plumber, if he’ll come. He’s a bit perturbed at Melanie. We had something like this before, some time ago, and when he phoned to confirm the appointment, Melanie was on the other line with an editor about one of her reviews. So she wasn’t rude to the plumber, but she was somewhat abrupt, and for that, for that reason, he didn’t show up, and when I asked him why, he said it was because my wife wasn’t nice to him. That’s something, a sensitive plumber. Meanwhile, we’re going to have to get him again, and behave.

  Back home, over dinner, I tell her everything.

  “He actually said t
hat – no thanks?”

  “No thanks.”

  “How cruel. What did you say?”

  “I said nothing. What’s to say? Everything’s been said. What could be more final?”

  “I don’t believe this,” she says.

  “Well, believe.”

  “No, I don’t believe this is final.”

  “Of course it isn’t final. Nothing is final, not until you’re dead, and even then it’s not final.”

  She says, “We’re not giving up, are we?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “We’re not giving up, Jay.”

  “That’s right. We’re not giving up.”

  I sometimes wonder which arrives first, old age or bitterness. If you’re lucky, it’s old age. Then it’s expected. I find this on the casino floor, how cranky and mean-spirited so many of them are, old people. It shows, that they’ve lived the life and are just fed up. They’re not going to take it anymore. I see their impatience, bordering on rage, when they have to wait an extra ten minutes for a payoff, which means they’ve won, but after a certain point, after a certain age, they’ve had it up to here with everything and everybody. Everything is a bother. I am starting to know the feeling.

  “Right, Jay?” Melanie says. “We’re not giving up. Not us.”

  This is rhetorical but I know Melanie and I know that she needs a response – affirmative, of course.

  She needs the assurance like checking my pulse as proof that I am still ticking.

  “Right, Jay? We’re not quitters.”

  “Right, Mel. Not us.”

  Chapter 9

  Lately, I’ve become a regular member of the gang in the cafeteria. I am an outsider no more.

  Toledo Vasquez and I spar out in the hallway and I continue to advise and consent when it comes to his Maria, and as for my Carmella, there is something going on, there are moments but only moments and I take it, accept it, as nothing more than a diversion, perhaps even a form of revenge against this job and the forces that put me here in this place. If Fate operates on whimsy then this is my response and if God operates on a Plan this is my answer to Him, that I am not happy. I could use a sign that there is more to life than futility, unless King Solomon had it right all along in which case we are really in trouble.

  Bob Michaelson is using me as a reference for his entry into the State Police force, where they need your history minute by minute from the day you were born; an inquisition even more exhaustive, much more exhaustive, than the ones performed by the Casino Control Commission, which is likewise pretty intense when it comes to hiring, where they examine you upside down, inside and out, almost to the point of are you now or have you ever been. To be a New Jersey State Trooper the candidate must be near perfect.

  I am flattered that Bob is using me for that reference and I am flattered that Hitesh Patel wants some academic names from me at Rutgers, where I still have some connections and where Hitesh wants to resume studies for a degree in communications, and I am flattered that wild and crazy Humberto Valdez wants some tips on writing proper resumes and proper reports so that he can move up to executive positions in the casino business.

  “My wife had incense and candles all around the bathtub,” says Bob Michaelson with a smirk. He goes on and tells the rest.

  There is this about Bob Michaelson. I like him all right and he may be a good man to know if he ever does become a state trooper, but he’s always talking about his wife and sometimes it gets quite personal. He talks about their various lovemaking episodes and techniques. I’m no prude, or maybe I am, but I find that odd, very strange, that a man should be so public about his wife. A wife is sacred.

  I think it would be just fine if he spoke openly about his mistresses or one-night stands. That wouldn’t bother me. In fact Bob Michaelson frequents Atlantic City’s massage joints – AC’s other claim to fame along its side streets – and mentions the differing techniques from one place to another, specifically the techniques as practiced by Asian women, and that’s proper. That’s different. That’s okay. But not your wife.

  Humberto says he is doing the right thing by starting as a slot attendant, isn’t he?

  “Just like Donald Trump.”

  I say, “Humberto, Donald Trump started with fifty million dollars.”

  “Of his dad’s money,” says Flint Odesso.

  “Turned it into a fortune,” pipes in Bob Michaelson.

  “Where can I get a job like that?” says Toledo Vasquez.

  “Get a father like that,” says Humberto Valdez.

  Amid all this frivolity who should walk in but Omar, his face a hot coal of indignation. Now what?

  He’s come for me, and what did I do? Nothing, directly.

  “They want you in the Law Enforcement office.”

  As I shuffle down the stairs, Toledo catches up. He wants to know what I’m going to say.

  “Nothing.”

  “You da man,” he says, giving me a shadow box.

  An officer named Detective Conrad Stevenson sits behind a vinyl desk short of any papers or any sign of work. What sort of investigative unit he belongs to is unclear, but he is solid, as they say, in bow tie and crew cut and erect posture. Handcuffs dangle from his belt (so he is the real deal) and a badge is tethered alongside his belt buckle. Uniformed officers parade in and out but he is in plain clothes. My guess is that these are temporary quarters, or that these are people from the outside. I’d never seen these guys before.

  All of it not quite a gulag but intimidating just the same.

  He opens by saying there’s nothing to worry about, if there’s nothing to worry about.

  I say that’s fine.

  “Have you any idea what’s going on?” he asks.

  I say I hear the talk. There’s thieving going on.

  Am I aware that someone has fingered me?

  I swallow hard.

  “No. May I ask who?”

  “You can ask, but I can’t tell.”

  I run through a reckoning of my enemies and there must be plenty of those as you can’t go through life without trespassing. You’re always offending somebody, always walking on somebody’s grass, whether you know it or not. Maybe you didn’t say hello or maybe you didn’t say goodbye. Maybe you forgot to tip the mailman at Christmas, or didn’t tip him enough, so maybe that’s why he’s friendlier to the people next door. Never mind the adversaries I’ve made during my literary and film endeavors, but even the Asian couple that run the dry cleaners took down my autographed poster of The Ice King when I complained about a crease that was pressed lopsided.

  I have sinned against Hollywood producers and New York publishers and newspaper editors, and their sins against me don’t count because they have the power and the glory. Awake and asleep I have cursed the powers that placed obstacles at my feet and prayed that they be recompensed and smitten for their snobbery and arrogance and for all those books of mine that they have murdered before they could be born. I have prayed to have their curses turned into blessings but so far they are ahead. In my dreams I have named names.

  David kept asking why the wicked keep ruling this good earth and that is still a good question.

  I do have friends. Most of them are at the racetrack, but even there I get in trouble when it gets to politics.

  So for sure I’ve made lifetime enemies and for sure I’ve made casino enemies. Top of that list is Omar, the supervisor who’s got a camel up his ass. I’d also had spats with a shift manager or two. There are always fellow slot attendants you’ve crossed down there on the casino floor on purpose or by accident, as when you’ve arrived three minutes late to exchange breaks. I know one girl, Latisha Johnson, who has it in for me for some reason. Beats me what I did to her, but word is that she does voodoo.

  So I’ve made enemies and that’s life, even casino life, where it’s all so animated. The casino is a universe all gathered within the space of a single floor…the good, the bad, the ugly, the profound, the profane. Down on the floor
, especially on weekends, it is madness, it’s a whirlwind, and there is sure to be friction. Gamblers are always on edge – it’s about money after all – and there is always something you are doing or not doing. As a slot attendant, you get it from all sides, from the shift managers, from the supervisors, from the players, from your co-slot attendants and even the cleaning people can order you around. The cocktail servers also get ticked when you hail them for a customer who’s thirsty and wants to know where those girls are with the drinks.

  The girls, the cocktail girls, can afford some dignity and independence, which is beyond us, the slot attendants. They’re union, so they do not have to snap to.

  Unless it’s for a big tipper.

  So they can pace themselves and measure their steps.

  We are not union.

  “Well I’ll tell you anyway,” says Stevenson, upon the question of who fingered me. “One of your co-workers, goes by the name Franco DeLima.”

  That makes sense.

  “He’s wrong.”

  “We know that,” says Stevenson. “We’ve had you under surveillance. That’s not why you’re here. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “By the way. Why are you here?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “We ran a check on you. Are you the same guy who wrote that movie?”

  “I wrote the book.”

  “So you’re a novelist.”

  “Of that I’m guilty.”

  “I thought you guys are rich and famous.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “So what are you doing in a place like this – a slot attendant?”

  “Can I plead the Fifth?”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s just that my wife is a big reader, and she’s read your book, and thinks it’s great.”

  “Please thank her for me.”

  “Me,” he says, half chuckling, “I always think of authors as being dead.”

  “You got that right.”

  There’s a pause.

  Back to business.

  Am I friendly with a kid named Toledo Vasquez?