Well, maybe she would get him something silly with her windfall.
Surprise him. Surprise herself.
She surprised herself, all right. Plenty.
That night she decided to walk home instead of taking the bus.
Halfway down North Street, she turned into the Silver City Casino, where she had never been before in her life. She had changed the quarters – $18 in all -into bills at the hotel desk, and now, feeling like a visitor inside her own body, she approached the roulette wheel and held these bills out to the croupier with a hand entirely void of feeling. Nor was it just her hand; every nerve below the surface of her skin seemed to have gone dead, as if this sudden aberrant behavior had blown them out like overloaded fuses.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself as she put all 18 of the unmarked pink dollar chips on the space marked odd. It’s just a quarter. That’s really all it is, no matter what it looks like on that runner of felt. It’s only someone’s bad joke on a chambermaid he’d never actually have to look in the eye. It’s only a quarter, and you’re still just trying to get rid of it, because it’s multiplied and changed its shape, but it’s still sending out bad vibes.
No more bets, no more bets, the wheel’s minder chanted as the ball revolved counterclockwise to the spinning wheel. The ball
dropped, bounced, caught, and Darlene closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she saw the ball riding around in the slot marked 15.
The croupier pushed 18 more pink chips – to Darlene they looked like squashed Canada Mints – over to her. Darlene put them all back down on the red. The croupier looked at her, eyebrows raised, asking without saying a word if she was sure. She nodded that she was, and he spun. When red came up, she shifted her growing pile of chips to the black.
Then the odd.
Then the even.
She had $576 in front of her after the last one, and her head had gone to some other planet. It was not black and green and pink chips she saw in front of her, not precisely; it was braces and a radio-controlled submarine.
Lucky me. Darlene Pullen thought. Oh, lucky, lucky me.
She put the chips down again, all of them, and the crowd that always forms behind and around sudden hot-streak winners in gambling towns, even at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, groaned.
Ma’am, I can’t allow that bet without the pit boss’ OK, the roulette wheel’s minder said. He looked considerably more awake now than when Darlene had walked up in her blue-and-white-striped rayon uniform. She had put her money down on the second triple – the numbers from 13 to 24.
Better get him over here then, hon, Darlene said, and waited, calm, her feet on Mother Earth here in Carson City, Nevada, seven miles from where the first big silver mine opened up in 1878, her head
somewhere deep in the deluminum mines of the Planet Chumpadiddle, as the pit boss and the minder conferred and the crowd around her murmured. At last the pit boss came over and asked her to write down her name and address and telephone number on a piece of pink memo paper. Darlene did it, interested to see that her handwriting hardly looked like her own. She felt calm, as calm as the calmest deluminum miner who had ever lived, but her hands were shaking badly.
The pit boss turned to Mr. Roulette Minder and twirled his finger in the air: Spin it, son.
This time the rattle of the little white ball was clearly audible in the area around the roulette table; the crowd had fallen entirely silent, and Darlene’s was the only bet on the felt. This was Carson City, not Monte Carlo, and for Carson, this was a monster bet. The ball rattled, fell into a slot, jumped, fell into another, then jumped again. Darlene closed her eyes.
Lucky, she thought, she prayed. Lucky me, lucky mom, lucky girl.
The crowd moaned, either in horror or ecstasy. That was how she knew the wheel had slowed enough to read. Darlene opened her eyes, knowing that her quarter was finally gone.
Except it wasn’t.
The little white ball was resting in the slot marked 13 Black.
Oh, my God, honey, a woman behind her said. Give me your hand.
I want to rub your hand. Darlene gave it, and felt the other one gently taken as well – taken and fondled. From some distance far, far away from the deluminum mines where she was having this fantasy, she could feel two people, then four, then six, then eight, gently rubbing her hands, trying to catch her luck like a cold germ.
Mr. Roulette was pushing piles and piles of chips over to her.
How much? she asked faintly. How much is that?
Seventeen hundred and 28 dollars, he said. Congratulations, ma’am. If I were you –
But you’re not, Darlene said. I want to put it all down on one number. That one. She pointed. Twenty-five. Behind her, someone screamed softly, as if in sexual rapture. Every cent of it.
No, the pit boss said.
But –
No, he said again, and she had been working for men most of her life, enough to know when one of them meant exactly what he was saying. House policy, Mrs. Pullen.
All right, she said. All right, Robin Hood. She pulled the chips back toward her, spilling some of the piles. How much will you let me put down?
Excuse me, the pit boss said.
He was gone for almost 5 minutes. During that time the wheel stood silent. No one spoke to Darlene, but her hands were touched repeatedly, and sometimes chafed as if she were a fainting victim.
When the pit boss came back, he had a tall bald man with him. The tall bald man was wearing a tuxedo and gold-rimmed glasses. He did not look at Darlene so much as through her.
Eight hundred dollars, he said. But I advise against it.
His eyes dropped down the front of her uniform, then back up at her face. I think you should cash in your winnings, madam.
I don’t think you know jack about winning, Darlene said, and the tall bald man’s mouth tightened in distaste. She shifted her gaze to Mr. Roulette. Do it, she said.
Mr. Roulette put down a plaquette with 800 written on it, positioning it fussily so it covered the number 25. Then he spun the wheel and dropped the ball. The entire casino had gone silent now, even the persistent ratchet-and-ding of the slot machines quiet.
Darlene looked up, across the room, and wasn’t surprised to see that the bank of TVs that had been showing horse races and boxing matches were now showing the spinning roulette wheel and her.
I’m even a TV star. Lucky me. Lucky me. Oh, so lucky me.
The ball spun. The ball bounced. It almost caught, then spun again, a little white dervish racing around the polished wood circumference of the wheel.
Odds! she suddenly cried. What are the odds?
Thirty to one, the tall bald man said. Twenty-four thousand dollars should you win, madam.
Darlene closed her eyes and opened them in 322. She was still sitting in the chair, with the envelope in one hand and the quarter that had fallen out of it in the other. Her tears of laughter were still wet on her cheeks.
Lucky me, she said, and squeezed the envelope so she could look into it.
No note. Just another part of the fantasy, misspellings and all.
Sighing, Darlene slipped the quarter into her uniform pocket and began to clean up 322.
Instead of taking Paul home, as she normally did after school, Patsy brought him to the hotel. He’s sneezing all over the place, she explained, her voice dripping with disdain, which only a 13-year-old can muster in such quantities. He’s, like, choking on it. I thought maybe you’d want to
take him to the Doc in the Box.
Paul looked at her silently from his watering, patient eyes. His nose was as red as the stripe on a candy cane. They were in the lobby; there were no guests checking in currently, and Mr. Avery (Tex to the maids, who unanimously hated the little cowboy) was away from the desk. Probably back in the office salving his saddle sores.
Darlene put her palm on Paul’s forehead, felt the warmth simmering there, and sighed. Suppose you’re right, she said. How are you feeling, Paul?
Ogay, Paul said in a distant, fog horning voice.
Even Patsy looked depressed. He’ll probably be dead by the time he’s 16, she said. The only case of, like, spontaneous AIDS in the history of the world.
You shut your dirty little mouth! Darlene said, much more sharply than she had intended, but Paul was the one who looked wounded.