His appearance of control, in this, seems a façade.
***
Perhaps I should stand for a bit, just to stretch my legs, for some circulation. I’ve been sitting here a very long time, longer than anyone should just sit in one place, I think. My legs ache, and my back aches, the lower back because I sit so far forward, I need to be able to reach all the way across the table, to the high numbers and the low, not that I play the numbers too often.
But maybe I will, just now, the next spin that is. It’s about time to offer something up, just a little something so I don’t seem extravagant. Ten on some number or other, but which to choose? Things never work out when I choose meaningful numbers, like ten or twenty-three, so I should avoid those.
That eight is looking quite nice, calling to me almost. Yes, there I will go on the next spin, a bit on even, and some on eight.
I move my stacks around, count them, I’m certainly up, not much, but a fair amount, enough to feel I’m in the game, enough to feel as if I’ve been lucky, whatever that exactly means, or anyway, I feel good about where I am after all this time.
I touch these chips with my fingertips.
They are yellow, and my hands are white, but they almost blend, as if my hands are just a slight shade of yellow and the chips bring that hue into focus.
I like this casino because the chips are all clean, immaculate, even. In some places the chips are dirty, the chips themselves, dirty! I can hardly stomach that. Chips should be pristine, as if mine are the only hands to have ever come in contact with them, as if they were waiting there, in their neat stacks, just waiting for a chance to be handed over to me, played for many hours, disappearing and reappearing over and over until they retire, never to be seen again once I walk away from the game.
That is in my mind how things should be.
Perfect purity, and only I am allowed to soil them, I with my clean white hands will alone be allowed to soil these yellow chips, after which they will themselves disappear, cease to exist, and certainly will not exist for some other soul who might sit down and happen to be assigned yellow.
***
That man over there reminds me of someone out of a Flannery O’Connor story somehow. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe The Misfit, the thinker surrounded by idiots. And yes, so he just happened to kill an entire family, including a baby, but that’s not the point at all of the story.
Yes, I think that’s right. He has some kind of tortured intelligence about him, like he’s seen things, things that the everyday person on the street couldn’t imagine. Maybe he’s a cop. I don’t know how people do that job, dealing with the darkest side of human behavior, or are criminals even human? Or are they only animals, but what does that even mean as well? My mind wants to think of them as animals, but then that makes me feel strange, and somewhat immoral myself, because why do I consider only “bad” human behavior in the same realm as animal behavior? Am I trying to say that instinct is inherently criminal? As if there could be no such thing as an instinct toward goodness?
I can’t be saying that.
And besides, it’s really an adolescent line of thinking, like it would be deep if you were in ninth grade.
But I want to watch this man, to follow him out to his own logical conclusion, or I suppose that’s a nonsense statement too. I heard that phrase once, logical conclusion, and it fit exactly right for the moment, in that context, and ever since then I have been looking for ways to use the phrase.
I’m not so sure it would fit here.
And now, looking at that tortured face, I ‘m not sure I’d want to follow that man to his conclusion, or find anything out about the logic of his life. He really does look too much like he’s seen things that I wouldn’t want to know exist. I don’t know why I think this of that man, exactly. But it is there. And now I must look away.
And then to what else? I need to find something else.
Yes, these carpets, these blue carpets with flecks of beige. The carpet is worn in a few places, just a few, and it is very clean. Now this is something else to think about. How does this carpet stay clean? I know this casino is open twenty-four hours, and I’ve never seen a vacuum running, not once. So how does this happen?
It’s one of those little bits of magic, I suppose. The magic of clean floors, only a bit worn though I know that these carpets have been tread upon for years and years and years.
The casino is really quite a magical place if I think about it long enough. People come and people go each having had in their own ways some kind of spiritual experience, some experience with the gods, as I would call it, others would call it luck, others call it superstition, but all of it magic, all of it a communion with those forces we can’t see, but know are there, those forces that call to us, perhaps want to destroy us, but to which we must at once show ourselves humble, and simultaneously spit in the face of.
***
I feel that tonight something will happen that will change the texture of my life.
I’m not sure exactly what that means, now that I think it.
The texture of my life. Texture. The way it feels under the fingertips, like this felt, these chips, this drink the waitress has just brought me. The texture of the hues that surround me, the slight shadow that is cast when I am down, or in other words blue, depressed, to say it flatly. Those slight shades of dark that are imagined, and I know they are imagined, but they feel themselves all around me just the same.
That is the texture of my life. Shades of dark and shades of light, all in my own minute connections with the minutia of the world, the countertops papers fabrics paperclips tubes of lipstick that I cannot be without and all those other things that I touch each day. And those things also take on a shadow. Also take on the texture that I feel a part of on that particular day.
And tonight this will all change. Though I cannot tell if it will be from light to dark or from dark to light. But it will change and I am sitting here waiting for it.
And I cannot help but wonder if this man is at the center. He is still there, why doesn’t he leave? Does he stay for the same reason I stay? Which at first was to spend an evening but is now just to see what happens? The suspense of my own life now sitting here in this chair, not making a move, yet waiting for myself to move at the same time? How is this to work? How is the suspense ever to be resolved if he is perhaps waiting and I am certainly waiting and that will be the action the entire night holds?
I sound like a teenage girl right now. I realize that. Perhaps that will be the change, a move toward adolescence, newness, innocence, even. It has been a long time since I have been innocent. He shifts. And he touches the glass beside me, he has put the glass beside me and is now touching that glass, as if to be closer to me, the proximity purposefully close, the minute details that bring his skin just an inch or so closer to mine.
***
Still, I must maintain the illusion of nonchalance.
Because I am not confident enough in my wit to make a remark. And because I am not confident enough in my appearance to move my hand to touch him, surprise him, and know he will respond. And because I know that I am only somewhat obsessed with this man now because I have been sitting here, and he has been sitting here, and the game is so romantic, and there is nothing more romantic than a casino at two am, and because there are drinks around us both and a chandelier high above us, and because the air that flows through this place feels of the outdoors, and because I know that what awaits me outside this space is responsibility and maturity and always the need to be right and fair and true and also restrained and conscious of every move my body makes and every sound that comes from my voice.
I recognize the source of this devotion I feel. And yet I feel it. I feel it in my skin and in my fingers as they move the chips around the table and as I move the chips sometimes to the center just to show him how bold
and I can be.
I just in fact placed a respectable number of chips on the number eighteen, just to show him that I can do it.
My decisions, from the rate of my breath to the movement of muscles in each fingertip and then to everything else, rely in their totality on this person sitting next to me. On his presence here, the warmth I feel coming from his body and that warmth that is then transferred to me. It is all in my mind I know and it will only last for a short time and he will leave this table before I do because I am the one staying for him and not the other way around, but I will feel this way tonight.
And I will leave this table up, that is for certain, because I have been following the rules and the gods have been generous. I will leave this table up, and I will leave probably a short time after he walks away.
***
Alright alright alright, I cannot ignore it any longer. I must stand up from this chair and leave my chips for a few moments and I must do this because I have had to pee now for about two hours. Two hours and I have refused to do this.
It is difficult to leave this seat. To leave the table. To leave the croupier and the felt and to not see where the ball lands a time or two. The fear is always that the thread will be cut, the connection to the circulation of breath and movement will be lost, that the very air itself will run stagnant and then, upon my return, will remain that way.
But now it must be done.
So I will excuse myself.
I will excuse myself in the direction of the man sitting next to me. He will guard my chips and my chair and indeed my presence. He will not allow another to fill the space that is occupied by me, designated for me.
So now I must speak words to him. I must speak more words strung together than I have spoken in a few hours now. I realize that I have not heard my own voice for some time. The pithy remarks of early evening have given way to silence. The witticisms I have been contemplating have never reached their culmination in speech, they rested instead in my mind, trapped there for fear of ridicule.
I need to get up now and use the restroom, I know exactly where it is. It is right there, I see the door right there, it would just take a quiet, ‘could you watch my things?’ or ‘will you be here for a few moments?’ or perhaps I could be very bold and tell him where to place my chips in my absence. This would make the most sense. This would be the more commanding move. This would indicate that I am not afraid of him, that he means nothing to me, that he means everything to me right now at the same time, that I trust him, that we are here together, on the same side, a team, of sorts, against the forces that wish to defeat and deflate us before we step away.
I will do this. I will tell him to bet ten on red each time, until I return.
***
Some goddamn fucking asshole has just shoved his way into the game. He calls the croupier honey. Honey, for Christ’s sake. One and three over there, honey. This is what he tells her. He doesn’t ask. Just a little smug nod, as if the world must succumb to each one of his short, uneven, foul breaths. And his first few shirt buttons are unclasped. Gold chain, gold ring, probably gold teeth.
This man is a stereotype.
A grotesque version of something in an early Pacino film. Somewhat fat, greasy, hairy, and proud of all of it. Probably some little wife at home that he beats.
I hate this man for his arrogance. He does not belong here.
Go somewhere else. We all want to tell him. We all hate him right now. He has soured the mood here, we all implicitly agree. His loud, ugly body has forced its way into our lives and there is nothing we can do but accept it or remove ourselves which would be admitting defeat.
The croupier smiles at him. And I do not smile.
I know I sneer, I can never hide a sneer, a look of disgust that shows in the way I squint my eyes, slightly tense the muscles in my nose and upper lip.
Yes, the mood has changed somewhat now. A darkness has fallen. The air feels dirty. The lightness has given way to tension and hate. There is hate at this table now, and it must not only be coming from me. We all hate this man, the few of us who have been sitting here in pleasant silence with a comment made here and there for a sense of solidarity.
It is three am and this man has now dispelled the good will we have all shared at this table. Perhaps he will not stay long. Perhaps he will lose it all, he is one of those who puts stacks of chips all over the board, nonsense bets, nothing at all will be gained, he will not last long.
I will not last long.
I will be unable to stomach all that has happened this evening, all those who have come and gone and who have won and who have lost and who have harmed me and who have put me in a state of rage such as I am in now.
I will not last long here, or rather, I will not last much longer.
Yet I remain.
And I will remain.
I will continue to sit here because I cannot remove myself from the possibility that the next moment will hold that which I have been waiting for, that which I desire.
***
The long silence.
The time that passes, it could be hours or it could be minutes.
No one speaks.
Even the croupier has tired of making jokes or wishing us well, even the croupier has tired, has become static, the hand that just barely now stretches out over the table to stop all movement, the hand now just barely raises to do this, because we all know before it happens that the time has come, and besides, we have all had our bets placed some time before the hand appears anyway.
We all understand the wheel by now, understand its whims, its decisions, the way the ball bounces, how often the croupier must slow down or speed up the wheel, how often the zero or double zero appears, how heavy stacks of ten feel, or how heavy stacks of twenty, or single chips worth five dollars each, and we all have had at times that sneaky little black chip, the hundred, hidden beneath our stacks of yellow or blue or green or orange, just waiting there just in case, that comfort, the reminder that we still have some time left before it will all be forced to its end.
This long drag of time, boring, it’s rather boring sitting here at this hour, with these people, when I know them and the wheel and all the people who come and go, when I know them so well, when I can almost predict what will happen next, so that what happens next is rendered nothing.
If someone were to ask me what happened next, I would say nothing.
Just sitting, moving a few chips here or there, waiting, then sitting some more, perhaps for some excitement order a drink, or at this point coffee is most useful.
But even this seems a trifle, a mute insignificance, coffee at this hour.
It just makes too much sense. Of course coffee. Of course sitting. Of course that man will now leave because he has lost it all. And of course this other man will put those chips in his pocket before he gets up. And of course I am the only woman left. Of course the drunk young man sloppily places twenty-five on red and wins, then stumbles away having a laugh, like he’s gotten over someone. Of course the music that can still vaguely be heard from the bar.
And of course he is still sitting here, now my true comrade after all this silence, this comfortable stillness and the knowledge that we are the beating heart of this table.
***
I wonder if I could fantasize some wondrous affair.
How would my fantasy go, exactly? We would talk, that is sure. Although I’m terribly afraid that it would end in boredom, that he would in fact be uninteresting. Like for example he works on Wall Street. Such a cliché, this couldn’t be possible.
Not this man
Or perhaps he is an artist.
Yes, this will do.
Perhaps a writer, or no wait a filmmaker, here all night after shooting an intensely emotional scene.
Or even better, a documentarian. But not one of those tha
t pulls all tricks possible to give their subject meaning, all melodrama and camera angles, as if those alone can infuse significance and emotional weight. No, he would be the documenter of history, or of culture, or of art, one who would respect his subject. The respect of silence. Like allowing a person to talk for twenty minutes straight, right into the camera, about even the smallest event. The spilling of wine across a set table. The way one responds when listening to Bach. The experience of horror and silence the first night in a new town, in the dark, alone, after having heard one’s mother has just passed away.
Yes, this man here must be at the center of something profound, some true expression of beauty, or of pure emotional connection, or of poetry, the kind of poetry that one feels in the bones.
And now my fantasy is comprised of talking, communicating between the two of us for some few hours or more, over wine, in a dark restaurant, perhaps with voices all around us so that our own become drowned in the din of other fantasies, our voices alone rise above the hum of noise all around us, and we talk about art and perhaps literature, although I am always disappointed at the books people read.
Yes, we’ll leave the books out of it entirely.
He will just tell me about his next project, tell me of the woman he just interviewed who had lost her cat and who feels so truly that she has lost then a child.
***
I realize now that he has not yet tipped the croupier. And I find now that this disgusts me, somewhat.
Is this a forgivable offense?
The air here is cool, shifting, I cannot tell where it comes from, which vents pour this air onto me, or how it reaches such a distance still with such precision, as if it blows just for me, the coolness of the air just to ease the slight discomfort I may feel in this hot, hot place.
And he has walked away.
He has just now placed his chips in his pocket. He has two black chips, I believe, which he must be going right now to exchange.
He will be walking to the cashier now, speaking some words to the effect of I’d like to cash in, or some such phrase, and then he will glance back to me, because he can still see the table, he will see me in profile, and he will regret ever having stepped away.