Six Stories (18 page)

Darlene also thought he might be the only 7-year-old in the clean air of this high-desert town who was an incipient asthmatic.

She sighed and used her passkey on 323, thinking maybe she’d find a 50, or even a hundred, in this room’s honeypot. It was almost always her first thought on entering a room. The envelope was just where she had left it, however - propped against the telephone -

and although she checked it just to be sure, she knew it would be empty, and it was.

There was a one-armed bandit - just that single one - in the lobby of the Rancher’s, and though Darlene had never used it during her five years of work here, she dropped her hand into her pocket on her way to lunch that day, felt the envelope with the torn-off end and swerved toward the chrome-plated fool-catcher. She hadn’t forgotten her intention to give the quarter to Paul, but a quarter meant nothing to kids these days. Why should it? You couldn’t even get a lousy bottle of Coke for a quarter. And suddenly she just wanted to be rid of the damned thing. Her back hurt, she had unaccustomed acid indigestion from her 10 o’clock cup of coffee and she felt savagely depressed. Suddenly the shine was off the world, and it all seemed the fault of that lousy quarter as if it were sitting there in her pocket and sending out little batches of rotten vibes.

Gerda came out of the elevator just in time to see Darlene plant herself in front of the slot machine and dump the quarter out of the envelope and into her palm.

You? Gerda said. You? No, never - I don’t believe it.

Just watch me, Darlene said, and dropped the coin into the slot, which read USE 1 2 OR 3 COINS. That baby is gone.

She started to walk off, then, almost as an afterthought, turned back long enough to yank the bandit’s lever. She turned away again, not bothering to watch the drums spin, and so did not see the bells slot into place in the windows - one, two, and three. She paused only when she heard quarters begin to shower into the tray at the bottom of the machine. Her eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously, as if this was another joke or maybe the punch line of the first one.

You vin! Gerda cried, her Swedish accent coming out more strongly in her excitement. Darlene, you vin! She darted past Darlene, who simply stood where she was, listening to the coins cascade into the tray. The sound seemed to go on forever. Lucky me, she thought. Lucky, lucky me.

At last the quarters stopped falling.

Oh, goodness! Gerda said. Goodness me! And to think this cheap machine never paid me anything, after all the quarters I’m stuffing it with! Vut luck is here! There must be $15, Darl! Imagine if you’d put in tree quarters!

That would have been more luck than I could have stood, Darlene said. She felt like crying. She didn’t know why that should be, but it was; she could feel the tears burning the backs of her eyeballs like weak acid. Gerda helped her scoop the quarters out of the tray, and when they were all in Darlene’s uniform pocket, that side of her dress sagged comically. The only thought to cross her mind was that she ought to get Paul something nice, some toy. Fifteen dollars wasn’t enough for the Sega system he wanted, not by a long shot, but it might buy one of the electronic things he was always looking at in the window of Radio Shack at the mall. Not asking -

he knew better; he was sickly, but that didn’t make him stupid -

just staring with eyes that always seemed to be inflamed and watering.

The hell you will, she told herself. You’ll put it toward a pair of shoes or Patsy’s damn braces. Paul wouldn’t mind that, and you know it.

No, Paul wouldn’t mind, and that was the worst of it, she thought, sifting her fingers through the weight of quarters in her pocket and listening to them jingle. You minded things for them. Paul knew the radio-controlled boats and cars and planes in the store window were as out of reach as the Sega system. To him that stuff existed to be appreciated in the imagination only, like pictures in a gallery or sculptures in a museum. To her, however…

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. Twentyfive. 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.

He winced and looked away from her.

He’s a baby, too, Patsy said hopelessly. I mean, really.

No, he’s not. He’s sensitive, that’s all. And his resistance is low.

She fished in her uniform pocket. Paul? Want this?

He looked back at her, saw the quarter, and smiled a little.

What are you going to do with it, Paul? Patsy asked him as he took it. Take Deirdre McCausland out on a date? She snickered.

I’ll thing of subthing, Paul said.

Leave him alone, Darlene said. Don’t bug him for a little while.

Could you do that?

Yeah - but what do I get? Patsy asked her. I walked him over here safe - I always walk him safe -so what do I get?

Braces, Darlene thought, if I can ever afford them. And she was suddenly overwhelmed by unhappiness, by a sense of life as some vast cold junk pile - deluminum slag, perhaps - that was always looming over you, always waiting to fall, cutting you to screaming ribbons even before it crushed the life out of you. Luck was a joke.

Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.

Mom? Mommy? Patsy sounded suddenly concerned. I don’t want anything. I was just kidding around, you know.

I’ve got a Sassy for you, Darlene said. I found it in one of my rooms and put it in my locker.

This month’s? Patsy sounded suspicious.

Actually this month’s. Come on.

They were halfway across the room when they heard the drop of the coin and the unmistakable ratchet of the handle and whir of the drums as Paul pulled the handle of the slot machine beside the desk, then let it go.

Oh, you dumb hoser! You’re in trouble now, Patsy cried. She did not sound exactly unhappy about it. How many times has Mom told you not to throw your money away on stuff like that? Slots’re for the tourists!

But Darlene didn’t even turn around. She stood looking at the door that led back to the maids’ country, where the cheap cloth coats from Ames and Wal-Mart hung in a row like dreams that have grown seedy and been discarded, where the time clock ticked, where the air always smelled of Melissa’s perfume and Jane’s Ben-Gay. She stood listening to the drums whir, she stood waiting for the rattle of coins into the tray, and by the time they began to fall she was already thinking about how she could ask Melissa to watch the kids while she went down to the casino. It wouldn’t take long.