Casino Nights
By Edward O. Sharp
Staff Writer
It was one of those warm nights in this city after plentiful evening light, of the kind that made you wonder whether the 100 days of it being pitch black at 5 o’clock were worth it. Ahead of them, the largest free parking lot in town, one filled up, the man working security pointed to the open one. I tell her to set me up with one of her friends—she has no friends really—but with the baddies she knows, and she always tries to make it seem like the reason it didn’t happen is not up to her and not that she wants me so badly she’d never actually do that. I can’t remember whether it was before I made him money at this place. $1K to $5K in one night, high-roller blackjack, hot streak so good I was on that I was raising capital to gamble—50-50 profit split. According to my numbers, large enough to surpass whatever he’d spent on me, net positive. Utterly meaningless metric that one, but the outside noise annoyed me. He wasn’t hesitant about introducing his money. Outsiders always seemed to quip you people and his money, heard money and lost their minds, didn’t bother to look at the person behind it. It’s nosurprise he sparked imitators. Evidently, they didn’t have a fraction of his money; crucially, they didn’t have a fraction of his grace.
Third floor, it says 1 in the elevator, but, you know, it isn’t the first floor—it was our summer canvas. I have 15 that I couldn’t get on bigger chips, let’s just go play numbers at the roulette table for the love of the game. You could give me a couple ideas. Let me put some on 0. It was me and the “Persian prince”, as one of the dealers affectionately called another one of my friends, picking numbers at a time too late for anything good to come out of it. His girlfriend and her close friend, the latter who’d realized 7x was a good time to go out, awaited them by the side of the table. 0, the 1-2-4-5 corner, and 7, two of which I’d picked, were the calls. Clean 36x hitting a number was never gonna happen though: donation to the casino, same way their friends donated to 365 with their parlays. The wheel spun. The ball chattered across the pockets. Red and black blurred, then sharpened. The ball bounced, clinked, and it settled there. Would you believe it? 0. The two friends shared the ecstasy of victory as we embraced. Let’s get the fuck out of here. I can’t recall if it was me or him who said it. We would’ve been wiser had we stuck to that on a longer-term basis.
Poutine by Parc Lafontaine awaited.