“I’m not feeling so good,” Grandma said. “My button finger is all swollen, and I’m sort of dizzy. I can’t take the lights flashing at me anymore.”
“We should go home.”
“I can’t go home. I gotta stay here and wait for my luck to get good. I got myself one of them high roller rooms this morning. I’m gonna take a nap.”
I toed Briggs, and he jumped off the bag, eyes wide open, ready to be the wolverine.
“What?” he asked.
“Grandma wants to go to her room.”
Ten minutes later, I had Grandma locked in her room with the money and Briggs standing guard outside her door.
“I’m going to check on Connie,” I told Briggs. “Call me on my cell when Grandma gets up.”
I walked down the hall, took the elevator to the casino floor, and found Connie still at the blackjack table. She had fifteen dollars in chips in front of her.
“This is not lucky money,” Connie said. “I haven’t won once... and I broke a nail.”
The guy sitting next to her looked like he bludgeoned people for a living. Not that this would bother Connie, since half her family looked like this... and some for good reason.
“It was real ugly when she broke the nail,” the guy said. “She used words I haven’t heard since I was in the army.” He leaned close to Connie. “If you want to get lucky, I could help you out.”
“I don’t need to get lucky that bad,” Connie said.
“Just offering. No need to get mean,” he said.
I wandered the casino looking for the little man in the green pants. I patrolled the gambling floor, browsed through a couple shops, checked out the bar and the cafe. No little man in green pants. Truth is, I was relieved. I mean, what the heck would I do with him if I found him? I had no legal right to apprehend him. And it seemed to me Grandma had sort of stolen his money. What would I say if he demanded it back?
I found a machine that I liked, took a seat, and slid a dollar into the money-?sucker slot. Forty-?five seconds later, my dollar was history and the machine went silent. I felt no compulsion to insert a second dollar. I love the casinos, but gambling isn’t my passion. I like the neon and the noise and the optimism. I love that people come here with unrealistic hope. The energy is palpable. Okay, so sometimes it’s fueled by greed and sloth and addiction. And sometimes the energy dissipates into despair. The way I see it, it’s a little like driving the turnpike through Newark. The turnpike will get you to your destination faster, but there’s always the possibility that you’ll crash and die. It’s the Jersey way, right? Take a chance. Act like a moron.
I felt all the little hairs stand up at the back of my neck and suspected Diesel had invaded my air space. I swiveled in my seat and found him standing behind me.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“I lost.”
“I can fix that.”
He fed a dollar into the machine and bells dinged and bonged, lights flashed, and the machine paid out four hundred and twenty dollars.
I rolled my eyes at him, and he grinned down at me.
“This is nothing,” he said. “You should see me shoot craps.”
“I saw your little man in the green pants.”
“Here?”
“Yep. I ran after him, but he disappeared.”
“What was he doing?” Diesel asked.
“Watching Grandma.”
Two older women in velour running suits paused on their way through the slots to appreciate Diesel. They looked him up and down and smiled.
“Ladies,” Diesel said, returning their smiles.