Slot Attendant Read online

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Then it’s back to the phone and Sylvio is listening and then smiling and then laughing and then it gets private and then it’s over.

  “He’s a tough nut,” Sylvio says, “but I’ll bring him around.”

  That won’t be necessary, I say. I will accept the $800,000.

  Sylvio says, “Oh, that wasn’t about you.”

  Oh. My mistake. (I keep wondering why agents are always talking about that OTHER writer.)

  “That was for Robert Ivers. Ever read him?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “You should. This new novel of his, sure to make it all the way to the top.”

  “That’s great.” (I’m thrilled.)

  “I’ll get you a copy.”

  “No rush.”

  So all of it – the sale, the million dollars – was for another writer, as you sat there, thinking, just once, Dear God, it was for you. Why not? Is good luck a limited commodity? Why so short the supply? There should be enough to go around. Why not make it bountiful so that we all get a turn? So you sit there and show no wound, no pain. To you it is life and death. To Sylvio it’s another day at the office.

  He leans back, then forward. “What can I say? Just this morning we got another rejection for Mister Smooth.”

  “You mean Smooth Operator.”

  “Right, Smooth Operator. So what can I say? Your writing is so good, but they’re not biting. We’ll just keep plugging away.”

  “I’m grateful for your persistence.”

  (True, another agent would have given up on me. It’s amazing how quickly they give up on you in this business – or maybe it’s the same in any business.)

  “Nobody wants good writing anymore,” says Sylvio.

  “There must be somebody.”

  “You have to learn to relax.”

  Yes, I will have to learn this.

  I never considered patience to be much of a virtue.

  He tells me it’s all about salesmanship, that I must get myself a publicist, get out there, promote myself, do television, social media.

  “It’s never the book that sells,” Sylvio says. “It’s always the author.”

  Yes, I will have to make myself famous. But I do not want to be famous, only my books. Fame (as I have known it) is a bother.

  Fame is only good if you are 21 and need it to get laid.

  One time I did end up on TV but the host never read my book (or any book) and the commercial interruptions were driving me crazy. I still say that commercials – commercial interruptions – cause brain damage. It’s impossible to focus when every five minutes the brain gets bonged. Also, I think I lost her, this host, when she tested me on Denis Johnson or some other writer she favored, or flavored, and I responded that I am not current and don’t much go for the genius of the month.

  She tried me on Saul Bellow and this didn’t click either when I said, “That’s not writing. That’s kvetching.” Same for Philip Roth.

  When we got around to such novels as Madame Bovary and Indecent Proposal, novels about temptation, she quoted surely the most controversial (and misunderstood) observation I ever published: “As long as there are women, there’s going to be trouble.” This only works with people who have a sense of humor and we are losing them by the hour.

  “Something’s got to give,” says Sylvio. “You’ve got too much talent.”

  Never mind talent. Luck is all we need. Luck is everything.

  Sylvio seems to be reading my thoughts. Says he can’t figure it out. I had such great success with The Ice King. Such a funny business, publishing. It’s all so subjective. Besides, people aren’t reading fiction these days, there is so much non-fiction going on around the world. Americans just want the headlines. Fiction is dead. Well, the experts said the same about radio, the movies and rock and roll. Also, I know more about the Civil War from Margaret Mitchell than from anything non-fiction. I don’t tell him any of that because he’d just say – I’m only giving you the facts. He tells me, again, not to worry, it’s still out there, being read. Anything can happen. How am I making out otherwise? How am I making a living? His phone is buzzing and he’ll take the call. I take that as my cue and as I rise for the exit I say I’m doing fine. Just fine.

  “We’ll get there,” he says, signing me off.

  Where?

  Chapter 3

  Like everyone else, I get two 40-minute breaks, so that’s where I am, on my break, up here in the employee cafeteria, smoking section, sitting by myself, doodling on my notepad or writing the great American novel. We may never know. I do have a title for my next novel. I’m always coming up with titles. This one, this new title, I think is my best, and it’s Boy Meets Girl. That simple. I think it’s good because it encompasses all Literature, just about. Boy meets girl. That’s how it starts whether we’re reading the Greeks or the Romans or any of them up to this minute. Even the Hebrews had it like that, though their inclination was more like, “Boy Meets God.”

  As for me and Boy Meets Girl, I can already see it plastered on a million book covers and hoisted upon ten thousand marquees.

  Down on the casino floor I sometimes write entire novels, in my head of course, going from machine to machine, from hopper jam to jackpot. Up here in the employee cafeteria I do most of my daydreaming, even though it’s at night. Unlike Elvis, slot attendants are not allowed to leave the building because we have that key, the key that opens every slot machine in the casino, each hopper containing anywhere from fifty to fifty thousand dollars. So that does set us apart. We may be lowest in rank, even lower than the maintenance people, but the keys do give us some status.

  There is an occasional temptation to dip in and pocket some of that loot, but there’s also that eye in the sky that sees everything. But something has been going on.

  I think I know what it is. I think I even know who it is. Toledo Vasquez once asked me if I’d want to go partners.

  I asked him for what? He said never mind. But I can’t forget that smile. But I also like Toledo and don’t believe he’s capable of that kind of action.

  Anyhow, there’s already been a scandal from Coin Redemption where a whole group of them conspired for an amount in excess of $60,000. They got nabbed.

  I don’t mind sitting alone up here in the cafeteria. It’s by choice. These are pretty good people, most of these employees, but they are not my people, whoever those people are; I still don’t know. It gets quite cliquish. The table dealers (they make the good money) have their own crowd as do the slot attendants and the supervisors. Some of the dealers are up here wearing tuxes, which tells you that they deal high-limit, which could be $100 blackjack, but usually it means baccarat. They’re supplied those uniforms from the Uniform Department, much like actors who get outfitted from Alliance Pictures’ Wardrobe Department out there in Hollywood. That brings back memories, some good, some bad. But it did happen for me, for us, that one time and maybe that’s all anybody’s entitled to, one time. If one person got all the luck there wouldn’t be enough for anybody else. But once I did; I did walk the red carpet. So let’s keep that in mind. Let’s remember that even as we sink lower and lower. My green uniform, here at the casino, comes from the Uniform Department, where they can never find your exact size. Those clerks in Uniform are always nasty. If you don’t like the jacket they hand you, well screw you, that’s all we got. I get along with one of them. I actually think she has a crush on me. Or maybe that’s how it gets to feel when somebody smiles.

  None of the uniforms ever fit, certainly not for me. The pants are too long and the jacket is too short. Sometimes the pants are too short and the jacket is too long.

  Fortunately nobody cares enough to notice or notices enough to care.

  So I’m sitting here minding my own business, munching on a cheeseburger, when an old-timer pulls up a chair, Russell Burger, the elder statesman among slot attendants. He has a story. We all do. We all have a story. I’ve heard his before, and I like it, abou
t how he used to be a top engineer for Lockheed or Boeing or something, and blew it all on craps. Lost practically everything and was into the IRS for about $80,000, and they were coming after him.

  So he got to them before they could get to him. He surrendered, plain surrendered, like in the old Wild West. He marches into the nearest IRS office, extends his arms for cuffing, and says, “Arrest me.” They think he’s nuts. They laugh and say, “Not so fast, not so easy. Work it off.” So that’s how you become a slot attendant. We all become equal under the same law of gravity which is now rendered as “default.” We all return to our default position though some come at it free-fall and tumbling.

  Whenever I get together with Russell Burger I think of that Depression song: “Once I built a railroad, now it’s done, brother, can you spare a dime.” But we are not about self-pity around here, I don’t think. We’re working, after all. We have a job, with Benefits, and we are not standing in any bread-line. Down on the casino floor Burger uses his own equipment, most famously that screwdriver from home, and that’s against the rules, but the supervisors don’t bother him about it because he’ll soon be gone anyway, downsized, incapacitated or dead. That’s the figuring, so they leave him alone, mostly.

  Burger doesn’t really walk when on duty; he shuffles along. One of the kids told me how she hated Burger for his “old man breath and his old man smell.”

  I explained that even young people grow old, so watch out!

  “What’s your story?” he asks as always.

  “I have no story,” I say as always.

  “There are rumors about you,” he laughs.

  “Like what?”

  “That you committed a crime or something.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Or that you failed at something.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Isn’t that why we’re all here? Because we failed?”

  “I didn’t fail. I’m just getting started.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he says.

  He’s gone but then I’m joined by Toledo Vasquez, who’s been sitting with that group of kids, all slot attendants, all of them Patel Indians, Asians, some whites, some black kids from the hood, a virtual United Nations junior league. I get along with some of them, especially the Patels, but it was different at first. What’s there to talk about with spanking new people? Most of them, the kids, are into hard rock and heavy metal and I still can’t get over Patsy Cline.

  Maybe, to be honest, I felt superior. Or maybe, to be more honest, I felt inferior. So I’ve kept my distance, though down on the casino floor there is no avoiding contact, and sometimes conflict, as our zones do overlap. It’s good form to come to the aid of a fellow slot attendant when he’s having trouble with a machine or a customer, but it’s bad form to poach on his territory for a tip after someone’s hit a jackpot.

  So Toledo Vasquez joins me and I’ve begun to like him anyway. He’s a chunky, muscular, bright eyed kid of about 22, American-born of Mexican parents. Or maybe Puerto Rican. They all call themselves “Spanish” regardless. He lives in a rough neighborhood and gets into many fights, mainly to preserve his girlfriend. He loves her with a passion that is clearly Spanish. They love for keeps. Toledo grew up tough in Camden, New Jersey. That’s where every next day is a triumph.

  I’ve given him tips on women (as if I’ve got it figured out) and even shown him some crafty moves in self-defense. He’s tougher than me, largely on account of his youth and street experience, but I have fought in a war and earned a Black Belt from a secret (Russian) martial arts society. I’m big on boxing and once got knocked out. It’s not so bad. It’s like taking a sleeping pill, only this, a knockout, works much faster; makes you swoon. My jaw still relocates every now and then. I don’t know how these boxers take it on the chin a thousand times a fight and still go on. I got hit that way but once and am still remembering.

  Yes, I fought in a war. I was in combat. I do not talk about this. Once in a while, at home, it slips out when something about it, where I fought, is mentioned on the news, and I remember. I remember how it was and how the chaveireem fought so gallantly but still fell. I wrote a book about this. Some time ago this was. I sent it around. No bites, no takers, no hope. They loved the writing but I had picked the wrong side even though it was the right side and some day this would be the justice, but not today, not in this world, not in this lifetime.

  Even Sylvio, back then, said it was too politically incorrect. One publisher said he would scoop it up in a minute if only I would switch the good guys to the bad guys.

  Imagine!

  That is when I learned something about the publishing business. Like everything else, it was the politics, not the writing. The politics.

  You had to conform to a particular point of view.

  Toledo says, “Man, they raked me.”

  “Who?”

  He says the State Police and law enforcement members of the Casino Control Commission questioned him about theft, precisely a theft ring. Thousands of dollars keep coming up short each day from the hoppers, so it must be somebody, but why him, he wants to know? He’s aiming for supervisor and got a girl he wants to marry. “Have they talked to you?” he asks.

  “Why me?”

  “They’ll be talking to everybody.”

  “News to me.”

  He doesn’t seem all that concerned. Or maybe he is. I really can’t tell. Tough kids like Toledo know it’s wise to walk through life with a shine and a snarl.

  “Could be big,” he says, lighting up another cigarette. “Big trouble. Everybody’s under suspicion. They got the spotlight on all of us; eye in the sky. They got it special on us, graveyard. Even the supervisors, man. You clean?” I’m glad he’s not asking what I keep writing in my notepad. Others have asked that question. They think I’m maybe a spy, a plant, a spook. But Toledo and I are cool. We cool.

  In this notepad of mine I keep writing sketches and one or two of them may lengthen out into a novel. The ideas keep coming and sometimes I just can’t stop.

  So I say, “I’m clean. You clean?”

  “I’m clean,” he says after a pause.

  He asks me if I’d snitch if I knew who it was.

  “Depends,” I say.

  He laughs, pats me on the shoulder, and goes back to his friends.

  I gobble down my cheeseburger, drain it down with a swig of Pepsi, and down I go to the casino floor where it’s buzzing with all that action, but it’s amazing how, after a while, you see nothing. It’s all the same. That first day you were dazzled but now it’s a blur. True, you never step into the same casino twice, but it’s still just a place of business, a place where you work and do your monotony.

  They’ve got me in Zone 7 tonight, not a bad zone. Mostly dollar games and therefore mostly a dollar crowd. I know some of these people, these players. They’re not bus people. They’re regulars and back home, white collar types. From zone to zone, it’s worlds apart. I settle in and wish them good luck and some turn from the machine action and say they’re glad I’m around.

  I’m in for a busy night and that’s okay. It’s better this way, otherwise I go on rewind and everything comes back. I try not to think of Melanie. She never complains about having to sleep alone all night and I try not to think about it too much. We have a deal that I won’t pity her and she won’t pity me and it’s been working out. She is afraid of mice, though. They come in from somewhere outside, obviously, and a couple of times, actually more often than that, she’s greeted me at the station with that bad news face, and when it turns out to be a mouse in the house, and nothing more, I’m quite relieved, though after that I have to go chasing it down. I know that sometimes she can’t sleep at night because she hears sounds, the sounds of a mouse or maybe something worse, something bigger. She thinks there’s something crawling between the walls. There probably is. She is terrified of spiders. But spiders are a blessing. A great king of long ago, David, was saved by a spider’s web.

  But the trick is
not to think about that, or anything, and get with the flow of the action, and there is always plenty of action down on the casino floor.

  Maggi Holt is my supervisor tonight. We get along. Maggi is a bit on the dumpy side but she’s got a pleasant face and an upbeat personality. She’s got romance problems and never hesitates to confide what’s happening and what’s not happening. She’s a flake, but that’s good. I thank her for getting me off Zone 14, and she says there’s a price. “Oh, Maggi,” I say, “I’m married. You know I’m married.”

  Maggi wants to get laid. It’s really that simple.

  Turning half-serious, she says when she does the schedule she always puts me in good zones, though she can’t give me Zone 1, the coveted $100 high roller spot. That’s reserved, usually for Marty Glick in his tux, and we all understand that some cash may be exchanged between certain slot attendants and certain supervisors to gain that plush assignment. Can’t be sure. But it’s a reasonable guess.

  It’s all about tips. The better the zone, the better the tips. Some of the guys in Zone 1, like Marty, can whisk home in a Mercedes after another thousand dollar night.

  Imagine that – slot attendant as a CAREER.

  In a neighboring zone, Zone 8, I spot a subterranean. We’re supposed to report them to Security to have them escorted off the premises. They get free food, free rooms, free play, all on forged documents, until they’re snagged, and even then they start all over again. So we’re supposed to report them, but I just don’t feel like it today. Everybody’s got an angle and who are they hurting anyway? We’re all trying to make it and so what if someone finds an edge?

  We’re all doing it in one form or another.

  So Maggi, also ignoring what’s going on nearby, says, with my looks I must have been something in my day. Sizing me up and down: “You still got it, you know.”

  “Come on, Maggi. Behave.”

  “That’s no fun. Just once. I won’t tell.”

  “But I’ll know.”

  “I’ll bet you were something. Oh don’t give me that innocent shrug. You know you were something.”