I enter under a glowing billboard promoting – for two
nights only – the reunion of a ’50s doo-wop group. Inside,
the casino is frigid and close.
The penny slots clink and
clang, joyful electronic chirps that don’t match the dull,
drooping faces of the people sitting in front of the
machines, smoking cigarettes above dangling oxygen
masks. Penny in penny in penny in penny in penny in ding-
ding-ding! penny in penny in. The money that they waste
goes to the underfunded public
schools that their bored,
blinking grandchildren attend. Penny in penny in. A group of
wasted boys stumble past, a bachelor party, the boys’ lips
wet from shots; they don’t even notice me, husky and
Hamill-haired. They are talking about girls,
get us some
girls
, but besides me, the only girls I see are golden. The
boys will drink away their disappointment and try not to kill
fellow motorists on the way home.
I wait in a pocket bar to
the far left of the casino
entrance, as planned, and watch the aged boy band sing to
a large snowy-haired audience, snapping and clapping
along, shuffling gnarled fingers through bowls of
complimentary peanuts. The skeletal singers, withered
beneath bedazzled tuxes, spin slowly, carefully, on replaced
hips, the dance of the moribund.
The casino seemed like a good idea at first – right off
the highway, filled with drunks and elderly, neither of whom
are known for eyesight.
But I am feeling crowded and
fidgety, aware of the cameras in every corner, the doors
that could snap shut.
I am about to leave when he ambles up.
‘Amy.’
I’ve called devoted Desi to my aid (and abet). Desi, with
whom I’ve never entirely lost touch, and who – despite what
I’ve told Nick, my parents – doesn’t unnerve me in the
slightest. Desi, another man along the Mississippi. I always
knew he might come in handy. It’s good to have at least one
man you can use for anything. Desi is a white-knight type.
He loves troubled women. Over the years, after Wickshire,
when we’d talk, I’d ask
after his latest girlfriend, and no
matter the girl, he would always say: ‘Oh, she’s not doing
very well, unfortunately.’ But I know it is fortunate for Desi –
the eating disorders, the painkiller addictions, the crippling
depressions. He is never happier than when he’s at a
bedside. Not in bed, just perched
nearby with broth and
juice and a gently starched voice.
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