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He laughed.
Thirty-three came up, and the croupier picked up Matt's chips again.
"You're not too good at this, are you, darling?"
"Just getting warmed up," Matt said. He put five chips on 00.
Sixteen came up.
"Have you ever considered getting an honest job?" Penny asked.
Not only isn't this much fun, but I've seen about all of this place that there is to see. It's about as wicked as a bingo game in the basement of McFadden's parish church.
Hay-zus is off base on this one. There's nobody in this room who looks like a mobster; my fellow gamblers look like they all belong to the Kiwanis. And/or the Bible Study Group.
I will buy Penny a drink, and try to show her the wisdom of driving back to Philadelphia now, rather than in the morning. We can get back by one, maybe a little sooner.
When the croupier had removed his five chips from 00, Matt pushed what was left of his stack onto 00.
"I don't think this is my night," Matt said to the croupier.
"You never can tell," the croupier said.
00 came up.
"And we have a winner," the croupier said.
"There must be some sort of mistake," Penny said. "Clearly, God doesn't want him to win."
"God must have changed His mind," the croupier said. "Would you like some quarters, sir? That's going to be a lot of nickels."
"I think I'd rather cash out. I'm too shocked to play anymore."
A pit boss appeared, saw what happened, and nodded his approval. The croupier wrote something on a slip of paper, handed it to the pit boss, who signed it and handed it back. The croupier handed Matt the slip of paper. On it was written $2035.
"Thank you," Matt said. "Where's the cashier?"
The croupier inclined his head, and Matt followed his eyes and saw a barred window near the entrance door. At the last moment, he remembered that winning gentlemen gamblers tip the croupier. He took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the croupier.
"Is this what's known as quitting when you're ahead?" Penny asked.
"You got it."
He took the chit to the cashier, exchanged it for a nice thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, put them in his inside jacket pocket, and then led Penny out of the casino and toward the bar.
"Are we going to the bar?" Penny asked.
"I thought we'd have a drink to celebrate."
"We have a bottle of champagne in the room," Penny said.
We have to go to the room anyway to get her bag. And there will be no one in the room, as there would be at the bar, to eavesdrop on our conversation, and wonder why a healthy-appearing young man was trying to talk a good-looking healthy blonde out of spending the night in a hotel.
"I forgot," Matt said as he nudged her toward the elevator.
While they had been downstairs, the bed had been turned down.
There was a piece of chocolate precisely in the center of each of the pillows.
