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I felt like Dorothy entering the Emerald City for the very first time. Everything shimmered and glowed and dinged and tinkled. Even the staff had an inner shine. As if they were part of the architecture, brought to life by the setting sun and the neon lights, their veins flush with absinthe and dreams.
Table games scared me. The leers, the scowls, the desperate men hunched over hands of cards with menace in their eyes. I don’t know much about slots, either, but they seemed easier to handle. Push a button and pray—that was more my style.
I don’t remember walking across the floor, through the pit, or really moving anywhere at all. But I must have, because I somehow found myself at a cluster of slot machines tucked into a corner.
An older woman in a garish pink tracksuit huffed in frustration and stood from her stool at the machine closest to the pit. She grumbled something about “gone cold” and shuffled her way over to a different row of the same game.
I stared at that stool.
Why not?
That was the question burning on my mind as I sat down and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill from my bra.
This is insane.
I need this money.
But my hands moved like they couldn’t hear what I was thinking.
I didn’t know how the game played, or what it paid out, or what all the connecting arrows on a super complicated chart meant. I just watched a few people nearby feed their money to their machine, press the big, glowing button, and wait.
So I fed this machine my hundred-dollar bill, pressed the big, glowing button, and waited.
Things spun. Lights flashed. Buttons whirred. And then, a seven-letter word popped up to change the course of my life.
Jackpot.
The sound comes rushing back in now. The vacuum punctures and the world hammers at my eardrums.
Which means I can very clearly hear the bells and whistles screaming at me that I’ve won.
A small slip of paper spits out of the machine, and I take it. It’s oddly underwhelming. I thought it would start spewing gold coins and I could dive into my newfound money jacuzzi like Scrooge McDuck, but I guess not. Nothing but a small little ticket, single ply paper, fading ink.“SEE CASHIER FOR WINNINGS”is printed in bold across the top.
So neat.
So simple.
So mundane.
Like my whole damn life didn’t just change.
My lungs are finally working again, though, and they suck in a deep breath. Then I cry out as loud as I can, “YES!”
I leap to my feet with victory fists punching the air. I’ve escaped hell and won my way into heaven. Roxy, Willow, and I are going to take the first private jet out of Nevada. We’re going to find somewhere warm and quiet and we’re going to wear matching coconut bikinis and drink mocktails on the beach. We’re going to be okay.
We’re going to be okay.
But, as I realize a moment too late, my victory fist is on a crash course with a nearby server just as she rounds the corner bearing an overloaded tray of hot coffees and watered-down vodka cranberries.
I turn in horror. It’s too late to stop it. My hand keeps going. Up and up, until it collides with the waitress’s tray…
Everything after that happens in slow motion.
First, I see the girl’s mascara-encrusted eyes go wide as saucers. I’m sure mine are doing the same.
Then the tray tips. Coffee sloshes over the rim of the highest mug in the stack. It becomes a murky brown waterfall, then intermingles with the vodka crans until it all looks like sewage. The whole nasty mess flies through the air, a tidal wave of the stuff, and sends it surging down…
All over a gorgeous man in a sharply tailored tuxedo.
