You Win!
notes from a casino food court
A crisp salad at a pretty hotel, followed by a dizzying afternoon. I’m weaving among pods of gaming machines in a warehouse of a midwestern casino.
My aunt is so happy here.
·
I get disoriented with the noise and so many flashing lights. I wander off to the bathrooms, and when I find them I choose one of the standalone ones, where it’s a whole room to yourself.
I close the door and put my little purse and phone on the counter. Prince is playing very, very loudly inside. My own private dance studio! I turn away from the mirror and dance, dance, dance like a disco-girl until my phone rings.
I stand there and yell over the music to talk with my daughter.
·
It seems a person can expend modest-to-very-little kinetic energy to play these games.
No handles to pull. Just buttons to press.
No need to leave your chair, either. Just scootch over to the machine beside you when you’re losing.
·
I’ve been searching and walking in search of two walkers—red for auntie, blue for her friend. I am the clucky tender of our flock, self-appointed. These birds do like to roost and spend and play.
Auntie and her friend also get around with those walkers. Just when I find one and then the other, I stroll back to the first and she’s rolled off to try her luck at another flashing machine.
I get lost in this place.
They’re playing games. I’m playing games.
·
At one point, I walk up to my auntie and she’s staring at the screen. “Call Service Attendant.” She presses a button and it blinks red. She raises her aching body from the chair (oh, so slowly) and grabs her walker. She rolls over to a nearby machine and settles herself in.
I station myself where she’d been playing before, waiting for the attendant. Maybe there’s money that’s hers in this machine!
I’ll find out.
·
Turns out sometimes a slot machine will simply run out of paper.
I talk to the attendant as he replaces the spool of paper inside, and ask him to explain the game.
He closes up the machine and presses a button called “Game Rules.” The cherries and bombs and big Number Sevens quickly disappear from the screen. Three paragraphs of game rules fill the screen, detailing rows and multipliers, lines and wins and payouts.
The attendant tells me a little bit more, but I can’t say I really understand much at all. He suggests a machine, a very low-stakes one at my request, and I insert a dollar, press the button four times, and walk away a loser.
I get up from my chair to wander.
·
The second bathroom-room thrums with silence. Delicious refuge!
I circle my arms and do a one-minute chair sit against the wall. I perform 24 shoulder squeezes and 24 swimmers and 24 open-up-the-shutters. Someone jiggles the bathroom door handle. I ignore it.
Five minutes later, the handle jiggles again. I imagine a single person outside that door, waiting and waiting. I decide to signal my presence with regular bathroom noises—flush, splash, rip of paper towels.
When I open the door, no one’s there.
·
The people here (so many): are they happy?
They’re certainly busy.
·
Sometimes while I’m strolling all these pods and aisles and carpeted walkways and neon, neon everywhere, I start to feel a little panic.
“Where is auntie again? Wait—where am I?”
Somebody designed this place so you’d lose all your reference points.
They sure are succeeding with me.
·
Well into my wandering, I turn down yet another aisle, looking for a blue or a red walker that belongs to someone I know or someone I love.
Rows and rows of faces, staring straight ahead.
·
I have judged people here today for staring at a screen, giving their money away, sitting sitting sitting as they play, allowing a machine to play with their wallet (and their mind).
And here I am, squirreled away at a table in the back of the casino food court, staring at a little screen, giving something away, sitting sitting sitting as I write, trusting something digital to bring these words to you.
·
I get up and return to my walking. I find the red walker and the blue one again.
My auntie is winning at the moment. Her friend is losing.
At least they are for now.