Part 2 - Stinky Gets a Fix Matt As we rode the Spike's stuttering elevator up to the sixth floor, Mark asked, "How much you wanna bet the room's a dump?" I agreed, he was probably right. "No, seriously. How much you wanna bet? Twenty bucks?" The corner suite was more tattered than we remembered, and the air conditioners belched out lumps of lukewarm air. There was no shampoo, one bar of brittle soap and a pair of undersized, sandpapery towels. Flat surfaces had cigarette burns; some ours, some not. But it was clean enough and cheap enough, and the wide balconies gave us a perfect platform for mooning the bums outside. We dropped our bags and left. Stinky We hit downtown to check into the room and meet up with some of the gang. The Southern California contingent had forgone a trip to Arizona to watch a ballgame, and had pulled into town earlier in the day. We caught up with Steve, Mike, Ghizal and Phil in the lobby of the Gold Spike. They had met up earlier with Bill from Texas.
Unfortunately, I got neither. I'm not going to go so far as to say that Steve wouldn't know a good Italian meal if it came up and slopped red sauce all over his shirt, but Montevani's wasn't quite as advertised. Forty-five minutes after ordering, I dug into the most bland plate of pasta I'd had since the night before, when I'd cooked spaghetti at home. The garlic knots weren't bad, but they were fried dough sprinkled with garlic salt. It's the kind of food they can't even screw up at county fairs. To be fair, I didn't try the cannoli, having eaten far too many garlic knots while waiting for the main course. The company, on the other hand, was fantastic. The restaurant was almost empty, but between the simultaneous conversations and Mike's famous root beer belches, we created our own raucous din. The waiter, sensing our good time, decided we'd be the perfect audience for his riddles and jokes. His material consisted of "You know you're a redneck if" jokes, with the word Saskatchewan taking the place of redneck, interspersed with mystifying attempts to impress us with tales of doing the makeup for a 300-pound female impersonator. It's not easy to get a group of eight people to simultaneously stop laughing sympathetically and turn from such horror, but eventually we pulled it off and were able to leave. Back downtown, Matt and I took some time to update our write-ups of the casinos. I'm always a little saddened to see the stagnation in Downtown Vegas. If their business keeps falling off, there's some chance that maybe one day it won't be there to let us sit in its worn out, smoky lap. But it does make it easy to keep our web site current. We walked in and out of casinos, to find the same tables in the same configurations with the same dealers, and probably the very same players as the last five times we'd been. Fine by me. I had money in my pocket, and I was looking to increase it, so the quicker it went the happier I was. Matt Back in the murky haze of the casino, I was torn about whether or not to let Stinky sit down at a blackjack table. If I did was I only letting him perpetuate his gambling problem? Or was I helping to make the impact of the intervention that much stronger? If I intervened now, Dan would be pissed that I started without him. Besides, I wanted to play more than I wanted to distract my friend with card tricks and knock-knock jokes, even though I am very good at both. Mostly, I wanted to drink. I had that fuzzy feeling, like someone shoved cotton balls under my eyelids and tongue. A waitress staggered by, hauntingly calling "cocktaaaiillzzz", as though it were the name of her long-lost child. "Can I get a whiskey?" I asked. "And can you ask the bartender not to put traces of women's lipstick around the rim this time?" The waitress looked at me bored. "I can only serve well drinks." "Oh, any whiskey's fine." "In a clean glass. That's a call drink."
Prior to the trip, we had 2,500 Big Empire matchbooks made. They featured Casino Boy's lovable mug and Lucky Ned's savvy gambling mantra "Go With Guts!" In ordering so many, we overestimated the number of friends we had by, oh, about 2,497. I put a handful of the extras on the felt, and a bearded man with crazy eyes at the other end of the table picked one up. I thought he was going to light his beard on fire. He was too clean to be homeless and too imbalanced to be socially accepted. That's why he was at the Gold Spike. He turned the book over in his hands, "I know this site." This was exactly the sort of recognition I crave like cheap tequila and I felt a flush of pride. Stinky wasn't paying attention; he was too busy splitting a queen and ten. "Really?" I asked, "Do you like it?" "I love it!" The guy's breath was boozy and rancid, suggesting he was in the middle of a long bender. I was jealous. "I love Stinky." He said this with too much emphasis, as though he meant, "I am obsessed and want to stalk him." "That's Stinky," I pointed at my friend who was too busy asking the dealer, "How much you wanna bet I beat you this hand?" to notice my conversation. The dealer said, "That's what the betting circle is for, sir." Stinky nodded, "I mean you. Wanna a little side action?" The obsessed guy yelled, "Stinky? I love you!" "Wanna bet?" I felt sort of left out. I never get obsessed stalkers and Stinky has dozens. Why do only the boring people like me, the ones who like to point out typos and grammatical errors? The crazy man leaned over me to talk to Stinky, and his breath was nauseating. I cashed in my chips before I vomited but after I got my drink. "I'm going to bed," I told Stinky and he asked why so soon. "I'm tired. Have fun with your new friend." The bearded guy was already shifting his ass into my seat to be closer to Stinky. Stinky eyed him suspiciously. "How much you wanna bet he stabs me?" Back in the dim suite, I quickly got drunk on a fifth of cheap bourbon I always carry, cried about something I can't remember and fell asleep. Stinky I had planned on winning big this visit, and knew that only the real high rollers had the kind of stake it takes to beat the tar out of the casino's built-in edge. In anticipation of the trip, I had been holding back on my normal sidewalk craps games at home and on living the high life with things like putting butter on my bagels. All of the dry bread and duct taping myself to the couch to keep from rushing to the siren call of the dice paid off handsomely, and I arrived in town with $57 cash. I was primed for the kind of action that is usually reserved for whales from Hong Kong. I pulled out the whole wad as I sat down at the Spike's $2 blackjack table, and I could swear I heard a distinct sharp intake of breath that meant one of two things. Some other player in the casino was either mighty impressed, or there was a problem with his portable oxygen tank. I lay seven dollars on the table and told the dealer to "give me some red with that." As he handed over my two silver dollars and worn $5 chip, I could tell he was impressed by my largesse, which is always a great sign. With the dealer on your side, the cards have a tendency to come up in your favor. Sure enough, my first two cards were a seven of diamonds and a five of clubs. Twelve! That's got to be one of the best bad hands you can be dealt. I hit, and the dealer tossed me a five. Seventeen! That's practically already a winner. That is, until the stupid dealer showed me his 20 and ripped the very heart out of my chest. I refused to let one bad hand ruin my whole weekend, although it was tempting, and kept playing, up and down for a while. Matt was busy talking to some weird looking guy about Las Vegas web sites or some such nonsense, so without any distractions, I was able to get in a zone. I had a run of cards like I'd never seen before, and must have been up by at least $15 at one point. Phil and Mieko Sunbury, Soiree regulars, dropped by the table to say hello. It's a great feeling when people you actually know, and who aren't just pretending to be old friends in order to get close enough to pick your pocket, run into you at the Gold Spike. Mieko, it seemed, had started drinking some time early that morning, and being blotto really became her. Normally, Mieko's a very happy person, but with about 128 ounces of cheap daquiri in her, her smile was so big it seemed it might swallow up her whole face at any moment. Matt got up and said he was going to bed, and after I got through detailing all of the ways in which he was a spineless pussy, I told him not to wait up, because by the time I was through, I would probably own the bed he was sleeping in, along with the rest of the hotel, and that Jackie Gaughan would be handing over the casino by early the next afternoon. I'm not sure if it was Matt's sissified bad vibe that did it, or the guy with the beard who kept asking me more and more detailed questions about the location of my apartment in New York, but something got to the cards, and the dealer kept taking away more and more of my chips. I cashed out, gave a thought to going up to bed, and then decided that what I really needed was some fresh air. There was plenty of it to be had in the four minute walk between the Gold Spike and El Cortez, whose $2 blackjack table has slightly more favorable rules and older but friendlier cocktail waitresses. The El Co is a "break-in" joint for dealers, meaning that the people handing you cards are often fresh out of dealer's school, and I sat down at a table across from a young Asian woman who didn't even yet have a name tag pinned to her shirt. She dealt slowly, under the watchful eye of a crusty old veteran who had probably been there for all of a week and a half, and I learned that she was auditioning for a job. As a very moral person, I frown on cheating, but I think even Socrates himself wouldn't find any ethical dilemma in using any advantage you can get in a game that's designed to guarantee you lose. So on every hand I lost, I would say, "Uh, I won that." About three quarters of the time the fresh-faced trainee knew I was wrong, and when she didn't, her goody-two-shoes shadow would correct her and tell me to cut it out. After half an hour or so, the pit boss finally said, "Sir, if you grab for those chips one more time, I'm going to ask you to leave." I can tell when I'm not welcome, so after the next time I grabbed for the chips and he had security escort me out, I got the hint. Fine, I don't need their lousy game anyway. I wanted to keep playing blackjack, but after a quick count of my crumpled bills, I realized I was down a little over $20. That meant the only other table I could afford would be back at the Spike, and I didn't want to run into my bearded stalker again. I had no intention of going to bed, though, so I thought I'd sneak into the Copper Mine, the Spike's penny slot area. Sure, penny slots are for low rollers, but on most machines, you can play five at once, which is essentially the same as the nickel machines the big boys frequent. I got my pennies and made it to the dusty back corner of the casino without any weirdos recognizing me, and settled in for a little video poker, which I vowed to play until I was tired enough to fall asleep in my chair and bang my head on the fingerprint-covered screen.
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