Honest Addict, Chapter Seven

7

Reno was a first love, the place where he had cut his teeth as a compulsive gambler. It was raw and honest, gray, dreary, unsophisticated and painfully dated. This is where the real gamblers came to play. Of course, all the high rollers, the big money players, were in Las Vegas. But it is inaccurate to presume that the amount one plays is a reflection of how big a gambler they really are. The ten dollar player is perhaps the biggest risk taker in the room if he is putting his rent money on the line. The real gamblers are the low down degenerates, the hard core losers. These are the truest of the true. And they came to play in Reno in droves.

It is said that for the first time in its history, Las Vegas hotels make more money from non-gaming revenue than from the casinos. This is not hard to believe with all the shows, shopping and entertainment options available to the average tourist. And while he had no hard data to prove his belief, Peter knew that this simply couldn’t be true in Reno. You will not find any celebrities here: no rappers, athletes, movie stars or Saudi oil billionaires. The strippers are less attractive, the prostitutes second tier. There are no glamorous showgirls, and only a tiny fraction of the fine dining. The gaming floors in the older casinos, such as the Cal Neva, are positively soiled with years of wear and tear. The ceilings are stained yellow with decades of cigarette smoke. You’ll find no art galleries in the casinos, no albino Siberian tigers. But the gambling can’t be beat.

He always played and stayed at the grimy Sands Regency. It was small, run down and unpopular, filled with broke locals, the elderly crowd and out of town miscreants: the very best the city had to offer. But as he walked through the entrance he noticed that the interior looked different in an oblique, indefinable way. It had been a good while since his last visit, but Peter was certain that something had changed. For some reason, this was disquieting. He approached the front desk.

“What’s changed about this place?” he asked the assistant, a young girl whose nametag read Jennifer.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been a while since I played here last – maybe ten months. Something’s different.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised, as if a great mystery had just been solved. “This place was bought out by a different company seven months ago. But not much has changed, I don’t think, anyway.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Only a few months.”

She was a moron but he couldn’t blame her. He had been a moron too when he was eighteen. Looking around, he realized that the place had been slightly cleaned up. And to his left he saw a husband and wife being trailed by a group of four screaming kids. He couldn’t remember ever having seen children there before, and wondered what had brought a family like them to this place. These portents didn’t bode well.

“I’d like to speak to the casino host, please.”
“Sure,” she replied in a squeaky, upbeat tone. It was obvious she was just happy to pawn off what she correctly interpreted to be a problem customer.

It was several minutes before help arrived. And when it did it was in the form of a heavy set, unimpressive looking man with deep jowls and a false smile. He extended his hand and shook Peter’s in an insincere way.

“Name’s Charles Tischen,” he said in a mock southern style and accent.
Peter introduced himself. He wondered how a man with such an interesting name could look and sound so unappealing.
“What can I do you fer?”
“I have been coming to this casino for many years now – over a decade, in fact. In the past, I had a substantial line of credit and the several accommodations that are generally extended to larger players.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well, I don’t know you from Adam. But you should be in our computer. Let’s take a looksie, why don’t we?”

Tischen took him to the player’s club kiosk. Peter gave him his drivers license as identification and the chubby man went to work. An impressed look manifested on his face as the information came to him.

“Well sir, you weren’t lying. On your last visit your line of credit was extended to seventy-five thousand dollars. I don’t see why you shouldn’t enjoy the same privilege at this time.”
“That’s fine.”
“We’ll set you up with a suite, of course. Anything you want you can order from room service; your meals in our restaurants are all complimentary of course.”
“Thank you.”
“I see here that you used to smoke Marlboro lights. Is that still the case?”
“It is.”
“I’ll send a carton up to your room immediately. And are you still drinking champagne?”
“Absolutely.”
“A bottle of Veuve Cliquot Grande Dame as well then. Is there anything else you require in the immediate future?”
“Ten thousand in chips ready for me at the cage. And you might as well send a deli platter up to my room also. I might get hungry later.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Castellano. I’ll call a bell hop to get your…”
“I am not carrying luggage,” Peter interrupted. “That reminds me: I need a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and some deodorant as well. I’ll get some new clothes tomorrow.”

***

The largest suite at the Sands was a pittance compared to what the big players got comped in Vegas, but Peter was satisfied with his space. It was quite spacious, consisting of a lower floor with a couch, loveseat, two chairs and television and a raised platform on which was placed a king sized bed. As the drapes were closed, he opened them and saw the town laid out before his eyes. He admired the panoply of silent flashing colors, the muted power of their electric light a mere whisper in the roar of sunrise. There seemed to be a message behind them, an optimism that no longer really existed but maybe once did. He especially liked the old fashioned, analog bulb effects that were present on the exterior of some of the buildings; they blinked in predictable succession, chanting an indecipherable mantra to an antiquated commercial spirit.

A knock at the door brought him out of his reverie. He answered it to find a pimply faced kid standing there was a large cart piled with all the items he had requested. Peter wondered where the hotel was getting all these youthful employees at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

“Come in.”
The kid rolled the cart into the room. “Where d’ya want it?”
“Right there’s fine. Do I owe you anything?”
“Naah. It’s all on the house.”
Peter pulled out a twenty dollar bill and handed it to him.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. What’s your name?”
“Kevin.”
“You like working here?”
“It’s all right, I guess. You need anything else, sir?”
“No,” Peter responded, almost disappointed that the kid wanted to leave so quickly. “Take it easy.”

When he had left Peter inspected the contents of the cart: champagne on ice, deli tray, cigarettes, toiletries: everything he needed until he went to sleep. He picked at some salami and cheddar cheese, popped a couple grapes into his mouth and inspected the bread. But he wasn’t too hungry.

Things were starting to slow down in his mind, but the day was only beginning. He addressed this situation by pumping still more cocaine into his wearying system. The deleterious effects of the drug were becoming more chronic, but now that he was high again the urge to gamble was too strong to resist. Before heading down to the casino, however, he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his matted hair. The face that looked back at him was hideous: pale, almost yellowish skin, pupils dilated, heavy, dark caverns under eyes which were excessively watery and bloodshot. It looked as if he had aged several years in a night. Putting his hand to his mouth he realized that his breath was terrible as well. He cleaned himself up as best he could.

Back on the floor the blood was pumping through him, fueled more by the adrenaline of impending gambling than by the copious drug use. At the casino cage he was given ten thousand dollars in chips in a single rack of the white one hundred dollar denomination. Approaching the empty twenty-five dollar minimum blackjack table, it was as if the universe were at his feet. Was it even possible that he lose?

He looked at the dealer and read her nametag. “Let’s gamble, Irene.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she responded, unenthused.

He played three hands at a time, wagering between three hundred and five hundred dollars each. Early on, his luck was very even: win one, lose one and so on. He hovered between up a thousand and down seven or eight hundred for almost an hour. The house cordoned off the table just for him, not allowing any other players access to the game. This was a part of the Sands that he loved: even in other, bigger Reno casinos he wouldn’t get this treatment. At the Sands he was the celebrity. In addition, the house assigned a cocktail waitress to be available to him at basically every moment. This assured that his constant stream of vodka-tonics never ran out. Because he tipped well, she was more than happy with this arrangement.

In the second hour, bad luck came his way and he lost about three thousand dollars in a fifteen minute stretch. Fearing that he was becoming too drunk, he went to the bathroom and inhaled more blow from off the tip of his car key. Staring up at the ceiling as he did so, he realized that there was a camera watching this area too. He hoped that nobody had seen him, or if they had they would prefer his money to the satisfaction of turning him over to the authorities.

Back at the table, a run of good cards offset his earlier losses and he found himself even again. Recklessness of manner, the byproduct of so many intoxicants, began to take over. He hollered and screamed when victorious, sang nonsensical songs to the ever changing dealers, waved and blew kisses at old ladies across the floor and told the waitress that he loved her and wanted her hand in marriage. It was all great fun for him, and this kind of behavior continued throughout the day. He never once raised his voice in anger or frustration, only in merriment, so his increasingly outlandish behavior was tolerated, if not enjoyed. And, once again, because he spread so much money in tips around to the dealers and his personal waitress, nobody was going to turn off the faucet. In fact, everybody acted as if they were his long lost friends.

After about two hours at blackjack he moved over to roulette, where he wagered about a thousand a turn out on the individual numbers at a hundred a piece. As at blackjack, he held up pretty well. He missed all his numbers in the first three tries, putting him down three grand. But then he hit back to back 8’s, which resulted in a five thousand dollar swing the other way.

Time began to fade away as a boundary of reality. At some indefinable point, watching the little white ball careen on the edge of the spinning wheel, Peter remembered he had nowhere to be and nothing to do. Nobody knew where he was. A sense of profound freedom, coupled with a kind of contented loneliness came over him. Delusion then began to manifest itself in his mind. Whereas before, in his drive from Marin, he had experienced himself passing through physical space and time, now he envisioned himself to be traveling through an almost tangible mathematical actuality, the limits of which were established by the variable odds of the game. He saw himself as a mystic wanderer, a migrating bird. Some would say he was just wasted, and of course they would be right. But it felt real to him all the same. And at the time that was truly all that mattered.

Play continued, interspersed with increasingly drawn out visits to the bathroom. Peter realized he had cut through a pack of cigarettes since he had come down to the casino floor. The funny thing was, he couldn’t remember smoking but one of them. The waitress brought him another complimentary pack and he continued in the same manner as before. His eyes stung from the incessant smoke. Looking around, he saw that everybody, or almost everybody, in the room had a smoldering butt between their lips or fingers. It was like 1978 in there – the only place in the contiguous United States where so many cigarette enthusiasts could congregate in such large numbers indoors.

A tap on the shoulder and he turned around, annoyed.
“Is everything to your liking, Mr. Castellano?” Charles Tischen asked.
“Oh, it’s you. Yes, everything’s fine.”
“I’m about to go home sir. Is there anything more you require of me before I leave?” He was being very cautious in his speech, less informal than before.
“You’re taking off already?”
“I have been on shift for sixteen hours. My replacement Mr. Jameson will look after all your wants until I return tomorrow.”
“What time is it?”
“Four o’clock.”
“In the afternoon?”
“That’s right.”

Peter looked down at his stack of chips and realized that he had blacked out for a spell. There was forty-five hundred dollars in front of him. “How much money have I withdrawn from the cage?” he asked, not remembering going back for more but knowing from experience that his memory meant nothing in these matters.

“Ten thousand dollars,” Tischen replied.
“Do you mean to tell me I’ve been playing all this time on one rack of chips?”
“That’s correct, Mr. Castellano.”
He smiled broadly. “Magnificent.”
“If I may say so, you are correct, sir.”
Peter erupted in uncontrollable laughter. “From the moment I saw you, Charles, I didn’t like you one bit. But for that comment alone, I’ll consider us old friends from now on.”
“Well, thanks,” he replied, reverting instantaneously to his Southern style. “Yer not a bad fella yerself.”
Peter withdrew a one-hundred dollar chip from his stack and handed it to the host. “For your trouble.” The words barely slurred out.
“And by the way, partner,” Tischen whispered in his ear. “There might be a little surprise waitin’ for you in your room when you finish. Mr. Jameson will take care of that.”
Having no idea what was meant by this inference, Peter replied ridiculously, flourishing his right arm in the manner of a triumphant bullfighter “hidi-ho.”
The host lowered his voice even further and came closer to the gambler’s ear. “Listen buddy, I’ve been doing this for twenty years now. I’ve seen ‘em all come and go. I’ve even seen some of the great ones play when I was in Atlantic City. But you, my friend, are truly one of a kind. I’ll never forget what I’ve witnessed here tonight.”

From his location in interstellar space he traversed the emptiness and then the outer and inner reaches of our galaxy and solar system before returning to earth; a dust mite buried beneath a thousand blankets he climbed through to the top and breathed for just a second fresh, open air; perfectly sober for that instant, Peter replied in unwavering voice, “I can’t tell you what that means to me.”
Tischen looked him in the eye, shook his hand, turned, and departed.

It wasn’t long thereafter that Peter finally gave in. A short winning streak on the craps table left him with the belief that his luck was about to expire. He went back to the cage and returned seventy-seven hundred of the ten thousand he originally withdrew on his line of credit. Considering the sums he was playing and his absolutely crippled state of mind, it had been a very successful night.

He wasn’t really tired, but his vision was blurry and pixilated. On the elevator ride to his suite the plastic bubbled numbers swirled and danced in front of his eyes. The hallway as he walked down it seemed interminably long and increasingly narrow. The carpet was a slithering mass of colors and elongated shapes. Finally, however, he reached his room. He inserted the key, entered, and was immediately confronted by Tischen’s surprise.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing a black dress that was hiked up almost as far at it could reasonably go, exposing thick but firm haunches. She had full, dark brown hair that was done up in a large fashion that reminded him of women fromTexas. Her face was covered in makeup, her lips a bright, candy-color red.

“You must be Peter.”
He could barely respond. “Uh-huh.”
“I hear you’re a big player around here.” She stood up and walked over to him, then placed the back of her hand against his face. It was then he remembered he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“What do you mean, baby?”
“There’s no point. I’ve been getting high for two days. I’m finished sexually. You’d have more luck with a neutered dog.”
She frowned. “That’s too bad.”
“Not necessarily.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “You wanna do anything?”
“You like to get high?”
“Sure.”
He handed her the rest of the blow. There was a little bit left. “Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your name?”
“Veronica.”
“Could you do me a favor, Veronica?”
“Sure. Anything you want. They already paid me for my time.”
“Make me a sandwich. The foods over there. And get me a glass of champagne while you’re at it.”

While she went about her business he crawled into bed with all his clothes on. He propped a couple of pillows behind his head and she returned with the sandwich and champagne. He devoured the salami and cheese on a roll and guzzled the sparkling liquid like it was water. Everything tasted delicious. Energy surged within his body for one last time.

“Honey,” he implored a moment later in his most childish voice. “Would you please make me another sandwich?”
She did so, and appeared to enjoy taking care of him. It must be a relief sometimes when they don’t have to turn a trick but still get paid, he thought. He ate and drank while she got high, cupping the coke in her long pinky fingernail. They talked for a little while and were having a pretty good conversation when he took his inquiries too far.

“How’d you get into this life?” he asked.
“How does anybody?” she answered vaguely with a shrug of her shoulder. It was obvious from her body language that she didn’t want to continue this topic, but he persisted, not knowing what else to do.
“I assume you’re a drug addict or something. I assume most of the girls in your business are.”
“How the fuck would you know that, asshole? You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about anything. You’re just some fucked up gambler with a few bucks in your pocket.
“That’s right.”
“So where do you get off?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, it seems like you do.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was just curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity.”
“What’s that?”
“It killed the cat.”
“Huh,” he chuckled.
“So what about you? Are you a drug addict?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I guess so. Or I’m just a completely compulsive person, you know? When people say ‘drug addict’ I always think of somebody who has a compulsion for one particular thing: like heroin or crack. It appears I have a compulsion for everything. My appetites are pretty universal. Maybe ‘chemically dependent’ is the best phrase to describe me.”

“You got no compulsion for sex. At least not right now.”
“That’s true. Sex is different. It involves another person. That makes it infinitely more complicated.”
She eyed him curiously. “You like to tell it like it is, don’t you?”
“I tell it as I perceive it to be,” Peter replied. “The attempt at honesty is a good thing.”

She was quiet for a second and then the words came out in a rush. “I sucked my step Dad’s cock when I was fourteen years old for five dollars. It was his idea, you know. After that, he used to fuck me in the basement while my Mom was upstairs making dinner or whatever. He always gave me something in return, a few bucks to keep me quiet. But he also threatened me and told me he’d kill me if I ever said anything about it to anybody. And I never did. The truth is, after a while I kinda started to love him in a demented way. My real old man had split when I was just a little kid.”

The thought of his own father flashed through Peter’s mind.

“So, anyway, in my sophomore year in high school my Mom came in and caught the two of us fucking on the couch in the family room. She was supposed to be gone for the whole day. She flipped out. And of course my stepfather blamed the whole thing on me, said that I had come on to him. So my Mom kicked me out of the house while he got to stay. I was out on my ass, had never worked a day in my life. I only knew how to do one thing well. So I started doin’ it. That was ten years ago.”

“Oh,” he said meekly. He felt emotion rising inside and tried with only marginal success to restrain it.
“Jesus,” she exclaimed, frustrated by the pained look on his face. “I don’t need your pity. My life’s no worse than anybody else’s. I just don’t walk around fooling myself into believing I’m something that I’m not. How’s that for attempting honesty?”

Not bad, he figured.