Sure enough, he busted. His gut told him to play five hundred on the next. Blackjack. A girl clapped behind him. Some pretty Indian—Squaw, not Bombay—holding her own copy of that same old Pittsburgh newspaper in her sharp red fingernails. He wondered why everyone had all these old newspapers lying around until a voice brought him back.
“Blackjack!”
It went on like that for hours. The pit boss changed dealers to make his streak go cold. They shut down the table and made him move. They made it six decks instead of one, thinking maybe he was counting cards. Whatever they did, it didn’t matter.
You can’t lose, Jerry.
At 5:00 p.m., Jerry stood up on drunken legs and wandered over to the roulette wheel. Sally told him not to push his luck, but he stopped listening to anything but that voice in his head. The first number he played was 9. When he hit on 9, even Sally shut the fuck up. The guys at the bar had told him about this kind of streak. He had never seen one. Not even from the cheap seats. But right now, he was unbeatable. The voice told him to bet twenty bucks on black. Ten on red. Sit one out. It hit green. The hot Indian girl sidled up next to him. She put her newspaper down on the ground and locked her high heels into the chair for some serious gaming.
“Mind if I read your paper?” Sally asked, bored as a high school girl watching her boyfriend play video games.
The hot Indian girl handed it over. Sally looked at the paper. Nothing on Hollywood. Just some boring story about four little boys finding a skeleton in the woods in Western Pennsylvania.
“Oh, this little boy is so cute,” Sally said, pointing to the picture. “Look, Jerry.”
“Sally, would you shut the fuck up?” Jerry said, putting his money down on 33.
“Thirty-three!” the hot Indian girl yelled.
You can’t lose, Jerry.
Jerry closed his eyes as the ball ran around the roulette wheel. He saw Kate Reese’s face in his mind. The apartment empty the morning after she snuck away. What did he do that night that was so terrible? He hit her, yes, but he said he was sorry, and he actually meant it. So, fuck her if she didn’t believe him. Fuck that bitch.
You miss her, Jerry.
You want to find her.
“Four!” the hot Indian girl yelled.
By midnight, the pit boss called over the manager, who comped Jerry a room on the spot with a politician’s smile and a douche’s handshake. The hot Indian girl got up and congratulated him on the streak of all streaks. She had spent the entire time losing, but for some reason, she kept playing right next to him. All day. With a seemingly never-ending supply of chips. Maybe she was another plant of the casino. Maybe she was a prostitute. All he knew was that she was hot as hell. She got up from the table, leaving the old newspaper at his feet. He picked it up and called out to her.
“Excuse me, miss? You forgot your paper.”
She walked back to him and flashed him a smile and a dirty little look.
“Jerry, do you know what the numbers on a roulette table add up to?” she asked.
“No. Why don’t you tell me over breakfast?” he said.
He couldn’t believe his balls. But there it was. The invitation hanging in the air like the cloud of cigarette smoke. He thought Sally would claw his eyes out with her press-on nails for saying it. But “Mustang Sally” was oddly quiet. The hot Indian girl smiled at him so wide that he thought she’d run out of teeth.
You can’t lose, Jerry.
The three of them went up to the comped suite and opened a bottle of complimentary champagne. The hot Indian girl turned on the television because she said she could be a “little loud.” Around 3:00 a.m., the television station started playing the local news from the tristate area. Jerry could hear the news anchor blah blahing about a terrible traffic accident involving the boy who had won the lottery for his mother back in September and found the skeleton in November, but never turned around to see the actual footage. He was too busy watching the girls licking champagne off each other as the wind pummeled the large windows with the view of downtown Wheeling. Jerry crammed as much sex into one night as he possibly could, but every time he slowed down, even for