Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

She followed her own code when it came to playing roulette. She never bet all inside, or all out; she spread her chips around the table, she never begged the dealer to let her play out her last chip, and she didn’t make loud proclamations, speak directly to the little white ball as if it gave a damn about her, or pray for those inanimate, albeit beautiful chips to behave any particular way. She tried not to act like a strung-out, desperate addict, even if that was how she felt.

“No more bets.”

The pit boss, a busty redheaded woman in a pants suit, whispered something into the dealer’s ear, looked hard at the people gathered around the table, then walked a few paces away. Even this moment of choreographed intimidation was a familiar comfort to Lelah.

The ball landed on 27.

“Aw hell,” the woman splitting the zeros said.

Lelah always played 27. Brianne was born on the twenty-seventh of February, as was Troy, the closest sibling to Lelah in age. Lelah’s chest tightened, and somewhere near her sternum she felt a bit of warmth. She wanted to play. Badly. Now was a smart time to move on to the buffet, she knew, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the dealer. He swept up all of the chips, a jumble of sherbet-colored winnings for the casino, because no one had bet on her number.

She stood up. Took off her jacket. She should have walked away, but she couldn’t. It was awkward, being at a table but not playing at the table. You had to smile, look indifferent and simultaneously interested enough to justify taking up space. Her armpits started sweating.

Several chips covered number 27 this turn. Too late for them, Lelah thought. The woman put the rest of her lavender chips, Lelah estimated twenty, between 0 and 00 again. She looked up at Lelah and winked.

“No more bets,” the dealer said.

“I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” The woman next to her jumped up from her stool. The ball was on 00. Lelah congratulated her as the dealer slid her a small fort of chips, more than five hundred dollars.

If she were a seasoned gambler, this woman would stay put and ride this upswing out, likely eating away at her winnings in the process. This was what Lelah would have done. But the woman asked the dealer to give her the chips in twenties and stood up to go.

“For you,” she said to Lelah. She handed her a blue and yellow $20 chip.

“For me, for what?”

“You said I’d hit and I did.”

“You would’ve anyway. I can’t,” Lelah said, even though she knew she could.

“Like hell you can’t,” the woman said. Then she leaned in closer, whispered, “Roulette ain’t a spectator sport.”

Lelah closed her fingers around the chip but did not sit down at the table.

“Well, thank you. Here.” Lelah looked past the woman toward a cocktail waitress, put up a hand to get her attention. “At least let me buy you a free drink. I can afford a free drink.”

They both laughed.

“No, I need to run out of here with my money before I get pulled back in.” She dropped her remaining chips into her purse, a sturdy, designer-looking purse, Lelah noticed, and headed toward the cashier.

This happened to Lelah sometimes in the casino, a stranger high off of a big win gave her money just for bearing witness, and each time she felt like crying. Because she wanted the money so much. Because a stranger could be so generous, when she’d never once thought to do that after a win. Because she perhaps looked as desperate as she felt. Because, truthfully, it didn’t take much to make Lelah feel like crying. But feeling like crying was not the same as actually crying, and Lelah was up $20.

She’d been down to less than twenty bucks and pulled ahead before. Her mind ran to wild possibilities of success. There was a red convertible sitting on top of the Wheel of Fortune slots, and though she detested slots as an amateur, vulgar game, she imagined winning so much at a table that they gave the damn thing to her; just put a ramp over the front slots so she could climb up, drive her new Corvette down, and pick up the rest of her winnings at the cashier. Or maybe she’d only get a few hundred, but it would be quick and enough to buy her some time, so she’d resist the urge to try to flip the money and run out of there, hundreds in her pocket, and check in to a nice hotel. Yes, a nice hotel would be a good start, and then she’d take a day or two to figure out what to do next. This was a lot more feasible than the car scenario, she knew; she just had to strategize.

She figured she should eat first, before they ran out of the good stuff at the buffet, then she’d come back and try to make the chip last. Split it into ones at the $5 minimum table, spread it around.

As she piled limp green beans onto her plate, she thought she saw half a dozen people she recognized. The woman near the pop fountain with the red sequin hat was definitely someone Lelah had seen before; she always wore that hat, and she kept rolls of quarters for the slots in her fanny pack. Lelah made a conscious effort to keep her eyes on the food, lest she run into someone from her GA meetings. The defeated did not like to acknowledge one another mid-backslide.

It would follow that Lelah returned to the table where the woman won the chip for her, but every open seat there made it so you could see the craps table behind it. On a Friday night the craps crowd was too lively, and Lelah couldn’t risk being distracted. She chose a five-dollar-minimum roulette table near the bar where an older black man named Jim was dealing. Lelah couldn’t recall anything spectacular happening to her at Jim’s table before, but she didn’t have any negative recollections either, so she gave him a try. It was considered bad form to take up a seat when you had so little money to play, but Lelah was determined to make this money grow. She planned to act like she had more cash until it became a reality.

She put ten outside on black, two on 27, and three in the corner between 7, 8, 10, and 11. Jim spun the ball and it landed on 8. That meant she’d get ten from her outside bet and twenty-four from the corner. This brought her to $54, a much more reasonable amount to work with. She took off her jacket.

Lelah never kept a strict count of her money after every play. The exact amount wasn’t as important to her while in the thick of the game as much as the feel of her stack of chips. Could she cover them with her entire palm, or did she have tall enough stacks that her hand sat on top of them, and the colors—the orange ones she preferred, persimmon, in fact—still peeked from between her fingers? Yes, this was the thing to measure by. Let the dollar amount be a pleasant surprise after several rounds. She kept playing inside and out, sometimes black, sometimes red, a few corners, a few splits, but always straight up on 27.

Her tablemates came and went. She registered their movements—new faces and body shapes—but not the particulars anymore. The camaraderie seduced her in the beginning, it was a way to warm up to the task at hand, but after a while if she didn’t go broke she’d slip into a space of just her and her hands and the chips that she tried to keep under them. A stillness like sleep, but better than sleep because it didn’t bring dreams. She was just a mind and a pair of hands calculating, pushing chips out, pulling some back in and running her thumb along the length of stacks to feel how much she’d gained or lost. She never once tried to explain this feeling in her GA meetings. She couldn’t even share with them the simplest reasons of why she played. They were always talking about feeling alive, or feeling numb. How the little white ball made them feel a jolt in their heart, or maybe how the moment of pulling on an old-fashioned slot handle for the first time in a night was better than an orgasm. Lelah did not feel alive when she played roulette. That wasn’t the point, she’d wanted to say. It wasn’t to feel alive, but it also wasn’t to feel numb. It was about knowing what to do intuitively, and thinking about one thing only, the possibility of winning, the possibility of walking away the victor, finally.